World War II historian Smith (The Ultra-Magic Deals, 1992, etc.)
persuasively argues (contrary to the consensus that Stalin and his
Western allies were standoffish partners) that sharing of wartime
intelligence between the Anglo-Americans and Soviets was extensive
and that it continued until the very last days of the war. When
Hitler launched Operation Barbarossa against the Soviet Union in
June 1941, the outlook for Russo-British cooperation seemed
inauspicious. After all, Britain had directed an international
military campaign against the nascent Soviet regime in the years
following the Russian Revolution. The US was so anti-Soviet that it
did not recognize the USSR until 1935. Meanwhile Stalin, himself
xenophobic, dismissed British warnings of an imminent Nazi invasion
as part of a Western plot against Russia. However, Smith shows that
despite a mutual abiding mistrust, the ideological adversaries were
compelled to share secrets by the exigencies of war and a demand
for anti-Nazi intelligence that outstripped the lone resources of
the USSR or England. Even before US entry into the war Harry
Hopkins, FDR's personal envoy, helped cement a working relationship
among the Allies with intelligence sharing and equipment grants.
Despite frequent personality clashes with the more secretive
Soviets and conflicts over the appropriateness of sharing sensitive
data, the Anglo-Americans shared secrets ranging from estimates of
German and Japanese war strategy and materiel to intercepts from
America's MAGIC program, which read Japanese codes. While the US
was warier of Soviet intentions than Britain in the early stages of
the partnership, Smith contends, by war's end the US had become an
enthusiastic sharer of intelligence and, hoping to involve the
Soviet Union in war against Japan, was giving high-level secret
information to the Soviets as late as August 1945. Although
compelled by lack of access to Soviet files to base his account
almost solely on Anglo-American sources, Smith gives a richly
detailed and well-researched contribution to the literature on WW
II intelligence. (Kirkus Reviews)
Bestselling author Bradley Smith reveals the surprisingly rich
exchange of wartime intelligence between the Anglo-American allies
and the Soviet Union, as well as the procedures and politics that
made such an exchange possible.
Between the late 1930s and 1945, allied intelligence
organizations expanded at an enormous rate in order to acquire the
secret information their governments needed to win the war. But, as
Smith demonstrates, the demand for intelligence far outpaced the
ability of any one ally to produce it. For that reason, Washington,
London, and Moscow were compelled to share some of their most
sensitive secrets.
Historians have long known about the close Anglo-American
intelligence collaboration, but until now the Soviet connection has
been largely unexplored. Smith contends that Cold War animosities
helped keep this story from a public that might have found it hard
to believe that such cooperation was ever possible. In fact,
official denials--from such illustrious Cold Warriors as Supreme
Court Justice Lewis Powell and the CIA's Sherman Kent--continued
well into the late 1980s.
Smith argues that, contrary to the official story,
Soviet-American intelligence exchanges were both extensive and
successful. He shows that East and West were not as hostile to each
other during the war or as determined to march right off into the
Cold War as many have suggested. Among other things, he provides
convincing evidence that the U.S. Army gave the Soviets its
highest-grade ULTRA intelligence in August 1945 to speed up the
Soviet advances in the Far East.
Based on interviews and enormous research in Anglo-American
archives and despite limited access to tenaciously guarded Soviet
documents, Smith's book persuasively demonstrates how reluctant and
suspicious allies, driven by the harsh realities of total war,
finally set aside their ideological differences to work closely
with people they neither trusted nor particularly liked.
General
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