Overview of 2017

2017 turned out to be a very productive year. During 2017 I copied material from government archives in Germany, US and UK, I received a lot of material from the NSA’s freedom of information act office and I also benefitted from the release of interesting files that were uploaded to the NSA and CIA FOIA websites.

Some of my friends also shared important reports with me and I did my best to repay them by giving them some of my material.

1). Regarding original essays, I wrote the following:

The compromise of the Croat Enigma K cipher machine by the German Army’s codebreakers

The Japanese TOKI diplomatic cipher 1943-45

The Abwehr’s Enigma G cipher machine and Procedure 63

The compromise of Greek partisan radio communications in WWII

Cipher machines of WWII

Secure ciphers - Insecure messages

Information on the Enigma cipher machine found in the War Diary of Inspectorate 7/VI

Compromise of Greek military and diplomatic communications in WWII

The compromise of the Swiss diplomatic Enigma K cipher machine in WWII

Signals intelligence and codebreaking operations during the Greek-Italian War of 1940-41

The code of mr Seymour Parker Gilbert - Agent General for Reparations to Germany

Compromise of State Department communications in WWII

2). I also added new information and pics in various older essays:

The American M-209 cipher machine (I added notes and information from various sources)

Wartime exploitation of Turkish codes by Axis and Allied powers (I added decoded Turkish diplomatic messages)

Soviet partisan codes and KONA 6 (I added information from the TICOM report I-26)

The Japanese FUJI diplomatic cipher 1941-43 (I rewrote parts and added information from TICOM I-181)

Japanese codebreakers of WWII (I added new links and uploaded a PDF file with the decoded US diplomatic messages)

Svetova Revoluce and the codes of the Czechoslovak resistance (I added information from the report ‘Dopady lúštenia šifrovacieho systému čs. londýnskeho MNO z rokov 1940-1945 na domáci odboj’ and the essay ‘STP cipher of the Czechoslovak in-exile Ministry of Defence in London during WWII’)

Decoding Prime Minister Chamberlain’s messages (I added information from TICOM DF-241 and from ‘British Intelligence in the Second World War- volume 2’)

Soviet cipher teleprinters of WWII (I added information from the TICOM reports DF-240 and DF-241)

Compromise of Soviet codes in WWII (I rewrote parts and added information from various sources)

The Slidex code (I added the British Air Support Signals Unit card No. 1)

3). I uploaded the following files and links:

Reports on the Soviet economy issued by German Army’s Leitstelle der Nachrichtenaufklärung

TICOM report DF-229 ‘Three reports on the work of OKW/Chi’

American Cryptology During the Cold War 1945-1989, Book I (NSA website)

BOURBON to Black Friday: The Allied Collaborative COMINT Effort against the Soviet Union, 1945-1948 (NSA website)

TICOM report D-69 ‘Correspondence between OKW/CHI and intercept stations’

SRH-361 ‘History of the Signal Security Agency Volume Two The General Cryptanalytic Problems’ (NSA website)

SRH-364 ‘History of the Signal Security Agency Volume One 1939 – 1945’ (NSA website)

TICOM report I-170 ‘Report on French and Greek Systems by Oberwachtmeister Dr. Otto Karl Winkler of OKH/FNAST 4’

TICOM report I-26 ‘Interrogation of Oblt. Schubert (OKH/Chef HNW/Gen.d.NA) on Russian Military and Agents’ systems at OKM Signals School, Flensburg on 17 June 1945’

TICOM report I-116 ‘Report of interrogation of Lt. Alex Dettmann and Oberwachtmeister Sergius Samsonov of OKH (Gen. d. NA) at Oberursel, Germany, during August 1945’

TICOM report DF-241 ‘The Forschungsamt’

TICOM report DF-240 ‘Characteristics, Analysis and security of cryptographic systems’

TICOM report I-31 ‘Detailed interrogations of Dr. Hüttenhain, formerly head of research section of OKW/Chi, at Flensburg on 18-21 June 1945’

TICOM report I-84 ‘Further interrogation of R.R. Dr. Hüttenhain and Sdf. Dr. Fricke of OKW/Chi on questions set by Mr. Friedman’

TICOM report I-118 ‘Joint reports by Reg. Rat. Dr. Hüttenhain and Sdf. Dr. Fricke, written at CSDIC on or about 28 August 1945’

TICOM report I-120 ‘Translation of Homework by Obltn. W. Werther, Company Commander of 7/LN Rgt. 353, written on 12th August 1945 at A.D. I. (K).’

