July 1941–December 1942
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4 From Barbarossa to Torch:July 1941–December 1942 The eighteen months between July 1941 and December 1942 saw momentous changes in Britain’s fortunes of war. Humiliation in the Far East at the hands of Japan was followed by catastrophic reverses in North Africa. For a time in the summer and early autumn of 1942 India became almost ungovernable during the Quit India campaign. But even then there were two positives: the Americans had begun to fight hard in the Pacific, and in the battle of Midway had inflicted a decisive defeat on Japan’s carrier fleet, the backbone of her earlier successes; and contrary to predictions Russia had continued to resist, battering the German armies even when yielding ground. Britain, her dominions and colonial armies, and her European ally Greece inflicted a decisive regional defeat on Germany in the second battle of El Alamein in October. By December the Anglo-American invasion of French North Africa had succeeded, and in the east the battle of Stalingrad had turned decisively in Russian favour. In the same month GC&CS finally broke the German diplomatic cipher, enabling Britain to study communications between Berlin and the German legation in Dublin. This meant that for the remainder of the warthebulkofthemostsecretGermandiplomatic communications could be read by the Allies as Pandora. Sir Harry Hinsley pointed out to this writer that the first German diplomatic traffic targeted by GC&CS was Berlin–Dublin, a reflection of the significance which Whitehall attached to those messages. The breakthrough transformed British policy, making Whitehall at once more confident and more circumspect in its dealings with Dublin. By July 1941 Ireland was far down the list of British strategic concerns. What is surprising is not that she received little prime-ministerial attention, but that she got any at all. Yet Churchill never lost his interest in the errant dominion, and this factor continued to complicate the management of intelligence and security operations. So too did a new element in the equation, the entry of the United States into the war after Pearl Harbor. The Americans already had personnel in Northern Ireland—Irish protests about this in Washington in the autumn of 1941 were dismissed, as was clear from a decoded cable to Gray seen by Churchill.¹ Now the province was to become a holding camp and training ground for large numbers of American troops, who would soon assume responsibility for its defence and for countering a German attack anywhere on the island. Fears that they would become the targets of IRA attacks never materialized, although their demeanour ¹ Washington to Gray, 18 Nov. 1941, TNA, HW1/251. 164 From Barbarossa to Torch and indiscipline sometimes caused friction with the local population.² America’s entry into the war upped the ante for Irish neutrality, which was now seen in Washington as threatening not merely British and Canadian but American interests and lives in the Atlantic, and the security of future Allied operations in Europe and the Mediterranean. The Irish refusal to fight on Britain’s side or even to make concessions on bases stood in stark contrast to the manner in which Mexico, Cuba, Haiti, and the Central American states dutifully declared their solidarity with the United States immediately after Pearl Harbor by severing relations first with Japan and then with Germany.³ These developments, while they added what London viewed as welcome additional pressures on Ireland, had one awkward consequence: they increased American interest in the details of Irish security and in the problem of the Axis legations. In particular, they gave David Gray in Dublin legitimate grounds for becoming involved. A meddler by nature, Gray’s initiatives in security questions and his often alarmist reports to Washington cut across the work of British agencies and threatened their best-laid schemes. Early in August the DNI John Godfrey made a four-day visit to Belfast and Dublin. His conclusions, circulated to the JIC on his return, reflected considerable development in British understanding of Irish security issues. Godfrey began by stating that ‘the best source of intelligence as regards both Ulster and Eire is Sir Charles Wickham’, whose ‘officers collaborate closely with the Civil Guard in Eire ...he is thus able to keep close watch on German and IRA activities on both sides of the Border’. Wickham described the IRA as ‘a spent force ...their activity is confined almost entirely to occasional acts of sabotage or hooliganism in Northern Ireland’. The Dublin authorities ‘are keeping a careful watch on all German activities ...and curbing the activities of the German Minister and his staff’, and Wickham convinced Godfrey that ‘further control of movements or communications across the Border is both impracticable and politically undesirable’. Godfrey noted an apparent difference of opinion between Wickham and the admiral commanding in Belfast on ‘protection against theft and sabotage’, although he took no clear position on this himself.