Economic Intelligence: The Codford Directive in the Safehaven Project. 1944-1945

Abstract

From the middle of 1944, the British government began to compiling a record of available information on German assets in neutral countries, in anticipation of future measures the Allies consider appropriate. Later, under coordination of the Ministry of Economic Warfare, their participation in the American SAFEHAVEN project was carried out. The CODFORD Directive of May 1945, related with this program, intended for the Special Operations Executive (SOE), meant an updated Charter and a new operating model of economic warfare, in its last mission. At the same time, the difficulties and results of SAFEHAVEN/CODFORD in several neutral countries (Spain, Portugal, Sweden and Switzerland) are presented, pointing out common elements and particular cases. It was necessary to combine politics, diplomacy and economic intelligence, in order to capture the goods and assets looted by Germany during the war. Material used for this work comes from the documentary collections of The National Archives-United Kingdom and SAFEHAVEN’s reports for the period May-December 1945 of the US National Archives, as well as the memorandum of overseas activities of the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) in addition to another international bibliography on the subject.