Fear not dear
reader, you’re not the only one with weird unusual hobbies! The website nuclear secrecy allows you to
choose a city and a nuclear bomb and then see the effects of the blast.
Military and intelligence history mostly dealing with World War II.
Thursday, May 30, 2013
Nuke the world
Have you ever
wondered what would happen to Moscow if it was hit with a Trident D5 nuclear missile?
How about a Tsar Bomba exploding over Washington DC?
PS: I found
this site through the War Nerd’s article ‘North Korea, Wish Mao
Were Here’.
Tuesday, May 28, 2013
Axis History Forum mug
Today a
coffee mug arrived in the mail. It’s a gift from my friends at Axis History Forum for
contributing to their site. Thanks guys!
Monday, May 27, 2013
German vs Allied losses – Italian front
One of the books I reviewed recently was the single volume
history of the Italian campaign ‘A
Hard Way to Make a War: The Allied Campaign in Italy in the Second World War’.
That book says in page 326 about casualties:
German killed, wounded, missing 434,646 (48,067 killed, 172,531 wounded, 214,048 missing)’
Apparently the figures used by the author include troops that surrendered at the end of the war. That’s not the way combat losses are compared. If we look at combat losses during the period of actual fighting it is obvious that the casualty figures were not fairly balanced but the Germans had a slight advantage.
‘The casualty figures also are fairly balanced:
Allied killed, wounded, missing (September 1943 - May 1945)
312,000 (188,746 Fifth Army/ 123,254 approx in Eighth Army) German killed, wounded, missing 434,646 (48,067 killed, 172,531 wounded, 214,048 missing)’
That part has always bugged me! Wouldn’t the fact that the
Germans were constantly on the defense be reflected in the loss ratios? (that doesn’t necessarily mean that the
attacking force will always incur higher losses than the defending force)
Luckily I found interesting data in ‘Waffen und Geheimwaffen des deutschen Heeres 1933-45’. There is a table
in page 314 with the monthly losses for the Italian front (killed, missing,
wounded) for the period November ’43-April ’45. The numbers come to 36,362
killed, 126,474 wounded, 87,883 missing for a total of 250,719. Losses for
September-October ’43 need to be added but these could not have been substantial.
Apparently the figures used by the author include troops that surrendered at the end of the war. That’s not the way combat losses are compared. If we look at combat losses during the period of actual fighting it is obvious that the casualty figures were not fairly balanced but the Germans had a slight advantage.
Thursday, May 23, 2013
WWII Myths – The German war economy was mismanaged
This is quite
a difficult subject to fully analyze. The idea that the Germans mismanaged
their war economy is one of the most enduring myths of WWII. This idea is
strange considering that everyone acknowledges the ‘economic miracles’ of the
period 1933-39 and of the postwar recovery. Why
would the Germans do things right up to 1939 and after 1945 but mess things up
in between?
‘The driving force of this spectacular increase, however, was anything but miraculous. To reiterate, in so far as Speer was responsible, the most important factor was ammunition. And the increased production of ammunition was not primarily an effect of rationalization or reorganization. It was a direct result of a hugely increased allocation of steel. From September 1939 to the end of 1943, there is a near-perfect correlation between the allocation of steel to ammunition production and the quantity of ammunition produced. When plenty of steel was allocated, ammunition production was buoyant. When the steel supply was restricted, so was the production of ammunition, and this relationship holds both before and after February 1942. To the extent that there was a major surge in labour productivity within the remit of the Speer Ministry, the indicator usually used to measure rationalization success, this in fact confirms the rate-limiting role of steel. Without enough raw material, neither labour nor the available industrial plant could be used efficiently.’
