Intelligence Requirements at the Crossroads: The 1948 French Plan de Renseignement, Intelligence Requirements and the Role of Intelligence History

Abstract

Very often intelligence history concentrates on the knowledge produced by a country's intelligence service and its impact on national decision-making, or – in the case of intelligence failures – the lack thereof. Using a previously unexplored document from the archives of the French Foreign Ministry, this research note proposes another contribution of intelligence history to diplomatic history: By analysing national intelligence requirements – the ‘top secret diaries’ of governments – intelligence history can provide a window into the minds of decision-makers. The 1948 French plan de renseignement illustrates this case. Written shortly after the Cold War started in earnest in 1947, the plan de renseignement shows a French government deeply worried about the danger of global conflict and of internal upheaval in its empire, but also a government not fully committed to the western cause and particularly sceptical about American intentions. French foreign policy was at a crossroads in 1947/48 and, quite sensibly, French policy-makers wanted to know exactly what lay on all the possible roads ahead. While these findings do not contradict existing scholarship, they may help to encourage a re-weighing of existing arguments.

Notes

¹ Christopher Andrew, ‘Intelligence in the Cold War’ in M.P. Leffler and O.A. Westad (eds.) The Cambridge History of the Cold War, Volume II: Crises and Détente (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2010) pp.417–37, p.417.

² Christopher Andrew and David Dilks, ‘Introduction’, in C. Andrew and D. Dilks (eds.) The Missing Dimension: Governments and Intelligence Communities in the Twentieth Century (London: Macmillan 1984). For examples of the use of this phrase, see Richard Aldrich, The Hidden Hand: Britain, America and Cold War Secret Intelligence (London: John Murray 2001); Oliver Hoare, British Intelligence in the Twentieth Century: A Missing Dimension?Cass Series: Studies in Intelligence (London: Frank Cass 2003); Len Scott and Peter Jackson, ‘The Study of Intelligence in Theory and Practice’, Intelligence & National Security 19/2 (2004) pp.139–69; Gerald Hughes, ‘”Giving the Russians a Bloody Nose”. Operation Foot and Soviet Espionage in the United Kingdom, 1964–71’, Cold War History 6/2 (2006) pp.229–49; Michael Goodman, ‘Jones' Paradigm. The How, Why and Wherefore of Scientific Intelligence’, Intelligence & National Security 24/2 (2009) pp.236–56; Eric Denécé and Gérald Arboit, ‘Intelligence Studies in France’, International Journal of Intelligence and Counterintelligence 23/4 (2010) pp.725–47.

³ See Raymond Garthoff, ‘Foreign Intelligence and the Historiography of the Cold War’, Journal of Cold War Studies 6/2 (2004) pp.21–56.

⁴ From Philip Davies, ‘Ideas of Intelligence. Divergent National Concepts and Institutions’, Harvard International Review 24/3 (2002) pp.62–6, p.63.

⁵ In addition to this, the ‘intelligence community’ possesses further channels of informing government, such as the UK's Joint Intelligence Committee, which, since 1957, has been a part of the Cabinet Office.

⁶ Michael Herman, ‘Diplomacy and Intelligence’, Diplomacy & Statecraft 9/2 (1998) pp.1–22, p.4.

⁷ Roberta Wohlstetter, Pearl Harbor: Warning and Decision (Stanford: Stanford University Press 1962).

⁸ See, for example, Sébastien Laurent, ‘Pour une autre histoire de l'État. Le secret, l'information politique et le renseignement’, Vingtième Siècle. Revue d'Histoire 83/3 (2004) pp.173–84. On the secrecy surrounding intelligence, see British Foreign Secretary Austen Chamberlain's 1924 (in-)famous statement: ‘It is of the essence of a Secret Service that it must be secret, and if you once begin disclosure it is perfectly obvious […] that there is no longer any Secret Service and that you must do without it’. From Len Scott, ‘Sources and Methods in the Study of Intelligence. A British View’, in L.K. Johnson (ed.) Strategic Intelligence (Westport/London: Praeger 2007) pp.89–108, p.90.

