MI6

The Secret Intelligence Service (SIS), commonly known as MI6, is the foreign intelligence service of the government of the United Kingdom, tasked mainly with the covert overseas collection and analysis of human intelligence (HUMINT) in support of the UK's national security.

Name "MI6" stands for the initials of "Military Intelligence"  and their official names (acquired in the 30s) are the Security Service (MI5) and SIS, the Secret Intelligence Service (MI6).

'MI6 was founded just before world war two, when the British government was worried about the rise of the German empire, and feared their spies. It was public opinion at the time that all German’s living in England were spies. They built their own network of spies to combat this problem, known as Military Intelligence Six. Originally there were two sections of what was known as the Secret Service Bureau, the army section, and the naval section. The army section concentrated on intelligence inside the country, and the naval section was concerned with foreign espionage.'

As soon as World War One started, MI6 were able to arrest 21 German spies living in the UK. MI6 had trouble gaining information during the first world war as it couldn’t establish a spy network in Germany but only in the countries surrounding it. However they did still gain some valuable information. After 1917 MI6 became increasingly worried about the growth of Communism, and underestimated the threat of Nazism. The British had set up anti-bolshevik groups in Russia to execute sabotage and subversion. They even tried to assassinate Lenin at one point, but the plan failed. Just before the war, their attention switched from communists to Nazis. Although they recognised the Nazis as a threat during the thirties they had a cordial relationship with the Gestapo until 1937. The Gestapo would provide the British with information on communists. During world war two MI6 worked tirelessly to decipher secret German messages sent using the undecipherable Enigma machine. The Enigma machine would consistently change it code, and did it so frequently that it was impossible for any human to crack. In the end they only managed to crack the code, when mathematician Alan Turing created the Turing machine, which was the world’s first computer. Cracking this code was one of the main reasons we won the war against the Axis power. During World War Two, the SIS operated under the code name Interservice Liaison Department.

Britain bribed Spain with $200 million in order to keep them neutral. Britain began to fear that Spain would join forces with Hitler and the Nazi’. They spent £14 million bribing Spanish officials in order to convince them to stay neutral, which is about $200 million in today’s money.