10% off all books and free delivery over £40
Buy from our bookstore and 25% of the cover price will be given to a school of your choice to buy more books. *15% of eBooks.

German Foreign Intelligence from Hitler's War to the Cold War

View All Editions

The selected edition of this book is not available to buy right now.
Add To Wishlist
Write A Review

About

German Foreign Intelligence from Hitler's War to the Cold War Synopsis

In the Allies' post-war analyses of the Nazis' defeat, the “weakness and incompetence” of the German intelligence services figured prominently. And how could it have been otherwise, when they worked at the whim of a regime in the grip of “ignorant maniacs”? But what if, Robert Hutchinson asks, the worldviews of the intelligence services and the “ignorant maniacs” aligned more closely than these analyses—and subsequent studies—assumed? What if the reports of the German foreign intelligence services, rather than being dismissed by ideologues who “knew better,” instead served to reinforce the National Socialist worldview? Returning to these reports, examining the information on enemy nations that was gathered, processed, and presented to leaders in the Nazi state, Hutchinson's study reveals the consequences of the politicization of German intelligence during the war—as well as the persistence of ingrained prejudices among the intelligence services' Cold War successors Closer scrutiny of underutilized and unpublished reports shows how during the World War II the German intelligence services supported widely-held assumptions among the Nazi elite that Britain was politically and morally bankrupt, that the Soviet Union was tottering militarily and racially inferior, and that the United States' vast economic potential was undermined by political, cultural, and racial degeneration. Furthermore, Hutchinson argues, these distortions continued as German intelligence veterans parlayed their supposed expertise on the Soviet Union into positions of prominence in Western intelligence in the early years of the Cold War. With its unique insights into the impact of ideology on wartime and post-war intelligence, his book raises important questions not only about how intelligence reports can influence policy decisions, but also about the subjective nature of intelligence gathering itself.

About This Edition

ISBN: 9780700627578
Publication date: 30th January 2019
Author: Robert Hutchinson
Publisher: University Press of Kansas
Format: Hardback
Pagination: 352 pages
Genres: Second World War
Modern warfare
Military intelligence
Cold wars and proxy conflicts
European history