⁹ I am very grateful to the staff at the Diplomatic Archives for their helpfulness in general and for the speed with which this request was handled.

¹⁰ Philip Davies, ‘MI 6's Requirements Directorate. Integrating Intelligence into the Machinery of British Central Government’, Public Administration 78/1 (2000) pp.29–49, p.31.

¹¹ Davies, ‘MI 6's Requirements Directorate’, p.32. For a similar argument and the need to relate intelligence to government ‘behaviour’, see Martin Smith, ‘Intelligence and the Core Executive’, Public Policy and Administration 25 (2010) pp.11–28.

¹² See Michael Herman, Intelligence Power in Peace and War (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1996) p.285; James Wirtz, ‘The American Approach to Intelligence Studies’, in L. Johnson (ed.) Handbook of Intelligence Studies (London, NY: Routledge 2009) pp.28–38, p.32f.

¹³ Garthoff, ‘Foreign Intelligence and the Historiography of the Cold War’, p.55.

¹⁴ Butler report, July 2004, p.16. See also Loch Johnson's comment: ‘Things can go wrong at the very beginning of the cycle. The problem is usually the lack of guidance from policymakers about their intelligence requirements. Often these requests are too general (“I'm interested in Guatemala”) or, even more likely, non-existent as busy Washington officials scurry from meeting to meeting with limited time to discuss collection requirements or read intelligence reports. If policymakers do not know what they want, it is hard to get it delivered’. (L. Johnson, ‘National Security Intelligence in the United States. A Security Checklist’, Intelligence & National Security 26/5 (2011) pp.607–15, p.608.)

¹⁵ Ibid. Emphasis added.

¹⁶ Michael Goodman, ‘The British Way in Intelligence’, in M. Grant (ed.) The British Way in Cold Warfare: Intelligence, Diplomacy and the Bomb, 1945–1975 (London: Continnuum 2009) pp.127–40, p.131.

¹⁷ Ibid., p.133.

¹⁸ Paul Pillar, ‘Adapting Intelligence to Changing Issues’, in Johnson (ed.) Handbook of Intelligence Studies, pp.148–62, passim. On the schools of intelligence, see Christopher Andrew, ‘Historical Research on the British Intelligence Community’, in R. Godson (ed.) Comparing Foreign Intelligence: The US, the USSR, the UK and the Third World (Washington: Pergamon-Brassey's 1988) pp.43–65; Michael Warner, ‘Sources and Methods for the Study of Intelligence’, in Johnson (ed.) Handbook of Intelligence Studies, pp.17–28.

¹⁹ Goodman, ‘The British Way in Intelligence’, p.131. Emphasis added. The catalogue of the National Archives in Kew, Surrey, indicates that one file on the JIC [intelligence] Priorities Sub-Committee exists, but has been retained. On the Sub-Committee, see Philip Davies, MI6 and the Machinery of Spying (London: Frank Cass 2004) p.176.

²⁰ See Davies, ‘MI 6's Requirements Directorate’, p.47. On the use of interviews for intelligence history, see Philip Davies, ‘Spies as Informants. Triangulation and the Interpretation of Elite Interview Data in the Study of the Intelligence and Security Services’, Politics 21/1 (2001) pp.73–80.

²¹ For example, ‘Signals Intelligence Requirements – 1948’, JIC (48) 19 (O), 20 May 1948, CAB 158/3, TNA, which is basically a priority list of intelligence subjects.

²² For two very concise discussions of intelligence and archival access, see Wesley Wark, ‘In Never-Never Land? The British Archives on Intelligence’, The Historical Journal 35/1 (1992) pp.195–203; and Richard Aldrich, ‘“Grow Your Own”. Cold War Intelligence and History Supermarkets’, Intelligence & National Security 17/1 (2002) pp.135–52. See also Gerald Hughes, Peter Jackson, and Len Scott (eds.) Exploring Intelligence Archives: Enquiries into the Secret State (London: Routledge 2008), especially Gerald Hughes, ‘”Knowledge is Never Too Dear”. Exploring Intelligence Archives’, in Hughes et al. (eds.) Exploring Intelligence Archives, pp.13–28.

