Overview of 2013

I think I’ve written some very interesting essays this year. I covered WWII cryptology, wrote about spies and intelligence operations, presented detailed statistics about various aspects of WWII and debunked several WWII myths.

Let’s have a look at the best essays.

Codes and ciphers:

Codes of the Special Operations Executive-SOE: part 1, part 2 and part 3.

Signals intelligence and the Battle of Stalingrad: part 1 and part 2.

State Department’s strip cipher: part 1, part 2, part 3 and part 4.

Turkish codes

Codes of Marshall Tito and General Mihailović

Soviet codebreakers of WWII: part 1 and part 2.

The Pope’s codes

British railways code

Polish diplomatic code: part 1 and part 2.

Spies:

Dienstelle Klatt

The resistance leader ‘King Kong’

 

T-34 tank:

German evaluation of captured Soviet tanks

US report on quality of Soviet tanks

German response against the Soviet T-34 and KV tanks

Recurring problems of Soviet tank design

 

WWII statistics:

German tank strength in the Battle of France 

German AFV production 1939-45

Tank strength and losses – Eastern Front

German AFV losses in the Eastern Front

 

WWII Myths:

The Mortain counterattack

The German war economy

The Me262 jet fighter

Multitude of German AFV types

Battle of Kursk

In writing some of these essays i received help from other people who gave me information and/or documents. I’d like to say a big thank you to everyone who’s ever helped me.

Keep in mind that real research costs money. The files that I’ve uploaded and used in my essays had to be copied from either the US or the UK National archives.

If you want to help me copy more files you can do so. The tab on the right that says donate works just fine.

US Chungking embassy message

I’ve written a lot about how the M-138-A strip cipher was used (and misused) by the US State Department during WWII.

Time for a challenge!

The following message was sent from the US embassy in Chungking, China to Washington in March 1943. It has the signature Vincent, which probably refers to Counselor John Carter Vincent.

Can YOU decipher it?

I know the following things about the indicator system. According to the cipher instructions of May 1944 all messages had to use the channel elimination table. The cipher clerk had to select 5 different letters at random and then use the channel elimination table to find out which of the 30 positions in the panel would be empty.

Although the cipher instructions did not include a sample channel elimination table I think that the version used at the time must have been similar to that used by the US Armed forces in the early parts of WWII:

The first code groups of the message must be the date (taken from either the Gray or Brown codebook) and then the channel elimination indicator that was repeated at the end. Following these instructions it would mean that XSUEF is a date group and TONZS the channel elimination indicator. Note that TONZS is not repeated at the end but that could be due to the fact that not all the codegroups were intercepted.

Since I don’t have the previous version of ‘Instructions for cipher device M-138A’ (issued in January 1942) i can’t be sure that channel elimination was used in 1943 by the State Department. Instead they could have been using only the split generatrix system (15 cipher letters from one column and 15 from another).

Australian tanker’s criticism of the T-34 tank

Site antipodeanarmour has uploaded the report ‘Centurion Tanks in Korea - Report by Lt J Brown RNZAC March 1952’ (originally found through world of tanks forum user Babui).

This report deals with the performance of the Centurion tank in the Korean War. What I found interesting are the comments on the Soviet T-34 tank, used by the North Korean forces.

‘And now, Sir, a few words for your private ear on the T 34. I assume that the tks given by Joe to Mr. Wu are old models. Even so they were grossly over-rated in press reports in the early days of the KOREAN Camaign. (A well placed HE shell from a 20 pr will lift the turret off). Only about 4 per Sqn have wrls and their armour is of poor quality. The whole tk is of the crudest workmanship, and breaks down with the greatest ease. (In fairness I must add that this may be due to inexperienced CHINESE crew). They would have to be used in mass, RUSSIAN fashion, to be any treat to a well trained, well equipped Army, as they have been proved somewhat inferior to the SHERMAN. A CENTURION will do to them what a TIGER did to the SHERMAN. They got their initial build up as a scapegoat to cover the natural and understandable, fact that the first American tps over here were raw, frightened boys who were also soft from occupational duties in JAPAN. The T 34, I am convinced, should be de-bunked. It is a workable tk, but NOT a wonder tk.’

