Books in Brief: The Double-Cross System in the War of 1939 to 1945

The Double-Cross System in the War of 1939 to 1945, by J. C. Masterman (Yale, 203 pp., $6.95). During World War II the entire German spy apparatus in Great Britain—all of it—was controlled by M.I.5. The story of how this was done and how German agents inside the UK were “run” by their British case officers is intriguingly and delightfully told in the Masterman Report. Sir John Masterman, a famed gamesman and Oxford Vice Chancellor, was himself the chief architect of the XX (Twenty or Double-Cross) Committee. This group had charge of policy and operation of “turned round” German spies. And all the German spies on that beleaguered isle were turned round. Masterman and his fellow players (from M.I.6, the Admiralty, Home Defense, the Air Force, the Foreign Office and, later on, SHAEF, among others) used the completely spoiled German network to feed false information to Berlin and to practice petty and grand deceptions right up to the hour of the German surrender. Masterman cites as proof that the German network was completely penetrated documents captured after the war and numerous other pieces of convincing evidence. He warns, however, that complacency or derision of German intelligence is not in order. First, he argues, counterintelligence is easy in wartime while intelligence is difficult (and, conversely, in peacetime intelligence is relatively simple to obtain but counterintelligence is hard to effect). There are numerous lessons, too, for the present period. Societies such as the USSR and China have in peacetime all the aspects of counterintelligence security that Sir John has characterized as typical of the wartime community. w. d. jacobs