British Intelligence in the Second World War; Security and Counter-Intelligence, Volume Four

London: Her Majesty's Stationery Office, 1990. Presumed First Edition, First printing. Hardcover. Good/Very good. xii, 408 pages Volume 4 ONLY. List of Abbreviations. Footnotes. Appendices. Index. DJ has slight wear and soiling. Some underlining noted. Signed and dated by Jeffrey Richelson on fep!!! Sir Francis Harry Hinsley OBE (26 November 1918 - 16 February 1998) was a historian and cryptanalyst. He worked at Bletchley Park during the WWII and wrote widely on the history of international relations and British Intelligence during the WWII. Hinsley helped initiate a programme of seizing Enigma machines and keys from German weather ships, such as the Lauenburg, thereby facilitating Bletchley Park's resumption of breaking of German Naval Enigma. Hinsley produced, with others, the multi-volume official history British Intelligence in the Second World War, and argued that Enigma decryption speeded Allied victory by 1-4 years while not altering the war's outcome. This volume reviews the arguments about security policy regarding enemy aliens, Fascists and Communists in the winter of 1939-40 and during the Fifth Column panic in the summer of 1940. It describes how the security system, still at the time inadequately organized and poorly informed, was developed into an efficient machine and how, with invaluable help from signals intelligence and other sources and by the skillful use of double cross agents, the operations of the enemy intelligence services were effectively countered. In conclusion it notes the consistent subservience of the Communist Party to the interests of the USSR and the likely threat to British security.