Ike's Spies (25 page)

Hitler's bold bid failed, as Rundstedt knew it would. The Allies won a smashing victory in the Ardennes, and the chief result of the battle was that, when good weather came in the spring of 1945, Rundstedt had insufficient forces left to defend Germany. The Allies by then had such overwhelming strength that they no longer required exact, precise information about the enemy. They could simply overwhelm the Wehrmacht.

Strong's comment on the intelligence failure at the Bulge was that “the consequences were of course serious, but perhaps too much attention has been paid to this specific question.” A major factor helping the Germans to achieve surprise was Strong's own estimate of German capabilities, not only in armored units but also in the fuel and the supply situation generally. Strong's information was such that he believed Rundstedt was incapable of sustaining a major offensive.

Strong was absolutely correct in this conclusion. As he writes, “It should not be forgotten that our estimate of German capabilities at this stage of the war was basically sounder than the estimate of those who launched the Ardennes offensive—the Germans themselves.”
²³

AT THE END OF THE WAR
, Colonel Telford Taylor, the man in command of the
SLUS
and the distribution of
ULTRA
material, asked all his
SLUS
to submit a full written report on their experiences. For a third of a century these reports were kept under lock and key at the National Archives, finally being declassified in October of 1978. They provide a major source for the history of
ULTRA
, its uses, and effectiveness.

Lieutenant Colonel Adolph Rosengarten wrote the longest report, and the most self-critical. He stated bluntly “that the Ardennes Offensive, which was very costly, could have been foreseen.” He gave four basic reasons. First, “the enemy was defending on an artificial line with a major obstacle, the Rhine, astride his supply lines.” Second, basic German army doctrine was an active
defense. Third, “the German situation, in the big picture, was so desperate that he could afford to take the longest chances.” Fourth, “the effect of our overwhelming air superiority was minimized by choosing a time when daylight was shortest, and the weather most likely to be bad.” Rosengarten admitted that some clues came in from other sources, but were ignored because none came from
ULTRA
.

Once the Allies realized that they faced an all-out offensive with Antwerp as the strategic objective, Rosengarten wrote, “The tide swung precipitously from general optimism based on the long-term hopelessness of Germany's strategic position to calamity and woe, involving the imminent arrival of divisions believed to be in the East (as well as invented ones), and new secret weapons. The problem was to keep the record accurate and straight.”
²⁴

THAT THE SLUS
, and the G-2s and their commanders, took more care after the Bulge was clear on January 1, 1945, when the Germans launched another, secondary offensive. Major Donald Bussey,
SLU
to the U. S. Seventh Army, stated in his postwar report that shortly after the Ardennes offensive began,
ULTRA
started picking up
GAF
reconnaissance orders to cover the Saar-Palatinate area. It was clear that an attack was in the offing, and that its objective was to draw off Allied strength from the Bulge. But where would it come?

Bussey found that by putting together enemy order-of-battle information, along with the boundary lines between German units (information provided by
ULTRA)
, he could “state with relative certainty that the main effort in the attack would be made west of the Hardt Mountains, with a secondary attack between the mountains and the Rhine.” Bussey commented, “If there was ever an essential element of information this was it, for the passes through the Vosges Mountains were a serious obstacle to the rapid movement of Seventh Army reserves.” Using the information Bussey had picked up from the
GAF
intercepts, Eisenhower reinforced the threatened sector with the 2d French Armored Division and the U. S. 36th Infantry Division (a veteran outfit and one of the best); these movements were not picked up by German intelligence.

Bussey described the result: “When the attack was launched on 1 January, the German main effort collapsed completely. Their only success was in the sector of the secondary effort, in and east of
the Hardt Mountains. This German offensive was properly appreciated and preparations made to successfully meet the threat. Lacking
ULTRA
it seems very doubtful whether the attack would have been repulsed, or whether other sources of information would have given advance warning. Open sources provided only the most meager evidence of an attack, and there was much opposing evidence suggesting precisely the opposite—a thinning out in the sector and movement of units away from the Saar-Palatinate to reinforce the North.”
²⁵

WHILE IKE'S ARMIES
met and repulsed these last-gasp German attacks, his air forces were busy pounding Germany to bits. In the air war,
ULTRA
continued to be of great help because the Luftwaffe used the radio constantly and carelessly. There was so much
ULTRA
material that the Tactical Air Forces had not only a
SLU
attached to headquarters, but in addition a Special Adviser on
ULTRA
. Major Lucius Buck explained that “the necessity for the Special Adviser grew out of the failure … to recognize the capabilities and role of tactical air power, coupled with the unworkable and fallacious theory that it was the function of Armies and Army Groups to do target planning for the Tactical Air Forces and their Tactical Air Commands; and a ‘Battle of Britain' emphasis on
ULTRA
at Air Ministry and War Station, that is, a stressing of Order of Battle aspects and a large discount of the target value. This was inconsistent with American concepts of offensive air power.”
²⁶

Other Americans echoed Buck's complaint that the British concentrated too much on what the Germans might do to them, not enough on what air power might do to the Germans. Lieutenant Colonel Leslie Rood,
SLU
at the First Tactical Air Force, wrote in his report to Taylor, “If I have any criticism to make of Bletchley Park's amazing contribution to the War it is that it failed to recognize after D-Day that targets had replaced the German Air Force as the main interest of air intelligence. At
BP
I gained the impression that the
GAF
was a hot subject but at the commands the operations people were completely uninterested in its grandiose plans and ineffective operations. The Allied air superiority was too overwhelming to be affected by anything the
GAF
might do.”

