Why was German intelligence so inefficient?

[Kurfürst]

There were some more localized successes, such as the B-Dienst which could read Allied convoy code for large parts of the war

Such statements almost beg for the comparison : if the fact that 'the B-Dienst could read Allied convoy code for large parts of the war', with dire results for literally hundreds of ships in those convoys on the battlefield that amongst others Churchill considered decisive, counts as a 'more localized successes'... then what importance if at all did an ULTRA interception had, that lead to the sinking of two Italian tankers..?

In other words, you are comparing one instance of a successful ULTRA interception with the totality of the B-Dienst's efforts? What exactly should that tell me about bias and overhyping?

I am afraid strawmen arguements won't work, you're attempting to misconstruct my statements.

I merely compared how you noted the B-Dienst successes in providing information about convoy routes, but then downplayed it immiditely (localised etc.), and the contrast between that and Andreas making the happy dance all over the place that ULTRA managed to do the same albeit on a MUCH smaller scale, and then you joined the happy dance on it, too.

If the B-Diesnt regularly decodes Allied convoy routes leading the sinking of hundreds of merchantmant, it's a localised success.
If ULTRA decodes far fewer Italian convoys in the Med, it's an amazing achievement leading to far reaching conclusions about the German intel in general.

I think that should tell a lot about bias and overhyping.

The B-Dienst could read the Allied convoy code until June 1943; held against ULTRA which provided data on everything from the location of the Bismarck at a crucial time, German troop movements into Romania and Bulgaria in the spring of 1941, Italian convoy routings and time tables, Reichsbahn mass transports of Jews to Auschwitz and a host of other things, that makes the B-Dienst's achievements a localized success in comparison.

These examples would be everything...? What did ULTRA provided about U boot locations near convoys HX 229 and SC 112 ? What did ULTRA provided about Tirpitz's task force turning back from PQ 17, which would have made scattering the convoy unnessary and preventing the bloodbath that took place? And who disarmed the Italian army after it's surrendered, the Allies who had ULTRA and to whom the Italians were surrendering to, or the Germans who were supposed to know nothing about the whole thing?

BTW and if memory serves me, Dönitz lamented his poor intelligence in his memoirs writing '...the enemy knew all of our secrets, and we knew none of his...' or words to that effect.

You just noted that B-Diesnt was reading Allied naval and merchant marine codes through most of the war, and now you try to find Dönitz-quotes about the total lack of intelligence... a bit controversial, isn't it..?

Then one wonders when exactly ULTRA had managed to broke into the highest and most closely guarded private discussions between high-ranking Axis leaders? Certainly ULTRA never managed to ever come close to the success of listening to the private talks between Churchill and FDR on the highest strategical goals.

May I ask to which use the acquired intelligence was put?

Yes of course you may ask purely rhetorical questions, but I usually don't bother to answer those. If you wish to downplay this achievement with rhetorical questions, feel free, but I don't think I need to assist to that.

Such are perfect examples to to overhyping that goes about ULTRA, ie. lenghty overblown celebration over the sinking of two Italian tankers and at the same time attempting to downplay and marginalize the fact that both the British Merchant and Naval codes were broken by B-Dienst for the large part of the war.

Well, as I also wrote, very few people knew about ULTRA until the secret was declassified in the 1970s. I further acknowledged that the late revelation of ULTRA probably lead some historians to overestimate its importance.

Yes, that's a logical assumption that I can fully agree with.

Andreas gave an example where the sinking of two Italian tankers was explained by other causes than ULTRA. How overblown is that? What you consider overblown at great length wasn't known, much less written about, until 1974.

You see I am struggling to think about what songs were on the top lists in 1974, but the calendar shows 2007 now...

Ignoring of the facts and regardless of their weight dismiss them to arrive on pre-existing concept, basically simplistic verbally bashing of German intelligence in WW2 while unconditionally praising Allied efforts in the field is unfortunately anything but conclusive, or convincing.

Who is praising what unconditionally here? We're simply comparing intelligence efforts.

These comparisons appear to me as one-sided praising of one-side, and attempt to downplay any and all achievement on the other side, and that BTW without actually having sufficient information to make a judgement, just a few examples being thrown against each other. That's of course, just an opinion of an observer.

Failure to discover that signals were read thanks to ULTRA is an important failure of German intelligence in itself.

