How realistically did the British government assess the threat from Nazi Germany during the 1930s? How accurate was British intelligence's understanding of Hitler's aims and Germany's military and industrial capabilities? In The Ultimate Enemy, Wesley K. Wark catalogues the many misperceptions about Nazi Germany that were often fostered by British intelligence.

This book, the product of exhaustive archival research, first looks at the goals of British intelligence in the 1930s. He explains the various views of German power held by the principal Whitehall authorities?including the various military intelligence directorates and the semi-clandestine Industrial Intelligence Centre?and he describes the efforts of senior officials to fit their perceptions of German power into the framework of British military and diplomatic policy. Identifying the four phases through which the British intelligence effort evolved, he assesses its shortcomings and successes, and he calls into question the underlying premises of British intelligence doctrine.

Wark shows that faulty intelligence assessments were crucial in shaping the British policy of appeasement up to the outbreak of World War II. His book offers a new perspective on British policy in the interwar period and also contributes a fascinating case study in the workings of intelligence services during a period of worldwide crisis.

Wesley K. Wark's profile page

Wesley K. Wark is Associate Professor of History at the University of Toronto.

The Ultimate Enemy is quite indispensable reading for any understanding of British policy in the six years before the Second World War.

International History Review

A first-rate study on the role of intelligence assessments in Britain's foreign and defense policies during the 1930s. By examining a mass of unpublished material in archival collections, Wark has skillfully reconstructed the intelligence pictures presented to British decision makers on German rearmament and intentions.

Orbis

A thoroughly researched, powerful, and important study about the role of intelligence in British rearmament and diplomatic policy during the 1930s. The tale Wark tells is a depressing but familiar one. The intelligence community in London was divided by bureaucratic frontiers and its vision distorted by its own preconceptions. Crucial policymakers, such as Neville Chamberlain, used intelligence merely to buttress their own preconceived notions, discarding whatever was inconvenient. British intelligence agencies first badly underestimated German rearmament, then wildly overestimated it; on the eve of war, the British swung about again and decided, largely as a matter of faith, that they would win. All the ingredients of classic intelligence failures are described in Wark's account, which concludes that intelligence, even when accurate, will rarely defeat the tendency to believe what one wants to believe.

Choice

This work is a penetrating analysis of the role of British intelligence services in assessing the threat posed by Hitler's Third Reich during the 1930s, and the accuracy of their evaluations of Germany's aims and capabilities.

Cryptologia

An incisive study of how the British government machine became aware of the size and nature of the threat from Hitler's Germany that lead to war in September 1939.

Albion