WW2
Your World War II Resource
Encyclopedia
MDSWW-- The Macmillan Dictionary of the Second World War
OCWW2--The Oxford Companion to World War II
OEGWW2--The Oxford Essential Guide to World War II
PWE: The Pacific War Encyclopedia
RMEWW2--Rand McNally Encyclopedia of World War II
SBEE--Spy Book: The Encyclopedia of Espionage
WW2AVE--World War II: A Visual Encyclopedia
WW2AW--World War II: America at War, 1941-1945
Atomic Spy Ring
During World War II the Soviet government operated a large spy ring that sought atomic secrets in Great Britain, Canada, and -- primarily -- the United States. The Soviet effort continued, albeit at a lesser level of intensity, during the Cold War ....The atomic bomb project was undoubtedly the most closely held Anglo-American war secret; the details of the program were known to far fewer people than those who had knowledge of Allied codebreaking efforts. Indeed, an important factor in the decision in early 1942 to have the US Army manage the atomic bomb project (Manhattan District) was the conviction that the army was the agency best prepared in wartime to enforce security. The Manhattan District's security officer would call upon the resources of G-2 and the War Department's Military Intelligence Division, which shared responsibility for matters of espionage, counterespionage, and sabotage in the United States with the FBI and the Office of Naval Intelligence. But security for the Manhattan District was a dismal failure.
The head of the atomic bomb project, Brig. Gen. Leslie Groves, decided to allow some scientists with communist connections to be employed. The most notable example was J. Robert Oppenheimer, whom Groves made head of the Los Alamos nuclear laboratory in New Mexico. In the 1930s Oppenheimer had been attracted to a number of communist front organizations and had made regular contributions to communist-supported causes. His friends, wife, and brother had earlier been Communist Party members. He had not. Still, Groves selected Oppenheimer to direct development of the atomic bomb. There is no indication that he ever knowingly betrayed that trust, although he continued -- against Groves's orders -- to associate with known communists. (Oppenheimer and Enrico Fermi, a leading nuclear physicist, were assigned the Soviet code names Star and Editor, respectively, as sources of information provided by Soviet spies.)
By the end of 1941 the Soviet NKVD had knowledge of US and British interest in the development of an atomic bomb. The primary source was John Cairncross, a member of the Cambridge Spy Ring. Cairncross was secretary to Lord Maurice Hankey, who in the summer of 1941 was made chairman of the British government committee looking into the potential of atomic energy.
....Soviet intelligence succeeded in placing several spies in addition to Cairncross in positions where they could learn secrets of the atomic bomb. The principal spies were Klaus Fuchs and David Greenglass, who worked on technical aspects of the bomb at the Los Alamos lab; Alan Nunn May and Bruno Portecorvo, scientists working in Canada; and Donald Maclean, from 1944 the first secretary at the British Embassy in Washington, DC, and from the summer of 1945 the coordinator of the Anglo-American atomic bomb efforts, the Manhattan Project and Tube Alloys Projects respectively.
To support these spies the Soviets established networks of couriers and handlers in the United States. Their reports and -- from May -- uranium samples were sent directly to Lavrenty Beria, head of the Commissariat for Internal Affairs (NKVD). Beria was able to provide Soviet dictator Josef Stalin and Soviet scientists with details of the atomic bomb project -- including the test schedule .... Fuchs -- the most important atomic spy -- also provided technical information on the plutonium bomb (Fat Man), including its assembly and detonation.
No Soviet spy was caught red-handed. But the atomic spy ring began to unravel in 1946. Radio messages sent from the Soviet spy handlers in the United States to Moscow were intercepted by the US Army Signal Intelligence Service but decoding did not start until the summer of 1946. At that time Meredith Gardner, a US Army cryptologist, was able to break into one of the messages and discovered that it contained a list of scientists working for the Manhattan District. The messages and their decryption was given the US code name Venona.