The Koreans actually had the latest version of the T-34, equipped with the 85mm gun plus these vehicles were built in 1945-46 so they were more reliable than those used in the Eastern front in the 1941-44 period.

It seems Lieutenant Brown was not a big fan of the T-34. Perhaps the T-34 was not the best tank of WWII?

Soviet signals intelligence and the German Enigma cipher machine

From the mid 1930’s the German Armed forces started using the plugboard Enigma as their main crypto system. The Enigma has received a lot of attention from historians since the solution of this traffic by the codebreakers of Bletchley Park played a role in WWII operations.

Were the Soviets also able to solve the Enigma machine cryptanalytically? Initially there were two main Soviet cryptologic departments during WWII, one under the NKVD’s 5th Special Department and the other under the GRU’s 8th Department. In 1942 the Army’s cryptologic department was absorbed by the NKVD department.

According to historian Matt Aid ‘By the end of World War II, the 5th Directorate controlled the single largest concentration of mathematicians and linguists in the Soviet Union.’

With so many talented mathematicians could the Soviets have figured out how to solve the Enigma? Could they have built special cryptanalytic equipment like the British bombes?

Let’s have a look at the available information.

Regarding the theoretical solution of the Enigma:

David Kahn who interviewed KGB General Nicolai Andreev (head of the KGB’s sigint department in the 1970-80's) in 1996 was told that the Soviets knew how to solve the Enigma and although they didn’t have bombes ‘it might have been possible to organize people to replicate the mechanisms work’.

Regarding special cryptanalytic equipment:

The Cryptologia article ‘Summary Report of the State of the Soviet Military Sigint in November 1942 Noticing ‘ENIGMA’ has a report from the GRU that says: ‘The research group of our office has revealed the possibility of solving German messages enciphered on the ‘Enigma’ machine, and started to construct equipment, speeding up the solution’

Captured material:

There can be no doubt that during the war both Enigma machines and valid keylists fell into Soviet hands.

1). In December 1941 Enigma machines and documentation were lost by the German 2^nd Army.

2). After the surrender of the encircled German forces in Stalingrad in early 1943 Enigma machines and documents plus signals personnel fell into Soviet hands.

3). According to the memoirs of Admiral Golovko documents were retrieved from the sunken U-boat 639 in August 1943: ‘Submarine S-101, which sank U 639 and recovered lists of call-signs and codes which made it possible to keep track of enemy submarines throughout the Northern theatre’

4). During the summer ’44 battles several German units were encircled and destroyed. It is safe to assume that a lot of crypto material was lost.

Help from abroad:

During WWII their spy John Cairncross was able to infiltrate Bletchley Park and he gave the Soviets copies of the documents that he had access to. Some dealt with the Enigma.

So it is certain that the Soviets were able to solve Enigma messages thanks to compromised material and the possibility that during the war they managed to retrieve the daily Enigma settings cryptanalytically cannot be discounted. The only way to know for sure is for the Russian government to give researchers access to the wartime files of the NKVD 5^th Department.

Another way is to look for information from other available sources. One such source is the report ‘Russian signal intelligence 1941-45’ by Lt Col Fritz Neeb, head of evaluation for NAAS 2 (Signal Intelligence Evaluation Center) of KONA 2 (Signals intelligence Regiment 2) assigned to Army Group Centre in the Eastern Front.

According to Neeb the Soviet signals intelligence organization was as good as or better than the Germans in traffic analysis and direction finding. However it doesn’t seem like they were able to solve German Enigma traffic, at least up to late 1942.

In page 17 of his report he says that during the Stalingrad battle a Soviet 5-figure message was decoded and it contained a signals intelligence report. The report showed that the German units in the area were correctly identified but there was a mistake in their numerical designation. This would imply that the information came from sources other than cryptanalysis since in German messages numbers had to be spelled out.

