The OWI had representative in countries abroad and participated not only
in news gathering activities but also Anti-Axis propaganda and even espionage.
Especially in Bern, Switzerland the local station, headed by Gerald M Mayer, cooperated
closely with the OSS - Office of
Strategic Services station of Allen Dulles.
Military and intelligence history mostly dealing with World War II.
Wednesday, July 30, 2014
Compromise of OWI - Office of War Information communications
In 1942 the
US government created a new organization called the Office of War Information, headed by Elmer Davis. This
organization absorbed the functions of several other government departments
such as the Office of Facts and Figures (OWI's direct predecessor), the Office
of Government Reports, the Division of Information of the Office for Emergency
Management and the Foreign Information Service.
Monday, July 28, 2014
Svetova Revoluce and the codes of the Czechoslovak resistance
At the end of the First World War the multiethnic Austro-Hungarian Empire
collapsed and out of its ruins emerged several new countries. One of these was Czechoslovakia,
containing the Czech areas of Bohemia and Moravia together with Slovakia and Carpathian
Ruthenia in the east.
In the interwar period Czechoslovakia followed a foreign policy supportive of France and was part of the Little Entente. The country had a stable democracy and its industrial resources were large (based on the Skoda works) for such a small country. However there were two important problems affecting Czech national security. On the one hand the rise of Nazi Germany and its rearmament was a clear security threat. At the same time there were serious problems with the German and Slovak minorities that resented Czech rule.
Czechoslovakia contained a large number of minorities that were dissatisfied with the ruling Czech establishment. Especially the German minority made up roughly 23% of the population (according to the 1921 census) and a large part of it was concentrated in the border with Germany called Sudetenland. Many of the Sudeten Germans wanted for their areas to be unified with Germany and in the 1930’s Hitler’s Germany supported the demands of the Sudeten German Party. These claims were rejected by the Czech government of Edvard Beneš and as the Czech crisis threatened Europe with a new war a conference took place in Munich between the governments of Germany, Italy, Britain and France.
In the interwar period Czechoslovakia followed a foreign policy supportive of France and was part of the Little Entente. The country had a stable democracy and its industrial resources were large (based on the Skoda works) for such a small country. However there were two important problems affecting Czech national security. On the one hand the rise of Nazi Germany and its rearmament was a clear security threat. At the same time there were serious problems with the German and Slovak minorities that resented Czech rule.
Czechoslovakia contained a large number of minorities that were dissatisfied with the ruling Czech establishment. Especially the German minority made up roughly 23% of the population (according to the 1921 census) and a large part of it was concentrated in the border with Germany called Sudetenland. Many of the Sudeten Germans wanted for their areas to be unified with Germany and in the 1930’s Hitler’s Germany supported the demands of the Sudeten German Party. These claims were rejected by the Czech government of Edvard Beneš and as the Czech crisis threatened Europe with a new war a conference took place in Munich between the governments of Germany, Italy, Britain and France.
Without support
from Britain and France the Czech government was forced to cede the Sudeten
territories to Germany and also lost other disputed areas to Hungary and
Poland. Even though Germany had succeeded in absorbing the Sudeten areas and in
weakening Czechoslovakia that did not
stop Hitler’s offensive plans and in March 1939 German troops invaded and
occupied the rest of the country. From then on the country was ruled by Germany
and special attention was given to its heavy industry which produced weapons
for the German armed forces.
During the war the Czech Government in Exile, headed by Beneš, was based in London
and had regular communications with the Czech resistance. The most daring operation
of the resistance was the assassination of Reinhard Heydrich, protector
of Bohemia and Moravia and former head
of the Reich Main Security Office. However after this episode the Germans took
many security measures and were generally able to keep the resistance
activities under control. In this area they took advantage of the insecure
communications between the resistance and the Czech intelligence service,
operating from Britain.Tuesday, July 22, 2014
Compromise of Soviet codes in WWII
Signals intelligence and codebreaking played an important
role in WWII. British and American codebreakers solved many important Axis
crypto systems, such as the German Enigma machine and the Japanese Navy’s code
JN25.
