The missing dimension; UK SIGINT & Operation Barbarossa – a pointer

In late 2025 I read a gifted paperback: From: ‘The Women Behind The Few: The Women’s Auxiliary Air Force and British Intelligence During The Second World War’ by Sarah-Louise Miller, pub. February 2024.

I set the book aside once complete, noting one puzzling passage as follows:

The author's information comes from the IWM Oral History following an interview in 1996 and in Collection No. 16900. See: https://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/80016333 (x8 tapes) and is in Reel 6, between 1830-2200:

AT the time she was @ Kingsdown 'Y' station, working with a Polish Lady "Ruby", when she heard 'skip' WT traffic 'loud and clear'. "Ruby" knew the places mentioned were in Poland and we told Air Intelligence @ Air Ministry. The traffic disappeared and was picked up elsewhere.

Curiously to me the invasion of the USSR was not indexed by the IWM.

The book author’s bio as a KCL lecturer in Defence Studies: https://www.kcl.ac.uk/people/sarah-louise-miller and her own site: Dr Sarah-Louise Miller

A YouTube interview about the book: and with a few reviews: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Women-Behi...ments=p_27:Sarah-Louise+Miller&s=books&sr=1-4

Vera Innes Morley Elkan (NT Google) and her Wiki entry is as Vera Elkan, which has no mention of her WW2 WAAF work: Vera Elkan - Wikipedia She is in another Wiki, a list of RAF Intelligence personnel: RAF Intelligence - Wikipedia

She was born in South Africa to German parents (1908–2008), Elkan trained as a photographer in Berlin in the 1930s and worked as a photographer in Germany and South Africa. While based in London, she received funding from the British campaign in support of the International Brigades to go to Spain to photograph the activities of the Brigades.

I am familiar with SIGINT and the warnings given to the USSR before the June 22 attack, which were dismissed by Stalin and others.

For the wider context I found this a useful summary:

From Post 22 in 2011 : The most dangerous moment

 

The comment in the book does not appear to stack up with information on the internet

Barbarossa Hitler Stalin: War warnings Stalin ignored

 

Cheers Clive, interesting, but so much has been written and re-written by more recent Russian / Soviet historians on the warnings. Churchill's warnings - as I understand them - were based on Enigma-generated intelligence, but their origin was camouflaged - though elsewhere historians argue Stalin knew of Enigma and had better sources he trusted.

Mt interest was the reference was eavesdropping on WT / radio traffic, not code breaking and was not from the Luftwaffe, but German armour units.