The Bletchley Park Codebreakers Read Online Free Page B

so dominated by the period known as the Cold War, that it is easy to forget that between the First and Second World Wars, Britain and the Soviet Union fought a first Cold War every bit as bitter as the second. The predecessors of the KGB regarded Britain as ‘the main adversary’ and there were widespread attempts to collect intelligence, to subvert British society, and to recruit agents within the British establishment, of whom the members of the Cambridge spy ring were only the most prominent. The following chapter traces the early beginnings of GC&CS and examines the part played by the British codebreakers in this first Cold War. It also dismantles the myth that once the Germans turned on the Russians - in June 1941 - the British stopped collecting intelligence on their newfound Soviet allies. Although their armies were united in the ‘hot war’ against Germany, the intelligence services on both
sides would very soon be positioning themselves to fight the new Cold War that would follow the victory over the Nazis.
    MS
    Britain’s codebreakers enjoyed a very successful First World War. Perhaps the best known of their achievements was the breaking, by the Royal Navy’s Room 40, of the Zimmermann Telegram, which brought the United States into the war. But even before Room 40 was created, on the orders of the then First Lord of the Admiralty, Winston Churchill, the Army’s MI1b had achieved considerable success against German military codes and ciphers.
    The Army and Navy codebreaking units rarely spoke to each other, engaging in a turf war apparently fuelled by the Army’s resentment of the greater influence of the upstart in the Admiralty. Alastair Denniston, who for much of the war led Room 40, or NID25, as it was more correctly known, later bemoaned ‘the loss of efficiency to both departments caused originally by mere official jealousy’. The two departments finally began to exchange results in 1917, but there remained little love lost and the situation came to a head a year after the Armistice, when the question of whether or not there should be a peacetime codebreaking organization was under consideration.
    Although there were inevitably some within government who were keen to axe the codebreakers as part of a peace dividend, there were many more who were just as eager to continue to receive the intelligence they were providing. It was decided to amalgamate the two organizations and a conference was held at the Admiralty in August 1919 to consider who should be in charge of the new body. The War Office wanted their man. Major Malcolm Hay, the head of MI1b, while the Navy was equally determined that Denniston was the worthier candidate.
    But Hay appears to have overplayed his hand, insisting he was not prepared to work under Denniston, while the latter expressed a willingness to do whatever was asked of him. The generals were embarrassed by Hay’s attitude. It was not for junior officers to decide who they were or were not prepared to serve under. Denniston was subsequently given charge of what was to be known as the Government Code and Cypher School (GC&CS), with a staff of just over fifty employees, of whom only a half were codebreakers. ‘The public function was “to advise as to the security of codes and cyphersused by all Government departments and to assist in their provision”,’ Denniston later recalled. ‘The secret directive was “to study the methods of cypher communications used by foreign powers”.’
    GC&CS came under the control of the Director of Naval Intelligence, Admiral Hugh ‘Quex’ Sinclair, a noted bon viveur who installed the School in London’s fashionable Strand, close to the Savoy Grill, his favourite restaurant. The material it dealt with was almost entirely diplomatic traffic. Its main target countries were America, France, Japan and Russia, with the last providing what Denniston said was ‘the only real operational intelligence’.
    ‘The Revolutionary Government in 1919