Allied Code Breakers Compromised

Indeed. The RAF might have been forced to devote serious numbers of aircraft to Coastal Command, rather then harassment raids against Germany.


I have read repeatedly in other posts that Axis forces were royally out produced by the allies, and greater strength at sea would have very little impact over the land-war for Germany with the Soviet Union. They could never match the allies in material, and the disparity would have significant implications in the Axis powers abilities to replace their losses due attrition that years of warfare will no doubt generate.

At the very best, they would start off stronger, hold the offensive longer, and than fight an even more stubborn defensive war against the allies. They would be ground slowly and polished overtime, if allied determination is unabated.

In my opinion, they might get a conditional surrender at the most. Germany might get a negotiated ceasefire with the west, but even that seems too optimistic to me.

Also, lets not forget a little known project called "Manhattan." Berlin and some other German cities might end up self lighting glassed parking lots. However, to be fair, when the two atomic bombs were dropped on Japan, imperial forces didn't have much left to defend and retaliate in kind. If the situation was that enough of the Axis air defenses and interceptors were still strong and operational, a similar mission would be disastrous without first dealing with fighter interceptors ahead of time.


With much respect. Thank you
 
I have read repeatedly in other posts that Axis forces were royally out produced by the allies, and greater strength at sea would have very little impact over the land-war for Germany with the Soviet Union. They could never match the allies in material, and the disparity would have significant implications in the Axis powers abilities to replace their losses due attrition that years of warfare will no doubt generate.

At the very best, they would start off stronger, hold the offensive longer, and than fight an even more stubborn defensive war against the allies. They would be ground slowly and polished overtime, if allied determination is unabated.

In my opinion, they might get a conditional surrender at the most. Germany might get a negotiated ceasefire with the west, but even that seems too optimistic to me.

Also, lets not forget a little known project called "Manhattan." Berlin and some other German cities might end up self lighting glassed parking lots. However, to be fair, when the two atomic bombs were dropped on Japan, imperial forces didn't have much left to defend and retaliate in kind. If the situation was that enough of the Axis air defenses and interceptors were still strong and operational, a similar mission would be disastrous without first dealing with fighter interceptors ahead of time.


With much respect. Thank you

This is true to an extent. The Soviets massively outproduced the Germans in terms of military equipment, but they did not do anything equivalent in terms of logistical production. To some extent they didn't need to do so in the earlier phases of the war where the logistical situation very much was very simple for them, but this bites them in the ass in terms of driving the Wehrmacht entirely out of the Soviet Union. They *can and will* defeat the Germans, they will be doing so at a price that makes the OTL one a cheery bed of roses, however.
 
it would depend on what the germans switched to; the italian system (as later used by the kgb) was unbreakable even with 80's technology

I can't see that happening. With near universal contempt for its own allies Germany isn't going to adopt their systems wholesale when they have their own alternatives.
 
Unless the intel people don't tell the Nazi's where they got the idea.

Since most of the "intel people" are Nazis, are loyal to the Nazis, or agree with the Nazis it's a bit hard to have that happen. The German military's contempt for its allies wasn't restricted solely to the Nazis.
 

Cook

Banned
the italian system (as later used by the kgb) was unbreakable even with 80's technology
Soviet use of One Time Message Pads predates World War Two. It broke down during the war because the tempo of traffic exceeded the rate that they could produce and distribute new message pads, resulting in their use of previously used pads and compromising the cypher system.

The system of One Time Message Pads is still widely used today, mostly as a back-up in the event of electronic encryption failure. It is time consuming and laborious in encryption, sending, receiving and decryption, but it isn’t even theoretically breakable since it never repeats.
 
Since most of the "intel people" are Nazis, are loyal to the Nazis, or agree with the Nazis it's a bit hard to have that happen.

Well, actually, a lot of the problem with German Intelligence in WWII is that a significant proportion, including its chief (Canaris), were disloyal to the regime...
 

BlondieBC

Banned
Soviet use of One Time Message Pads predates World War Two. It broke down during the war because the tempo of traffic exceeded the rate that they could produce and distribute new message pads, resulting in their use of previously used pads and compromising the cypher system.

The system of One Time Message Pads is still widely used today, mostly as a back-up in the event of electronic encryption failure. It is time consuming and laborious in encryption, sending, receiving and decryption, but it isn’t even theoretically breakable since it never repeats.

Any manual encryption system is slow to use, well at least if it has a reasonable level of complexity.
 
Well, actually, a lot of the problem with German Intelligence in WWII is that a significant proportion, including its chief (Canaris), were disloyal to the regime...

Disloyal is far too general phrase. Many of them disliked the regime, but only a minority of those carried out active resistance, especially before 1943. Early in the war most were at least placated by Germany's victories.
 

Cook

Banned
Any manual encryption system is slow to use, well at least if it has a reasonable level of complexity.
I mean really slow. Encrypting a short message consisting of a request for new sig gear and a time and location for the marry-up can take an hour, and another twenty minutes to send. I know because I’ve done it. God help anyone that has to send a message of any length; the worst I received consisted of 300 x 3 letter groups, and that was a long decrypt.
 

BlondieBC

Banned
I mean really slow. Encrypting a short message consisting of a request for new sig gear and a time and location for the marry-up can take an hour, and another twenty minutes to send. I know because I’ve done it. God help anyone that has to send a message of any length; the worst I received consisted of 300 x 3 letter groups, and that was a long decrypt.

