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such operation ‘would only result in compromise’. Menzies argued that ‘the Anglo-Russian alliance against Germany’ had ‘not altered my policy of endeavouring to obtain U.S.S.R. Armed Force information’, but Godfrey would appreciate ‘that I have to tread very warily as regards any further steps I may take’. The British ambassador and mission in Moscow, he continued, were ‘most anxious that nothing should be done which may in any way impede their efforts towards a successful collaboration with the U.S.S.R. authorities, the result of which may have much influence in winning the war’. Despite the somewhat elliptical language (and demonstrating that Menzies was clearly alive to the political ramifications of the proposal), this was a definite SIS refusal to meet a direct request from a customer department.

Intelligence, however, was central to the new Anglo-Soviet relationship. Having rallied to the Soviet side in the summer of 1941, there was actually very little practical assistance that London could offer, and when an Allied supply mission, including United States representatives, arrived in Moscow in the autumn it became abundantly obvious that the bulk of any available war supplies would come from the USA. In the meantime, as Bradley F. Smith has observed, ‘out of a combination of necessity and desperation’, the British Military Mission in Moscow under General Noel Mason-Macfarlane ‘always came back to intelligence exchange as the best available method of aiding the Russians and demonstrating Britain’s military prowess and importance’.6 But the best British intelligence was based on Ultra material, and there was never any suggestion that the USSR could be let into the secret in the way the USA had been earlier in the year. Menzies was instructed to ‘work out a scheme’ for transmitting ‘highly secret information’ to Macfarlane, who, in turn, was told ‘to pass on nothing to the Russians likely to compromise our sources of information’. Apart from the marking ‘from most reliable sources’, Ultra material, which was transmitted to Moscow over a dedicated, secure SIS wireless link, was paraphrased and massaged to obscure its origin. When Churchill pressed Menzies in July 1941 to send Ultra-based material to Moscow, Menzies observed that the immediacy of the information (which was of course one of its greatest strengths) could jeopardise the source if it were sent without some delay. ‘It would be impossible’, he wrote, ‘for any agent to have secured such information’ and transmitted it so quickly. He therefore arranged for the gist to be buried among other War Office material, and the Soviets to be tipped off that SIS had a ‘well-placed source in Berlin’.7

Even so, Menzies worried about the security of Ultra and the volume of material being provided. In September 1941, on a copy of an Air Intelligence signal to Moscow containing from ‘most reliable sources’ (evidently German air force Enigma decrypts) information about Luftwaffe dispositions on the Eastern Front, he minuted: ‘I am very concerned about these comm[unication]s & I think [we] sh[oul]d refuse to let this type of info[rmatio]n go forward.’ Intelligence security did not just apply to the Soviets. In August 1941 London sent Macfarlane a complaint from the Turks that their military attaché in Moscow ‘was getting very little information from our M.A.’. Since it was ‘very important to maintain good relations with the Turks’, London requested that Macfarlane pass on ‘what information you feel possible’. Menzies thought that this might be ‘dangerous’ and asked Commander Denniston at Bletchley Park about Turkish cypher security. Denniston reported that 90 per cent of the Turks’ diplomatic signals and ‘all’ military attaché messages between Moscow and Ankara were ‘practically fully legible . . . Hence it may be assumed that any information passed to the Turkish Ambassador or M.A. may be read by the enemy.’

In September 1941 SOE signed an agreement with the Soviet intelligence agency, the NKVD, to co-operate in subversive activities in all countries outside their respective