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secret weapon, which was ‘relied upon to work miracles but if it fails or proves non existent reaction will be serious and probably revolutionary’. The Air Ministry in London lauded these reports, affirming that they were ‘of considerable value and largely accurate’, since they added details to the more general evidence from signals intelligence ‘and provided an assessment that the RAF was unable to obtain from aerial reconnaissance when the weather was bad’. Another source visited Berlin from August to November 1943 and reported that there were no signs of internal demoralisation and that public services were functioning satisfactorily. Among workers and soldiers, he noted, Hitler was still considered a ‘demigod’. Heavy bombing, while materially devastating, seemed to have had the effect of stiffening resistance and determination for revenge.

Reflecting the continuing value of the close Anglo-Polish intelligence relationship, a precious supply of information from high German military circles came to SIS from an impressive Polish intelligence network code-named ‘Darek’, run by Major Szczęsny Choynacki, with cover as the Polish deputy consul in Berne. After the Germans (who knew the network as ‘Jerzy’) began in the early summer of 1943 to read Choynacki’s radio traffic and break up his organisation, they concluded that at least one of his agents had well-informed access to Hitler’s headquarters. This was probably ‘JX/Knopf ’, one of the ninety-three Darek sub-sources recorded by SIS. Evidence survives that Knopf reported between February 1942 and April 1943. He mainly supplied intelligence on the Russian campaign, but also considered a few other matters, such as the possibility of an Italo-German offensive aimed at the seizure of Suez, and troop dispositions in Tripolitania. A surviving Knopf report, dated 12 February 1943, and described as ‘from “contacts in the O.K.W.” [German high command]’, discussed the ‘state of mind’ at the headquarters following the defeat of the German Sixth Army at Stalingrad. ‘Despite their prodigious efforts, their heavy casualties, illness and, in some sectors, the loss of the greater part of their equipment’, German army morale was ‘far from broken; indeed it is very good. For this reason all rumours of an imminent break-down of the German military front in the East are quite untrue.’ MI14 (the German order-of-battle branch of British Military Intelligence) regarded Knopf as having ‘very good contacts’, and when ‘reporting from his usual sources, he is more often sound than not’. The information, however, could not ‘be accepted without some confirmation, but when it is clear and factual and is in line with our own views [a necessarily double-edged judgment this] or with information from other sources, a high degree of confidence can be placed in it’.1

One of the most interesting relationships was that between Vanden Heuvel and Allen Dulles, the OSS representative in Switzerland, who arrived in early November 1942 (and who later served as Director of the CIA from 1953 to 1961). Although they would ultimately share intelligence, from the beginning controversy surrounded Dulles. In January 1943 Broadway warned Vanden Heuvel about him, suggesting that he was likely to ‘lend himself easily to any striking proposal which looks like notoriety’. Although the SIS head of station and Dulles had mutual friends in the United States and were personally on friendly terms, Vanden Heuvel himself concluded that Dulles was ‘out for himself and clashes of interest are bound to come’. Competition for agents seemed especially acute. In typically acerbic fashion Dansey observed that the dollar was an ‘unfailing magnet’ and that Americans ‘everywhere swallow easily and are not critical’. He therefore thought it essential for SIS to work as closely as possible with Dulles (and the French, Poles and Swiss), otherwise the ‘only people who will profit by this madness will be the Germans and agents who get paid by three and even more masters’.

The closeness of the wartime Anglo-American intelligence relationship