Intelligence in World War II

Intelligence agencies of the United States have made vast strides since their inception in the early twentieth century. However, during their early days, there were many gaps in technology and the abilities of the agents, but intelligence agencies also had some major successes. Intelligence was especially key during World War II. Frequently, operational failures during World War II were due to either a lack of or error in intelligence, a failure to funnel the information down to the appropriate commanders, and/or the subsequent misuse of the information. This problem can be seen in both the European theater in the Ardennes Forest, and in the Pacific at Pearl Harbor.

The intelligence failures relevant to the German offensive in the Ardennes Forest in 1944 were general and cannot be attributed to any person or group of persons. By mid-September, the Western Allies believed certain victory was in their hands due to military successes, including bloody defeats the Soviet armies had inflicted on the Germans. This optimism was temporarily dispelled when German armies steadfastly defended the West Wall. As the Allies resumed their offensive plans in late November and early December, the earlier optimism returned. It appeared to many that attrition was depleting the German forces of both men and supplies, and that their lines were much weaker than they appeared to be. These reports helped shape the Allied opinion of the both the enemy's plans and their ability to carry them out. This shield of false hope within the upper echelons served to blind commanders to the real situation at hand (Matthias 25).

The return of Field Marshal von Rundstedt to command in the west also helped mold Allied decisions, since he was thought to be one of the best soldiers in the world. He was a commander who could be expected to act and react rationally and according to the accepted canons of the military art. He would conserve his dwindling resources, counterattack in a way which maximized his limited resources, and ultimately fall back to the Rhine as a defensive position. However, Hitler, and not Rundstedt, had sole command over the western forces. Thus, intuition and not conventional, professional judgment, would determine German action. This intelligence gap allowed the Allies to be unaware of the true nature of the German decision-making process in the west, causing the Allied commanders and their staffs to await a rational and predictable enemy in vain.

One item caused Allied intelligence some concern, the location of the Sixth Panzer Army, although it seems that this concern was more academic than real. The 12th Army Group thought that it might be concentrated around Bielefeld, northeast of Cologne. The U.S. First Army placed it rather indefinitely between the Roer and the Rhine. The U.S. Third Army argued for a location between Dusseldorf and Cologne. The U.S. Ninth Army apparently did not care to enter the guessing game. There was general agreement that Rundstedt's armored reserve would be thrown against the First and Ninth Armies in an effort to blunt their drive in the Roer area, although the severe German reversals sustained in the south during the second week of December led to some thought that divisions might be stripped from the Sixth Panzer reserve to shore up the defenses of the Palatinate. The two U.S. armies carrying the attack in the north agreed that the Sixth Panzer Army would be committed after their attack had crossed the Roer River. The 12th Army Group expected the same timing and anticipated the German reaction would come as a coordinated counterattack. This false assumption by intelligence agencies put the Allied forces at a distinct disadvantage.

American intelligence summaries, periodic reports, and precise briefing for the month prior to the December 16th assault, gave little information, most of which was incomplete, on the enemy opposite the VIII Corps. German planners had predicted that American high command would accept the theory that the rugged terrain in this area, particularly in poor weather, would effectively preclude large-scale, mechanized operations. But there were more tangible reasons for the scant attention accorded this sector. It had been a quiet sector of the Western Front since the Allied dash across France had halted in September. By December, it had become evident to U.S. intelligence that any new division identified on the VIII Corps front was no more than transient units en route to the north or the south. As a result, the Ardennes assumed a kind of neutral hue in American eyes. This preconception offers a partial explanation of why the 99th Division in the V Corps identified only three of the twelve German divisions assembled to its front, while the VIII Corps identified only four out of ten divisions before December 16th.

With the advantage of hindsight, seven items which might have given the alarm can be discerned in the corps reports for the period December 13th-15th. Two divisions, the 28th and 106th, sent in reports of increased vehicular activity on the nights before the attack. The 28th discounted its own report by noting that this was the normal accompaniment of an enemy front-line relief and that the same thing had happened when a German unit had pulled out three weeks before. The 106th was a green division and unlikely to know what weight should be attached legitimately to such activity. A third incident occurred on December 14th, when a woman escapee reported to the 28th Infantry Division commander that the woods near Bitburg were jammed with German equipment.

The four remaining incidents pertained to the capture of German prisoners on December 15th, two each by the 4th and 106th Infantry Divisions. All four claimed that fresh troops were arriving in the line, that a big attack was in the offing, and that it might come on the 16th or 17th but certainly would come before Christmas. Two of the prisoners were deserters; they themselves did not take the reported attack too seriously since, as they told their captors, all this had been promised to the German troops before. The other two were wounded. One seemed to have made some impression on the interrogators, but since he was under the influence of morphine, his captors decided that further questioning would be necessary (Wikipedia: Bulge).

Of the seven incidents, only four were reported to the corps headquarters. The incidents reported to the VIII Corps were forwarded to the First Army and duly noted by that headquarters on December 14th and 15th . Only one incident was deemed worthy of 12th Army Group attention. Whether any commander would have been justified in making major alterations in his troop disposition on the basis of this intelligence alone is highly questionable. One might more reasonably conclude that the American acquisition of only this limited and suspect information was a tribute to