Hmm so when it comes to ammunition production the effects of Speer’s rationalization program seem to have been modest to nonexistent…
The recent study ‘Demystifying the German “armament miracle” during World War II. New insights from the annual audits of German aircraft producers’ says
‘The precise timing of the Ju88 program gives us some idea, why the concurrence of the German armament miracle and Albert Speer’s reign might just have been coincidental. It was in May 1938 when the aviation department finally decided that the Ju88 bomber would become one of the major weapons of the German air force. The firms which were chosen to participate in this program were instructed to end their established production and adapt their plants to the new design instead. Production of the Ju88 bombers started in 1939. The firms used the following two years to move down their learning curves and to realize the substantial increases in labor productivity that occurred in the early stage of a production run. Around the end of 1941 the production processes were finally broken in, and the Ju88 producers were ready to take off. In February 1942 Albert Speer became armament minister, in the middle of a seasonal downturn. This was exactly the right time to be credited with the considerable increase in the Ju88 production in the following two and a half years. This growth was not a sudden miracle made possible by Speer but the continuation of a development that started in 1938 and was fuelled by the ongoing learning effects shown by table 6 and the growth of the firms’ capital and labor endowment discussed in section 2.’
So why did the Germans produce more armaments in the period 1943-44?
For example tank production significantly increased thanks to the expansion of existing tank facilities and by building new factories, especially the gigantic Nibelungenwerk in Austria.
Let’s start
at the beginning. After taking emergency measures and restarting military
production the German economy stabilized and in the mid thirties was running at
full speed, meaning that the internal factors of production were fully
exploited.
Before the
war the main problem was how to finance the import of raw materials that were
needed for the production of civilian and military goods. Here the Germans used
several tricks including bilateral trade agreements and ‘stealth’ credit. At the same time they invested in technologies
that would allow them to substitute foreign raw materials with internal
production (low grade German ores, synthetic rubber, synthetic fuel).
In the period
1939-41 Germany gained control of a large number of European countries BUT could not exploit their economies
to the fullest because they were dependent on imports of raw materials. Since
the British Royal Navy blockaded Europe those countries instead of adding to
the German economy had to be supplied with scarce resources (for example coal for
their energy needs and chemicals for their agriculture).
In the period
1942-44 military production increased significantly despite shortages of raw
materials and a bombing campaign by the Anglo-Americans. It was this increase
in production that led to the creation of the Speer myth.
According to
the standard account prior to Speer’s appointment as Armaments minister in 1942
there was widespread wastage and underutilization of industry.
Speer in his
memoir ‘Inside the Third Reich’ attributes
the increase in production to his radical measures. In chapter 15 (aptly named
‘Organized improvisation’) he lists the main policies:
1).
‘industrial self-responsibility’ with civilian committees being responsible for
each procurement program instead of Army personnel and bureaucrats who did not
know how industry worked.
2). Standardization
of weapons and emphasis on long term production vs the old policy of ‘frequently assigned contracts only for a
limited time’.
3). Giving positions
of responsibility to younger, energetic men (below 40).
According to
him one of the main problems was excessive bureaucratization of the government
agencies. Instead his policy was to promote personal initiative and
improvisation.
His policies
seem to have been successful. For example two categories that are always
mentioned are tracked fighting vehicles and combat aircraft:
1941
|
1942
|
1943
|
1944
|
|
Tanks and SPG
|
3,736
|
6,058
|
12,228
|
19,665
|
Combat aircraft
|
8,729
|
12,011
|
19,241
|
34,614
|
Such a rise
in production must have been made possible by eliminating waste and
mismanagement. What else could be the reason?
Debunking
the Speer myth
Things become
clearer if we look at the two largest production categories of the war economy,
ammunition and aircraft.
Source: U.S. Strategic Bombing Survey - European War
vol3, p144
Did the Germans
produce more with less? Was mismanagement and misallocation of resources
holding production back?
Ammunition
production
From ‘The Wages of Destruction: The Making and
Breaking of the Nazi Economy’, p575-6‘The driving force of this spectacular increase, however, was anything but miraculous. To reiterate, in so far as Speer was responsible, the most important factor was ammunition. And the increased production of ammunition was not primarily an effect of rationalization or reorganization. It was a direct result of a hugely increased allocation of steel. From September 1939 to the end of 1943, there is a near-perfect correlation between the allocation of steel to ammunition production and the quantity of ammunition produced. When plenty of steel was allocated, ammunition production was buoyant. When the steel supply was restricted, so was the production of ammunition, and this relationship holds both before and after February 1942. To the extent that there was a major surge in labour productivity within the remit of the Speer Ministry, the indicator usually used to measure rationalization success, this in fact confirms the rate-limiting role of steel. Without enough raw material, neither labour nor the available industrial plant could be used efficiently.’
