Citation

Winter P. War Hist. 2011; 18(1): 85-108.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2011, SAGE Publishing)

DOI

10.1177/0968344510382610

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

Since the end of the Second World War, historians have assumed that the greatest secrets of the German war machine were divined through ‘signals intelligence’ (SIGINT), the decryption at Bletchley Park of the Wehrmacht’s enciphered messages, and not through ‘human intelligence’ (HUMINT) supplied by high-level agents situated at the very heart of Hitler’s high command. The discovery that Anglo-Polish intelligence possessed at least two penetration agents within the Oberkommando der Wehrmacht and Oberkommando des Heeres , ‘Warlock’ and ‘Knopf ’, not only challenges this idée fixe, but corrects the historical record by overturning sixty years’ worth of received wisdom on the subject. This study aims, therefore, to demonstrate that by means of high-grade HUMINT, Whitehall gained a unique entrée into German strategic and operational thinking during some of the most critical stages of the war.