The Enigma enigma
Discussion
I believe it was actually the Poles who were first to crack the Enigma codes but then the Germans found out that they knew and changed it so they had to be re-cracked by the Brits.
I once read that the only WWII codes that were never broken were based on the Native American Navajo language. I think there was a movie.."Wind Talkers" or something but I haven't seen it.
I once read that the only WWII codes that were never broken were based on the Native American Navajo language. I think there was a movie.."Wind Talkers" or something but I haven't seen it.
website said:
The Japanese had more success compromising Soviet codes and ciphers than they had in compromising American or British ones. The Japanese never were able to break the Navajo codes (the Navajo code-based system used words of the native Navajo language to represent war items; owl=recon aircraft, etc.), nor for that matter any Chippewa, Comanche, Hopi or Menominee codes used by the U.S. Armed Forces from 1941-1945 (American Indian “code talkers” were also used in the First World War and their efforts too were never compromised by the Germans). During the interwar period (but only up to 1933), Lithuania and Germany worked closely together to compromise Polish codes and ciphers; a number of successes were registered. The Americans were able to compromise the Japanese Orange, Red and Purple systems.
As far as Germany goes, they did have many successes in reading the secure traffic of other nations. Regretfully, Germany somewhat missed the proverbial boat in terms of securing its own communications. Hitler’s Germany was convinced that its Enigma technology could not be compromised. It was; by the Polish Intelligence Service even before the Second World War began! All of the major branches used the Enigma machine; each branch having its own variant.
However, while the British enjoyed greater successes in compromising Luftwaffe and Wehrmacht secure wireless transmissions, the British had a harder time with those of the Kriegsmarine (KM). This is because the KM was the most security conscious of the three services. The German navy used landlines whenever possible to facilitate communications (and the landlines used an entirely separate means of encryption and encipherment than used by KM wireless transmission) and the KM also modified its Enigma machines extensively, making it harder for the British and Poles to obtain the key. That said, the following list represents the major KM ciphers used during the war:
and
website said:
By 1932, the Germans were reading British, French and even Italian naval communications (naturally, the Germans never advised the Italian navy that their secure transmissions had been compromised). By 1934, Germany was working loosely with the Finnish Intelligence Service to compromise Soviet secure communications. Generalissimo Franco allowed Germany to establish a number of wireless surveillance posts in Spain (these were primarily directed against the Royal Navy operating in the Atlantic and in the Med).
Prior to the start of the Second World War, the Germans traded information with the Italy’s Servizio Informazione Militare re French secure naval communications efforts. The Italians also read British and Jugoslavian naval traffic with ease. On the eastern front, Germany, Hungary and Romania often traded information they had collected against Soviet secure communications efforts. But then the Soviets were also reading German traffic with minimal problems. Interestingly, Admiral Golokov, the Soviet CinC in the Arctic, wrote in his 1960 memoirs that he knew that Admiral Fraser was planning to send the Scharnhorst to sea in December of 1943. The Americans and the British did not advise the Soviets of this - thus, how did Admiral Golokov know what Germany planned on doing if it did not read its secure traffic?
Like in many other fields (R&D, mfg, security, etc.), the Germans also had many duplicate efforts in place in the field of cryptography. There were no less than 9 separate entities tackling the myriad of problems. Each component guarded its secrets jealously and there were few instances where two or more components pooled their talents to get the job done more efficiently:
Prior to America’s entry into the war in 1941, Germany’s Naval B-Dienst (Beobachtungsdienst - Surveillance Service) was reading a number of American encoded communications systems. This capability essentially ceased after April of 1942 when the U.S. adopted a new system; but before the U.S. switched systems, reading U.S. naval traffic helped the second Paukenschlag to be a huge success.
Of note is that the Deutsche Reichspost was able to break the scrambled voice transmission of the American-British transatlantic telephone system. Specifically, German technical experts built a de-scrambling device, set up shop in the town of Noordwijk in the Netherlands and by 1940/1941, were (routinely) listening to classified telephone conversations between U.S. President Roosevelt and PM Churchill. By 1944, the Germans had to relocate their telephone intercept facility from the Netherlands to Bavaria - and as a result of the much poorer intercept potentials, they were no longer able to compromise all Allied telephone conversations. As a whole, Germany had not gained immensely valuable insights into the Allied camp. Most of the intercepted telephone conversations did not yield the Germans optimally suitable intelligence primarily because the Allies knew their system was not secure and most individuals did practice good security measures when talking.
B-Dienst (a part of OKM) was very successful in compromising the Royal Navy’s secure communications for most of the war; specifically, B-Dienst compromised the 5-digit Royal Navy code. The British 4-digit naval code was harder to break, but in time, it too was compromised by the German Navy’s B-Dienst. By 1941, B-Dienst applied German city names to British naval codes as an easy way to distinguish one British naval system from the next. “Köln” was one cover name; “München-Blau” and “München-Braun” were two others. A four-digit American-British naval communications system was codenamed “Frankfurt”. Of note is that Germany was never able to break secure British diplomatic communications.
In addition to the above, OKM’s B-Dienst was able to compromise five French naval communications systems, four Soviet systems (though the Germans never were able to break the Soviet diplomatic code) and three Danish systems by 1939.
But in the end, very little really mattered. The Germans lost the “cipher” and “code” war. American and British efforts to compromise German secure communications were far better than German efforts to compromise Allied efforts. This is not to say that the Allies were perfect. The British misinterpreted much during the German invasion of Norway. Both the Americans and the British failed to correctly interpret the German position at Arnhem and they failed to recognize the German attack of the Battle of the Bulge in 1944. And the Germans too had their share of successes. But the Allies had more successes than the Germans did. Among the major reasons for failure (in the field of cryptography or code-breaking), one can cite the fact that the Germans were overly arrogant in their beliefs, they were pre-occupied with petty political infighting and they were subservient to a bizarre political structure, a political system which wanted to see only what it wanted to see and which truly neglected to invest in a good intelligence service when it should have - in 1933.
Thats the relevant stuff sourced from this article
www.feldgrau.com/code.html
Gassing Station | The Pie & Piston Archive | Top of Page | What's New | My Stuff