The Ultimate Enemy: British Intelligence and Nazi Germany, 1933–1939

by Wesley K. Wark

How realistically did the British government assess the threat from Nazi Germany during the 1930s? How accurate was British intelligence's understanding of Hitler's aims and Germany's military and industrial capabilities? In The Ultimate Enemy, Wesley K. Wark catalogues the many misperceptions about Nazi Germany that were often fostered by British intelligence. This book, the product of exhaustive archival research, first looks at the goals of British intelligence in the 1930s. He explains the various views of German power held by the principal Whitehall authorities―including the various military intelligence directorates and the semi-clandestine Industrial Intelligence Centre―and he describes the efforts of senior officials to fit their perceptions of German power into the framework of British military and diplomatic policy. Identifying the four phases through which the British intelligence effort evolved, he assesses its shortcomings and successes, and he calls into question the underlying premises of British intelligence doctrine. Wark shows that faulty intelligence assessments were crucial in shaping the British policy of appeasement up to the outbreak of World War II. His book offers a new perspective on British policy in the interwar period and also contributes a fascinating case study in the workings of intelligence services during a period of worldwide crisis.

Genres: History

304 pages, Hardcover

First published September 1, 1985

About the author

Wesley K. Wark is Associate Professor of History at the University of Toronto.

Reviews

[Theodore McCombs · Rating 4 out of 5]

"I highly recommend this book." The terse and to-the-point blurb on the front cover sums up Wark's approach: it's a very specific, very concrete, and very good examination of British service intel on Nazi Germany's rearmament over 1933-39. Since MI6/SIS didn't open its archives to historians until recently (see Keith Jeffery's "The Secret History of MI6" (2001)), Wark in 1985 had no access to SIS records that weren't passed up to Whitehall, and so based his study on the intelligence services of the RAF, War Office, and Admiralty, as well as the strategic appreciations of Chiefs of Staff and Joint Planning Committee. Wark can be rather dry, but the specificity of his subject also leads to some fascinating insights into appeasement policy, British imperial anxiety, and the way in which totalitarianism was a nightmare mirror for Britain as it ran up against the drawbacks of a democratic society, at least when it came to rearmament. Wark's study tracks a shift from a confident service intelligence community assuming a tempered, rational German rearmament, to one despairing of ever matching the ruthlessness, efficiency, and impeccable organization the Nazis were assumed to have brought to their rearmament.