Slow, careful crytanalysis efforts followed. Not until 1949 was there conclusive evidence from Venona that led to Fuchs, who was then investigated by Scotland Yard's Special Branch. On Jan. 27, 1050, he confessed that from 1942 to 1949 he had been working for the Soviets. Evidence provided by Fuchs led the FBI to Harry Gold, who had been his courier. Gold, arrested on May 22, 1950, on espionage charges, confessed to US officials and revealed another Los Alamos spy, Greenglass, as well as Morton Sobell, and Julius Rosenberg and his wife, Ethel. Greenglass was Ethel Rosenberg's brother, and Sobell was a longtime friend of Julius Rosenberg. All were involved in stealing atomic secrets ... [and] were tried and convicted of espionage or conspiracy to commit wartime espionage. The Rosenbergs were executed on June 19, 1953; the others were sent to prison.
.... Another aspect of the atomic spy ring was revealed in 1946 following the defection of Igor S. Gouzenko, a cipher clerk at the Soviet Embassy in Ottawa, Canada. His revelations led to the exposure of Col. Nikolai Zabotin, the GRU resident in Ottawa, and scientist May, as well as others involved in stealing atomic secrets. May and nine others ... in Canada were sent to prison.
....On Feb. 4, 1944, the Military Policy Committee of the US atomic bomb program reported that "no espionage activities by the Axis nations with respect to this project have been discovered, although there have been suspicious indications." The committee was correct. Rather, it was the wartime ally of the United States, the Soviet Union, that successfully spied out atomic bomb secrets .... [SBEE]
Automedon
[SBEE] British merchant ship of 7,528 tons whose capture by the German raider Atlantis just west of Singapore on Nov. 11, 1940 yielded valuable intelligence to the Germans. The Atlantis was one of several German heavily armed merchant-type ships employed to attack Allied merchant ships. The raiders generally sought their prey in remote areas, not in the major shipping lanes where escorted convoys would be encountered. Upon being ordered to stop by the German raider, the Automedon sent an emergency radio signal. The Atlantis immediately began shelling the helpless Automedon. German sailors then boarded the British ship and took off classified mail pouches.
One packet was intended for the new British commander in chief in the Far East, Sir Robert Brooke-Popham, whose headquarters were in Singapore. The secret documents included minutes of the British War Cabinet meeting on Aug. 8, 1940, which delineated British weaknesses and the vulnerability of the fortress at Singapore. The packet reached the German naval attache in Tokyo, Rear Adm. Paul Wenneker, on Dec. 5, 1940. He radioed a summary to Berlin and on direct orders from Adolf Hitler, passed the documents to the Japanese Navy on Dec. 12. Significantly, the lack of coordination between the Japanese War and Navy ministries may have limited the usefulness of the Automedon [information] to the Japanese Army's campaign against Singapore in early 1942.
The Automedon was one of 22 merchant ships, totaling 145,697 gross registered tons, that were sunk or captured by the Atlantis from March 1940, when she left Germany, to Nov. 22, 1941, when she was lost in the south Atlantic. The most successful of the German merchant raiders, Atlantis was sunk because British codebreakers succeeded in breaking into the U-boat operational cipher. The signals to the submarine U-126 to rendezvous with the Atlantis were deciphered at Bletchley Park, and a British warship was directed to their location.
The Atlantis was refueling a U-boat when she was attacked by the British heavy cruiser Devonshire. The captain of the Atlantis scuttled his ship when escape from the more heavily-gunned Devonshire became impossible. Later the submarine U-126, which the Atlantis had been refueling when attacked, took aboard 55 Atlantis crewmen; another 200 men "camped" on the surfaced U-boat's deck, wearing life jackets; and 200 more were in six small boats that the U-boat towed. Other submarines and a German surface ship took off some of the survivors. The latter was sunk by the British. After a lengthy odyssey all but eight of the crew of the Atlantis did reach Germany. [SBEE]