Hitler's Codebreakers: German Signals Intelligence in World War 2

Have you ever wondered how successful Hitler's code breakers were at breaking Allied codes during the Second World War?The wartime story of code breaking has almost exclusively centred on Allied successes, particularly that of Bletchley Park breaking the Enigma code. However, the Germans were extremely active in code breaking and had their successes. But it was not until after the war that the extent or otherwise of their triumphs could be gauged. With the war in Europe at an end, in April-May 1945 British and American code breaking teams hunted for their German counterparts to find out just how good they had been. There were lessons to be learned for the post-war period for Western military intelligence. This publication summarises the European Axis Signal Intelligence in the Second World War as revealed by ‘TICOM’ Investigations and by other Prisoner of War Interrogations and Captured Material, Principally German and completed in May 1946. This is available on the National Security Agency website. TICOM – Target Intelligence Committee – was a shadowy Anglo-American organisation set up in October 1944 whose cover name disguised its real purpose – the seeking out of German Sigint staff for interrogation in the immediate aftermath of the war of German Sigint staff for interrogation.This edited volume extracts key data from the 1000 pages of the original documents to create a fascinating and technical insight into German cryptography.PLEASE NOTE: The book is a technical summary of the TICOM documents using the words of those collecting the data. The complex data was written for military analysis rather than general reading so the Allies could assess Hitler's code breaking operation during the war. It becomes clear that Hitler's team understood that the Enigma cipher machine had weaknesses and that they had various ingenious machines either developed or under development as the war drew to a close. Lack of resources – and running out of time – put paid to any major operational deployment of this machinery, but underlines the fact that German ingenuity came close to a situation where they would have made Bletchley Park’s task almost impossible. It includes a report on the interrogation of 5 leading Germans in Nuremburg, September 1945 regarding signals intelligence. They are: General Jodl, Grand Admiral Donitz, General Field Marshall Keitel, Herr Von Ribbentrop and Field Marshall Goering.