Historians have not only acknowledged these Allied successes
but they’ve probably exaggerated their importance in the actual campaigns of
the war.
Unfortunately the work of the Axis codebreakers hasn’t
received similar attention. As I’ve mentioned in my piece Acknowledging
failures of crypto security all the participants suffered setbacks
from weak/compromised codes and they all had some successes with enemy systems.
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.
After having dealt with the United
States and Britain it’s
time to have a look at the Soviet Union and their worst failures.
Move along comrade, nothing to see here
Compromises of communications security are usually difficult
to acknowledge by the countries that suffer them. For example since the 1970’s
countless books have been written about the successes of Bletchley Park, yet
detailed information on the German solution of Allied codes only started to
become available in the 2000’s when TICOM reports and other relevant documents
were released to the public archives by the US and UK authorities.
In Russia the compromise of their codes during WWII has not
yet been officially acknowledged and the archives of the codebreaking
organizations have remained closed to researchers. This is a continuation of
the Soviet policy of secrecy.
The Soviet Union was a secretive society and information was
tightly controlled by the ruling elite. This means that history books avoided
topics that embarrassed the regime and instead presented the officially
sanctioned version of history. Soviet era histories of WWII avoided references
to codes and ciphers and instead talked about ‘radio-electronic combat’ which
dealt with direction finding, traffic analysis and jamming (1).
After the fall of the Soviet Union several important
government archives were opened to researchers and this information has been incorporated
in new books and studies of WWII. However similar advances haven’t taken place
in the fields of signals intelligence and cryptologic history. Unlike the US
and UK that have admitted at least some of their communications security
failures the official line in Russia is that high level Soviet codes were
unbreakable and only unimportant tactical codes could be read by the Germans.
Even new books and studies on cryptology repeat these statements (2).
However various sources such as the TICOM reports, the
war diary of the German Army’s signal intelligence agency Inspectorate 7/VI and the monthly reports of the cryptanalytic
centre in the East Horchleitstelle Ost
clearly show that the Germans could solve even high level Soviet military and
NKVD codes. Monday, July 21, 2014
Update
I have uploaded TICOM report DF-111 ‘Comments on various
cryptologic matters’. Acquired through the NSA’s FOIA office. Available from my Google docs and Scribd accounts.
I have rewritten Soviet Diplomatic Code 26 and the elusive Dr Roeder using information from DF-111.
I have rewritten Soviet Diplomatic Code 26 and the elusive Dr Roeder using information from DF-111.
Friday, July 18, 2014
Update
I have uploaded TICOM report DF-105 ‘Determination
of the Absolute Setting of the AM-1 (M-209) by Using Two Messages with
Different Indicators’. Acquired through the NSA’s FOIA office.
Available from my Google docs and Scribd accounts.
Available from my Google docs and Scribd accounts.
Monday, July 14, 2014
Compromise of Soviet codes in WWII – the good, the bad and the unexpected
After
covering the cryptologic failures of the United
States and Britain in
WWII, i’m currently writing a summary of the compromise of Soviet codes in
WWII, however there are some good news and some bad news regarding the
available sources.
The good
news
The war diary
of the German Army’s signal intelligence agency Inspectorate 7/VI and the
reports of the cryptanalytic centre in the East Horchleitstelle Ost (later
named Leitstelle der Nachrichtenaufklärung)
are available for the period 1941-43. Also summaries on the solution of Soviet
codes are available for the period October 1944-March 1945.
The bad news
I haven’t been able to find the reports of Horchleitstelle Ost for the second half of 1941 and for
the period February- September 1944.
The
unexpected
According to
a recently declassified TICOM report the Germans were able to read the first
version of the Soviet diplomatic one time pad code in the 1930’s and the codes
of the Comintern. In the first case their success was due to the fact that the
system was not true one time pad in that one additive page was assigned to each
message. If the values were not enough to encipher the entire message then they
were reused.
In the case
of the Comintern it seems that the main system used by Communist Parties around
the world was a numerical code used together with a letter to number
substitution table. The table was used as a ‘key’ generator for additive
sequences used to encipher the coded message. A common book would be used for
this purpose and the user would identify through the indicator the page and
line that the sequence would start from. In one such case the Germans solved the ‘encipherment sequence of about five million
digits’ and identified the five books used as cipher.