According to the recent article ‘О ВКЛАДЕ СОВЕТСКИХ КРИПТОГРАФОВ В ПОБЕДУ ПОД МОСКВОЙ’, in late 1942 the Soviet codebreakers analyzed the Enigma cipher machine and developed ways of solving it. However their efforts failed in January 1943 due to new German security measures.

This information seems to be confirmed by the war diary of the German Army’s Inspectorate 7/VI. The March 1943 report of Referat 13 (security of German cipher machines) says that based on the published radio dispatches from Stalingrad Inspectorate 7/VI was asked to give an opinion from the point of view of decipherment.

Schlüsselüberwachung

Auf grund der veröffentlichten Funksprüche asus Stalingrad wurde In 7/VI um ein allgemeines Gutachten gebeten, das die Stellungnahme vom Standpunkt der Entzifferung enthält.

Thus it seems that the Soviet effort to decrypt Enigma messages was identified early and countered by the Germans.

Sources: ‘Russian signals intelligence 1941-45’, Intelligence and National Security article: ‘The Soviets and naval enigma: Some comments’, The History of Information Security: A Comprehensive Handbook chapter 17-‘Eavesdroppers of the Kremlin: KGB sigint during the Cold war’, Cryptologia article: ‘Summary Report of the State of the Soviet Military Sigint in November 1942 Noticing ‘ENIGMA’, Cryptologia article: ‘Soviet comint in the Cold war’, ‘Journal of Contemporary History’ article: ‘Spies, Ciphers and 'Zitadelle': Intelligence and the Battle of Kursk, 1943’, Inspectorate 7/VI Kriegstagebuch, ‘О ВКЛАДЕ СОВЕТСКИХ КРИПТОГРАФОВ В ПОБЕДУ ПОД МОСКВОЙ’

A holiday special from the NSA

Update

I added information on the German exploitation of the codes of British liaison officers sent to occupied Yugoslavia in The secret messages of Marshall Tito and General Mihailović.

The Pope’s codes

                                                                                                                          
                                                 The Pope! How many divisions has he got?

                                                                                 Joseph Stalin

 

Although the Pope doesn’t have any divisions he has always been one of the most powerful men on the planet. As leader of the Catholic Church and head of the Vatican State he can wield great influence on world affairs.

With millions of followers all over the globe the Catholic Church has traditionally been well informed of world events. The numerous Catholic churches with their priests, bishops and other officials have always transmitted information back to the Vatican. In order to protect its communications from outsiders the Catholic Church has used various cryptologic systems.

During WWII the communications of the Vatican attracted the attention of numerous codebreaking agencies. Both the Axis and the Allies tried to exploit these messages and they succeeded, in part.

Axis:

German effort:

Three different agencies worked on Vatican codes. The German High Command’s deciphering department – OKW/Chi, the Foreign Ministry’s deciphering deparment Pers Z and the Air Ministry’s Research Department - Reichsluftfahrtministerium Forschungsamt.

The Germans spied on the Catholic Church because they knew that the internal opposition to Hitler and the Polish intelligence service had connections with the Vatican.

Unfortunately the information on their successes and failures versus Vatican systems is limited.

OKW/Chi

European Axis Signal Intelligence in World War II, vol3 says in page 69:

‘Around the beginning of the war, a desk was established for attacks on Vatican traffic. Seifert, a former member of the Austrian Cryptanalytic Bureau, joined OKW/Chi at the time of the Anschluss and broke a Vatican book.’

Pers Z

European Axis Signal Intelligence in World War II, vol6 says in page 33:

‘Vatican

The 1940 Report of the Italian Group (Paschke) made it clear that while approximately 50 per cent of the Vatican traffic could be read, the traffic was not a major Pers Z S commitment. Reference was made to a one part, three-letter code, enciphered by a transposition within the groups, and to a one-part figure code, enciphered by means of substitution alphabets and a sliding strip. Most of the book groups were secured from Goering's "Research" Bureau (FA).’

