ABSTRACT
However little regard may have been paid to intelligence in the planning of military operations in the past (and perhaps still in the present?), historians now commonly agree that during the second half of the Second World War plenty of reliable intelligence (mainly Ultra) was available to generals and their political masters and that it was highly esteemed and much used by most of them. This is of course not to pretend that it virtually directed operations – the primacy of policy was inviolate – but to insist that from the winter of 1942/3 onwards the planning and execution of policy took regular and serious account of intelligence about the enemy's situation and intentions. In the majority of cases no real conflict arose between the two: intelligence did not suggest that policy should be drastically changed, rather it assisted in solving problems which arose naturally out of the circumstances, and suggested no more than adjustments of policy.
