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Room 40: British Naval Intelligence 1914-18
Room 40 British Naval Intelligence 1914-18
338 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1982
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86 people want to read
About the author
Patrick Beesly
9 books2 followersPatrick Beesly was a British author and intelligence officer during World War II.
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
May 21, 2013
This is not an easy book to read as it gets extremely technical in some of the chapters. The author, who was involved in code breaking during WWII, takes a look at Room 40 during the first war. What is Room 40, you ask? Nobody could have answered that question during the Great War because nobody knew it existed. The Admiralty was aware that it had to find a way to read German naval codes in order to be one step ahead of the enemy; so they hired mostly civilians....scholars, Oxford dons, barristers, and a few Navy men to work on the problem. They had practically no staff and their offices were in tiny rooms and even bathrooms. They had no communication with the Intelligence Division or the Admirals of the Fleet which led to messages being days and sometimes weeks behind schedule......and was part of the reason that the Grand Fleet missed the opportunity to demolish the High Seas Fleet of Germany at the Battle of Jutland. One of their great successes was the decoding of the infamous Zimmerman telegram but they received no credit since they "didn't exist"!
But it is an interesting look at the precursor of WWII's Bletchley Park, which operated with a bit more organization. And many of the men who worked in Room 40 went on to serve at Bletchley. This book has enough little known and surprising information within its pages for me to give it a recommendation........but not to the top of your TBR list.
But it is an interesting look at the precursor of WWII's Bletchley Park, which operated with a bit more organization. And many of the men who worked in Room 40 went on to serve at Bletchley. This book has enough little known and surprising information within its pages for me to give it a recommendation........but not to the top of your TBR list.
March 8, 2023
3,5/5. A little bit too much of Very Special Genius Blinker Hall. The build-up from zero to Jutland is a tension arc that America's entry through the Zimmer Telegram simply cannot replicate, in spite of Flemingesque escapades.
May 13, 2023
Perhaps the first point to make is that the title of this book is a little misleading. Room 40, being the cryptanalysis wing of the Admiralty, was not initially part of the Naval Intelligence Division (which was based in Room 39 of the Old Admiralty Building on Whitehall). So a more accurate title would be ‘Room 40 AND British Naval Intelligence 1914-18’.
Having got that out of the way, this is a fascinating study of a pioneering intelligence initiative. Beesly manages to convey the essential characters of the people involved in creating, shaping and maintaining Room 40. But also he explores the many issues in play throughout the organisation’s lifespan, one of which is the way it was mishandled for much of its time by the system within which it operated.
Appropriately Beesly concludes his study with ‘Perhaps it is the staff of Room 40 who are the real heroes of this story’. Certainly he has made it plain throughout just what each of these staff members achieved in the development of Room 40 as a pioneering enterprise able to make huge contributions to the war effort. Naturally the handling of the Zimmermann telegram gets the attention and credit it deserves. But Beesly’s study gives extensive portrayals of the various ways that Room 40 was able to develop its provision of, and indeed interpretation of, decoded German intercepts.
While its success was given a head start early in the war by the fortuitous acquisition of German codes, yet it had to engage with the cypher systems that used these codes. So successful was it that for instance the intelligence provided by Room 40 allowed the British Grand Fleet to keep the German Hochseeflotte on the defensive, preventing it from taking the offensive: ‘Room 40 robbed the Germans of the advantages of surprise’. Its decoding of intercepts also proved invaluable in dealing with the menace posed by U-boats, once its ‘accurate information’ was ‘put to effective use’ by supporting convoy actions and mine-laying.
In his conclusion Beesly admits that Room 40 had its failings, ‘but these were almost entirely the result of the system imposed on it from above’. It is this tension which informs the study. At first Room 40 was a makeshift collection of volunteers drafted in to deal with an increasing influx of intercepted German signals. But as the war continued, the importance of intelligence gathering, particularly in SIGINT (signals intelligence), and the need to integrate the product into strategy and policy, was not appreciated fully by those in charge.
