ABSTRACT
In the brilliance of hindsight it might be argued that in the some battles the failure of intelligence to provide the captains with the information necessary for victory could have been avoided. In the case of each battle, much has been printed claiming how the disaster could have been averted if the leader had listened to this intelligence officer or to that advisor, or if he had made a different decision from the one he did. Adolf Hitler’s ruthless effort to destroy the Soviet Union was matched only by his total failure to estimate the war capacity of Russia. Hitler’s attack on Russia achieved initial success because his opponent possessed some of Hitler’s fatal characteristics. The Japanese attacking Pearl Harbor benefitted from almost flawless intelligence. They knew from agent reports where the battleships would be anchored. An examination of the information failures raises the question of the role of intelligence in the decision-making process of the nations concerned.