I used to work in a Battalion HQ, and i remember the code books. Some simple message like Fire 10 rounds at location 1234567890 would be over 40 letters, and if either side makes one mistake, the message would be meaningless. And that is an over simplification because I am likely to have to give the type of round, FFO or adjust, fuse settings. And I was sitting in a nice tent, with a desk, not in the mud. We never trained sending the code groups below battalion level, so maybe they would just talk in the clear. I am not so sure how it would really work in combat, maybe we would just encrypt messages to Brigade.

And god forbid I had to handle something unexpected by the code books and spell a message like "Deliver the case of typhus vaccine to 435 South Canal Street, Apt 48A, Scarbourgh". I can only begin to imagine how much work it would be to actually send orders over the network like, "Change of plan, attack here, with these units, here is the intel on what we think is there, here is the assistance we are giving you, etc.

BTW, the German WW1 Naval code books look very similar to USA army code books, but with 5 letter groups, so I understand why they used machines in WW2. Sending real intel to say U-boats in the code groups could take many hours, and a single wrong letter in the right place means the U-boat goes to the wrong location.

And if was really critical the message was right, we have to send it twice, and have the guy read it back. Seemed a bit of overkill, but understandable.
 
If the Japanese find out their codes were compromised, they probably wouldn't believe it...."Those barbarians reading our codes? Impossible!" And Enigima, there were two Enigma codes that the Allies never did break: one was the Enigma used by the Kreigsmarine's heavy ships: it was never cracked. The other one? What the British called "Pike". It was the code used by surface raiders, blockade-runners, and their supply ships. Even if the British (and Americans later on) couldn't read a message, just using Direction-Finding led a cruiser to the runner or supply ship, and that would be that.
 
If the Japanese find out their codes were compromised, they probably wouldn't believe it...."Those barbarians reading our codes? Impossible!" And Enigima, there were two Enigma codes that the Allies never did break: one was the Enigma used by the Kreigsmarine's heavy ships: it was never cracked. The other one? What the British called "Pike". It was the code used by surface raiders, blockade-runners, and their supply ships. Even if the British (and Americans later on) couldn't read a message, just using Direction-Finding led a cruiser to the runner or supply ship, and that would be that.

Again, the US media actually did leak Engima and Magic. After Midway, no less. The Axis didn't notice or didn't believe it, depending on whether you're an optimist or a pessimist.
 
Yeah, that was the famous Chicago Tribune piece by Stanley Johnston, who had been embedded (for all intents and purposes) with the Lexington carrier group until she was sunk at Coral Sea. He picked up the secret from talking to several officers, and ran the story (how it got by the censors I have no idea). It should be noted that the Tribune was notorious for having a vicious hatred of FDR. Admiral King wanted the paper prosecuted, but Biddle (AG) and FDR decided not to. But King did have his revenge: no reporter from the Tribune was allowed to go to sea with the USN for over a year. And Johnston was permanently banned from going with the Navy. Either Axis intelligence in Latin America (the Mexico and Buenos Aires stations were the busiest) ignored it, or didn't believe it. The Mexico Station (Japanese mainly) was shut down after Mexico declared war on the Axis, but the Buenos Aires station was active throughout the war-both Germans and Japanese had intel operations there.
 
There were four possible locations where the Japanese could have found that their codes had been compromised: Guam, where the Navy had a small SIGINT Station, and the nine sailors there had time before the island fell to the Japanese on 10 Dec 41 to destroy all of their commo gear, files, and other equipment and materials. The Japanese simply assumed they were sailors assigned to the radio station and never found that they were COMINT operators. They were sent to Japan with the other POWs from Guam, and spent the war working as stevedores and on farms. Then there was the British in both Hong Kong and Singapore, as part of their Far East Combined Bureau. The Hong Kong codebreakers were evac'd to Singapore before the shooting started, and everyone was evac'd to Ceylon in Jan '42, well before the surrender. Again, what they couldn't take with them was destroyed. Next, the Dutch: they had a codebreaking operation known as Kamer 14, and had made some penetration-not much, but some, into the IJN's JN-25 code. Before the fall of the Dutch East Indies, they destroyed their materials, crypto gear, etc. and escaped to Australia via submarine. Finally, the American codebreakers in the Philippines: they were on Correigidor in a tunnel complex separate from the Army's tunnels, and were evac'd in three groups, one to Java and two direct to Australia. The group in Java worked with the Dutch until everyone there made another trip by sub-to Australia, and the other two groups wend direct to Oz by sub. When the Japanese took Correigidor, they were looking for the codebreakers, and interrogated everyone they found hiding in the old Navy tunnel. They gave up when told the people they were looking for had left by sub a month earlier (the last group left on 8 Apr 42), while the only man left behind from the operation was the cook! And the Japanese gave up on him when he told them he knew nothing about radios or codes, but was just a cook.
 
I agree with everyone here that the Germans and Japanese had the wrong attitude to signal security. For the Germans, Rebecca A. Ratcliff “Delusions of Intelligence: Enigma, Ultra, and the End of Secure Ciphers” reviewed at http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=13210 gives details of why they were unlikely to find out that Enigma had been compromised. Another interesting article is “Der Fall Wicher” by Joseph A. Meyer at http://www.google.co.uk/url?sa=t&rc...qtnmDQ&usg=AFQjCNH_CbEuYM_wHOntwzGrYzONij1oww.

If you want a POD for a WW2 without ULTRA, you might simply make the Germans a little more paranoid in about 1930 when they realized that the commercial Enigma was not strong enough. Simply deciding to make the rotor movement more complicated, as was done in the Abwehr Enigma, and adding a plugboard, as was done by the other services, at the same time would have probably prevented the initial break. If they were really paranoid, they could have replaced the reflector by a symmetric plugboard and added a fourth rotor. The German Navy might even have explained to the other services how to send the settings without weakening the machine.
 
Top