In WWII
Poland fought on the side of the Allies and suffered for it since it was the
first country occupied by Nazi Germany. At the end of the war the suffering of
the Poles did not end since they had to endure the Soviet occupation of their
country and the installation of a communist regime.
The betrayal
of Poland by its Western Allies was a hard blow, especially since its armed
forces fought bravely in multiple campaigns. Polish pilots fought for the RAF
during the Battle of Britain, Polish troops fought in N.Africa, Italy and
Western Europe, the Polish intelligence service operated in occupied Europe and
even had agents inside the German high command. Finally the Poles had managed
to solve the German Enigma cipher machine in the 1930’s and when they shared
the details of their solution with British and French officials in July 1939
they helped them avoid a costly and time consuming theoretical attack on the
Enigma.
Considering
this impressive success of the Polish cipher bureau one would expect that
Polish codes would have a high standard of security and that Polish military,
diplomatic and intelligence communications would be secure from eavesdroppers.
Surprisingly this was not the case. Even though the Poles periodically upgraded
their cipher systems it was possible both for the Germans and the Anglo-Americans
to read some of their most secret messages.
2). The code
used by the Polish resistance movement for communications with the London based
Government in Exile was read
by the Germans since 1942 (by the agents section of OKH/In 7/VI).
3). The code
of the Polish intelligence service in occupied France was solved in 1943 and
messages of the ‘Lubicz’ network were read. The book ‘Secret History of MI6:
1909-1949’, p529 says about this group: ‘Some
of the Polish networks were very productive. One based in the south of France
run by ‘Lubicz' (Zdzislaw Piatkiewicz) had 159 agents, helpers and couriers,
who in August and September 1943 provided 481 reports, of which P.5 circulated
346. Dunderdale's other organizations were rather smaller’.
I’m going to
cover this case in the future.
‘Intelligence
concerning foreign diplomatic exchanges was received from the Forschungsamt
(subordinated directly to GOERING) through Ic/Luftwesen/Abwehr, and was given a
restricted distribution. It consisted of intercepted Allied radio-telegrams
(e.g. London-Stockholm), ordinary radio reports (e.g. Atlantic Radio) and
intercepted traffic between diplomats and ministers on certain links, e.g.
Ankara-Moscow (Turks), Bern-Washington (Americans), London-Washington (Poles).
10. The
last-mentioned source was of great value before and during the invasion and
after the breaking-off of Turkish-German relations. In general the
Forschungsamt reports contained a great deal of significant information
concerning economic and political matters.’
The British also read this traffic as can be seen from messages like
the following:
5). Polish intelligence/military attaché messages from the Middle East
and Bern, Switzerland were read by the Germans throughout the war. For example:
Unfortunately there is limited information available on these cases and
some very interesting TICOM reports have not been declassified by the NSA yet.
Once they are released I will be able to rewrite these essays.
