Espionage...

[Footslogger]

Did espionage play a big role between the British, Germans and Russians, before and during WWII?

[heliodorus04]

Is recon, for both sides, too good in WitE?

[JAMiAM]

ORIGINAL: heliodorus04

Is recon, for both sides, too good in WitE?

Hey dude! Keep your hands off my Junk...ers...[;)]

[Captain]

apparently, the Russian secret services had spies troughout the German high command, including some very highly placed during the entire war. They kept the Russians informed about all moves the germans were planning, including the exact date and plan for Barbarossa, Case Blue, Kursk.

Unfortunately, they had access to so much info, much contradictory, that the Soviets could not figure out what was real or disinformation planted by the Germans. Plus Stalin tended to pick and choose information depending on what suited his current political moves better, so on the whole it did not have much impact.

[PeeDeeAitch]

A lot of data without ability to focus it into information can be quite useless.

[vinnie71]

It seems that the Soviets only got their act together in '42 - meaning that they started to make sense of a rather varied and extensive spy operation only quite late. The Soviets had a valuable tool in the large number of socialist/communist/general leftist persons who lived in Axis countries and were oppressed by right wing governments.

Funnily enough for a long time the Germans were very much able to divert soviet attention rather easily. But another factor that played a hand was the fact that at the apex of each system was a dictator who thought that he could read the mind of his adversary. Unfortunately both were wrong...

[76mm]

I would think that partisans would have been a good source of information for Stavka, especially for things like tracking panzer movements, etc. anybody have any historical evidence one way or the other?

[HMSWarspite]

ORIGINAL: Footslogger

Did espionage play a big role between the British, Germans and Russians, before and during WWII?

You are joking right? Or do you mean on a tactical level?

On a strategic level, as is said below, the Russians had some very well placed spies. The Germans had a very extensive intel system on the Russian front, under a guy called Gehlen (IIRC) who Hitler ignored most of the time because he kept producing reports that contradicted Hitlers 'intuition'. Minor details like the Russians having a load of Siberian Divs uncommitted...

The British had some spies (though little in Germany itself I think), but the worlds greatest SigInt system (Ultra). This enabled all sorts of stuff to be read and decoded. They had so much access that a major concern was never to use it unless the info could plausably be got another way, for fear of being exposed. They then indulged in elaborate spoofs and hoaxes (landing in Greece rather than Sicily, the Pas de Calais rather than Normandy). This also took advantage of the fact that by about 1941 every German agent in UK was turned or eliminated. The turned agents added to the spoofs etc.

[Apollo11]

Hi all,

The one thing we don't know much about is if Soviets had capability in deciphering German Enigma... not much data exists about that even now... this is still very very classified for the Russians...

The funny thing is that although both USA and Britain maintained harsh secrecy regarding deciphering both German and Japanese codes during WWII (and first books started to appear decades after WWII was finished) the Soviets knew of Allied effort through highly positioned Soviet spies in British establishment... [;)]

BTW, it is thought that most immediate post WWII books are more-or-less "skewed" and "wrong" in strategic / tactical sense due to then not known fact that there was Ultra (British) and Magic (US) projects against Germans and Japan!


Leo "Apollo11"

[Captain]

yes, although it is hard to know what impact ultra had on the land war.

US and UK broke the Japanese and German naval codes and where able to track individual ships/ U-Boats. However, some codes were never broken during the war and operational/tactical orders were generally not sent through coded radio messages, so that piese of the puzzle was missing. For example, the battle of the Bulge came as a complete surprise.

[Mehring]

Minor details like the Russians having a load of Siberian Divs uncommitted...

Which has been demonstrated to have been a propaganda fiction in any case.
http://operationbarbarossa.net/Myth-Bus ... ters3.html

[vinnie71]

ORIGINAL: Captain

yes, although it is hard to know what impact ultra had on the land war.

US and UK broke the Japanese and German naval codes and where able to track individual ships/ U-Boats. However, some codes were never broken during the war and operational/tactical orders were generally not sent through coded radio messages, so that piese of the puzzle was missing. For example, the battle of the Bulge came as a complete surprise.

Exactly. In a sense the western allies kind of suffered from an excess of information (if that is possible) but very rarely could they see the big picture from German eyes, as many seem to believe. Also there were times when even enigma was revamped or adjusted by the Germans, leaving them quite blind to German intentions.