The notion that the Germans would be unaware of the possibility that their coded messages could be and were decoded is interesting, even more so entertaining, but factually it's just utterly naive...

The point isn't that the Germans changed their codes, but rather that they failed to realize that their signals were being read.

Source please. J Keegen for example seems to believe the contrary.

Of course they knew of the possibility, but they didn't draw the consequences, or, AFAIK, made any attempts to feed false information via enigma.

Absance of evidence is not evidence of absance, esp. as 'AFAIK' is the keyword here. That's why I noted the area of WW2 German/Italian intel is insufficiently covered by the literature.

One of the reason why ULTRA's importance has been overhyped over the years is the fact that during the war years, ULTRA provided the only significant intelligence source for the Brits. If the German human intelligence gathering was dilletantic, the British was non-existant

Strictly speaking we can't know that - vide ULTRA only declassified in 1974 - but apart from that the British did, in fact, have a rather extensive intelligence network in occupied Europe.

Care to provide a few examples when this 'rather extensive intelligence network' actually turned up anything useful on large scale German operations? The Russians, for example, had one in Germany, until it was rounded up by the Gestapo and SD, and the agents turned or forced to give information about the rest of the organisation.

thanks to small, insignificant incidents like Venlo. Lacking any serious spy network, the much vaunted British intelligence had to work from tidbits it could gather through the air...

...for example, information on the V-1 flying bomb was gathered via Danish resistance, which stumbled across a crashed V-1 on the island of Bornholm. Granted, that's not intelligence gathering in the classic sense, but it's human information gathering all the same.

Yes, sort of. It's actually gathering of debris of something that gone down in a big boom, and sending the pieces to London for analysis. I'd not call that a spy network, though. It's an example of amateurs and resistance fighters that helped, which is getting blown out of proportion since the question I asked was about examples about the 'lack of any serious spy network'.

...Nothing serious was provided on these channels on German operational plans, development of new weapons, disposition of troops on the front, and higher strategy. Unfortunately for ULTRA, these kind of inforations were not part of the chatter between ENIGMA machines, they were handed over by officer couriers, over telephone lines that could not be listened toor other means...

Indirectly, ULTRA could and did provide information also about strategic dispositions. For example, the British knew about German troop movements into Bulgaria and Romania in late 1940/early 1941 via ULTRA decrypts, which gave strong circumstantial evidence that Hitler was planning to attack in the Balkans that spring. Intelligence gathering doesn't have to be directly from source in order to be effective; much can be inferred from seemingly unimportant or insignificant things.

Well even my grandmothered noticed in the late spring of 1943 how many Panzers are heading to the Eastern Front, and no, she wasn't looking particularly to that kind information. Such kind of information is that easy to obtain you see, everybody can see troop movements. Only a blind man would miss 3 million German troops massing on the USSR border in 1941, but appearantly Stalin was deceived and kept uncertain, leading to the most disasterious losses.

As far as what German troop movements in Bulgaria indicated as circumstancial evidence, they could indicate a zillion things apart from a German campaign on the Balkans (certainly not a done deal in late 1940 btw). Deception, preparation of attack on the USSR, political bluff, or simply reinforcing strategically vital areas to Germany.

[Kurfürst]

The notion that the Germans would be unaware of the possibility that their coded messages could be and were decoded is interesting, even more so entertaining, but factually it's just utterly naive.

Maybe, but it is also the truth. You may not like it, but that does not make it wrong.

Quite the contrary. It's only an opinion from you, but that does not make it right.

When Dönitz asked for the security of enigma to be reviewed in 42 he was told there was no problem with it - what else but a failure of intelligence is that?

It's a failure of intelligence on your part, to play a bit with the word, I hope you don't mind. :p

The ENIGMA code that was used for Command & Control of the U-Boots between February 1942 and May 1943 was not broken until December 1942. For practically all of 1942, the Brits could not read Dönitz's ENIGMA transmissions at all.

Decodings were sporadric even after, for example ULTRA failed to break it between 10 and 19th March 1943, with catastropic results. In May it was replaced and ULTRA went completely silent again for a while.

At the same time, between Febuary and December 1942 the German Navy was readin the Royal Navy's No. 3 Code, when it was replaced, but the B-Diesnt broke it again and read it between February 1943 and June 1943.

