Back in 2013
I wrote down several
cases of WWII cryptologic history that require more research. Since then
I’ve spent a lot of time and money trying to find new information. Has the
effort paid off? Let’s have a look at each case:
1). US
State Department strip cipher
I wrote: How bad was the compromise of the State
Department’s high level system? That question is hard to answer because
there is limited information available and it doesn’t seem like the Americans
were really interested in learning the full extent of the compromise. Some
documents that would shed more light on this affair are proving very hard to
find…
It is clear
that Germans, Japanese and Finns were able to solve many alphabet strips both
circular and special and thus read State Department messages from embassies in
Europe and Asia. The most important intercepted messages seem to have been
those from Bern, Switzerland and Chungking, China.
Unfortunately
several important reports are still classified by the NSA and we have to wait for
the declassification procedure. At the same time I haven’t been able to track
down the Carlson-Goldsberry
report, detailing the Finnish solution of the State Department strip cipher.
This report was written in late 1944 by two US cryptanalysts after interviewing
Finnish codebreakers in Sweden.
Another
aspect of this case concerns the messages from the OSS
- Office of Strategic Services
and OWI
- Office of War Information
stations in Bern that were also sent via diplomatic channels. It’s not
clear why these messages were sent using State department codes and not through
their own systems. In this area information is lacking, since the OSS organization
doesn’t seem to have officially acknowledged the compromise of their
communications during the war.
2). NKVD 5th Department
codebreakers
During WWII
the Soviet Union invested significant resources in the interception and
exploitation of enemy radio traffic. The internal security service NKVD
and the Army’s general staff had codebreaking departments with the former
recruiting many talented mathematicians. According to author Matthew Aid ‘By the end of World War II, the 5th
Directorate controlled the single largest concentration of mathematicians and
linguists in the Soviet Union.’
So far very limited information is available regarding their war time
efforts versus foreign codes (not only Axis but also US, UK and those of
neutral countries).
3). Referat Vauck success
In the period
1942-44 the German Army’s signal intelligence agency Inspectorate 7/VI had a
separate deparment (Referat 12) assigned with the solution of the encoded
messages of Allied spy groups operating in occupied Europe. Head of the
department was dr Wilhelm Vauck, so his unit was also called Referat Vauck. In 1944 they were transferred to the OKW
radio defense department so their reports can no longer be found in the files
of Inspectorate 7/VI.
I had written about this case: How successful were they during the
war? Unfortunately we do not know. The relevant file in the British national
archives HW 40/76 ‘Enemy exploitation of SIS and SOE codes and cyphers’ says
that postwar files have been retained and my request for the release of the
interrogations of dr Vauck has been rejected by the archives staff
Thankfully I‘ve been able to track down the monthly reports of Referat 12 for the period April ’42-February
’44 and I will be writing an essay on them.
An
interesting discovery, made while I was trying to find information on Referat
Vauck, was that OKW/Chi was also solving Allied agents codes during the war (with
significant success it seems). Not much is known about this aspect of
OKW/Chi operations…
4). Forschungsamt
information
Goering’s Forschungsamt
was one of the main German codebreaking/intelligence agencies of the period 1939-45,
yet a
detailed history of that organization still eludes us. This is another case
where it’s up to the NSA to declassify the relevant documents, written by Forschungsamt
personnel in the 1950’s.
5). German
Enigma investigations
Several
authors claim that the Germans never suspected that their Enigma cipher machine
was solved by the Allies and that they considered it to be unbreakable.
I had
written: The Germans constantly evaluated
the security of their Enigma cipher machine. There were many studies on whether
the daily key or parts of it could be retrieved through cryptanalysis. Those
studies are the TICOM DF-190 to DF-190AN files…..More research is needed to
evaluate the German methods and the way they influenced their security
measures.
Since then
I’ve posted information on case
‘Wicher’ (Polish solution of the Enigma) showing that the Germans knew the
device had been compromised in the prewar period and in 1943 they got information
from the US regarding the solution of their naval version. So far it’s clear that the German Navy’s
codebreakers found
a solution for their 4-rotor machine in late ’44 but we don’t know much about
the similar work of the Army cryptanalysts. More research is needed in this
case.
6). Japanese
Purple and Coral cipher machines
Were the
Germans able to solve the cipher machines used by the Japanese foreign ministry
and by Japanese military attaches?
I wrote: PURPLE was solved by American and Soviet
codebreakers. Did the Germans have any success with it? Until recently the
answer was no.
However it seems there is more to this story.
The Coral machine was used by military
attaches and the Anglo-Americans solved it in 1944. In the same year dr
Steinberg of the German Army’s signal intelligence agency was transferred to
OKW/Chi where he worked on a cipher machine used by the Japanese attaché. Did
he manage to solve it?
TICOM report I-64 ‘Answers by Wm.
Buggisch of OKH/Chi
to Questions sent by TICOM’ says ‘B. thinks Steinberg (of
209 fame) solved some Jap machine traffic which was difficult but not so hard
as Enigma. B. thinks it was traffic of the Jap Military Attache.’
There is
scattered information that points towards the solution of an important Japanese
code or cipher machine in the period 1943/44 but no conclusive evidence. Maybe
more information will become available in the future.
7). Soviet
diplomatic code
I wrote: The Soviet Union used a code enciphered with
one time pads as its main diplomatic system during WWII. This system if used
correctly is unbreakable.
The recently
declassified TICOM report DF-111 ‘Comments on various
cryptologic matters’ by Adolf Paschke (head of the linguistic cryptanalysis
group in the German foreign ministry’s decryption department) says that in the
years 1927-30 parts of the Soviet diplomatic traffic could be read since the
additive pads were sometimes used twice if the message was long enough. Paschke
had also identified the use of the same additive tables more than once in some
links. Regarding wartime traffic he says that they couldn’t solve any since
there were no repetitions but in the report he also added cryptically that
Russian material of the Forschungsamt and the High Command’s deciphering
department OKW/Chi were destroyed in 1943 during a bombing attack on Berlin.
Although the
Germans might have not solved any Soviet diplomatic traffic they did succeed in
solving Comintern
communications.
8). M-209
decoding device
I wrote: I’m surprised that no one has figured
out how this machine worked!
I have to say
I’m still surprised that this device has not received any attention from
historians and/or the media!
