The future Soviet raider threat grew out of the Allied scramble for German expertise and records at the end of the Second World War. Britain sent specialist teams, including a unit associated with Ian Fleming, to secure naval documents. Unlike the wider contest for rockets and aircraft, the naval archive hunt became chiefly an Anglo-Soviet race. British files later tracked and translated Soviet studies of German surface-raider operations, evidence that Moscow was learning how distant cruisers might be employed and supported.
Notable Point · 27:20-29:07
The race for Germany's surface-raider records
Britain and the Soviet Union competed for German naval records, then studied how commerce raiders had operated and been sustained during the Second World War.