They finally got the idea by late 44 during the preparation for the Ardennes, but by then it was a bit late.

Source and details please. They knew about it, and did nothing about it. Unconvincing.

As for the idea that all ULTRA got were two tankers (German, BTW)... That is such tosh it does not warrant reply.

Of course it's such tosh it does not warrant reply, because it's a strawman arguement made up by you, manipulating my actual statements.

The Germans had excellent tactical intelligence systems that could have operational impacts, e.g. in North Africa. They were extremely weak at the strategic and later operational intelligence gathering and analysis, particularly in the east in 1944 (but already in 1942, when they missed preparations for Uranus).

Regards

Andreas

Well that's a nice opinion but only that. Numerous examples can be quoted with German intel having serious effect on the strategic level, to name one : they found out Churchill's little plan about the invasion of Norway to cut off the Germans from Swedish ore, and Reader had ample time to come up with his own counter-plan. The success of Weserubung and the failure of Wilfrid secured Swedish ore and the Baltic for the Germans for the rest of the war, and it provided very useful bases for the LW and KM in Norway.

[Andreas]

I merely compared how you noted the B-Dienst successes in providing information about convoy routes, but then downplayed it immiditely (localised etc.), and the contrast between that and Andreas making the happy dance all over the place that ULTRA managed to do the same albeit on a MUCH smaller scale, and then you joined the happy dance on it, too.

It is this type of brazen misrepresentation of other peoples' views that has no place on this board.

For a balanced (but not error-free) overview of code-breaking successes, I suggest to any reader who is interested to have a look here:

http://history.sandiego.edu/GEN/WW2Time ... onage.html

All the best

Andreas

[Andreas]

Some information on the success of the B-Dienst can be found on page 12 and 13 of this biography of Brigadier Tiltman:

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_q ... 1691/pg_12

All the best

Andreas

[Andreas]

The official history of the Atlantic communications war is on ibiblio.org:

http://www.ibiblio.org/hyperwar/ETO/Ult ... index.html

Of particular interest is the table at the end of section 2, giving days read per month and delay in reading:

The final section describes the B-Dienst success and Allied countermeasures:

http://www.ibiblio.org/hyperwar/ETO/Ult ... 009-6.html

There is another interesting article on the matter:

http://www.ibiblio.org/hyperwar/ETO/Ult ... index.html

All the best

Andreas

[Zebedee]

As one does reads British Air Intelligence papers the impression is often that it was written by eager boyscouts, not an intelligence service...

There's definitely an element of truth in that. British intelligence recruited amateurs from a very specific background in the main (middle and upper class, Oxbridge educated). But they were talented amateurs - was it 20 divisions added to the OOB in North Africa?

[henryk]

Jon G. said:

...for example, information on the V 1 flying bomb was gathered via Danish resistance, which stumbled across a crashed V 1 on the island of Bornholm. Granted, that's not intelligence gathering in the classic sense, but it's human information gathering all the same.

Another example of intelligence on the V 1 and V 2:
http://users.rcn.com/salski/No05-06Fold ... bution.htm

POLAND'S CONTRIBUTION IN THE FIELD OF INTELLIGENCE
TO THE VICTORY IN THE SECOND WORLD WAR
It is a vast subject. Many books have been written covering Polish intelligence activities both before the outbreak of the Second World War, and after the war started. The Polish intelligence operated in occupied Poland, and in Germany, France, North Africa, Portugal, the Balkans, Turkey and neutral Switzerland.
I will limit myself to only two subjects and try to be perspicuous and present them undistorted and unexaggerated. I will also start in the inverse order of their importance.

Beginning with the Vergeltungswaffen or weapons of retribution, as Hitler called the V 1 and particularly the V 2 rockets, we should keep in mind how frightful and terrible were the V 2 rockets. They were radio-controlled, and about 47 feet long and 5 feet in diameter. They had a range of 200 miles, could reach a height of 90 miles, and attain a speed about 900 miles per hour. At such a speed people on the site where a rocket was about to hit could not even hear it.

When the first V-2 struck the London suburb of Chiswick on September 8, 1944, it destroyed 19 homes, killed scores of people, and left a crater 30 feet deep. British authorities were panic-stricken. Immediately they muzzled the media and forbade any mention of the impact and destruction. It was only two months later that the British public found out anything about the damaging weapon.

