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Regarding the debate as to the Abwher being infiltrated or not by the Allied intelligence services I have found the following quote which will be of interest.
In addition to Ultra and the contentions between the Abwehr and SD, MI-6 (British security service, also known as the Secret Intelligence Service, responsible for collecting foreign intelligence) had penetrated the Abwehr before the war. MI-6 had an agent who worked in the Abwehr intelligence school located in Hamburg.70 As a result, the British were able to identify many of the early German agents before they even left
16 SECOND WORLD WAR DECEPTION
German soil. The Abwehr never recovered from these early set backs
and the conflict with the SD. Thus, the German intelli gence
community was susceptible to Allied
There are also some interesting observations on page 14 of the paper and I suggest that the whole document is of interest.
The link to the paper is as follows:-
http://www.maxwell.af.mil/au/awc/awcgate/wright/wf05.pdf
And here is the mystery bit about Wilhelm Canaris himself. And looking through the internet on various web sites on Canaris you will find confusing data on him I would say books written about Canaris would be confusing as well. People's names keep cropping up like Dietrich BonHoeffer and Lutherian Minister Dr Hans Bermd Gisevius. Dr Hans Bermd Gisesvius is linked to Allen Dulles whilst Dulles was stationed in Bern Switzerland as an OSS Agent. You can seek this information yourself. I spent 3 hours sifting through the information.
I am not wanting to reopen this thread but I bought a book in a second hand book shop last week on the German Intelligence Services.
The book is called Hitlers Spies by David Kahn. ISBN 0 340 17553 2
It a big beast of 670 pages and well researched (there are 60 pages just quoting the sources). As you may have guessed it covers Hitlers Spies but also goes into considerable detail on Army, Navy, Airforce and Economic intelligence. Covering tactics, methods, what worked and what didn't, with examples of operations.
If you have an interest in this area its a book I would recommend.
Whilst the Allied LRDG formations achieved outsdtanding succeses in the desert, the axis efforts were never anywhere near as successful, I dont see how it can be claimed the Germans in Australia would be any more successful than the German LRDGs in Libya, in fact they would probably be a lot less successful
You need something more to be effective, continual small strikes that can cause significant damage, that happen again and again, spread uncertainty.
Targets should be infrastructure based, water pumping stations, power lines, fuel pipelines, bridges, almost anything that impacts the civilian population. Anything that makes them question their goverment and what they are being told.
Attacks would be best spread over the coast forcing the defenders to spread their resources and reducing the risk to the attackers
As Wildcat pointed out the Darwin raid led to a panic flight of military personnel and civilians into the interior. A number of books have been published on the subject and conclude that it wasn't one of Australia's better moments in the war.