²³ For a similar reasoning, see the publication history of the Official history of the blockade during the First World War; Marion Siney, ‘British Official Histories of the Blockade of the Central Powers during the First World War’, The American Historical Review 68/2 (1963) pp.392–401. Even spying on adversaries – if detected – can have severe consequences on bilateral or international relations, as shown by the ‘U2 incident’ and the ‘Commander Crabb’ affairs, for example.

²⁴ Martin Alexander, ‘Introduction. Knowing your Friends, Assessing your Allies – Perspectives on Intra-Alliance Intelligence’, Intelligence and National Security 13/1 (1998) pp.1–17, p.9. This has, rather spectacularly, proven to be right by the souring of the transatlantic relations caused by the Snowden revelations.

²⁵ Ibid., p.2. Emphasis in the original.

²⁶ In the case of articles, where these omissions might be – in part – explained by lack of space, see Matthew Perl, ‘Comparing US and UK Intelligence Assessment in the Early Cold War. NSC-68, April 1950’, Intelligence and National Security 18/1 (2003) pp.119–54; Huw Dylan, ‘Britain and the Missile Gap. British Estimates on the Soviet Ballistic Missile Threat, 1957–61’, Intelligence and National Security 23/6 (2008) pp.777–806; Michael Weaver, ‘International Cooperation and Bureaucratic In-Fighting. American and British Economic Intelligence Sharing and the Strategic Bombing of Germany, 1939–41’, Intelligence and National Security 23/2 (2008) pp.153–75. Another very good example is the Review article written by Raymond Garthoff quoted above (Note 3). He, too, mentions the importance of requirements but does not analyse the existing literature concerning this aspect.

²⁷ See Peter Jackson, ‘Intelligence and the State. An Emerging “French School” of Intelligence Studies’, Intelligence & National Security 21/6 (2006) pp.1061–5. For two major French studies on the history and nature of French intelligence see Olivier Forcade, La République Secrète. Histoire des services spéciaux français de 1918 à 1939 (Paris: Nouveau Monde 2008), and Sébastien Laurent, Politiques de l'Ombre. État, renseignement et surveillance en France (Paris: Fayard 2009).

²⁸ ‘Toute autorité ayant à connaitre des questions de Défense Nationale doit être renseignée pour pouvoir prendre des décisions en connaissance de cause. Il lui appartient donc d'indiquer à son 2e Bureau ou organes d'études les grands traits des questions étrangères qui sont susceptibles de l'intéresser. Le 2e Bureau ou organe d'étude établit la liste de renseignement à demander pour satisfaire aux besoins exprimés. Cette liste cons[t]itue le plan de renseignements’. Note sur l'organisation du renseignement, undated [c.1948], C/226, Archives Diplomatiques.

²⁹ Speech of 22 November 1944. Charles de Gaulle, Discours et Messages. Pendant la guerre, 1940–1946, Paris 1970. Frédéric Bozo, La France et l'OTAN: De la guerre froide au nouvel ordre européen (Paris: IFRI/Masson 1991) p.27.

³⁰ This is exemplified, for example, by the question of reparations in Austria, where British and American officials likened their French to their Soviet homologues. On the debate concerning the real French political aims, see Michael Creswell and Marc Trachtenberg, ‘France and the German Question, 1945–1955’, Journal of Cold War Studies 5/3 (2003) pp.5–28; Charles Cogan, ‘Response to Michael Creswell and Marc Trachtenberg’, Journal of Cold War Studies 5/3 (2003) pp.29–32; William Hitchcock, ‘Response to “France and the German Question, 1945–1955”, by Michael Creswell and Marc Trachtenberg’, Journal of Cold War Studies 5/3 (2003) pp.33–6; Mark Sheetz, ‘France and the German Question. Avant-garde or Rearguard? Comment on Cresswell and Trachtenberg’, Journal of Cold War Studies 5/3 (2003) pp.35–47; Michael Creswell and Marc Trachtenberg, ‘New Light on an Old Issue?’, Journal of Cold War Studies 5/3 (2003) pp.46–53.