Hmm so when it comes to ammunition production the effects of Speer’s rationalization program seem to have been modest to nonexistent…
Aircraft
production
After WWI
Germany was prohibited from having a military aircraft industry. This meant that
in the 1930’s, when rearmament started, the effort to rebuild this industry was
constrained by the lack of industrial resources, trained manpower and aviation technology.
It took years to build up factories, acquire modern aero engine technology and
develop aircraft models for mass production. The Luftwaffe
played a major role in the plans of the Nazi regime and thus huge resources
were invested in the airforce. Did aircraft production rise as a result of
Speer’s rationalization program? The recent study ‘Demystifying the German “armament miracle” during World War II. New insights from the annual audits of German aircraft producers’ says
‘This
paper uses the annual audit reports of the Deutsche Revisions- und Treuhand AG for seven firms which
together represented about 50 % of the
German aircraft producers. We question the received view by showing that in the German aircraft industry the crucial
changes that triggered the upswing in aircraft production already
occurred before World War II. The government decided in 1938 that aircraft producers had to
concentrate on a few different types, and in 1937 that cost-plus contracts were replaced with fixed
price contracts. What followed was not a sudden production miracle but a continuous development which was
fuelled first by learning-by doing and
then by the ongoing growth of the capital and labor endowment.’
Aircraft
manufacturers had already taken measures similar to those that Speer promoted so
again there was no miracle in the increased production. The same study says in
page 20:‘The precise timing of the Ju88 program gives us some idea, why the concurrence of the German armament miracle and Albert Speer’s reign might just have been coincidental. It was in May 1938 when the aviation department finally decided that the Ju88 bomber would become one of the major weapons of the German air force. The firms which were chosen to participate in this program were instructed to end their established production and adapt their plants to the new design instead. Production of the Ju88 bombers started in 1939. The firms used the following two years to move down their learning curves and to realize the substantial increases in labor productivity that occurred in the early stage of a production run. Around the end of 1941 the production processes were finally broken in, and the Ju88 producers were ready to take off. In February 1942 Albert Speer became armament minister, in the middle of a seasonal downturn. This was exactly the right time to be credited with the considerable increase in the Ju88 production in the following two and a half years. This growth was not a sudden miracle made possible by Speer but the continuation of a development that started in 1938 and was fuelled by the ongoing learning effects shown by table 6 and the growth of the firms’ capital and labor endowment discussed in section 2.’
So why did the Germans produce more armaments in the period 1943-44?
The answer is
simple. For the same reason they produced more in 1941-42 compared to 1939-40.
Production rose
because more inputs of raw materials, capital and labor were invested. At the
same time workers became better at producing weapon systems whose
specifications had been fixed for a long time.
There were
certainly benefits from cutting down on inefficiencies and bureaucracy but
these were not the primary reasons.
The main
cause for the 1943-44 ‘miracle’ was
the diversion of resources from long term investment into production.
Major
investments in infrastructure started in the 1930’s but took till mid war to become operational. These projects absorbed large quantities of capital and labor without
contributing to the output of munitions. Once they were completed they
helped boost production plus the resources that they kept occupied could be
redirected to other projects.
For example tank production significantly increased thanks to the expansion of existing tank facilities and by building new factories, especially the gigantic Nibelungenwerk in Austria.
Aircraft
production took advantage of investment in the expansion of aero engine
capacity but also profited from the production of the same types throughout the war (Bf109, FW-190, JU-88, Ju-52, He-111
etc).
In both cases
we also need to consider that production numbers were boosted by taking
shortcuts. In the case of tanks there was an emphasis on vehicle production at
the expense of spare parts (engines,
transmissions, gearboxes etc). In the aircraft industry the impressive
production numbers of 1943-44 were achieved by concentrating resources on the single engined fighters Bf109 and
FW-190. These were much cheaper to build than the twin engined Ju-88 bomber.
For example in terms of weight we have Bf109 - 2.250kg , FW-190 - 3.200kg compared to ~9.000kg for the Ju-88.
There are two
more important issues that come up when discussing the German war economy.
