569 INSTERBURG-KÖNIGSBERG OFFENSIVE OPERATION JANUARY 13–24, 1945 Soviet 3rd Belorussian Front attacked German 3rd Panzer Army in the Insterburg corridor.. INTELLIGENCE Accurate mili
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INSTERBURG-KÖNIGSBERG OFFENSIVE OPERATION ( JANUARY
13–24, 1945) Soviet 3rd Belorussian Front attacked German 3rd Panzer Army
in the Insterburg corridor Insterburg itself fell on January 22 Forward elements of
the Red Army reached the outskirts of Königsberg fi ve days later
See also Vistula-Oder operation
INTELLIGENCE Accurate military and political intelligence is a “force
multi-plier” that may be worth many divisions and even whole armies and fl eets during
wartime That was certainly the case for all the major Allies during World War II,
whose intelligence successes were a vital ingredient of success against the armed
forces of Germany, Italy, and Japan It remains unknown how far Soviet political
intelligence penetrated German communications, but Soviet military intelligence
and counterintelligence regularly outwitted the German Abwehr The story of
Western Allied intelligence is better known, though still not fully revealed
West-ern leaders and commanders probably knew more in real time about their enemies’
secret plans and intentions, and fi eld and sea dispositions and operations, than
any foe in the history of warfare Britain and the United States made enormous
use of superior intelligence to trick, manipulate, and misdirect the Axis powers in
Europe and Asia, most notably during the vital Battle of the Atlantic (1939–1945)
The Western Allies also conducted extensive deception operations that concealed the
true landing sites of the TORCH assaults in North Africa in 1942, the HUSKY
inva-sion of Sicily in 1943, and the OVERLORD invainva-sion of France in 1944
However, things did not always go the way of the Western powers During the
1930s French intelligence deliberately overestimated the size of the Wehrmacht
in reports to the French government, to sustain a public campaign for budget
increases for rearmament But the tactic backfi red by helping weaken national
confi dence and deepen, in certain political quarters, an already baleful mood that
is sometimes called the “Maginot Spirit.” American intelligence also began badly
In mid-1940 U.S diplomatic codes were compromised globally by their betrayal
to an Italian spy ring by a clerk in the London Embassy That may have made the
codes available to Germans as well The United States was also heavily penetrated
during the war by agents working for the Soviet Union, including after the two
countries became allies in December 1942 Soviet penetration of the Manhattan
Project, code name for the Allied nuclear weapons program, was especially damaging
to long-term U.S interests Germany’s B-Dienst organization broke the Western
Allied convoy escort code, enabling U-boats to vector in on forward waypoints The
Germans may have had other successes, but many captured German intelligence
fi les still remain closed to protect procedures and spycraft, and possibly also
repu-tations Best known are several German code-breaking failures, including
cata-strophic failure to detect that their own naval codes were violated Such mistakes
appear to have resulted not simply from technical problems, but from a systematic
failure of German intelligence that arose from the essential sycophancy of Nazi
political culture, along with a cultural inability of German offi cers and agents to
self-examine and critique their own operations The problem fl owed from the top,
as Adolf Hitler was only ever interested in tactical conclusions from his spies, not