Secret Service Bureau

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The Secret Service Bureau is the common forerunner of today's British Secret Services Security Service (formerly known as MI5) and Secret Intelligence Service (formerly known as MI6), which formerly existed as a joint division between the War Department and the Admiralty . Separated into domestic and international espionage, it was the first official, non-military secret service to lay the foundation for today's secret services .

Framework

Great Britain's experience of the Second Boer War (1899–1902), which lasted disproportionately long for a highly armed army fighting against rebellious peasants, led to deep uncertainty among the military and the population. The defense against a potential invasion of foreign powers in the home country no longer seemed to be guaranteed.

The forerunners of today's official secret services are the military intelligence services, which mainly provided tactically relevant information (troop strength, armament etc.) about the enemy in times of war. Strategic information (morality in the home country, war fatigue, available natural resources) was hardly collected at all.

Influences after the Boer War

Shortly after the war, the stereotype of the constantly spying German spread noticeably. Any foreigner was seen as a potential spy preparing a German invasion of Britain. Le Queux ' novels sold millions of times illustrate the fear of the German threat. His novel The Invasion of 1910 alone sold over a million copies, translated into 27 languages ​​and published as a serial in the daily newspaper, where it received a large audience. Under pressure from the editor of the Daily Mail , Le Queux used a German invasion route that was pointless from a military point of view, but which affected many heavily populated areas and thus helped the newspaper to increase its circulation.

Something similar happened with other works by Le Queux and other authors, so that the fear of a German invasion spread across Britain and became a real threat. This can also be seen in the numbers of new recruits for the British Army , which were growing rapidly at the time.

Although there were ideas in Germany to invade England, these were rejected as early as 1896 because they were considered impracticable.

Meeting of the subcommittee

In March 1909, pressure from various authorities and the fear of the population forced the British Prime Minister to convene a subcommittee to investigate the nature and extent of German espionage in Great Britain. At the first meeting on March 30, 1909, the Minister of War , the Minister of the Interior , the Postmaster General , the High Police Commissioner, the First Admiralty Lord , the Director of Military Operations, the Director of Naval Intelligence and the Head of the War Ministerial Intelligence Department appeared . The latter acted as the main witness, as he had dealt intensively with the German invasion threat in previous years. In the following three sessions he presented reports of potential espionage activities, all of which were very superficial and could not irrefutably prove that there were German spies in Great Britain. For example, he reported on suspects who behaved in a typically German manner and repeatedly drove into the surrounding area around their tenement houses and apartments - as if they were spying out interesting peculiarities in the area.

However, this evidence alone did not convince the subcommittee. Only a document about an astonishing train journey brought the change of opinion and is presented here in the quotation:

“This document came from a French traveling salesman on his way from Hamburg to Spa. He had shared the compartment on the train with a German whose travel bag looked like his own. When the German got out, he took the wrong bag with him, and when the traveling salesman noticed this, he opened the bag of his fellow passenger, in which he found detailed plans for the invasion of England. He copied as much of it as possible before he was asked to return the bag, the loss of which the actual owner had informed those responsible at the next train station by telegram. "

Military experts came to the conclusion that the plans were indeed real, so that the entire subcommittee was certain that a German invasion was imminent. It is now assumed that the plans were made by the French in order to enable or intensify British-French cooperation talks. The committee then agreed to set up a secret service to act as an interface between the Admiralty and the War Department. He was supported by the police, especially the Metropolitan Police , and was supposed to pursue espionage abroad and counter-espionage at home. The Secret Service Bureau was born.

The Secret Service Bureau

The first two employees, Vernon Kell from the War Department and Mansfield Smith-Cumming , appointed by the Admiralty, met for the first time on October 4, 1909. At the beginning, they had to share an office and their work tasks, but there was soon a separation between domestic and international espionage. Kell took over the domestic secret service, later MI5 , Cumming the foreign secret service, later MI6 . Incidentally, the custom of shortening the respective heads of the British secret services with the first letter of the surname also goes back to that time, because in correspondence they called themselves “K” and “C”.

The early days of the bureau were characterized by a lack of contacts and a limited budget, so that little developed in the first few months. The legal limits also severely restricted espionage activities. Only when Winston Churchill took office as Minister of the Interior (1910) did the work of domestic intelligence become easier. In the meantime, also spatially separated from the international secret service, the restrictions on opening letters from suspects have been greatly simplified. A register of all foreigners in Great Britain was also created. With the help of the police, with whom Kell had developed good relations, the register was complete by the beginning of World War I , except in London. This enabled a division into potentially dangerous to harmless foreigners and should serve as an important aid to protect the home country in a war.

In 1910 the first German spy was arrested in Great Britain while spying on coastal fortifications. However, it is known today that he acted on his own initiative and had no mandate from the German military. In the following years, not least thanks to the sloppy and barely camouflaged approach of German spies, a distribution station for German espionage mail was found. A German hairdresser, who occasionally cut the hair of the British Admiralty, distributed all mail from and to the most important German spies in Great Britain. Thanks to the monitoring of all mail from the hairdresser, 22 German spies were located in Great Britain. However, these were not arrested immediately in order to reduce the risk of undetected new spies. Instead, they were monitored and shortly before the war began, Kell gave the order to arrest all of them at the same time. Within a very short time, 21 of the 22 spies were arrested. These were all important spies and German espionage was practically blind when the war started. Even years later, no new German spy network was able to develop in Great Britain. The 22nd spy was in Germany at the time of the arrests and thus escaped arrest. The arrests were carried out by the Metropolitan Police, also known as Scotland Yard, which was also considered by the public to be the actually executing government body. Kell was able to work largely in secret.

