Cspan and cspan. Org or listen to it on the free cspan radio app. Author and journalist max hastings talks about his book the secret war spies, ciphers and guerrillas. Mr. Hastings argues the rise of electronic and Radio Communication made codebreakers equally if not more important, than spies on the ground. This hourlong talk is part of a multiday conference at the National WorldWar Ii Museum in new orleans. Good morning, everyone. Its a great pleasure and honor to be here amongst all our attend eaees and speakers for t wonderful day and the whole weekend weve got line up for you. As master of ceremonies, its my responsibility to introduce our speakers and to keep you informed of our schedule and any updates or additions as the day progresses. Most of you in the audience are you seasoned veterans who have attended our programs before. But i do want to stress that due to the tight schedule of great programming, we will stick to the itinerary and timings as closely as we can so as to ensure that everyone gets enough time for their presentations and so that our question and answer sessions provide you all with enough opportunity to ask the speakers specifically what you want to know. I do want to point out that the speakers biographies are in the back of your official programs so please refer to that for more personal details. The opening lecture for our espionage symposium is raymond e. Mason jr. Distinguished lecture on world war ii. General Raymond Mason jr. Served under general patton in world war ii and worked his way through the ranks following the war, including an important posting at the pentagon. After his military career, he was a successful businessman and in concert with his wife, margaret, became a generous philanthropist. A gift from the Mason Foundation created an endowed lecture series here at the museum. This series brings in the best and brightest historians to share their latest works and their insights with our live and online audiences. Our sincere thanks go to the mason family, including the masons son, ray mason iii, and to their foundation. Our mason lecturer for the symposium is sir max hastings who is one of the most renowned historians of world war ii. Hes been a part of programs here at the museum going back to our very first conference in 2006, and he has also presented to a group of travelers that were in london with a museumsponsored tour. Sir max is here to present on his brandnew book the secret war ciphers, codes and guerrillas 19391945. Ladies and gentlemen, please join me in welcoming our very first speaker to the stage, sir max hastings. [ applause ] good morning. I cant tell you what a pleasure it is to be here. I heard the word miracle used earlier on to describe whats been done here. I remember when i first came here and, like all of you, ive always been deeply committed to the study of world war ii. Never when i saw how things started at the first conference that the museum staged nine years ago did one imagine that it would have ballooned into this magnificent achievement. Its actually not a miracle. Its a manmade miracle and its been done by all these remarkable people and such a pleasure and privilege to be here with you today and sharing in some part of this miracle. The book that ive written tells of some of the most fascinating and outlandish characters ive ever studied. Soldiers, sailors and airmen who killed each other, the most conspicuous participants in world war ii. Outcomes were also profoundly affected by a host of men who never fired a shot. Months could elapse between big battles. Every nation sieged an unceasing secret war, a struggle for knowledge of the enemy to empower its armies, navies and airforces through espionage and code breaking. I thought i knew quite a bit about the war but was amazed by some of the tales i came across while researching the book. Among my favorite vignettes there was a japanese spy chief whose exploits caused him to be dubbed by his own men, lawrence of manchuria. Meanwhile, a german agent in stockholm warned berlin in saepts 1944 that the allies were about to stage a mass parachute drop. His forecast was ignored by the nazi high command and after the war it was found that his supposed sources in britain who frightined the hell out of the british Secrete Service were figments of imagination. The imagine was that it inspired a completely wild guess. One of russias wartime spy chiefs earned his spurs in stalins eyes by presenting a nationalist in rot bedam with a handsome box of chocolates that the ukrainian crest which blew the retched recipient to pieces. In the far east, bitter hostility between the british and United States secret services reached a in 1945 when american black widow night fighters shot down two raf liberators because they were carrying french agents into indochina against washingtons anticolonial policy. The soviet superspy richard sorga once said spying should be done bravely. And he certainly did that. Sorga began his Brilliant Campaign to penetrate the German Embassy in tokyo in 1933 by befriending the colonel who soon after became hitlers ambassador nvd by sleeping with the colonels wife. Before sorga was finally trapped and dispatched nine years later, there was scarcely a handsome woman in his reach whom hed not seduced nor a german secret that went unreported to moscow. One of the most bizarre british agents was a man that very few people have ever heard of. Ronald seth who in october 1942 was parachuting into estonia to start a Resistance Movement. Seth was next sighted in paris in 1944 having become an employee of german intelligence trained to drop back into britain. This fabulously weird mans doings fill a thousand pages of mi5, mi6, mi9 and hitlers all of who ended up completely baffled about whose side he was really on. It almost defies belief that the operational code name was blunderhill. The last entry in his mi5 file is a copy of an unsuccessful 1946 application to become chief constable of wilshire. He achieved some postwar success and was last heard of trying to pay for a penis enlarger. As