Women in
the workforce and butter over guns
1). German women stayed at home taking care of
the kids instead of working in the factories
Actually the Germans used a larger percentage of women in their workforce
than the US and UK. According to ‘The Wages of Destruction: The Making and
Breaking of the Nazi Economy’, p358:
‘In 1939 a
third of all married women in Germany were economically active and more than
half of all women between the ages 15 and 60 were in work. As a result women
made up more than a third of the German workforce before the war started
compared to a female share of only a quarter in Britain.’
And in page 515: ‘When the chief statistician of the Reich Labour Ministry investigated
the issue in the autumn of 1943, using data that were very unfavorable to
Germany, he arrived at the conclusion that the share of women in war work was
25.4 per cent in the United States, 33.1 per cent in Britain and 34 per cent in
Germany.’
2). The Germans continued to produce lots of civilian
goods throughout the war because Hitler did not want to disadvantage the
population
According to
‘Germany: guns, butter and economic miracles’ (chapter 4 of ‘The Economics of
World War II’) ‘by late 1940 most of the
consumer branches were already devoting between 40 and 50 percent of their
output to the military, leaving very little for the civilian population’.
Civilian
consumption was contained even by the mid 1930’s by cutting the steel
allocation. According to ‘The Wages of
Destruction: The Making and Breaking of the Nazi Economy’, p254: ‘Measured
in terms of steel, the quantity of materials available for non-Wehrmacht
purposes was cut by 25 per cent between March and July 1938, from a high point of 1.345 million tons to 1.041
million tons.’
The calorific
content of food rations also fell after 1940-1. Although the regime tried to
protect the civilian population there was never a policy of ‘butter over guns’.
Conclusion
The
performance of the German war economy has always fascinated historians. However
in order to evaluate the performance of the economy one needs to understand the
major factors that limited production.
It was not
wastage and bureaucratization but rather the lack of vital resources that
affected production. The best way to describe the German war economy is scarcity management. The Germans
responded to resource limitations by investing in new technologies
(hydrogenation plants etc), in infrastructure and by shifting resources to
important projects. They also substituted German workers (that were drafted by
the armed forces) with forced and slave labour.
The belief
that the German economy could have produced more armaments if it hadn’t been
mismanaged is not supported by the evidence.
For those of
you that are still doubtful read: ‘The Wages of Destruction: The Making and Breaking
of the Nazi Economy’, ‘Demystifying the German “armament miracle”
during World War II. New
insights from the annual audits of German aircraft producers’, ‘The Economics of World War II: Six Great
Powers in International Comparison
– Chapter 4’, Economic History Review: ’Fixed-price contracts, learning, and outsourcing: explaining the continuous growth of output and labour productivity in the German aircraft industry during the Second World War, ‘Industrial Investment in Nazi Germany: The Forgotten Wartime Boom’, Economic History Review: ‘‘Armament in depth’ or ‘armament in breadth’? German investment pattern and rearmament during the Nazi period’
Also have a look here.
– Chapter 4’, Economic History Review: ’Fixed-price contracts, learning, and outsourcing: explaining the continuous growth of output and labour productivity in the German aircraft industry during the Second World War, ‘Industrial Investment in Nazi Germany: The Forgotten Wartime Boom’, Economic History Review: ‘‘Armament in depth’ or ‘armament in breadth’? German investment pattern and rearmament during the Nazi period’
Also have a look here.
Monday, May 20, 2013
British report on military and diplomatic Polish codes
After
checking my files for my essay on the reliability
of TICOM reports i rediscovered a British report giving an overview of
Polish codes. The British codebreakers obviously had some success with the
codes of their close ally!
You can
download it from my Google docs or Scribd accounts.
This report
is important because it verifies the use of a stencil subtractor system on
military attaché links, just as the Germans said.
The title is "Polish
Cyphers 1942-1945", write-up by Jones-Williams (Berkeley St.) and it can be found in collection HW
47/2 of the British National Archives.
Sunday, May 19, 2013
More information on the Japanese codebreakers of WWII
The book ‘Mathematics
and War’ has a small chapter on the Japanese codebreakers of WWII by Setsuo Fukutomi.
The author was one of these codebreakers and he mentions his work on the US
strip ciphers and the M-209 machine.