³¹ See Charles Cogan, ‘Puissance virtuelle. La France de la Victoire à l'OTAN’, in Maurice Vaïsse, Pierre Mélandri, and Frédéric Bozo (eds.) La France et l'OTAN: 1949–1996. Actes du colloque tenu à l'Ecole militaire, 8, 9 et 10 février 1996, à Paris (Vincennes: Complexe 1996) pp.53–76, pp.54ff.

³² Irwin Wall, The United States and the Making of Postwar France: 1945–1954 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1991) p.49f.

³³ President Harry S Truman, telling de Gaulle ‘in words of one syllable’ that France would have to pay for her economic recovery herself and could not count on US aid. Referring to the General as ‘something of a pinhead’ did not assuage these suspicions. (Note by Air Marshall Harris, 16 August 1945, FO 800/464, TNA.)

³⁴ See Georges-Henri Soutou, ‘La sécurité de la France dans l'après-guerre’, in Vaïsse et al. (eds.) La France et l'OTAN, pp.21–52. As early as May 1945, Bidault asked the US ambassador to France Jefferson Caffery: ‘Who is going to stop Attila; he is covering more territory every day’ (Creswell and Trachtenberg, ‘France and the German Question, 1945–1955’, p.8.)

³⁵ See Jean-Jacques Becker, ‘La scène intérieure’, in Vaïsse et al. (eds.) La France et l'OTAN, pp.103–14.

³⁶ On this, see Jonathan Fenby, The General: Charles de Gaulle and the France he Saved (London and NY: Simon & Schuster 2010) pp.323ff.

³⁷ On the role of the Soviet Union within the French policy towards Germany, see Geneviève Maelstaf, ‘Le “Facteur Soviétique” dans la Politique Allemande de la France, 1945–1954’, in G.-H. Soutou and É. Hivert, L'URSS et l'Europe de 1941 à 1957 (Paris: PUPS 2008) pp.341–56. Additionally, to tackle the task of reconstruction, the tripartiste French governments – not unlike the Attlee government in Britain – adopted central planning and the nationalization of core industries.

³⁸ In the end, the Fourth Republic closely mirrored the Third Republic, much to de Gaulle's chagrin.

³⁹ Bozo, La France et l'OTAN, p.27.

⁴⁰ Georges-Henri Soutou, ‘France and the Cold War. 1944–63’, Diplomacy & Statecraft 12/4 (2001) pp.35–52, p.36.

⁴¹ See Cyril Buffet, Mourir pour Berlin. La France et l'Allemagne, 1945–1949 (Paris: Armand Colin 1991).

⁴² Antonio Varsori, ‘From Dunkirk to Washington via Brussels’, in S. Dockrill, R. Frank, G.-H. Soutou, and A. Varsori (eds.) L'Europe de l'Est et de l'Ouest dans la Guerre froide, 1948–1953 (Paris: Presse de l'Université de Paris-Sorbonne 2002) pp.9–20, p.16.

⁴³ See Sean Greenwood, ‘Return to Dunkirk. The Origins of the Anglo-French Treaty of March 1947’, Journal of Strategic Studies 6/4 (1983) pp.49–65; Charles Cogan, Forced to Choose: France, the Atlantic Alliance and NATO - Then and Now (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press 1997) pp.18ff.

⁴⁴ ‘Treaty of Alliance and Mutual Assistance between the United Kingdom and France’.

⁴⁵ In Philip Zelikow, ‘George C. Marshall and the Moscow CFM Meeting of 1947’, Diplomacy & Statecraft 8/2 (1997) pp.97–124, p.98.

⁴⁶ See Georgette Elgey, Histoire de la IVe République: La République des Illusions, 1945–1951. Vol. 1 (Paris: Fayard 1993) pp.405ff. French participation at the Moscow conference was limited. Philip Zelikow has argued that ‘the French were devoting practically all of their political energy to one issue: getting more German coal’. (Zelikow, ‘George C. Marshall and the Moscow CFM Meeting of 1947’, p.119, fn. 11.)

