Rational Agony

Abstract

Perhaps this is asking too much, given that all the sources are secondary. Nevertheless, Ridley’s book goes some way to showing how what we might now call the “cognitive dissonance” between the German military/political leadership and its intelligence product constituted not so much a failure of intelligence but was part of a grand strategic project that no amount of “truth to power” telling intelligence was likely to alter. The German strategy was both defeated and self-defeating; to that extent, it is quite straightforward to add poverty of intelligence to the balance sheet of defeat. The analysis becomes more complex when looking at the British account. Not defeated, certainly. Victorious, yes, in the counterair battle but helpless to prevent the ensuing “Blitz” of 1940–1941. REFERENCES