The discussion of intelligence services on the Allied and the German sides (after all, the Gestapo and SD were among other things intelligence-gathering agencies) in this book assumed its central role due to the covert nature of hoped-for cooperation between the Zionists and other Jewish organizations working for rescue once experienced Jewish leaders such as David Ben-Gurion had realized that overt action by the Allies had many limits due to the menace of a “Jew's war,” which the Allies intended to avoid by all means at their disposal unless domestic opinion imposed such an action upon them. At the same time, Nazi and Allied intelligence gathered information on the Holocaust, on rescue efforts, and on the Zionists and other Jewish organizations that were supposed to cooperate with them. This information led also to various actions that contributed their share to the workings of the doomsday machine.

In comparison to the regular bureaucracies, such as the British Foreign and Colonial Offices, which had adopted a rather anti-Zionist policy since the late 1930s that was followed by the politicians heading them on cabinet level but not Churchill himself, and in comparison to the General Officer Commanding in Chief (GOC in C) Middle East, who always feared an Arab revolt in his back yard, MI6, or the Secret Intelligence Service (SIS) (i.e., the British Foreign Intelligence Service), was a little more open to the rescue of Jews and to Zionist overtures as far as activities planned against the Axis powers were concerned.