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by Michael E. Bigelow, INSCOM Command Historian
MIRS PRODUCES THE RED BOOK
In February 1944, the War Department’s Military Intelligence Division (MID) published "Order of Battle of the German Army." Commonly known as the “Red Book” for the color of its cover, it was the work of Capt. John Kluge’s branch of the Military Intelligence Research Section (MIRS) stationed at Fort Hunt, Virginia.
Established in May 1943, the MIRS was a cooperative endeavor between the British and American armies to develop a common understanding of the German Army’s order of battle and general deployment. The section’s mission “was primarily to extract from documents all information of value for operational or occupational intelligence and to evaluate and compile it in a suitable manner for prompt dissemination.” The captured documents ranged from written orders and army manuals to soldiers’ pay books and military newspapers. The work of the larger London MIRS office was tied to the planning of the invasion of western Europe. Meanwhile, the section at Fort Hunt became a kind of “research organization” that concentrated on broader strategic information.
In December 1943, Capt. John Kluge, a 30-year-old German native who grew up in Detroit, became the chief of the MIRS at Fort Hunt, just down the road from the Pentagon. At full strength, he had twenty-five men working for him. Kluge and almost all his team received order of battle training at the Military Intelligence Training Center (MITC) at Camp Ritchie, Maryland. One of his principal assistants was 41-year-old Sgt. Alfred T. Newton, an Austrian-born expert on German Army personnel documents. As they prepared their studies and products, Kluge’s analysts showed initiative, thoroughness, and precision.
In early 1944, these analysts produced a series of handbooks, including the Red Book. This order of battle was a revamped update of the 1942 version. That version was 230 pages long and included information on the German high command, various army units and their commanders, and an index of senior officers. It covered about 180 division-sized units, as well as field army and corps-level organizations of the German Army.
For the 1944 version, the analysts modified and corrected “the mass of factual data…concerning the organization, composition, disposition, and commanders of German ground forces.” The update covered more than 250 division-sized units, including the Waffen SS divisions, and increased coverage of senior officers. The Red Book “embodied a number of improvements to be more accurate, more complete, and easier to use.” These revisions included new explanations of the replacement-training system and a more exhaustive catalog of types of small units. More important for the intelligence officers in the field, the book contained a series of charts that cross-referenced units to their parent units. The new edition exceeded 550 pages but, measuring just 7¾” by 5¼”, it was still handy for field use.
Although Kluge was proud to have gotten the Red Book to General Dwight D. Eisenhower and his staff so it could be part of the D-Day planning, he acknowledged his section never stopped updating the order of battle. As the section “got more information…,” he noted, “we got to know what kind of leader they had and the firepower they had and how many men in the unit.” These updates were sent to the field regularly. The next revised Red Book was published in March 1945.
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| Date Taken: | 02.16.2024 |
| Date Posted: | 02.16.2024 15:15 |
| Story ID: | 464142 |
| Location: | US |
| Web Views: | 195 |
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