Wednesday, July 9, 2014
The French War Ministry’s FLD code
In May 1940 Germany
shocked the world by defeating
the combined forces of France, Britain, Belgium and Holland in a short land
campaign. Unlike World War I that had ended in millions of deaths and a
stalemate in the West, this time the German forces were able to quickly defeat
their opponents. After France’s defeat several theories were promoted, trying
to explain this strange outcome. Some focused on the supposed superiority of
the Germans in manpower and armaments, while others tried to point to the
German Panzer divisions that supposedly had a big advantage over the similar
French units.
General
Gamelin who commanded the French forces told Churchill that the defeat was due
to: ‘Inferiority of numbers, inferiority of equipment, inferiority of method’.
In fact both sides had roughly similar strength in troops and aircraft while in
tanks it was the Franco-British alliance that had the advantage, both in terms
of numbers and of quality.
However the
German were able to overcome their tank inferiority by grouping their armored
divisions together, supporting them with ample airpower and providing them with
dedicated infantry, anti-tank, artillery and communication units. At the same
time their radio communications system was much more advanced than the French
Army’s and orders could be dispatched quickly and securely to all units.
The German
leadership also took a big risk by attacking
through the Ardennes area with the purpose of cutting off the northern part
of the Allied front.
Another area
where the Germans had the advantage was in signals
intelligence. Unfortunately historians have focused almost exclusively on
the German Enigma
cipher machine and its solution by the codebreakers of Bletchley Park thus
neglecting the many
successes of the German codebreakers.
The German
victories during the period 1939-1942 in France, N.Africa, Atlantic and in the
Eastern Front were achieved at least in part thanks to their ability to read
their enemies communications.
French
military codes and the Battle of France
The French
military and civilian authorities used for their secret communications several codebooks,
both enciphered and unenciphered. Individually these systems did not have a
very high degree of security but it seems that the French strategy was to
overwhelm enemy codebreakers through the simultaneous use of a large number of
different codebooks. (1)
In addition
to the codebooks a number of Hagelin B-211 and C-36 cipher
machines had been ordered in the 1930’s. These cipher machines proved secure in
1940 but it doesn’t seem like they were available in large numbers since the
codebooks continued to be used on important French communications links.
From recently
released TICOM reports and various books it is clear that the Germans could
read French Army tactical codes (2), the Navy’s main cipher system (3) and the
Airforce’s ‘Aviation Militaire’ (4). By exploiting these systems the Germans
obviously got valuable intelligence. However their main success that directly
contributed to their victory in 1940 was achieved against a high level
enciphered code used by the French War Ministry.
Monday, July 7, 2014
Case ‘Wicher’ – Information from the war diary of Inspectorate 7/VI
In the Second
World War the Allies and the Axis fought battles not only with tanks, aircraft
and infantry but also in the fields of signals intelligence and cryptology.
Both sides tried to protect their communications from outsiders by using
complicated cipher procedures and their codebreakers made every effort to solve
enemy codes and thus gain valuable intelligence.
The Anglo-Americans
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 USA 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 code.
However the
Axis codebreakers also
had their successes and they were also able to compromise various Allied crypto
system both low and high level.
One
interesting question that often comes up in history books is whether the
Germans ever suspected that their Enigma cipher machine was being read by the
Allies and how the war could have taken a different turn had they managed to
discover that it was not secure.
The truth is
that the Germans never considered the Enigma to be unbreakable and in fact they
had discovered in 1939 that the Poles had solved messages. During the war they
continued to investigate the Polish solution of the Enigma, which they called
case ‘Wicher’. (1)Wednesday, July 2, 2014
Professor Wolfgang Franz and OKW/Chi’s mathematical research department
Nazi Germany
had several codebreaking agencies both military and civilian. The armed forces
had separate agencies for the Army, Navy and Airforce plus there were
codebreaking departments in the Foreign Ministry, in Goering’s Forschungsamt
and in the Supreme Command of the Armed Forces. This last department operated
on civilian lines even though it was subordinated to the military.
Thanks to the
success of the department is solving the strip cipher dr Huettenhain was able to hire more
mathematicians and expand the research section.
It is
interesting to note that a special cryptanalytic device called the ‘Tower-Clock’ was used to
solve the strip system. Franz says in pages 9-10:
‘In addition, there was built at my suggestion at the Bureau an electric machine which permits determining a number of repetitions of letters in a polyalphabetic substitution on a width of 30 with a depth of 20 to 80 lines, taking one line at a time, which naturally is fundamental for problem (f) above.’
The apparatus consisted of a single teleprinter tape reading head (speed 1 1/2 symbols per second); a storage means, by which any one of five different scores could be assigned, on a basis of frequency, to each of the letters in the 30 separate monoalphabets that resulted from the 30 columns of depth; a distributor that rotated in synchronism with the tape stepping, and selected which set of 30 scores was to be used as basis for evaluating the successive cipher letters; and a pen recording device.
The German codebreakers were only able to exploit the strip cipher to such a degree thanks to serious mistakes in the use of the system by the State Department. Franz acknowledged this in page 6 of the DF-176 report:
The
OKW/Chi agency
OKW/Chi -
Oberkommando der Wehrmacht/Chiffrier Abteilung was the Signal Intelligence
Agency of the Supreme Command of the Armed Forces. It had been established as a
separate agency in 1920 and in the interwar period it was able to solve the
codes of many foreign countries. Initially the focus was on philological
research but the introduction of more complex codes and ciphers led the Germans
to invest in mathematical research in the field of cryptanalysis.
The person
who orchestrated this change in priorities was Wilhelm Fenner. Fenner started
working for the department in 1921 together with his friend Fedor Novopaschenny, a former Tsarist codebreaker
and in 1922 became an official employee. In the beginning he didn’t know much
about solving codes but he learned mathematical techniques from his Russian
friend and came to realize that the agency would need to make organizational
changes in order to solve the more difficult foreign cryptosystems.
Since Fenner
quickly became head of the cryptanalysis department he was able to carry out his
plan to reorganize the agency. First he introduced a more rigorous training
program for analysts and concentrated on the scientific analysis of cryptologic
history and systems.
The next step
in the 1930’s was to hire mathematicians.
Professor
Huettenhain and OKW/Chi’s mathematical research department
The first
mathematician hired by Fenner was Erich Huettenhain. In the mid 1930’s Huettenhain worked at the
observatory of the University of Münster and came to Fenner’s attention when he
contacted Chi with some of his proposals for cryptographic systems. Although
his systems were ‘unusable without
exception’ he was offered a job at Chi and he accepted.
Huettenhain became responsible for mathematical analysis of more
difficult cipher systems and in the early years of WWII new personnel were
hired to form a separate mathematical research department.
These were Wolfgang
Franz, Werner Weber, Ernst Witt, Georg Aumann, Alexander Aigner, Oswald Teichmueller and Johann Friedrich Schultze.
During the
war they solved several difficult foreign cipher systems. Weber was successful
with a Japanese diplomatic code transposed
on a stencil, Witt solved the stencil
subtractor frame used by the Polish diplomatic and intelligence service and
Franz was responsible for the exploitation
of the State Department’s strip cipher.
Apart from
the aforementioned individuals, two more mathematicians, Karl Stein
and Gisbert Hasenjaeger
were hired to work in the cipher security department.
Professors
Franz and the State Department’s strip cipher
According to
the recently declassified TICOM report DF-176 ‘Answers written by
professor doctor Wolfgang Franz to questions of ASA Europe’ Wolfgang Franz primarily
studied mathematics in the period 1924-1929, during 1930-1934 worked as an
assistant at the mathematical seminar at the University of Marburg and in 1937
moved to the University of Giessen as an assistant. When at the beginning of
WWII the University of Giessen was closed down he spent a semester as a
substitute at the University of Gottingen.
Franz’s area
of expertise was topology.
Thanks to a
friend of his who knew Huettenhain
he was able to get assigned to the OKW Cipher department in Berlin in 1940. The
initial training program consisted of solving simple codes and ciphers and as
Franz was easily able to cope with these he moved on to real traffic.