in all my books, i have tried to paint the big picture with significance and intelligence to each nations war effort and woven into it human stories such as those mentioned above about spies, codebreakers, guerrillas and intelligence chiefs. Secret service became the wars growth industry. Never in history had such huge resources been lavished upon gathering information. The United States alone spent half a billion dollars, serious money in those days, on socalled signals intelligence. Of course, most of this was wasted. As late as january 1943 in the heyday, the canadian minister in britains war cabinet expressed his own skepticism saying that in cabinet he heard veritable secret information of real value. Secret Service Reports were a doubtful quality and their quantility made it difficult for anyone to sift the good from the bad. He even expressed caution about the output saying that the enemy could put out deception messages just as easily as we could. Today, we know that didnt happen. But it deserves noticing that a warlord could say such things. At the time, the allied secret war machine didnt always command the openmouthed admiration conferred upon it by some 21st century writers of spy books. Most books on this theme focus on single nations. I tried instead to create a global context. I wrote a lot about the russians whose dooings are unknown to mot western readers. The socalled red orchestra, its players upper middle class, in 1945 and 1942 provided moscow with superb intelligence about hitlers war machine. They were led by astonishing personalities. The intellectual communist and his american wife mildred who all met dreadful deaths in nazi hands. Their special tragedy was that they sacrificed everything only to have most of their information, including that which warned of hitlers warming invasion of russia dismissed by stalin who scorned reports unless they told of conspiracies against himself, real or imagined. The russians also, of course, spied on their allies as energetically as on their enemies. The fungus growth of communism caused many people to embrace a loyalty that crossed frontiers and in the eyes of zealots transcended mere patriotism. More than a few people discovered virtue in treason. Others betrayed for cash. Claiming to serve moscow out of principle but also taking its money to pay his wine bills. The british dwell obsessively on the treason of the socalled cambridge five but fewer noticed what i called the small army of american leftists who briefed soviet intelligence. Not merely about the atomic bomb but about every aspect of u. S. Policy and technology. In the 1950s, mccarthy stigmatized many individuals of soviet tools unjustly. But mccarthy was not wrong in charging that for a generation, americas greatest institutions and corporations harbored an amazing number of top people whose first loyalty was not to the stars and stripes. True, between 1941 and 45, the russians were supposedly an alliance with british and the United States. But stalin considered this a mere temporary arrangement of convenience solely for the purpose of destroying the nazis with nations that remained his irreconcilable foes. The task of many Intelligence Officers is to promote treachery which helps to explain why the trade attracts so many seriously weird people. A writer who spent the war in britains secret service asserted that it necessarily involves such cheating, lying and betraying that it has a dill tiruous effect on the character. I never met anyone professionally engaged in it whom i should care to trust in any capacity. Stalin agreed saying a spy should be like the devil. No one can trust him, not even himself. Spy masters were often unsure which side their agents were really on. And in some cases, doubt persists to this day. Many books focus on what was found out. The only question that matters, however, is how far intelligence discoveries changed outcomes. Did they prompt action in the field or at sea. All claims about spies heroics or codebreakers successes are meaningless unless they cause things to happen. The intelligence gathering is not the science. Its a cacophony of what they call in the trade noise from which socalled signals, truths large and small must be winnowed. In august 1939, a british official wrung his hands over the british governments confused picture of relations between stalin and hitler. He wrote in his diary, we find ourselves attempting to assess the value of secret reports somewhat in the position of the captain of the 40 thieves. When having put a chalk mark on early barberss door, he found mugano put similar marks on all the doors in the street and had no indication which was the true one. Statesman and commanders must be willing to analyze evidence honestly. A journalist who became a Naval Intelligence officer observed intelligence has much in common with on the standards which a demand in scholarshipship are those who ought to be applied to intelligence. After the war, many german journals blame their defeat on hitlers refusal to do this. Good news was given priority for transmission to berlin while bad received short shrift. Before the invasion of russia, the german high command produced estimates of impressive soviet arms production. Hitler dismissed the numbers out of hand because you couldnt reconcile them with his contempt for all things slovanik. The nazi defense chief eventually instructed the army to stop submitting intelligence reports that might upset the fuhr. By contrast, the western democracies profited immensely from their relative openness. Churchill sometimes vented anger to those who espoused unwelcome views but in general an open debate was sustained in the allied corridors of power. Im struck by the number of spies or nationalities whose only achievement abroad at hefty cost to their employers was to stay alive while collecting information, of which not a smidgen helped anybodys war effort. Perhaps 1,000ndth of 1 changed battlefield outcomes yet that fraction was of such value that no nation grudged a life nor a pound, dollar, ruble, unexpended