At the same time, Cumming organized international espionage, which focused almost exclusively on Germany. With the few resources available to him, he often bought small pieces of information and only later could he hire his own spies, who acted much more effectively. This also enabled Cumming to raise funds much faster to set up branches in Russia and Holland. In this way he was able to obtain information about German weapons technology and the construction of new warships and to provide his own military with further strategic information that was useful at the start of the war.

During the First World War, both departments were renamed several times and were given their names MI5 and MI6, which are still in use today. However, both continued their work almost unchanged. MI6 provided further information from Germany and MI5 was able to almost completely prevent German espionage activity in Great Britain.

Designations

  • SIS - Secret Intelligence Service, term used throughout for international espionage.
  • Security Service - This term is commonly used for counter-espionage in the UK.
  • MO5 (g) - In August 1914, Counter Espionage is assigned to the War Department as Military Operations, Section 5g .
  • MI5 - 1916 the War Department was restructured again. MO became MI. Counter-espionage was given the designation Military Intelligence, Section 5 .
  • MO6 - With the outbreak of war, foreign espionage was subordinated to the War Department as Military Operations, Section 6 .
  • MI6 - Name changed with the reorganization of the War Department, Military Intelligence, Section 6 .

literature

  • Christopher Andrews : MI5, The True Story of British Secret Service . Propylän, Berlin 2010, ISBN 978-3-549-07379-7 (from the English by Stephan Gebauer, Enrico Heinemann, Norbert Juraschitz).
  • Christopher Andrew: Secret Service, The Making of the British Intelligence Community . William Heinemann, London 1985, ISBN 0-434-02110-5 .
  • Richard Deacon: A History of the British Secret Service . Frederick Muller, London 1969, ISBN 0-584-10127-9 .
  • Wolfgang Krieger: The history of the secret services, from the pharaohs to the CIA . CH Beck, Munich 2009, ISBN 978-3-406-58387-2 .
  • John Curry: The Security Service 1908-1945. The Official History, Introduction by Christopher Andrew . Public Record Office, Surrey 1999, ISBN 1-873162-79-0 .
  • Phillip Knightley: The History of Espionage in the 20th Century, Structure and Organization, Successes and Defeats of the Great Secret Services . Volk und Welt, Berlin 1990, ISBN 3-353-00767-9 (from the English by Jürgen Bavendam).
  • Phillip HJ Davies: MI6 and the Machinery of Spying . Frank Cass, London 2004, ISBN 0-7146-5457-4 .

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Christopher Andrew: Secret Service, The Making of the British Intelligence Community . Propylän, London 1985, p. 34 .
  2. ^ Phillip Davies: MI6 and the Machinery of Spying . Frank Cass, London 2004, p. 44-50 .
  3. ↑ Wolfgang Krieger: The history of the secret services, From the Pharaohs to the CIA . CH Beck, Munich 2004, p. 156-157 .
  4. ↑ Christopher Andrew: Secret Service, The Making of the British Intelligence Community . Propylän, London 1985, p. 42 .
  5. ↑ Christopher Andrews: MI5, The True Story of British Secret Service . Propylän, Berlin 2010, p. 28 .
  6. ↑ Christopher Andrew: Secret Service, The Making of the British Intelligence Community . Propylän, London 1985, p. 53 .
  7. ^ A b Christopher Andrew: Secret Service, The Making of the British Intelligence Community . Propylän, London 1985, p. 37 .
  8. ↑ a b Phillip Knightley: The history of espionage in the 20th century, structure and organization, successes and defeats of the great secret services . People and World, Berlin 1990, p. 15 .
  9. ↑ Christopher Andrews: MI5, The True Story of British Secret Service . Propylän, Berlin 2010, p. 41 .
  10. ↑ Christopher Andrew: Secret Service, The Making of the British Intelligence Community . Propylän, London 1985, p. 57 .
  11. ↑ Christopher Andrews: MI5, The True Story of British Secret Service . Propylän, Berlin 2010, p. 19 .
  12. ↑ Christopher Andrew: Secret Service, The Making of the British Intelligence Community . Propylän, London 1985, p. 60 .
  13. ↑ Christopher Andrews: MI5, The True Story of British Secret Service . Propylän, Berlin 2010, p. 78-79 .
  14. ↑ Christopher Andrews: MI5, The True Story of British Secret Service . Propylän, Berlin 2010, p. 56 .
  15. ↑ Christopher Andrews: MI5, The True Story of British Secret Service . Propylän, Berlin 2010, p. 61 .
  16. ^ Richard Deacon: A History of the British Secret Service . Frederick Muller, London 1969, p. 164 .
  17. ↑ Christopher Andrew: Secret Service, The Making of the British Intelligence Community . Propylän, London 1985, p. 70 .
  18. ^ Richard Deacon: A History of the British Secret Service . Frederick Muller, London 1969, p. 184 .
  19. ↑ Phillip Knightley: The history of espionage in the 20th century, structure and organization, successes and defeats of the great secret services . People and World, Berlin 1990, p. 36 .
  20. ^ A b Phillip Davies: MI6 and the Machinery of Spying . Frank Cass, London 2004, p. 26 .
  21. ^ A b Christopher Andrew: Secret Service, The Making of the British Intelligence Community . Propylän, London 1985, p. 174 .
  22. ^ A b John Curry: The Security Service 1908-1945. The Official History, Introduction by Christopher Andrew . Public Record Office, Surrey 1999, pp. 70 .