What if Hitler had had this weapon sooner? Why did he not strike earlier? How many lives would have been lost? Would operation Overlord ever have taken place? Would any concentration of the large contingent of troops necessary for the invasion of the continent have been possible?

The production of V 2 was considered by Hitler as a project of high secrecy and priority. When Wernher von Braun showed Hitler the perfect launch of the V 2 on a color film, it is reported that Hitler jumped from his seat and in a somewhat uncharacteristic display of emotion pumped von Braun's hand with the greatest excitement. "This is the decisive weapon of the war. Humanity will never be able to endure it," he said, and added "If I had had this weapon in 1939 we would not be at war now."

Polish intelligence reported in 1941 that the Nazis were building new and mysterious weapons in Peenemünde on the Uznam island, on the Baltic Sea. Polish reports and maps delivered to British intelligence in 1942 and 1943 were more specific, and indicated that they were building rockets capable of mass destruction.

The British, convinced of the veracity of these reports and supplied with all the necessary information, on August 17, 1943 bombed and demolished the V 2 factory in Peenemünde. Over 500 Allied bombers dropped 1600 tons of bombs and 280 tons of incendiaries. The operation code name was Hydra. Forty bombers were lost over Peenemünde and one Mosquito over Berlin. I mention Berlin because the whole operation was conducted as though it was directed as a regular bombing of Berlin.

To Germany the loss was much greater than the Allies realized at that time. Gen. Hans Jeschonnek, the chief of staff of the German air force, the Luftwaffe that should have prevented the bombing, committed suicide and left a suicidal note that read: "I hate Göring. Heil Hitler." Hermann Göring was the commander in chief of the Luftwaffe.

Hitler immediately turned over the entire responsibility for production of these rockets to Heinrich Himler, Minister of Interior of the Reich and Reichsfuerer of the powerful and ferocious SS. He frantically, in an around-the-clock operation, transferred the manufacturing of weapons to the deep tunnels of the Harz Mountains. However, testing was still necessary, and was conducted in Poland in the early Summer of 1944.

Polish intelligence officers who had been given the reports of tests of the V 1 and V 2 rockets from the Polish underground Home Army, notified the British that they knew where the experiments were conducted, and the British, confident that the Poles could do just about anything, asked if by any chance the Polish underground army could steal one of the V 2s and ship it to England. The Polish underground soldiers did exactly that: they stole the V 2 rocket, one of the most guarded secrets of the Third Reich. They had also stolen one of the earlier models of German rockets, the V 1, and sent it to England.

It happened when one of the tested V 2 rockets landed on a muddy bank of the river Bug and it did not blow up. The Polish underground fighters were waiting for just such a situation and immediately camouflaged the rocket. Then, after the German patrols stopped looking for it, at night they took 6 horses and pulled the V 2 out of the mud and hid it in an empty barn. Later four Polish scientists disassembled the rocket and packed it into empty barrels. While waiting for the plane that the British promised to send to pick up the rocket they used the time to study its guidance system. Finally the plane, a Dakota C47, arrived with Lt. Culliford as its pilot. To load the huge cargo, and the four Polish scientists, into the plane was a frantic operation due to the nearness of the Nazi forces.

The C47's motors were running high but unfortunately the heavy plane could not move on the wet, muddy field. While many attempts were being made, distant Nazi automobile lights became visible on a vicinity road. Nervousness among those present rose high, and Lt. Culliford ordered the already dynamited plane to be blown up. But about 100 members of the underground army pleaded for one more try. They clawed the mud with their bare and already bleeding hands to enable the plane to move. Their last chance Their last try Finally the wheels moved and slowly rolled down on the provisory runway. The C47 had lifted into the air with its so precious cargo. The remaining Poles were quickly gone out into the nearby woods-which were usually avoided by the Germans, particularly at night.

Some historians believe that the incredible airborne Market-Garden operation that was supposed to secure bridges on the Rhine and seize Arnhem was greatly accelerated by two events. First, Gen. Bernard L. Montgomery's promotion to Field Marshall, and second, the V 2 explosion in Chiswick two days earlier. If successful, the three airborne divisions and one Polish brigade were also to wipe out the launchers of the V 2 menace. Tragically the operation failed miserably, even though in his memoirs Marshall Montgomery remained its unrepentant advocate.

