A few stray thoughts and questions on the unseen war. Who claims the title of the best spy of the war ? It seems there are many possible choices that range from operatives like Popov , Garcia to divisional chiefs like "Wild Bill" Donovan , Canaris (as an anti-Nazi) , to the men of Ultra or the US code breakers reading the Japanese plans against Midway Island. The Axis spies seem to have been rather ineffective, is that really true or just a mis-perception? And how important was all this to the war effort? (We all know of Stalin's failins here in the first days warnings) Were people like Harro Schulze-Boysen (a Luftwaffe officer that tried to give complete data to the Russians about military objectives) an anti-Hitler spy to be honored or was he a traitor potentially killing his own men ? There are several individuals that fit this profile.
Gelen, was highly enough thought of to get employed first by the American's and then later by the west German's. To be honest though, some of what I have read since may cast doubts about this.
I´m sure that if there was a "Best Spy of the War" you won´t read his name in a history book. Gelen had a low morality and he worked for the one who payed him best as long til he had seen the end is coming. Than he turned to the next boss. All Spies which are giving information away to the enemy are somehow traitors who kill their own people. The spy game is a game without morality.
I agree on the moral issues, spy work is a very grey area as it's all about betrayal of trust. So I much prefer Alan Touring and the Bletchey Park team, or if you want physical courage the divers that went searching for code books on enemy wrecks in contested waters and the "embassy raiders", but then I'm a IT security pro with an interest in cryptology so it may skew my vision (I think "technology is good, people are the weak link, if they're not outright bad you can count on them to do stupid things" about 10 times a working day) .
My favourites must be the German agents in Britain that were used to send massive amounts of false info to Germany... The biggest spy of WW2 and the cold war time together for me is Kim Philby..
What about Richard Sorge? His info that the Japanese weren't going to attack the Soviet Union in the East allowed the Siberian Division to be transferred to the Battle for Moscow.
Then there was a spy for the Germans they called "Cicero". I believe he was an employee of the British legation in Ankara, Turkey. Lots of the stuff was on Overlord but the Germans didn't believe him because the info came too easily and they thought it was a plant.
I recall we had a discussion on Sorge that yes, the Siberian troops were transferred but actually the numbers in Asia for the Red Army were still such that the Japanese Kwantung Army could not have been a real threat to the rear of the USSR. Still, Sorge did a great job for the USSR and Stalin did not care to save him.
