Intelligence Agencies in World War II Introduction Accurate intelligence is vital to military operations, and all the combatants operated these services during World War II. Most of the agencies that were established during the conflict are still in operation, though they are known by different names and their missions have changed. This paper discusses some of the intelligence agencies in operation during the war, particularly in Britain, Germany, Russia and the United States. Discussion We‘ll begin our survey with Germany, which had an intelligence organization in existence as early as 1866, when the Abwehr was created (Lerner). The Abwehr was ―founded to gather intelligence information for the Prussian government during a war with neighboring Austria. After initial successes, the organization was expanded during the Franco-Prussian War in 1870‖ (Lerner). When the various independent German states united to form the German nation in 1871, the Abwehr was included in the governmental structure (Lerner). The Abwehr continued to operate through the end of the First World War, although its success was undermined by the ―loss of the German codebook to British intelligence‖ during the conflict (Lerner). Finally, under the terms of the Versailles Treaty that ended WWI, the Abwehr stopped operating (Lerner). However, it didn‘t remain out of operation for long; in 1921, it was re-established and when the Nazis took over in the 1930s, ―some members of the intelligence agency began to spy on their own government‘ (Lerner). This led to a split; the Nazis ―created a separate intelligence organization, the Sicherheitsdienst, or Security Service, headed by Reinhard Heydrich‖ (Lerner)