The German Gen. Fritz Kraemer rushed his V 2 rockets to the center of the Hague, Netherlands, as soon as the Market-Garden operation was halted by German forces, and the V 2s exploded again, some in London and some in Antwerp. But the attacks did not last long, for they were the last convulsions of the dying Nazi beast. The last V 2 exploded in London on March 27, 1945, killing 127 innocent people.

[Jon G.]

I am afraid strawmen arguements won't work, you're attempting to misconstruct my statements.

I'll leave that remark for posterity while I address the rest of your post below:

I merely compared how you noted the B-Dienst successes in providing information about convoy routes, but then downplayed it immiditely (localised etc.), and the contrast between that and Andreas making the happy dance all over the place that ULTRA managed to do the same albeit on a MUCH smaller scale, and then you joined the happy dance on it, too.

I did not 'downplay' B-Dienst. I merely wrote that the Germans didn't have anything of the magnitude offered by ULTRA. Clearly, B-Dienst is a specialized success in comparison. That is comparing, not 'downplaying'.

If the B-Diesnt regularly decodes Allied convoy routes leading the sinking of hundreds of merchantmant, it's a localised success.
If ULTRA decodes far fewer Italian convoys in the Med, it's an amazing achievement leading to far reaching conclusions about the German intel in general.

I think that should tell a lot about bias and overhyping. ..

If you had actually read mine and Andreas' posts you would note that the example with the two Axis tankers was brought forward as an example of historians who didn't know about ULTRA. It would be a good deal easier to discuss this subject if you bothered to read what other thread participants actually write, instead of pursuing a paranoid line of thought about bias and overhyping.

These examples would be everything...? What did ULTRA provided about U boot locations near convoys HX 229 and SC 112 ? What did ULTRA provided about Tirpitz's task force turning back from PQ 17, which would have made scattering the convoy unnessary and preventing the bloodbath that took place? And who disarmed the Italian army after it's surrendered, the Allies who had ULTRA and to whom the Italians were surrendering to, or the Germans who were supposed to know nothing about the whole thing?

Hmm, who has claimed that ULTRA provided any information about these events? Maybe it is you who should look up 'strawman'?

For what it is worth, how would ULTRA intelligence about the Italian surrender have changed anything? It was the time element which lost the game for the Allies, not lack of intelligence.

BTW and if memory serves me, Dönitz lamented his poor intelligence in his memoirs writing '...the enemy knew all of our secrets, and we knew none of his...' or words to that effect.

You just noted that B-Diesnt was reading Allied naval and merchant marine codes through most of the war, and now you try to find Dönitz-quotes about the total lack of intelligence... a bit controversial, isn't it..?

If you find Dönitz' memoirs controversial, you should take it up with him. I provided a quote (from memory) in order to provide contrast to your - and mine - assertions about the B-Dienst.

May I ask to which use the acquired intelligence was put?

...

Yes of course you may ask purely rhetorical questions, but I usually don't bother to answer those. If you wish to downplay this achievement with rhetorical questions, feel free, but I don't think I need to assist to that.

I wasn't being rhetorical. I'd like to know how the phone taps you allude to helped the German war effort. I take you non-reply to my question as a 'not at all'.

Andreas gave an example where the sinking of two Italian tankers was explained by other causes than ULTRA. How overblown is that? What you consider overblown at great length wasn't known, much less written about, until 1974.

You see I am struggling to think about what songs were on the top lists in 1974, but the calendar shows 2007 now...

Let me ask you again then: what was overhyped and overblown about ULTRA prior to 1974? Specifically, what was overblown and overhyped in a 1962 Italian text which is explaining the loss two tankers through aerial reconnaissance?

Of course they knew of the possibility, but they didn't draw the consequences, or, AFAIK, made any attempts to feed false information via enigma.

Absance of evidence is not evidence of absance, esp. as 'AFAIK' is the keyword here. That's why I noted the area of WW2 German/Italian intel is insufficiently covered by the literature.

1) My use of the AFAIK moniker acknowledges just that. If you or anyone else knows of German attempts to feed the Allies false intelligence via enigma, I am very interested in reading about it.
2) As for 'insufficiently covered' look up the disclosure date of ULTRA again if you please, and hold it against pre-1974 WW2 historiography.