Jutland is of course given as a case in point, but there are other examples illustrating this failure to exploit a valuable resource. Over and again studies of the covert world of intelligence will remind the reader that it is not just the gathering of intelligence that counts, it is the use made of it that validates the enterprise. Thus it was not until Room 40 was integrated into the Naval Intelligence Division that it found its true function.
Beesly’s concluding chapter is entitled ‘Heroes and Monsters’, and he’s in no doubt who the principal monster is in this story: ‘Room 40’s ‘monster’ was undoubtedly Dummy Oliver’. Rear Admiral Henry Oliver’s nickname ‘Dummy’ came from his ‘extreme taciturnity’. When first we meet Oliver, Beesly credits him as being ‘an intelligent and able man’. So why does he become the monster of the piece?
Beesly depicts Oliver’s fault as being a reluctance to delegate and decentralise, citing the opinion that for Oliver ‘Room 40 was really his private cryptographic bureau rather than a fully fledged Intelligence centre’. Rather than allowing Room 40 to process intelligence fully and to issue notifications of its own, Oliver imposed an almost obsessive control over its output, embodied in his insistence that he should compose all signals himself. In this way Oliver and Alfred Ewing (Director of Naval Education and first head of Room 40) stunted the effectiveness of Room 40.
The above opinion of Oliver is credited by Beesly to William Reginald ‘Blinker’ Hall, Director of Naval Intelligence from 1914 to 1919. If Oliver is the monster of the story, clearly Hall is the hero. Even though he didn’t take charge of Room 40 until 1917, when it became integrated into the Naval Intelligence Division, Hall is a prominent character throughout this study.
By all accounts – not just Beesly’s – Hall was a remarkable figure in the world of intelligence during the First World War. It is perhaps inevitable then that he should be the individual hero in this study. His understanding of intelligence gathering, and his deployment of the intelligence gathered, balances the portrayals of Oliver and Ewing. Hall does not impose a centralised control, insisting that everything should travel through him. Instead he allows his subordinates to develop their own areas of expertise and supervises rather than directs. In this way Room 40 becomes at last part of the implementation of naval intelligence, and indeed lays the foundations for its future transformation as the Government Code and Cypher School, later Government Communications Headquarters.
Beesly’s study has all the detail you need to appreciate fully how Room 40 developed, and the value of the intelligence it provided. This is in itself a fascinating story. But also Beesly shows how even the best intelligence is dependent for its effectiveness on how it’s used. He admits that being a groundbreaking enterprise, Room 40’s work may have been difficult to appreciate at least in the outset. However, he makes it clear that when a system is based on personality rather than structure, the system’s effectiveness suffers.
Having got that out of the way, this is a fascinating study of a pioneering intelligence initiative. Beesly manages to convey the essential characters of the people involved in creating, shaping and maintaining Room 40. But also he explores the many issues in play throughout the organisation’s lifespan, one of which is the way it was mishandled for much of its time by the system within which it operated.
Appropriately Beesly concludes his study with ‘Perhaps it is the staff of Room 40 who are the real heroes of this story’. Certainly he has made it plain throughout just what each of these staff members achieved in the development of Room 40 as a pioneering enterprise able to make huge contributions to the war effort. Naturally the handling of the Zimmermann telegram gets the attention and credit it deserves. But Beesly’s study gives extensive portrayals of the various ways that Room 40 was able to develop its provision of, and indeed interpretation of, decoded German intercepts.
While its success was given a head start early in the war by the fortuitous acquisition of German codes, yet it had to engage with the cypher systems that used these codes. So successful was it that for instance the intelligence provided by Room 40 allowed the British Grand Fleet to keep the German Hochseeflotte on the defensive, preventing it from taking the offensive: ‘Room 40 robbed the Germans of the advantages of surprise’. Its decoding of intercepts also proved invaluable in dealing with the menace posed by U-boats, once its ‘accurate information’ was ‘put to effective use’ by supporting convoy actions and mine-laying.