Forschungsamt

It seems that serious work on Vatican cryptosystems was done at Goering’s Forschungsamt. However the information from TICOM reports on the work and successes of the FA is very limited.

European Axis Signal Intelligence in World War II, vol7 says in page 88:

‘Vatican Code,

In  a captured Pers ZS reconstruction of a Vatican Code Book the signature of a Fraulien Titschak appears with the date of August 1939 and a notation that she had copied out values at that time for the FA (Fraulien Titschak was a member of the Foreign Office Cryptanalytic Bureau). The Annual Report of the Italian Group of Pars ZS for 1940 indicates that while Pers ZS did some work on Vatican systems most or the identifications on Vatican systems were received, from the FA.’

Several reports were written in the postwar period by former workers of the FA but these have not yet been declassified by the NSA.

Italian effort:

The Italian Army’s codebreaking department solved Vatican codes during WWI and in the interwar period. According to David Alvarez’s ‘Left in the Dust: Italian Signals Intelligence, 1915-1943’:

‘Access to Vatican traffic proved a boon to Italian intelligence. Such traffic provided Rome with advance word of papal diplomatic initiatives, such as the pope’s peace proposal of August 1917 and his efforts in 1918 to mobilize Catholic opinion and lobby foreign leaders on behalf of Vatican representation at the peace conference.’

However during WWII the small number of cryptanalysts had too many commitments and it doesn’t seem like they could solve the high level Vatican messages.

Finnish effort:

According to David Kahn’s ‘Finland's Codebreaking in World War II':

‘Among the simplest codes to crack were those of the Vatican. In the 16th century the papal curia led the world in cryptology, and AaIto thought that they had not advanced beyond that level, as described in a couple of studies of nomenclators of that period in a Finnish journal by H. Biaudet in 1910. Vatican codes were attacked by O. Nikulainen because he was the only cryptanalyst who knew Italian. However, the results had little value.’

Allies:

Anglo-American effort:

Information on the efforts of British and US codebreakers versus Vatican codes is available from the article ‘No immunity: Signals intelligence and the European neutrals, 1939-45’.

The British codebreakers solved in 1942-43 parts of the low level code RED, a three-letter code of 12,000 groups enciphered by substitution tables. The information was shared with the US Army’s cryptanalytic agency that assigned a group of codebreakers to tackle Vatican traffic. This section was called ‘Gold’.

Neither the British nor the Americans were able to solve the high level codes used by the Vatican.

According to the article:

‘The cryptanalysts in Gold Section were surprised at the sophistication of Vatican cryptosystems. Explaining their lack of success, they noted that 'The difficulties encountered showed that considerable intelligence was matched against the analysts', and they concluded that they were dealing with 'a cryptographer of no mean ability.' The effort against papal cryptosystems was also undermined by the complete absence of compromised cryptographic materials and the communication discipline of papal diplomats.’

Conclusion:

In the course of WWII the communications of the Vatican attracted the attention of both the Axis and the Allies. Both sides were able to exploit some Vatican cryptosystems but according to the information available, the Pope’s high level codes proved secure.

Perhaps a guardian angel was looking out for the Pope.

Sources: ‘European Axis Signal Intelligence in World War II’ volumes 3,6,7, Intelligence and National Security article: ‘No immunity: Signals intelligence and the European neutrals, 1939-45’, ‘In the Name of Intelligence: Essays in Honor of Walter Pforzheimer’, International Journal of Intelligence and CounterIntelligence article: ‘Left in the Dust: Italian Signals Intelligence, 1915-1943’,

Pic: mapsofworld.com

When real life turns into comedy

The NSA and GCHQ intercept and record all communications in order to protect ‘the people’ from evil terrorists.

The Guardian reveals that these agencies are intercepting the communications of players in games like World of Warcraft and Second Life.

Way to go guys! There are bound to be several Al-Qaeda cells in there. Don’t forget Counterstrike. Lots of terrorists there and they usually win most of the rounds….