One of the reason why ULTRA's importance has been overhyped over the years is the fact that during the war years, ULTRA provided the only significant intelligence source for the Brits. If the German human intelligence gathering was dilletantic, the British was non-existant

Strictly speaking we can't know that - vide ULTRA only declassified in 1974 - but apart from that the British did, in fact, have a rather extensive intelligence network in occupied Europe.

Care to provide a few examples when this 'rather extensive intelligence network' actually turned up anything useful on large scale German operations? The Russians, for example, had one in Germany, until it was rounded up by the Gestapo and SD, and the agents turned or forced to give information about the rest of the organisation.

Well, henryk just gave a much more detailed example, above. Also, I'd like to know your definition of 'large scale' and tell me which pre-D-Day German operations in occupied Europe qualify as 'large scale'.

...As far as what German troop movements in Bulgaria indicated as circumstancial evidence, they could indicate a zillion things apart from a German campaign on the Balkans (certainly not a done deal in late 1940 btw). Deception, preparation of attack on the USSR, political bluff, or simply reinforcing strategically vital areas to Germany.

The point isn't that the intelligence conveyed via ULTRA could have been conveyed by other channels, or if it was of a particularly mundane nature. The point is that it was interpreted correctly, whether it came from your grandmother or from Luftwaffe enigma decrypts.

[byron2112]

Another example of intelligence on the V-1 and V-2:
http://users.rcn.com/salski/No05-06Fold ... bution.htm

POLAND'S CONTRIBUTION IN THE FIELD OF INTELLIGENCE
TO THE VICTORY IN THE SECOND WORLD WAR...

Polish intelligence officers who had been given the reports of tests of the V-1 and V-2 rockets from the Polish underground Home Army, notified the British that they knew where the experiments were conducted, and the British, confident that the Poles could do just about anything, asked if by any chance the Polish underground army could steal one of the V-2s and ship it to England. The Polish underground soldiers did exactly that: they stole the V-2 rocket, one of the most guarded secrets of the Third Reich. They had also stolen one of the earlier models of German rockets, the V-1, and sent it to England.

It happened when one of the tested V-2 rockets landed on a muddy bank of the river Bug and it did not blow up. The Polish underground fighters were waiting for just such a situation and immediately camouflaged the rocket. Then, after the German patrols stopped looking for it, at night they took 6 horses and pulled the V-2 out of the mud and hid it in an empty barn. Later four Polish scientists disassembled the rocket and packed it into empty barrels. While waiting for the plane that the British promised to send to pick up the rocket they used the time to study its guidance system. Finally the plane, a Dakota C47, arrived with Lt. Culliford as its pilot. To load the huge cargo, and the four Polish scientists, into the plane was a frantic operation due to the nearness of the Nazi forces.

The C47's motors were running high but unfortunately the heavy plane could not move on the wet, muddy field. While many attempts were being made, distant Nazi automobile lights became visible on a vicinity road. Nervousness among those present rose high, and Lt. Culliford ordered the already dynamited plane to be blown up. But about 100 members of the underground army pleaded for one more try. They clawed the mud with their bare and already bleeding hands to enable the plane to move. Their last chance Their last try Finally the wheels moved and slowly rolled down on the provisory runway. The C47 had lifted into the air with its so precious cargo. The remaining Poles were quickly gone out into the nearby woods-which were usually avoided by the Germans, particularly at night.

This is an incredible story!

Thanks so much for sharing it.

Reguards,

Byron

[bf109 emil]

I thought Gehlen was very good at finding out of Russia's strengths,armies, armoured numbers, etc. but when he was summoned to OKW to answer these numbers, which seemed vast, was he not called a defeatist,liar, and almost belittled by Hitler, with Keitel and jodl almost shaking their heads at him for being a liar,,,The Gehlen Diaries are very good reading, and include how he went to work for the CIA in east germany after the war

[phylo_roadking]

One VERY major issue with German "intelligence" was that what intelligence WAS pssed back home for analysis...wasn't always analysed by the Abwher - but nabbed for its pertinence to "current business" and "analysed" by Hitler and his generals rather than proper intelligence analysists.

