Booklist: Captains Without Eyes, by Lyman B. Kirkpatrick, Jr.

Captains Without Eyes: Intelligence Faiures in World War II, by Lyman B. Kirkpatrick, Jr.
MacMillan Company, 1969
281 pages plus References, Index. No photos
Library: 940.548 K48

Description
This controversial and unprecedented book by the former executive director of the CIA reveals the alarming truth behind the most critical intelligence failures of WWII. Captains Without Eyes fascinates as it chills, focusing on five key battles of the Second World War-and the mistakes on both sides that changed the course of history.

Here is the inside story of the GErman invasion of Russia, the Japanese attack on Pear Harbor, Allied catastrophes at Dieppe and Arnhem, the Battle of the Bulge: all major conflicts, and each one a disaster of military intelligence.

Drawing heavily on previously unpublished records and personal experience, Lyman B. Kirkpatrick Jr. presents a privileged professional appraisal of intelligence breakdowns in each camp that determined the course of the war. To what extent were these failures due to inadequate data and misrepresentation of available information? How efficient were the total espionage operations of both Allied and Axis forces? How did the leaders themseves bring about their own defeat?

Captains Without Eyes tells of near fatal American innocence in Japananese diplomatic relations, of visionary and unheeded military leaders and diplomats, of internal communications casualties, poor timing, underestimation of the enemy, and calamitous overconfidence in the highest echelons (witness the egomania of Hitler, Stalin and Montgomery). Here are a series of crucial cables intercepted and decoded by Americans in the months before Pearl Harbor, as well as other vital and revealing documents. Montgomery's report dated the day of the GErman offensive in the Ardennes says positively of the GErman enemy, "...his situation is such that he cannot stage major offensive operations." And so it continues: an appalling picture of the misuse of and sometimes the over-reliance on intelligence systems, of lives needlessly lost because of intelligence failures, of human waste, of national tragedies.

Captains Without Eyes is one of the greatest true espionage stories of our time: a brilliant and incisive analysis of what went wrong-and why-behind the most important closed doors of the twentieth century.

Table of Contents
Preface
1. The Problems of Foresight
2. Case Barbarossa: The German Attack on Russia, June 22, 1941
3. Pearl Harbor: A lost battle vs a National Disaster, December 7, 1941
4. Dieppe: Prelude to D-Day, August 19, 1942
5. Arnheim,,: A Viper in the Market, September 17, 1944
6. The Bulge in the Ardennes: Hitler's Last Threat, December 16, 1944
7. The Brilliance of Hindsight
References
Bibliography
Index