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Intelligence in World War II: A Survey
by DAVID KAHN -- abstract

With numerous examples from Allied (notably the United States and Great Britain) as well as Axis (i.e., Nazi-Germany) perspectives, David Kahn provides an overview of the strengths and weaknesses, successes and failures of various intelligence activities and their impact on the outcome of World War II.
Kahn discusses strategic aerial reconnaissance, the accessability of photographic material, and issues that may make such information gathering strategies less attractive. He argues that there is one important type of intelligence mostly neglected by historians: intelligence obtained by the fighting soldier. After all, he sees, hears, smells, and feels the enemy close-up. The author devotes much attention to the code-breaking activities on both sides, the most effective of all types of intelligence during the war, he argues, although much less appealing to a broader public and novelists than the spy, who has so often been immortalized in fiction, even though – as the evidence suggests – he actually did not matter as much.
During the war, the Anglo-Americans increasingly intensified their intelligence activities while the more hierarchically organized German services proved to be less and less efficient. Intelligence, Kahn maintains, unquestionably played a decisive part in winning the war.