This part can
be downloaded as a sample at the Springer
site.
Saturday, May 18, 2013
Solution of Dutch Hagelin cipher machine by US codebreakers
An
interesting report of the Signal Security Agency is available from the wwiiarchives.net
site. The title is ‘An Insecure Use of
the Hagelin Cryptograph Leading to the Discovery of Messages in Depth and
the Reconstruction of Base Settings - NEA’.
The site has a problem with Internet Explorer so use an alternative
browser.
Wednesday, May 15, 2013
Dienstelle Klatt – A case of Soviet deception
In their war
against the Soviet Union the Germans were in need of reliable information on
Soviet military capabilities and decisions. However before 1941 they were
unable to organize an espionage network because the Soviet borders were
hermetically sealed and the authorities kept a close eye on everyone.
Kauder and his associates were allowed to organize a network and they were provided with funds and the necessary radio equipment. Their base was a villa in Sofia, Bulgaria and the group was called Dienstelle Klatt.
After the
objectives of the 1941 invasion were not realized the German intelligence
agencies were ordered to work harder in order to recruit high level spies
inside the SU. It was at this time that a great opportunity appeared.
A Viennese
citizen named Richard Kauder (alias ‘Klatt’)
who was half Jewish had agreed to spy for the Germans in order to protect himself
and his family from persecution. Through his friend Joseph Schultz he met White
Russian émigré General Anton Turkul who
claimed that he could activate a network of spies inside the SU. This idea was
presented to the head of the Vienna Abwehr station Count Marogna-Redwitz and he
found it very interesting.Kauder and his associates were allowed to organize a network and they were provided with funds and the necessary radio equipment. Their base was a villa in Sofia, Bulgaria and the group was called Dienstelle Klatt.
Sunday, May 12, 2013
A spy in the Kremlin
After the
fall of the Tsarist Empire and the rise of the Communist regime the British
intelligence service tried to recruit spies inside the new Soviet state.
I switched back, and began to press his conscience. "Have you ever thought about the people who died?" Blunt feigned ignorance. "There were no deaths," he said smoothly, "I never had access to that type of thing . . ." "What about Gibby's spy?" I flashed, referring to an agent run inside the Kremlin by an MI6 officer named Harold Gibson. "Gibby's spy" provided MI6 with Politburo documents before the war, until he was betrayed by Blunt and subsequently executed. "He was a spy," said Blunt harshly, momentarily dropping his guard to reveal the KGB professional. "He knew the game; he knew the risks."
I assume that
this person was ‘Gibby's spy’.
Most of the
books I’ve read claim that all those efforts resulted in failure and no
important sources of information were available. However I noticed that in the
book ‘Spycatcher: The
Candid Autobiography of a Senior Intelligence Officer’ by Peter Wright
(former Assistant Director of MI5) there is mention of a spy in the
Kremlin.
In Chapter 15,
p220 we get:I switched back, and began to press his conscience. "Have you ever thought about the people who died?" Blunt feigned ignorance. "There were no deaths," he said smoothly, "I never had access to that type of thing . . ." "What about Gibby's spy?" I flashed, referring to an agent run inside the Kremlin by an MI6 officer named Harold Gibson. "Gibby's spy" provided MI6 with Politburo documents before the war, until he was betrayed by Blunt and subsequently executed. "He was a spy," said Blunt harshly, momentarily dropping his guard to reveal the KGB professional. "He knew the game; he knew the risks."
Who was this
spy? What information did he give his controller and how did Blunt compromise him? Gibson
was a longtime MI6 officer who served in Turkey and Czechoslovakia but I
haven’t been able to find more information on his agent.
This spy must
have been the person mentioned by Walter Krivitsky when
he was interrogated by the British. Krivitsky was head of the Red Army’s
foreign military intelligence network in Europe in the 1930’s but he defected
and managed to get to the US. There he publicly attacked Stalin in a series of
articles and in 1940 visited the UK and was interrogated by the British authorities.
These reports
refer to him as ‘mr Walter Thomas’.
In one of
these he mentions how his chief Slutsky called him sometime
in 1937 and showed him information from one of their spies in Britain. This
person gave the Soviets copies of the proceedings of the Committee of
Imperial Defense . One of these documents had information from a Politburo
meeting that clearly showed that the British had a high level agent.