⁴ In Dublin, Godfrey met with Maffey, with Walshe, and with Gray. He recorded their key observations in turn: Maffey detected growing respect for Britain because of her resilience in the face of air raids, but increased Irish apprehension about the likely consequences of such attacks on them: in May thirty-four Dubliners were killed when a single German aircraft bombed the city, perhaps inadvertently; there was also the bloody example of Belfast, which was devastated by German raids in April and May, with 900 fatalities and 50,000 houses damaged or destroyed. Belfast was poorly defended, being considered too remote from France for the Germans to mount heavy raids, but compared to Dublin it was a fortress. Maffey advised that, should ‘we contemplate seizing bases ...we should give Ireland prior help to defend her towns ...against air attack’. Gray wanted ‘a much stiffer attitude’ and ‘is all for ² Report by county inspector, Londonderry, on conduct of American troops, 12 Sept. 1941, TNA, CJ4/30. ³ Knight, ‘Mexico, c.1930–1946’, in Bethell (ed.), Cambridge History of Latin America, vii. 64–5. ⁴ Note by Godfrey, 16 Aug. 1941, JIC (41) 335, TNA, CAB81/104. From Barbarossa to Torch 165 combined Anglo-American action regarding ports’. Walshe was ‘very interested in the bases question, but is ignorant of the strategical as distinct from the political aspect ...would welcome more information on strategical issues ...would like to think need of bases was lessened by recent events’, and welcomed American proposals to use ‘Shannon for [a] Civil Aviation terminus’. Godfrey added parenthetically that, at about the time of his visit, Walshe had been at pains to stress to the Italian minister that there was ‘no prospect of joint British–American action to obtain Eire bases. This information is graded A1’ (it clearly came from a decoded Italian cable of 9 August).⁵ Godfrey described a dinner party where, ‘as always in Ireland, there was a good deal of political talk’. After ‘a long and somewhat exhausting evening’, he concluded that ‘the Irish cannot or will not understand the geographical factors which make ...bases imperative. They cannot see that they and ourselves are like two houses on the edge of a cliff, which will both fall into the sea unless something is done to stop coast erosion’. They found this argument ‘too realistic ...and invariably slide off into politics’. While they ‘hammer away incessantly at the Partition grievance ...they have no clear idea of what they would do with the Six Counties if they got them ...Their conceit is impenetrable and they cannot bear to be ignored’, and they ‘cling passionately to their neutrality and are prepared to put up any argument, however futile, to justify their attitude’. While they identified partition as the main grounds for neutrality, ‘I believe ...that the real fear ...is fear of air attack, which the Germans cleverly keep alive by their occasional raids’. The one point on which Godfrey felt slightly at a disadvantage was ‘our refusal to give them arms. They think ...we are inconsistent in urging them to stand up against the aggressor and giving them nothing to do it with. This is the usual complaint of a small neutral, and is never an easy one to answer’. Godfrey concluded that ‘Eire still clings to neutrality’, largely due to fear: ‘practical evidence of our ability to give them immediate protection against air attack would reduce their fear and greatly increase the chances of a favourable reaction if we were compelled to demand bases’.⁶ This sober dissection of both the security and the wider political issues arising from Irish neutrality was worlds away from what had been on offer in Whitehall only a few months before. It set a tone for professional analysis and discussion of Irish affairs which was by and large maintained for the rest of the war, occasional bouts of Churchillian apoplexy apart. THEISSUEOFTHEGERMANLEGATIONRADIO IN 1941–1942 The problem of the mysterious transmissions from ‘Station AM’ assumed more serious proportions as time went on. Notwithstanding the Italian decode which indicated that Hempel had a secret transmitter, it was not certain that this was the ⁵ Ibid. On the Belfast blitz and Ireland’s reaction see Wills, That Neutral Island, 212–18.The ‘A1’ source is clearly Berardis to Rome, 9 Aug. 1941 (decoded on 13 Aug.), TNA, HW12/267. ⁶ Note by Godfrey, 16 Aug. 1941, JIC (41) 335, TNA, CAB81/104. 166 From Barbarossa to Torch ‘Station AM’ which the Post Office interceptors at Sandridge occasionally picked up. Because of doubts about their expertise, responsibility for monitoring Station AM passed to RSS in the autumn. Direction-finding indicated that ‘Station AM’ was definitely in the Dublin area. A review towards the end of October showed that until 10 August ‘traffic was passed fairly regularly in both directions’, but that afterwards the traffic had all been from Nauen, apart from one Dublin message on 4 October.⁷ On 2 September Walshe assured Maffey that ‘they had definitely disposed of the matter’, and that the radio would never be used again—the previous month de Valera had warned Hempel about it, pointing out that the British ‘might know the German code’—but it was heard less than a month later.