This led to several failures of a very basic and classic type - the analysis of intelligence for information and data SUPPORTING whatever plan or enterprise was on hands, rather than the proper analysis of intelligence for corroborating AND CONTRA-INDICATING intelligence. The classic example is June and Early July 1940, when Hitler - during his period of offfering various olive branches to Britain - while at the SAME time mounting a number of psi-war ops in order to further demoralize (as HE thought) British morale...was constantly looking for evidence that the various ops were WORKING, and looking for POSITIVE reactions to his "peace offers" - and NOT ALSO looking for indicators that the various ops had failed! So the evidence of failure was ignored in favour of MUCH smaller indicators that they were working. See Peter Fleming's Operation Sealion for several VERY good chapters on this classic failure of intelligence that lost the Germans SIX WEEKS of potential preparations for Sealion.

[Potsdamerplatz]

On a diplomatic level, before Ribbentrop's appointment as Foreign Minister in February 1938, his own independent Dienststelle Ribbentrop engaged in fierce rivalry with Neurath's Foreign Ministry. As a result of this, much valuable information was lost or misinterpreted because of the in-fighting.

Germany's failure to establish a successful spy network in Britian during World War II also cost them dearly.

[Knouterer]

The basic problem with German intelligence was that it was so poorly coordinated. In fact, it was a good example of the "organized chaos of the Third Reich", as historians have called it.

Kriegsmarine, Luftwaffe and army (generally) did not share what information they had; the Foreign Affairs Ministry (Auswärtiges Amt) forbade its staff to have any contact with the Abwehr; the NSDAP/SS/SD set up their own intelligence organizations, which distrusted everybody else (not without reason); and so on.

Even within branches of the services, there was friction. Lt. Col. Earle Lund, in “The Battle of Britain – A German Perspective:

“The performance of Luftwaffe air intelligence prior to and during the Battle of Britain was seriously flawed and perhaps doomed it to failure from the outset. British air intelligence was equally guilty of serious miscalculations during this period, but by comparison the Luftwaffe was ill prepared for the task at hand. As will be seen, poor organization and staffing, low esteem of the Luftwaffe's intelligence corps, and the Nazi "system" itself (a system that resulted in an almost complete absence of coordination amongst the various intelligence agencies) all combined to help ensure defeat.
Air intelligence was subordinated to the operations staff at the major levels of the Luftwaffe. (See Appendices 6 and 7.) At the General Staff level, the 5th Abteilung (Detachment) served as the senior intelligence agency. A similar position was retained at the air fleet (Luftflotte) level. It is also significant to note that no intelligence organizations were stationed below the Fliegerkorps until 1944.

Because of the organizational subordination of intelligence to the operations staff, it was very often the operations staff officers themselves who would prepare intelligence assessments of the situation. Their reports sometimes included inputs from the intelligence departments but most frequently they did not. This was apparently not considered unreasonable because these "intelligence assessments" also reflected the Luftwaffe's future "operational intentions, objectives or missions."
In effect, intelligence officers were perceived as "maids of all work", and were manned with low-quality personnel whose inputs were considered of limited usefulness to the conduct of future operations.

Knowledge is power. Nowhere is this axiom more prevalent than within the wartime German state, within the Wehrmacht and of particular importance here, within the Luftwaffe. More than a dozen intelligence collection agencies existed outside the realm of the armed forces. All of these agencies competed with one another; none fully cooperated with the others and only at the very highest level – Hitler – did the potential for a true picture exist. The result was information passed "largely vertically, and seldom horizontally." Even within the Luftwaffe's own intelligence agencies the rivalry and mistrust was so great that the 3d Abteilung (signal intelligence; also under the operations staff) rarely coordinated with the 5th Abteilung. The friction and rivalry between them led directly to erroneous assessments."

[Carl Schwamberger]

NIce to see this thread necroed. Despite the salting of low quality posts there is some good information, analysis, and quite a few useful links.

[steverodgers801]

Germany was very good at tactical intelligence, because that was considered relevant to planning. Intel work was not a path to higher ranks, the best officers were assigned to operations. Those who were assigned to intel were considered 2nd rate officers, those who either would not be promoted or had failed to be promoted. The most serious failure was in thinking that assessing what he enemy would do was not important. The most that was asked for was the most serious act the enemy could do. This disregard for enemy capacity and intent is very evident in the failures of the eastern front