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Chapter One examines Labour involvement in the wartime Coalition government and Ministerial access to and use of intelligence. It argues that the Second World War provided an important opportunity for future Ministers in the post-war government to gain knowledge and experience of handling and using intelligence. Within months of the coalition’s formation, Labour Ministers had access to the fruits of British codebreaking. Further, the chapter also suggests that this experience ended any lingering animosity that resulted from the Zinoviev Letter Affair. The chapter places particular emphasis on Attlee’s wartime experiences and provides examples of his use of intelligence and early views on it. It also looks at Labour involvement with the Special Operations Executive (SOE) and Party attempts to add an ideological facet to British special operations in Europe under Hugh Dalton, Minister of Economic Warfare until 1942. Beyond intelligence and special operations, Labour involvement with intelligence and security extended to the domestic front with Herbert Morrison, appointed Home Secretary in November 1940. Already a fierce opponent of British Communists, he received the product of MI5’s surveillance of the Communist Party of Great Britain and provided the Cabinet with information warning of Communist espionage.

This chapter by David Kohnen examines the Allied response to the initial German submarine operations in the Indian Ocean during the Second World War. Roughly forty German submarines sailed for East Asian waters after 1942; U-188 was among the few to navigate the Allied gauntlet in the Atlantic to reach the Indian Ocean. Only three German submarines, including U-188, returned to Europe from operations in the Indian Ocean before the Allied victory in May of 1945. The discussions between key British and American commanders regarding the presence of German submarines in the Indian Ocean provide unique insight into the operations and intelligence organizations of the Admiralty and Navy Department and are examined in detail. The chapter also looks at the Allied submarine tracking rooms, which assisted the Special Operations Executive and Office of Strategic Services in the capture of the skipper of U-188 – thereby securing information on the Imperial Japanese during a critical period in the closing months of the Second World War.

The publication of Professor M. R. D. Foot's SOE in France — an officially sponsored account of the activities of the Special Operations Executive (SOE) during the Second World War — stands out as a significant moment in the historiography of British intelligence. However, little is known about the period between the original submission of Foot's manuscript in May 1963 and the book's publication in April 1966. This chapter explores the manuscript's journey during this time and considers why an editorial period of such length failed to address the issues that would cause such trouble after publication. As such, it aims to shed some light upon Whitehall's first experience of preparing official ‘secret history’ for publication, highlighting the key issues and decisions taken, which emerge in the file material that is now available at the National Archives.

This chapter establishes whether the different forms of British white propaganda were consistent. The print and broadcast treatment of a series of key events ranging from the British attack upon the French fleet at Mers-el-Kébir to the D-Day landings in Normandy are compared. The internal planning by Department Electra House, Special Operations Executive propaganda section, Political Warfare Executive and the British Broadcasting Corporation is also evaluated. The propagandists divided the French into three: the apathetic, the anti-British and the pro-British. Adolf Hitler's invasion of the USSR caused pro-Soviet feeling to sweep through Great Britain. Leaflets continued to be dropped after D-Day, but their role was limited. The British propaganda organisations overcame the issues that they encountered, whether these came from objectives bringing them into conflict with other bodies prosecuting the war effort or arose from problems encountered in what propaganda had to report.

The intelligence agency the Asian Americans joined was established by William Donovan, lawyer and Medal of Honor recipient from World War I. Donovan turned to his trusted friends who organized the various sections of his agency and staffed them with personnel they knew and trusted through their old boy network. To gather strategic and tactical intelligence against Japan, however, Donovan required experts, field agents, and available military personnel with experience in East Asia. But he found there were fewer available through the old boy network. Out of necessity, therefore, he turned to the Asian American communities in the United States to recruit linguistically and culturally qualified personnel with the correct racial uniforms.