Cultures of Intelligence

Start date: -
End date: -
Primary investigator: Simon Ball
Co-investigators: Dr Alan MacLeod
External co-investigators: Professor Philipp Gassert, Professor Andreas Gestrich, Professor Neitzel

Description

Cultures of Intelligence: Military Intelligence Services in Germany, Great Britain and the USA: Britain, 1918-1947. The main aim of Cultures of Intelligence is to deepen our knowledge of the mid-twentieth century intelligence services in Britain. It will do so by going beyond the institutional history of particular intelligence services and interrogating the nature of an overarching culture of intelligence, manifested both in the intelligence community and the wider public sphere. Britain will be placed in comparative perspective through formal co-operation with a parallel project Kulturen der Intelligence: Ein Forschungsprojekt zur Geschichte der militurischen Nachrichtendientse in Deutschland, Grossbritannien und den USA, 1900-1947 funded by the Gerda Henkel Stiftung, Dusseldorf.

More specifically our main objectives are to write a major study of Cultures of Intelligence in Britain, 1918-1947; to contribute to a joint comparative volume with Kulturen der Intelligence; and to disseminate the work to specialist and non-specialist audiences. We aim to:

a) Investigate the discourse on military intelligence within the British intelligence community.
b) Investigate the practice of military intelligence within the British intelligence community.
c) Investigate the impact of two world wars on military intelligence.
d) Develop our understanding of the differences between British intelligence culture and practice and that of other major nations.