The Ultimate Enemy

Wark shows that faulty intelligence assessments were crucial in shaping the British policy of appeasement up to the outbreak of World War II. His book offers a new perspective on British policy and intelligence in the interwar period.

Wesley K. Wark is Associate Professor of History at the University of Toronto.

This work is a penetrating analysis of the role of British intelligence services in assessing the threat posed by Hitler's Third Reich during the 1930s, and the accuracy of their evaluations of Germany's aims and capabilities.

An incisive study of how the British government machine became aware of the size and nature of the threat from Hitler's Germany that lead to war in September 1939.

A thoroughly researched, powerful, and important study about the role of intelligence in British rearmament and diplomatic policy during the 1930s. The tale Wark tells is a depressing but familiar one. The intelligence community in London was divided by bureaucratic frontiers and its vision distorted by its own preconceptions. Crucial policymakers, such as Neville Chamberlain, used intelligence merely to buttress their own preconceived notions, discarding whatever was inconvenient. British intelligence agencies first badly underestimated German rearmament, then wildly overestimated it; on the eve of war, the British swung about again and decided, largely as a matter of faith, that they would win. All the ingredients of classic intelligence failures are described in Wark's account, which concludes that intelligence, even when accurate, will rarely defeat the tendency to believe what one wants to believe.

A first-rate study on the role of intelligence assessments in Britain's foreign and defense policies during the 1930s. By examining a mass of unpublished material in archival collections, Wark has skillfully reconstructed the intelligence pictures presented to British decision makers on German rearmament and intentions.

The Ultimate Enemy is quite indispensable reading for any understanding of British policy in the six years before the Second World War.

Christopher Andrew, University of Cambridge:

Wesley K. Wark provides a very lucid and interesting analysis of the problems of intelligence assessment and points to some of the preconceptions that prevented Whitehall from better understanding Nazi Germany's strength. This is a clear, original, and convincing study of a new and important topic.