⁴⁷ In William Hitchcock, France Restored: Cold War Diplomacy and the Quest for Leadership in Europe, 1944–1954 (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press 1998) p.70.

⁴⁸ Cover letter to ‘Plan de Renseignement de défense nationale pour l'année 1948’, 23 March 1948, C/140, Archives Diplomatiques. French Foreign Ministry officials likewise noted that Moscow had stated a ‘veritable communist offensive’ (Note, 17 May 1947, Documents Diplomatiques Français, 1944–1954, Vol. 8 I: 1948, 836.) On the development of thinking within the French Foreign Ministry see Étienne Santiard, ‘La Sous-Direction d'Europe Orientale de Quai d'Orsay: Un “Laboratoire de Réflexion sur le Communisme” pendant la Guerre Froide’, in É. Bussière, I. Davion, O. Forcade, and S. Jeannesson (eds.) Penser le système international, XXI^e– XIX^esiècle: Autour de l'œuvre de Georges-Henri Soutou (Paris: PUPS 2013) pp.103–18.

⁴⁹ The event triggering this was their opposition to Ramadier's policy with regard to the economic crisis and the numerous strikes in early 1947. See Wilfried Loth, ‘Frankreichs Kommunisten und der Beginn des Kalten Krieges. Die Entlassung der kommunistischen Minister im Mai 1947’, Vierteljahreshefte für Zeitgeschichte 26/1 (1978) pp.9–65.

⁵⁰ Other Communists in Cabinet were Maurice Thorez (Ministre d'État and Vice-Premier), Charles Tillon (Minister for Reconstruction and Urban development), Ambroise Croizat (Minister for Work and Social Security), and George Marrane (Minister for Public Health and Population).

⁵¹ He remarked that although they were honest and devoted, ‘ils sont trop à la remorque de la Russie et, de l'autre part trop attachés à une doctrine dictatoriale qui ne vaut pas pour la France’. In Elgey, Histoire de la IVe République, p.185.

⁵² See Jean Doise and Maurice Vaïsse, Politique étrangère de la France: Diplomatie et outil militaire. 1871–1991 (Paris: Ed. Seuil 1987/1992) p.509.

⁵³ See Cogan, Forced to Choose, p.29f.

⁵⁴ Treaty between Belgium, France, Luxembourg, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, Brussels, 17 March 1948. Art. VII of the treaty referred to ‘steps to be taken in case of a renewal by Germany of an aggressive policy’. In a 1953 article in Foreign affairs, Robert Schuman underlined the change of thrust of the two subsequent treaties. See Robert Schuman, ‘France and Europe’, Foreign Affairs 31/3 (1953) pp.349–60, p.351. On the Brussels Treaty, see John Baylis, The Diplomacy of Pragmatism: Britain and the Formation of NATO, 1942–1998 (London: Palgrave 1993) pp.70ff.; John Baylis, ‘Britain, the Brussels Pact and the Continental Commitment’, International Affairs 60/4 (1984) pp.615–29; Greenwood, ‘Return to Dunkirk’; John Baylis, ‘Britain and the Dunkirk Treaty. The Origins of NATO’, Journal of Strategic Studies 5/2 (1982) pp.236–47. On changing French perceptions of the Soviet Union see Georges-Henri Soutou, ‘La perception du problème soviétique par le Quai d'Orsay entre 1945 et 1949’, Revue d'Allemagne 30/3 (1998) pp.273–84; Georges-Henri Soutou, ‘La perception de la menace soviétique par les décideurs de l'Europe occidentale: le cas de la France’, in S. Dockrill, R. Frank, G.-H. Soutou, and A. Varsori (eds.) L'Europe de l'Est et de l'Ouest dans la Guerre froide, 1948–1953 (Paris: Presse de l'Université de Paris-Sorbonne 2002) pp.21–43.

⁵⁵ ‘Plan de Renseignement de défense nationale pour l'année 1948’, 23 March 1948, C/140, Archives Diplomatiques.

⁵⁶ ‘Note sur l'organisation du renseignement’, undated [1948], C/226, Archives Diplomatiques.