Nevertheless, Rood went on, “
GAF
news continued to come over the link in its carefully processed form while the target information
arrived without the benefit of
BP'S
usual dependable thought.”

In his analysis of the situation, Rood pointed out that “target intelligence is naturally more controversial than order of battle because in it intelligence becomes operational. Perhaps I was seeking order where there could be no order. Yet I feel that had
BP
exercised the same careful and ubiquitous guidance in this field as it did in order of battle, some of the wasteful target arguments might have been eliminated and the bombers used more intelligently.”
²⁷

Insofar as there was a
GAF
left after D-Day,
ULTRA
provided the clues that rendered it inoperative. Lieutenant Colonel James Fellers,
SLU
to the IX Tactical Air Command, noted that in attacking
GAF
facilities, “it was of key importance to produce bomb craters. Repair was no longer a simple process of bulldozer and roller. In the existing weather, the craters filled with water, drainage was poor, and considerable delay in restoring serviceability was affected.
ULTRA
revealed that the
real
way to render the
GAF
non-operational was
not
in shooting up individual aircraft by strafing, but rather by destroying fuel stocks and supplies, rendering airfields unserviceable and delaying repairs. The significance of
ULTRA
in affecting such changes in Allied tactics is noteworthy.”
²⁸

There was general agreement among the U. S. Army Air Force officers who served as
SLUS
that
ULTRA
was the best guide to target priorities. Within hours of a raid,
BP
would pick up the Germans' own damage report and assessment, thus telling the Allies whether they needed to hit that particular target again. And, as Major Ansel Talbert,
SLU
at U. S. Eighth Air Force, pointed out,
ULTRA
was “the agent which changed different viewpoints into a common policy.” Throughout the war, both the British and American air forces complained that they had too many masters to serve—
SHAEF
, 21st Army Group, 12th Army Group, the various armies, and even corps headquarters. Each master had his own idea as to the proper use of Allied air power.

ULTRA
served as the ultimate guide, rejecting this or that pet theory on the basis of the German reaction while embracing others. As Talbert noted, “The oil offensive was not undertaken until a few weeks before the invasion and there was considerable skepticism in many air force quarters whether it would pay off in time to affect German air and ground operations. By Fall 1944,
ULTRA
began to reveal shortages of fuel which grew in proportions rapidly
and soon clearly were revealed by
ULTRA
as being general, NOT local. This convinced all concerned that the air offensive had uncovered a weak spot in the German economy and led to exploitation of this weakness to the fullest extent.”
²⁹

BY THE SPRING OF
1945, Germany was finished. Ike's air forces dominated the sky overhead, his troops could go almost anywhere at will, the Russians were closing in on Berlin, and his need for information about the enemy's plans, intentions, and capabilities had all but disappeared. There was, however, to be one more minor flap over intelligence.

Allen Dulles, head of the
OSS
operation in Switzerland, and his agents became convinced that the Germans were building an Alpine redoubt, or fortress, in the Bavarian Alps, where Hitler intended to make a last-ditch, Wagnerian stand, a true
Götterdämmerung
. As early as September 1944,
OSS
reports had warned of the possibility that as the war neared its end the Nazis would probably evacuate key government departments to Bavaria.
³⁰

Then on February 16, 1945, Dulles' office sent to
OSS
headquarters in Washington a bizarre report obtained from agents in Berlin: “The Nazis are undoubtedly preparing for a bitter fight from the mountain redoubt.… Strongpoints are connected by underground railroads … several months' output of the best munitions have been reserved and almost all of Germany's poison gas supplies. Everybody who participated in the construction of the secret installations will be killed off—including the civilians who happen to remain behind when the real fighting starts.”
³¹

The various G-2s embellished on the supposed threat, possibly because they had little else to do by this stage of the war. Seventh Army G-2, for example, suspected the creation in the redoubt of “an elite force, predominately ss and mountain troops, of between 200,000 and 300,000 men.” Already supplies were arriving in the area at the rate of “three to five very long trains each week.… A new type of gun has been reported observed on many of these trains.…” There were hints of an underground aircraft factory “capable of producing Messerschmitts.”
³²

It all seemed to make sense, if only because the Bavarian Alps were the best natural defensive area the Germans could find, and there they could combine the fighting forces from Germany and Italy, perhaps even draw in some from the Eastern front. General
Strong ordered reconnaissance missions flown over the Alps, but the results were confusing. The Germans seemed to be installing extensive bunkers, and there was a definite increase in antiaircraft protection. It did seem likely that the fanatical Nazis would make a last-ditch stand somewhere, and there was no better place to make it.

As General Strong commented to Bedell Smith, “The redoubt may not be there, but we have to take steps to prevent it being there.” Smith agreed. He said in his opinion there was “every reason to believe that the Nazis intend to make their last stand among the crags.”
³³

All the rumors, the fragments of real evidence, and the genuine fears among the Allies that they would have to kill every last Nazi before the war would be over fed the March 11
SHAEF
intelligence analysis: “Theoretically within this fortress, defended both by nature and the most efficient secret weapons yet invented, the powers that have hitherto guided Germany will survive to organize her resurrection. The area is, by the very nature of the terrain, practically impenetrable. The evidence indicates that considerable numbers of ss and specially chosen units are being systematically withdrawn to Austria … and that some of the most important ministries and personalities of the Nazi regime are already established in the Redoubt area.”

At this point, Strong seems to have been carried away with his own verbiage. “Here armaments will be manufactured in bombproof factories, food and equipment will be stored in vast underground caverns and a specially selected corps of young men will be trained in guerrilla warfare, so that a whole underground army can be fitted and directed to liberate Germany from the occupying