In his conclusion Beesly admits that Room 40 had its failings, ‘but these were almost entirely the result of the system imposed on it from above’. It is this tension which informs the study. At first Room 40 was a makeshift collection of volunteers drafted in to deal with an increasing influx of intercepted German signals. But as the war continued, the importance of intelligence gathering, particularly in SIGINT (signals intelligence), and the need to integrate the product into strategy and policy, was not appreciated fully by those in charge.
Jutland is of course given as a case in point, but there are other examples illustrating this failure to exploit a valuable resource. Over and again studies of the covert world of intelligence will remind the reader that it is not just the gathering of intelligence that counts, it is the use made of it that validates the enterprise. Thus it was not until Room 40 was integrated into the Naval Intelligence Division that it found its true function.
Beesly’s concluding chapter is entitled ‘Heroes and Monsters’, and he’s in no doubt who the principal monster is in this story: ‘Room 40’s ‘monster’ was undoubtedly Dummy Oliver’. Rear Admiral Henry Oliver’s nickname ‘Dummy’ came from his ‘extreme taciturnity’. When first we meet Oliver, Beesly credits him as being ‘an intelligent and able man’. So why does he become the monster of the piece?
Beesly depicts Oliver’s fault as being a reluctance to delegate and decentralise, citing the opinion that for Oliver ‘Room 40 was really his private cryptographic bureau rather than a fully fledged Intelligence centre’. Rather than allowing Room 40 to process intelligence fully and to issue notifications of its own, Oliver imposed an almost obsessive control over its output, embodied in his insistence that he should compose all signals himself. In this way Oliver and Alfred Ewing (Director of Naval Education and first head of Room 40) stunted the effectiveness of Room 40.
The above opinion of Oliver is credited by Beesly to William Reginald ‘Blinker’ Hall, Director of Naval Intelligence from 1914 to 1919. If Oliver is the monster of the story, clearly Hall is the hero. Even though he didn’t take charge of Room 40 until 1917, when it became integrated into the Naval Intelligence Division, Hall is a prominent character throughout this study.
By all accounts – not just Beesly’s – Hall was a remarkable figure in the world of intelligence during the First World War. It is perhaps inevitable then that he should be the individual hero in this study. His understanding of intelligence gathering, and his deployment of the intelligence gathered, balances the portrayals of Oliver and Ewing. Hall does not impose a centralised control, insisting that everything should travel through him. Instead he allows his subordinates to develop their own areas of expertise and supervises rather than directs. In this way Room 40 becomes at last part of the implementation of naval intelligence, and indeed lays the foundations for its future transformation as the Government Code and Cypher School, later Government Communications Headquarters.
Beesly’s study has all the detail you need to appreciate fully how Room 40 developed, and the value of the intelligence it provided. This is in itself a fascinating story. But also Beesly shows how even the best intelligence is dependent for its effectiveness on how it’s used. He admits that being a groundbreaking enterprise, Room 40’s work may have been difficult to appreciate at least in the outset. However, he makes it clear that when a system is based on personality rather than structure, the system’s effectiveness suffers.
February 15, 2018
Beesly is a good writer and has the great advantage of professional insight - he worked in NID's Operational Intelligence Centre during WW2 and knew several of the key actors in this drama. He doesn't make the mistake of confining his narrative to a narrow cryptographic silo, as Room 40 itself too often was in practice, but places it in the wider intelligence context. It would be wise to read some other accounts to get a cross-bearing on his view of the 'heroes and monsters' of the tale, a topic on which he has some very definite views.
August 15, 2016
This is an important book, but not easy reading. The foreshadowing with Bletchley is intriguing. On occasions I felt that the book gravitated towards general naval history - probably no bad thing!
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews