The Effectiveness of the British Double Cross System

Bletchley Park -
Headquarters of the Government Code & Cipher School

The British Double Cross System was a program overseen by the Twenty Committee, chaired by John Cecil Masterman. The objective of this program was to capture Nazi agents sent to infiltrate Britain, and if judged acceptable, turn them to disseminate false information to their Nazi controllers. 

By the time the Abwehr (German intelligence) started sending its spies into Britain, the British MI5 had already cracked the German ENIGMA code. Furthermore, the German spies were not exactly the best in the world. They lacked proper training and motivation and were generally recruited from civilians. This made the German spies relatively easy to spot.


As a result, the SIS was able to capture and turn the German spies as soon as they entered the country. Post-war records showed that none of the German spies were not caught, save one who committed suicide. After their capture, the German spies were given a choice to either work as double agents for the British, or face imprisonment or execution. 

Joan Pujol Garcia

The Double Cross System was so effective, largely because the British were able to convince the Nazi handlers that their agents were still loyal. They managed to accomplish this in a number of ways. For example, in the case of Joan Pujol Garcia, the British were able to use him to convince the Germans that Normandy was just a diversion and that the real attack would be coming from Pas de Calais. The German High Command believed him so much to the extent of keeping more German troops in the Pas de Calais region two months after the Normandy invasion than there had been on D-Day.

In order for him to retain his credibility with the Germans, he forewarned the Germans about the D-Day landing in Normandy but too late for them to take any effective action. The Germans never found out that they were being misled by him and awarded him with the Iron Cross Second Class over the radio, an award that required Hitler's personal authorization. The Germans never found out that he was double-crossing them and this made him one of the few, if not the only person to have received decorations from both sides during the war.

Another instance which the British Double Cross System was so effective was when they were able to convince the Germans that their V bombs were hitting on target, where in reality they were falling short. The disinformation was able to make the Germans aim short and this prevented the bombs from hitting densely populated areas in Britain and saved the lives of many British civilians.
Thus, the success of the British Double Cross System was largely due to the Germans' failure to properly train and equip their agents, coupled with the excessive trust that the Germans had in their agents.

For example, on June 22 1944, the German agents reported that only one of the bombs fell south of the Thames, where in truth there had been 3/4 of the bombs landing there. Despite being able to plot where the bombs had fallen using radio transmitters in the bombs, the Germans trusted their agents so much that they disregarded the telemetry in favor of the intelligence provided by their agents. 

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