Wednesday, May 8, 2013
A look into the reliability of the TICOM reports
The reports
I’ve used to write about Axis signals intelligence in WWII are mainly those
prepared under the TICOM
program.
A few days
ago Frode
Weierud pointed out that ‘A more
serious problem is the lack of good, verifiable sources. Good scientific and
historical research mandates that one try to use multiple sources, but with
cryptology one is often happy to have just one single written source. The TICOM
documents fall into this category. A single document does not always tell the
full story and sometimes the information is incomplete and sometimes even
wrong. The TICOM documents should be looked upon more as research notes than
final research reports.’
Now I agree
with Frode that information from a single source cannot be thought to be 100%
correct without further verification. However the TICOM reports seem to me to be
both accurate and verifiable since different people, from different agencies,
interrogated years apart give the same answers when asked about specific crypto
systems. In many cases their reports can be crosschecked by using the captured
German archives, decrypted German messages solved by Bletchley Park, Foreign
Military Studies and/or various books and articles.
For example let’s
have a look at some interesting cases:
1). Soviet
5-figure code. This was a codebook used at the highest level by the Soviet
military. Its exploitation is mentioned by several people including Mettig,
Huettenhain, Lingen, Dettman. All these people were high ranking officials and
knew what they were talking about. Their reports range from 1945 to 1952, yet
the details are the same.
TICOM reports
DF-292 and DF-112 have a detailed overview of the operation and they give us
the same story of significant success in 1941-42 but limited exploitation in
1943-45 due to the use of one time pad. The last two reports were written by
Alexis Dettmann, head of cryptanalysis at the Army’s Intercept Control Station
East and Edwin von Lingen, head of the Eastern cryptanalysis department of the
Luftwaffe’s signal intelligence agency. These were the people in charge so I
don’t see how their testimony could be discounted!
If someone is
still not convinced there are statistics from the Finnish archives on their
exploitation of the 5-figure code that show exactly the same picture (for
example 36% success rate in June 1942 but roughly 1% in the period
1943-44).
2). Soviet
partisans. From summer 1943 the Germans were able to decode a part of the
Soviet Partisan traffic. This was such an important task that an entire signals
regiment (KONA 6) was assigned to handle this traffic.
The details
we have come from reports written by several people such as Mettig (head of the
Army’s signal intelligence agency in the period 1941-43), Schubert (head of the
Russian section of the Army’s signal intelligence agency from 1943 onwards),
Friedrichsohn (member of KONA 6). All three were part of this program and they
give similar information even though their reports were written years apart
(two in 1945 and one in 1947).
In addition
we have a report by Abwehr personnel written in 1946 that points to
considerable success by KONA 6: ‘Most
successful in monitoring and decoding was Kdr der Nachrichten Aufklaerung 6,
who furnished FAK III daily with decoded transcriptions of a major part of the
W/T traffic between partisan and NKGB stations.’
3). Polish
intelligence-Berne station. In 1943 the Germans were able to solve
the traffic of the Polish military attaché in Berne that concerned intelligence
operations in Europe. This is mentioned in EASI vol2 but the relevant TICOM
reports (I-31 and I-118) are still classified. Still this incident is also
mentioned in the book ‘War Secrets in the Ether’ by Wilhelm Flicke.
Flicke was a
member of OKW/Chi (the agency that solved this traffic) and his book is based
on the reports he wrote for the Americans after the end of the war (TICOM DF-116
to DF-116AL). He mentions the Polish attaché and the solution of his code in summer 1943 and in another page says that
his name was Choynacki.
This
information can be verified from two British sources. The recently published ‘MI6: The History of the Secret Intelligence
Service 1909-1949’ by Keith Jeffery mentions Major Szczesny Choynacki
Polish deputy consul in Berne, whose radio traffic was compromised in summer
1943. This isn’t just another book on British intelligence but actually an authorized history, which means
that the author had access to secret archives. The other document that fills
the last piece of the puzzle is report DS/24/1556 which can be found in
HW 40/222 ‘Poland: reports and correspondence relating to the security of
Polish communications’. This report is a summary of the Polish decodes found in
captured archives of OKW/Chi and reveals that some decodes were on the link
London-Berne on a system identified as military attaché cypher Poldi 4.
