Winston's War_ Churchill, 1940-1945 - Max Hastings [47]
When Jones finished, Tizard expressed renewed scepticism. Churchill overruled him. He ordered that the scientist should be given facilities to explore the German beams. Initially much dismayed by Jones’s revelations, he exulted when the young man told him that, once wavelengths were identified, the transmissions could be jammed. The “boffin” himself, of course, was enchanted by the prime minister’s receptiveness: “Here was strength158, resolution, humour, readiness to listen, to ask the searching question and, when convinced, to act.” The beams were indeed jammed. Jones became one of the outstanding British intelligence officers of the war. The episode showed Churchill at his best: accessible, imaginative, penetrating, decisive and always suggestible about technological innovation.
From the summer of 1940 onwards, decrypts of German signals assumed a steadily rising importance to the British war effort. Selected samples code-named Boniface were delivered to Churchill daily, in a special box to which even the private secretaries were denied a key. The Chiefs of Staff deplored his direct access to Ultra, arguing that he often derived false impressions from raw intelligence, and misjudged the significance of enemy exchanges. Yet Ultra armed the prime minister for the direction of the war in a fashion unknown to any other national leader in history. It played a critical role in guiding Churchill’s own perceptions of strategy, both for good and ill, and fortified his confidence in overruling commanders.
The Bletchley Park code-breaking operation, still in its infancy in 1940, was the greatest British achievement of the war, and from 1941 became the cornerstone of the nation’s intelligence operations. The Secret Intelligence Service was directed by Brig. Sir Stewart Menzies, “C,” a quintessential officer and gentleman, former president of “Pop” and captain of the cricket team at Eton, Life Guardsman and member of White’s club. Menzies owed his appointment to Halifax. His record was more impressive as a Whitehall intriguer than as a spymaster. SIS never gained significant “humint”—agent intelligence—about the Axis high command. Before Ultra hit its stride, most of Menzies’s assessments of—for instance—German intentions in 1940–41 were wildly mistaken. He had little to do with the prewar development of Bletchley Park, but by a skilful coup gained administrative control of its operations. He made it his business to deliver personally to the prime minister the most delectable code breakers’ delicacies, and in consequence was always a welcome visitor at Downing Street. All national leaders gain a frisson of excitement from access to secret intelligence. This was especially and understandably so of Churchill. Menzies, purveyor of Bletchley’s golden eggs, gained exaggerated credit and influence as owner of the goose.
Amid the great issues of national defence, there were constitutional responsibilities, including regular meetings with the monarch. The king and queen were “a little ruffled,”159 Jock Colville learned, “by the offhand way he treated them—says he will come at six, puts it off until 6.30 by telephone, then comes at seven.” Only a king would dare to resent his prime minister’s tardiness at a time when Churchill had to supervise the creation of the Takoradi aircraft ferry route across Africa to Egypt, visit blitzed airfields, bully the Treasury into paying compensation for private homes destroyed by bombs, and write at length in his own hand to Neville Chamberlain, now stricken with the cancer that would kill him within three months. There were certainly difficulties, the prime minister acknowledged to his predecessor in a letter of August 31: