The Defence of the Realm (58 page)

The Security Service's August 1944 report informed Churchill that a German map
(above)
, captured in Italy, showing the location of Allied forces in the UK, accorded ‘precisely' with the disinformation fed to the enemy by the double agents and wireless deception pointing to an attack in the Calais region. The map opposite shows the real deployment of Allied forces preparing for the Normandy landings.

At noon on 6 June, Churchill, watched by his wife and eldest daughter from the Speaker's Gallery, announced to a packed and expectant House of Commons: ‘During the night and early hours of the morning, the first of the series of landings in force upon the European continent has taken place.' The Prime Minister must have thought his reference to other landings which were to follow D-Day would help to reinforce the German belief that an even bigger Allied assault was being planned in the Calais region. Tar Robertson and others in B1a, however, were shocked by Churchill's statement, which – though he did not realize it – contradicted an earlier message sent by GARBO to the Abwehr reporting a bogus Political Warfare Executive (PWE) directive on the need to avoid any public reference to ‘further attacks and diversions'.
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The Prime Minister's faux pas seemed to justify Petrie's and Liddell's earlier fear that, if Churchill was informed of a deception operation (as he was in this case), he might take some rash initiative of his own.
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At 8 p.m. on D-Day GARBO radioed Madrid, saying that he had spoken to the PWE Director, who was dismayed that Churchill had ignored his directive. The Prime Minister, claimed GARBO rather lamely (without, however, arousing the suspicions of the Abwehr), had felt obliged not to distort the facts when announcing the invasion to the Commons and to the country.
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GARBO rounded off his radio message with a withering denunciation of the failure of Madrid to come on air at 3 a.m. that day to receive vital intelligence on the imminent Allied landings on the Normandy beaches: ‘This makes me question your seriousness and sense of responsibility. I therefore demand a clarification immediately as to what has occurred.' By the following morning, after a supposedly sleepless night, GARBO radioed a further message of recrimination, this time combined with self-pity:

I am very disgusted as in this struggle for life and death I cannot accept excuses or negligence . . . Were it not for my ideals and faith I would abandon this work as having proved myself a failure. I write these messages to send this very night though my tiredness and exhaustion due to the excessive work I have had has completely broken me.

The errant Abwehr case officer in Madrid, who had failed to ensure that the radio station came on air at 3 a.m., replied apologetically with a fulsome tribute to the quality of GARBO's intelligence: ‘I wish to stress in the clearest terms that your work over the last few weeks has made it possible for our command to be completely forewarned and prepared.'
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That tribute, which probably caused GARBO and Harris to laugh out loud, was quoted in the Security Service's June report to the Prime Minister.
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Before D-Day it had been expected that the fiction of a planned attack on the Pas de Calais could not be maintained for more than ten days after the Normandy landings. ULTRA, however, revealed that the deception remained firmly embedded for far longer in the minds of both Hitler and his
high command.
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For the rest of June GARBO and BRUTUS continued to send alarming intelligence reports on the waves of fresh American forces supposedly flooding into Britain and the growing troop concentrations in the south-east of England, apparently poised for an assault on the Pas de Calais. Four weeks after D-Day the German high command still had twenty-two divisions waiting to repel an attack by the non-existent FUSAG.
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The Security Service's monthly report for June, despatched to Churchill on 3 July, concluded:

It is known for a fact that the Germans intended at one time to move certain Divisions from the Pas de Calais area to Normandy but, in view of the possibility of a threat to the Pas de Calais area, these troops were either stopped on their way to Normandy and recalled or it was decided that they should not be moved at all.

Churchill was also informed that Berlin had awarded GARBO the Iron Cross (Second Class); the following German radio message was cited as an example of the praise lavished on him and his imaginary sub-agents: ‘. . . I reiterate to you, as responsible chief of the service, and to all your collaborators, our total recognition of your perfect and cherished work and I beg of you to continue with us in the supreme and decisive hours of the struggle for the future of Europe. Saludos.' The Security Service's June report to the Prime Minister also cited ‘an effusive message of encouragement' to TATE from his German case officer: ‘Your messages about concentrations and movements (more especially signs of troops preparing for action) can be not only fabulously important, but can even decide the outcome of the war.'
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A month after D-Day Eisenhower declared: ‘I cannot overemphasize the importance of maintaining as long as humanly possible the Allied threat to the Pas-de-Calais area, which has already paid enormous dividends and, with care, will continue to do so.'
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Not till the last week of July did the HQ of Field Marshal Gerd von Rundstedt, Commander in Chief West, conclude that ‘The more ground Montgomery gains southward from the [Normandy] bridgehead, and the quicker he does this, the less probable it will be that the forces still in England will carry out a seaborne landing at a new point.'
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Since February 1944 copies of the Security Service's reports to the Prime Minister had also gone to the Foreign Secretary, Anthony Eden,
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to whom in December 1943 Churchill had given ministerial responsibility for MI5.
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On 26 June 1944 Petrie wrote to Eden that since becoming director general in 1941 he had ‘perhaps said more hard things of the Service than almost anyone else', but now wanted to pay tribute to it:

The role of the Security Service has been particularly important and particularly difficult . . . Before and even after D-Day in the recent operations, the German Abwehr has continued to show unbounded and almost pathetic confidence in reports of agents, which have been described as vitally affecting ‘the whole course of the war' and in similar terms.

Eden replied on 7 July that MI5 ‘could take legitimate pride in what has been achieved'.
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For the Security Service the aftermath of the FORTITUDE deceptions brought a stream of congratulations and gratitude not often seen in the organization's history and far removed from the open criticism of the early war years. On 21 August, Colonel Bevan wrote, as controlling officer of the LCS: ‘I honestly believe that whatever success may have been achieved in our line of business is due in very large measure to the support given by B1A.'
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The Security Service's August report informed Churchill that a German map, captured in Italy, showing the location of British ground forces in the UK, accorded ‘precisely' with the disinformation fed to the enemy by the double agents and wireless deception.
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It added, with an understandable air of triumph: ‘Conversations between Hitler and his generals . . . show that the threat to the Pas-de-Calais caused Rommel to delay committing the full weight of his armour until the bridgehead had become sufficiently established to enable us to repel his attack.' Churchill minuted ‘Let me see' against this passage, and wrote ‘Good' on the report as a whole.
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Later in the year, having already been promised the Iron Cross by his German case officer, GARBO became the first British agent (as opposed to intelligence officer) to be awarded the MBE. Since it was thought inappropriate for a double agent to meet the King, the presentation was made instead by the DG, Sir David Petrie, in a private ceremony attended by Tomás Harris and senior members of B1a. Petrie, noted Liddell, ‘made a nice little speech': ‘Later we lunched at the Savoy when GARBO responded to the toast in halting but not too bad English. I think he was extremely pleased.'
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B1a continued to use double agents for deception purposes until the last week of the war. The most serious German threat to which the Security Service had to respond in the aftermath of the Normandy landings was the V-weapons
(Vergeltungswaffen)
which were mainly targeted on London. The first V-1 flying bombs (small pilotless planes) hit London on 13 June, only a week after D-Day. GARBO complained that, despite being a London resident, he had not been given advance warning of the attack (for which the Abwehr apologized), but applauded ‘this fantastic reprisal
weapon, the creation of German genius'. On Sunday 18 June a V-1 landed on the Guards Chapel at Wellington Barracks in the middle of morning service, killing 121 of the worshippers. The explosion was heard in MI5's St James's Street offices. Since the attack was publicly announced, GARBO duly reported it but added the improbable claim that the initial public alarm generated by fear of flying bombs had none the less ‘disappeared'.
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Though a majority of the V-1s crashed or were shot down before they reached the target area, 2,419 hit London, about thirty Southampton and Portsmouth, and one Manchester, killing 6,184 people and injuring 17,981.
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GARBO reported that 17 per cent of the V-1s to reach England during June had hit the Greater London area; in fact the figure was over 27 per cent. Though it was believed that the V-1s were aimed at central London, probably Charing Cross, the Ministry of Home Security located their ‘mean point of impact' (MPI) as around North Dulwich Station, where large expanses of open ground reduced the level of casualties. Since only a slight correction would bring the MPI into central London, both the Air Ministry and Home Defence Executive attempted to devise ways not merely to discourage the Germans from correcting their aim but also to persuade them to worsen it by using the double agents to send reports that they were overshooting their targets in the hope that they would then conclude that they needed to shorten their aim, with the result that fewer of the V-1s would reach central London. Meeting on 29 June, the Twenty Committee welcomed this deception, which fitted in well with reports already sent by GARBO to his case officer that the flying bombs were falling mainly in an arc to the north and west of London.
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It was decided, however, that continuing to use GARBO to send disinformation on the flying bombs carried too great a potential risk to the credibility of B1a's star double agent. A pretext had therefore to be found for him to cease reporting on the V-1s. On 5 July a radio transmission to the Abwehr from GARBO's (non-existent) second in command reported him missing, followed by an even more alarming report two days later that he had been arrested. Decrypted Abwehr traffic made clear its consternation and its qualified relief on 10 July when GARBO's deputy reported his release. On the 14th GARBO sent details of his arrest by courier to the Abwehr office in Madrid. While investigating flying-bomb damage in Bethnal Green, he had been stopped by police and taken into custody after being caught attempting to dispose of his notes. Happily he had been released after a protest by his supposed employers in the Ministry of Information (MoI); GARBO enclosed both the warrant for his arrest and
a letter from the Home Office to the MoI apologizing for the officiousness of the police. Joy was unconfined in the Madrid Abwehr, which, as expected, insisted that GARBO take no more risks reporting on the V-1s: ‘Cease all investigations of the new weapon.' He was told there must be ‘a period of complete inactivity' during which he suspended contact with his extensive network of (non-existent) sub-agents. The apparent near-disaster to the GARBO network led the Abwehr to send similar instructions to BRUTUS, whom it considered its second most valuable agent, for fear that he too might put himself at risk. To reassure GARBO of the high regard in which he was held in Berlin, his case officer informed him on 29 July ‘with great happiness and satisfaction' that the Führer had decided to award him the Iron Cross for his ‘extraordinary merits'. It is easy to imagine the secret hilarity with which, assisted by Harris, GARBO composed his reply: ‘I cannot at this moment, when emotion overwhelms me, express my gratitude in words.'
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