The report says ‘The Berne military
attache traffic mostly dates back to June 1943..’
So by all accounts Flicke and reports I-31 and I-118 seem to be very
accurate!
The real
culprit
The main
problem, as I see it, isn’t with the actual reports but with summaries such as
the ‘European Axis Signal Intelligence in World War II’ volumes. These suffer
from a number of flaws:
1). They were
written in 1945-46 with the material that was available at that time. This
means that they did not have access to files and personnel that were located at
a later date. For example important reports by people like Dettmann, Luzius,
Marquart, Fenner, Flicke, de Bary,
Kroeger, Praun, Lingen and others were not available.
2). The
people who wrote them do not seem to have had a well rounded understanding of
Allied, Axis and Neutral cryptologic systems and their evolution during the
war.
3). There is
no volume for the B-Dienst.
4). The information
on the Forschungsamt is very limited.
5). The EASI
volumes are not thorough. Important cases such as the compromise of the A-3
speech scrambler, the diplomatic M-138-A, the OSS strip and others are not
examined in detail. If I had to guess I’d say that the authors considered that
these systems were ‘civilian’ and thus the responsibility of their parent
organization.
These
problems can be circumvented by reading the original reports (those that are
publicly available) but here the researcher faces the problem of time. There
are probably close to 200 TICOM reports available online plus several other
files that also deal with Axis sigint. Some of these files are quite large with
hundreds of pages. Obviously if someone wants to read them all it will take some
time!
Misunderstandings
and confusion
Then there is
the question of understanding the
information. Just reading the reports doesn’t give all the details. For example
if you learn that the Germans solved the US TELWA code what can you infer from
that? What was TELWA? Was it an important system? In order to learn more you’ll
need to check several reports that mention it and discover that it was the ‘US Telegraph code’. With more digging you’ll finally identify it
as the US War Department Telegraph Code 1942 edition. This was used in
administrative traffic so it wasn’t top level but still it was an important
system. There are similar problems in all the reports.
Many authors
who have written about WWII signals intelligence do not have a solid understanding
of what crypto systems were used by each country and at what level. Instead
they just refer to the Enigma cipher machine and if there is a comparison with
Allied equivalents it is with cipher machines such as SIGABA and Typex.
That is a
grievous error. The Enigma was built in huge
numbers and used by the German armed forces as their main cipher system. This was not true for the Allies.
The Americans
used a small number of SIGABA machines in the period 1941-43. According to the
official history ‘The Achievements of
the Signal Security Agency (SSA) in World War II’, p41 in late 1941 75
M-134/M-134-A and 45 M-134-C had been distributed to the Army. Another report
SRH-360 ‘History of Invention and Development of the Mark II ECM’ says that in October
1943 4.550 machines had been delivered (3.370 for the Navy and 1.180 for the
Army).
The British
used the Typex for top level communications but never had a large number of
these. At the start of WWII less than 300 were in service and by May 1944 5.016
had been produced.
The Germans
in comparison had more than 10.000 Enigmas at the start of WWII and built about
30.000 more. So if an author wants to compare apples to apples he’ll have to
read up on the British book cyphers
and the US Strip ciphers, not just their
cipher machines!
Conclusion
My conclusion
is that the TICOM reports are reliable provided that all of them are examined
and especially the ones written by high ranking personnel. However in order for
the information contained in them to be fully understood it is important that
the reader is acquainted with the main cipher systems used by the major
participants and their operational use and security.
Tuesday, May 7, 2013
German AFV production 1939-45
Here are
detailed production statistics for German armored vehicles. Source is ‘Waffen und Geheimwaffen des deutschen Heeres
1933 – 1945’.