in securing it. Until the 20th century, commanders could discover their enemys motions only through spies on direct observation. Counting men, ships, guns. Then came wireless communication. The scientific Intelligence Officer wrote about this. There has never been anything comparable in any other period of history to the impact of radio. It was as near magic as anyone could conceive. In washington, berlin, london, moscow, tokyo, electronic yv eefsdroppers were probing the intentions of their foes without benefit of telescopes or men in false beards. Until halfway through the global struggle, the signals intelligence competition was much less lopsided in the all s allies favor than legend suggests. Hitler had his own leslie parks and Arlington Halls. The germans wrote important codeses with consequences for both the battle of the atlantic and the north african campaign. During the spring and summer of 1940, they were reading 2,000 British Naval messages a month. Even after ciphers were changed, uboat chief still achieved regularly reasonable breaks into convoy traffic, although only about one signal in ten was read quickly enough to concentrate his submarines against them. The postwar american study of german intelligence concluded the enemy possessed at all times a reasonably clear picture of atlantic convoys. In ten days of march 1943, when the germans were for a time ahead in the siga contest, they lost one in five of its ships, a disastrous attrition rate. Yet such costly failures sometimes have perverse consequences. Several times became fearful the british were reading uboat codes and all the inquiries. In the end, however, he allowed himself to be reassured by the convoy traffics vulnerability. He reasoned that if the royal navy was clever enough to read the german hand, its chiefs would have stopped this costly hole in their own communications. Had the allies conduct at the battle of the atlantic shown it would have slammed shut the window open by the brilliant allied codebreakers. As for the land war, the first three years, German Allied signa were about the same place. In 1941, leslie park warned the british high command that messages were being decrypted. In the desert, the africa thought british wireless discipline very slack and attributed to this some of one of the desert foxs Intelligence Officers wrote fleefully his chief often had a clearer picture of what the british commander in chief planned than did his own officers. He considered it a major disaster when in july 1942, new zealand troops overran and destroyed his radio interception unit. Worse for the germans, washington changed its diplomatic codes. For months, ronald had been reading what he greatfully called his little fellow with the American Military attache who reported almost every detail about british deployments and intentions. After the United States repaired this gaping security breach, the germans never again found such a superb source. For the rest of the war, hitlers men broke only lower allied codes though they were able to piece together a lot of information about troop movements using the same techniques as the british and americans did. The german outstation in athens, for instance, once read a message for british paymaster in palestine instructing a Division Moving to egypt to leave behind its filing cabinet and this enabled a big red pin to be shiftod german maps. Later they discovered the 82nd Airborne Division had been shipped from italy because they cracked a message about one of its paratroopers facing a paternity suit. They received warning of one impending attack in italy by decrypting a signal demanding a rummishing for the assault units. We should acknowledge that german codebreakers had important successes before thinking our forefathers lucky stars that the enemy did not, in the end, match the stellar achievement of the men and women of leslie park, the United States navies, op20 g. Pearl harbors rockies dxford a thomas dyer were in a class of their own. A brilliant oxford professor who served as the intelligence chief wrote in an important 1945 secret report, it must be made quite clear that ultra and ultra only put intelligence on the map. Until decrypts became available in bulk in summer 1942, in williams words, intelligence was the cinderella of the staff. Preultra skepticism was often well deserved. I found a 1940 war diary of the middle east intelligence section. Such comically silly snippets as all cabaret artists have been ordered to leave egypt by the end of may. Ultra when it came fully on stream bore an authority that no mere spy could match. An oxford historian turned Intelligence Officer noted afterwards, of all the great intelligence traps of the conflict, not one was directly or exclusively due to the secret service. And that applied on both sides of the atlantic. The allies ability to read the voluminous radio reports to tokyo, japans ambassador in berlin detailing his conversations with hitler and other leading nazis provided a far more credible insiders view of the nazi high command than any spy could have achieved. The codebreakers transformed the very nature of espionage. One key reason the democracies did intelligence better than the dictatorships is they gave free reign to clever civilians. When the british official history of intelligence began to be published about 30 years ago, i went to the launch party, and i suggested to its chief author, professor Harry Hensley who was himself a veteran of lechly park but it seemed to see enlisted only for the duration achieved much more than did the secret service professionals. Hensley replied to me impatiently, of course they did. You wouldnt want to think that in peace time the best brains of our society were wasting their lives in intelligence. Ive always thought this was important. Before 1939, most secret services got by or at least didnt do much harm. Run by second rate people. Once the struggle for National Survival began, however, intelligence became part of a guiding brain of the war effort. Battles could be fought by men of quite limited gi