⁵⁷ Cover letter to ‘Plan de Renseignement de défense nationale pour l'année 1948’, 23 March 1948, C/140, Archives Diplomatiques.

⁵⁸ Unless otherwise stated, all quotes are from: ‘Plan de Renseignement de défense nationale pour l'année 1948’, 23 March 1948, C/140, Archives Diplomatiques.

⁵⁹ This deep-rooted scepticism towards potential US imperialism had been sown during the war, when both Britain and France believed that imperialism might have behind the ostentatious US anti-imperialism. see William Louis, Imperialism at Bay, 1941–45: The United States and the Decolonization of the British Empire (Oxford: Oxford University Press 1977). See also Wall, The United States and the Making of Postwar France, pp.49ff.

⁶⁰ The most famous examples of British and American analyses are Kennan's long telegram and Sir Frank Roberts' similar dispatch from Moscow. See X [George F. Kennan], ‘The Sources of Soviet Conduct’, Foreign Affairs 25/4 (1947) pp.566–82; Sean Greenwood, ‘Frank Roberts and the “Other” Long Telegram. The View from the British Embassy in Moscow, March 1946’, Journal of Contemporary History 25/1 (1990) pp.103–22; Kenneth Jensen (ed.) Origins of the Cold War: The Novikov, Kennan and Roberts “Long Telegrams” of 1946. With Three New Commentaries (Washington: United States Institute of Peace 1993); John Gaddis, George F. Kennan: An American Life (NY: The Penguin Press 2011) ch.12. British government intelligence assessments also focused exclusively on the Soviet mindset. See, for example, ‘Russian Interests, Intentions and Capabilities’, JIC (48) 9 (Final), 23 July 1948, CAB 158/3, TNA; and, for a similar Foreign Office memorandum, ‘The Soviet Campaign against this Country and Our Responses to it’, undated [1946], FO 371/56832, TNA.

⁶¹ See Doise and Vaïsse, Politique étrangère de la France, pp.507f.

⁶² All this was aggravated by the serious economic and military weakness of France at this period. It was, in Vaïsse's words, a ‘non-puissance’, or, according to Charles Cogan, a ‘virtual power’. See Doise and Vaïsse, Politique étrangère de la France, p.509. See also Hitchcock, France Restored, pp.72ff. The British were very well aware of the French weaknesses, the UK delegation to the Western Union were warned ‘lest we live in a fool's paradise about the present shape of the French army’ about poor morale, obsolete and lacking equipment, and a weak national government. (Packard to Huddleston, 21 October 1948, WO 208/608, TNA.)

⁶³ Guy de Carmoy, The Foreign Policies of France: 1944–1968 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press 1970) p.23; Herbert Tint, French Foreign Policy since the Second World War (London: Palgrave Macmillan 1972) p.39. For a more recent defence of this approach, see Sheetz, ‘France and the German Question’.

⁶⁴ See Hitchcock, France Restored, pp.33f.

⁶⁵ Creswell and Trachtenberg, ‘France and the German Question, 1945–1955’, p.7.

⁶⁶ Soutou, ‘France and the Cold War’, p.46. See also the recently published French foreign policy documents for 1948, Ministère des Affaires Étrangères - Commission des Archives Diplomatiques, Documents Diplomatiques Français, 1944–1954. Vol. 11: 1948, 2 vols., Brussels, 2011.

⁶⁷ Creswell and Trachtenberg, ‘France and the German Question, 1945–1955’, p.53.

⁶⁸ Ibid., p.9.

⁶⁹ Ibid., p.48.

⁷⁰ Sheetz, ‘France and the German Question’, p.39.

⁷¹ Ibid., p.40.

⁷² Creswell and Trachtenberg, ‘France and the German Question, 1945–1955’, p.52.

⁷³ Warner, ‘Sources and Methods for the Study of Intelligence’, p.25.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Michael Seibold

Michael Seibold's research focuses on intra-alliance intelligence, economic intelligence past and present, and the flow of information within organizations. His future research seeks to bring all of this together into a monograph. He is currently an employee of Hamburg-based strategic consultancy Kampmann, Berg & Partner.