1939
|
1940
|
1941
|
1942
|
1943
|
1944
|
1945
|
Sum
|
|
Mobelwagen 37mm
|
205
|
35
|
240
|
|||||
Wirbelwind 20mm
|
100
|
6
|
106
|
|||||
Ostwind 37mm
|
15
|
28
|
43
|
|||||
Kubelblitz 30mm
|
5
|
5
|
||||||
Stug III 75mm L/24
|
192
|
540
|
93
|
825
|
||||
Stug III 75mm L/43
|
330
|
330
|
||||||
Stug III 75mm L/48
|
365
|
3,011
|
3,849
|
1,038
|
8,263
|
|||
Stug III 105mm FH18
|
12
|
204
|
903
|
98
|
1,217
|
|||
Stug III Gesch 33
|
24
|
24
|
||||||
Stu Flammwagen
|
10
|
10
|
||||||
Hummel
|
368
|
289
|
57
|
714
|
||||
Nashorn
|
345
|
133
|
16
|
494
|
||||
Stug IV 75mm L/48
|
30
|
1,006
|
127
|
1,163
|
||||
Jagd IV 75mm L/48
|
769
|
769
|
||||||
Sturm IV 150mm
|
70
|
215
|
25
|
310
|
||||
Pz IV/70 (V) Pak42
|
560
|
384
|
944
|
|||||
Pz IV/70 (A) Pak42
|
206
|
121
|
327
|
|||||
Tiger I
|
78
|
649
|
623
|
1,350
|
||||
Ferdinand
|
90
|
90
|
||||||
Sturm Morser Tiger
|
18
|
18
|
||||||
Befehls Pz VI
|
84
|
84
|
||||||
Tiger II
|
1
|
376
|
112
|
489
|
||||
Jagdtiger
|
51
|
28
|
79
|
|||||
Panther
|
1,848
|
3,777
|
507
|
6,132
|
||||
Berge Panzer V
|
82
|
227
|
38
|
347
|
||||
JagdPanther
|
1
|
226
|
198
|
425
|
||||
Pz IV 75mm L/24
|
45
|
280
|
480
|
117
|
922
|
|||
Pz IV 75mm L/43
|
877
|
598
|
1,475
|
|||||
Pz IV 75mm L/48
|
2,425
|
3,225
|
438
|
6,088
|
||||
Berge Panzer IV
|
36
|
3
|
39
|
|||||
Beobachtungs Pz IV
|
96
|
31
|
127
|
|||||
Befehls-Panzer IV
|
97
|
97
|
||||||
Pz III 37mm
|
157
|
396
|
553
|
|||||
Pz III 50mm L/42
|
466
|
1,649
|
251
|
2,366
|
||||
Pz III 50mm L/60
|
64
|
1,907
|
22
|
1,993
|
||||
Pz III 75mm L/24
|
449
|
213
|
662
|
|||||
Pz III flammenwefer
|
100
|
100
|
||||||
Berge-Pz III
|
150
|
150
|
||||||
Beobachtungs Pz III
|
225
|
43
|
268
|
|||||
Tauch-Pz III
|
168
|
168
|
||||||
Pz 38
|
72
|
369
|
698
|
195
|
1,334
|
|||
Pz 38 76.2mm
|
344
|
19
|
363
|
|||||
Pz 38 Marder III
|
110
|
799
|
308
|
1,217
|
||||
Pz 38 Grille
|
224
|
138
|
17
|
379
|
||||
Pz 38 Aufklarer
|
70
|
70
|
||||||
Pz 38 20mm Flak
|
87
|
54
|
141
|
|||||
JagdPz Hetzer
|
1,588
|
1,261
|
2,849
|
|||||
Berge Pz 38
|
77
|
63
|
140
|
|||||
Pz II
|
15
|
10
|
233
|
282
|
540
|
|||
Pz II F
|
90
|
42
|
23
|
155
|
||||
Pz II Luchs
|
20
|
77
|
7
|
104
|
||||
Pz II Marder II
|
327
|
204
|
531
|
|||||
Pz II 76.2mm Pak
|
184
|
8
|
192
|
|||||
Pz II le.F.H Wespe
|
518
|
144
|
662
|
|||||
Pz I C
|
40
|
40
|
||||||
Pz I F
|
30
|
30
|
||||||
Pz I sJG 33
|
38
|
38
|
||||||
Pz 47mm Pak(t)
|
172
|
30
|
202
|
|||||
Sum
|
289
|
2,181
|
3,736
|
6,058
|
12,228
|
19,665
|
4,636
|
48,793
|