The first
systems he worked on were a Mexican and a Greek code and he was able to solve
them. The most important system solved by Franz was the US diplomatic M-138-A
strip cipher, called Am10 by the
Germans:
‘Especially
laborious and difficult work was connected with an American system which,
judging by all indications was of great importance. This was the strip cipher
system of the American diplomatic service which was subsequently solved in
part.’
According to
DF-176, p6 Franz had started his own investigations into this system and was
able to make some limited progress when he received the ‘circular’ strips 0-1
and three ‘special’ strips used between Washington and Helsinki, Tallinn and
Reval. Using these strips messages could be solved and his investigations could
move forward.
Regarding the
strip cipher 70 ‘different traffics’
(links?) were identified and 28 solved plus 6 numerical keys.
‘In addition, there was built at my suggestion at the Bureau an electric machine which permits determining a number of repetitions of letters in a polyalphabetic substitution on a width of 30 with a depth of 20 to 80 lines, taking one line at a time, which naturally is fundamental for problem (f) above.’
According to EASI
vol2 ‘Notes on German High level
Cryptography and Cryptanalysis’ , p56-57
c.
Statistical "depth-increaser." - The "Turmuhr," or
"Tower-Clock was a device for testing a sequence of thirty
consecutive cipher letters statistically against a given "depth" of
similar sequences, to determine whether the former belonged to the given depth.
It was used "primarily for work on the U.S. strip cipher, when cribbing which was generally employed
was impossible. It cost approximately $1,000.00.The apparatus consisted of a single teleprinter tape reading head (speed 1 1/2 symbols per second); a storage means, by which any one of five different scores could be assigned, on a basis of frequency, to each of the letters in the 30 separate monoalphabets that resulted from the 30 columns of depth; a distributor that rotated in synchronism with the tape stepping, and selected which set of 30 scores was to be used as basis for evaluating the successive cipher letters; and a pen recording device.
The German codebreakers were only able to exploit the strip cipher to such a degree thanks to serious mistakes in the use of the system by the State Department. Franz acknowledged this in page 6 of the DF-176 report:
‘This strip cipher system, when rightly
employed, doubtlessly has great advantages .It appears to me, however, that it
was not used with sufficient caution. Only through carelessness, in part
through lack of care in setting up, was it possible to break into the system as
far as we did. Only after the Americans had obviously noticed that many of
their messages were being read was the application so modified that although
the basic idea was the same the possibilities of breaking in were materially
reduced.’
Postwar
career
In the
postwar period professor Franz returned to teaching at Frankfurt University
where he eventually became dean of the newly established Department of
Mathematics. Also in 1967 he became president of the German Mathematical
Society.
In the end It
might give some comfort to the Americans to know that their strip cipher was
solved by a real gentleman, as report DF-176 says: ‘Personal contact with Dr Franz indicated that he was a gentleman of
unusual scholarship and integrity, an impression confirmed by the report’.
Sources: TICOM reports DF-187
A-G and DF-176,
‘European Axis Signal Intelligence in
World War II’ vol2
Update
I have uploaded TICOM report DF-176 'Answers written by
professor doctor Wolfgang Franz to questions of ASA Europe' - 1949.
Acquired through the NSA’s FOIA office.
Available from my Google Docs and Scribd accounts.
Upcoming essays
After finally
receiving the documents I was waiting for I can write a detailed essay about the
compromise of Soviet codes in WWII. Within the month I’ll also try to cover
other interesting cases such as the German investigations on the solution of
the Enigma by the Polish codebreakers and the FLD code used by French War
Ministry in the period 1939-1940.
In the news
Cryptome
has a kickstarter campaign. If you can support them, do so!
Nigel Askey, author of the essay ‘The T-34 in WWII: the legend vs. the performance’ has updated his very interesting website operationbarbarossa.net. Check it out if you’re interested in analysis of weapon system effectiveness and wargaming simulations.
Nigel Askey, author of the essay ‘The T-34 in WWII: the legend vs. the performance’ has updated his very interesting website operationbarbarossa.net. Check it out if you’re interested in analysis of weapon system effectiveness and wargaming simulations.
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