TICOM report I-137 ‘Final report written by Wachtmeister Otto Buggisch of OKH/Chi and OKW/Chi’

TICOM report I-160 ‘Homework by Sonderführer Kuehn of Gen.d.NA. on General Organization and Work of French Referat’

TICOM report I-176 ‘Homework by Wachtmeister Dr Otto Buggisch of OKH/Chi and OKW/Chi’

TICOM report I-181 ‘Homework by Dr Werner Weber of OKW/Chi’

TICOM report I-123 ‘Interrogation Report on Rudolf Trappe (Civilian) of OKW/Chi’

Summary annual reports of the Army Security Agency (NSA website)

Soviet cryptology articles (BIS Journal)

NSA Early Computer History (NSA website)

4). I posted the following book presentations:

TICOM: The Hunt for Hitler’s Codebreakers

Working on the Dark Side of the Moon: Life Inside the National Security Agency

War By Numbers

British Tank Production and the War Economy

War Over the Steppes - The Air Campaigns on the Eastern Front 1941-45

Criticism by Nigel Askey of the ‘Myth of German superiority on the WW2 Eastern Front’

Interesting essay by Nigel Askey regarding German and Soviet combat performance in the Eastern Front in WWII.

My opinion on this matter is given in the following comparisons:

Strength and loss data Eastern Front – part 1

Tank strength and losses – Eastern Front

Eastern Front Aircraft Strength and Losses 1941-45

WWII Myths - T-34 Best Tank of the war

Compromise of Soviet codes in WWII

Also note the following statements by Christopher Lawrence in ‘War by Numbers: Understanding Conventional Combat‘, p48:

‘We conclude from the Kursk comparison that the Germans had a clear advantage in combat capability that showed itself in both offensive and defensive casualty effectiveness and mission accomplishment. The difference appears to be a factor of 3. This difference appears in the middle of 1943, after the Soviet Army had two years of wartime experience, was using experienced units, and had time to rest, train, and rebuild before the German offensive. Yet there was still a very clear performance difference between these armies’.

and in page 50:

‘One cannot help but note that the relative combat performance of the Israelis and the Arabs in 1956-73 was similar in disparity to that between the Germans and the Soviets in 1943’.

Understandably the truth hurts…

Additional information: Comments on “Deutsche Militärische Verluste” by Rüdiger Overmans

Compromise of State Department communications in WWII

In the course of WWII both the Allies and the Axis powers were able to gain information of great value from reading their enemies secret communications. In Britain the codebreakers of Bletchley Park solved several enemy systems with the most important ones being the German Enigma and Tunny cipher machines and the Italian C-38m. Codebreaking played a role in the Battle of the Atlantic, the North Africa Campaign and the Normandy invasion. 

In the United States the Army and Navy codebreakers solved many Japanese cryptosystems and used this advantage in battle. The great victory at Midway would probably not have been possible if the Americans had not solved the Japanese Navy’s JN25 code.

On the other side of the hill the codebreakers of Germany, Japan, Italy and Finland also solved many important enemy cryptosystems both military and diplomatic. The German codebreakers could eavesdrop on the radio-telephone conversations of Franklin Roosevelt and Winston Churchill, they could decode the messages of the British and US Navies during their convoy operations in the Atlantic and together with the Japanese and Finns they could solve State Department messages (both low and high level)  from embassies around the world.

Britain, the Soviet Union and the United States did not have impenetrable codes. In the course of WWII all three suffered setbacks from their compromised communications. One of the worst failures of US crypto security was the extensive compromise of State Department communications in the period 1940-44.