Colonel Bonner Fellers uses a different code

Fellers was the US Military attache in Cairo and he was given every help by the British, but Fellers transmitted his reports to Washington using an old cipher code-called 'Black' code for communications to and from overseas embassies, which had been completely compromised. The Italians had broken into the US Embassy in Rome, in 1941 copied the code book and returned it without the Americans knowing anything.


OK, so what effects does it have on German successes in North Africa if Fellers' objection to using the State department code had been accepted?
 
Interesting section from 'Destiny in the Desert' by Jonathan Dimbleby.

It was at this moment that, serendipitously, the code-breakers at Bletchley Park discovered that Fellers’s coded messages from Cairo had been decrypted by Axis intelligence. It is impossible to establish the precise impact of this embarrassing discovery on the outcome of the Anglo-American talks – which had already been substantially recast by the fall of Tobruk – but, according to the American historian C. J. Jenner, who has sifted the available evidence, ‘Whitehall handled Washington’s disgrace, which was decisive in appalling loss of British blood and treasure, with adroit magnanimity.’ From Jenner’s account it appears that Churchill cleverly turned America’s mortification to British advantage. Instead of reproaching Roosevelt for the Fellers debacle, he allowed the disgrace merely to hang in the air as he strove to secure the President’s endorsement of his own strategic priorities.

Whether or not remorse for the role that Fellers had inadvertently played in the loss of Tobruk did in fact play a significant part in American calculations, Churchill came away from Washington with every reason to be satisfied with what had been achieved. Sledgehammer had been postponed at least until 1943, Gymnast was still in the frame for 1942, and the Eighth Army was about to be massively reinforced with 300 of the latest and best tanks in the world. He could congratulate himself that, while Roosevelt saw very nearly eye to eye with him over future strategy in the region, the President’s advisors, some of them seething at the way in which – as they saw it – ‘Our Boy’ had been manipulated by Churchill – had clearly been worsted. Paradoxically, so far from the humiliation at Tobruk weakening Churchill’s hand, it had evidently had the opposite effect.
 
From accounts of Rommel's success, it appears reading Black helped him significantly. He was also reading British plain language signals, which also helped. How much Eighth Army traffic B-Dienst was also reading, IDK; I'd guess at least some.

So, a perciptible effect, but maybe not decisive. Rommel was plagued by supply issues--& those were compounded by the Brits reading Enigma.
 
I'm suprised no one has tuned up who tried gaming this. I used to be heavily involved in blind or limited intel games, & my take is the signals intelligence Rommel had was a significant part of his sucess in Libya. The lack of it after his sources were shut off strongly leans towards his problems.

This goes far beyond the Italian penetration of the US Black code. The Brits had their own embarassments along that line some of which related directly to their defeats in Africa. Rommel was also blessed with a robust & capable German signals collection/analysis unit. That was lost to him during the Alimien battles.

Had I the time to burn it would be interesting to go over Rommels African battles, with and without the information he had on the British messages & OB. I strongly suspect the German player in this exercise, no matter how skilled, would be unable to reproduce Rommels level of spectacular victory without the same information.
 
... How much Eighth Army traffic B-Dienst was also reading, IDK; I'd guess at least some. ...

Quite a bit as I understand it. There was a considerable 'clean up' by the Brits in mid 1942. I suspect a lot more than large artillery strikes and Colossal Cracks came to the 8th Army with Monty.
 
Not knowing much about the affair did the British make use of the breach operationally once it had been discovered? Seems like a win-win situation for them, purposely not mention it and use it as emotional blackmail in Washington whilst also using it to feed Rommel bad intelligence before their next major operation. Or was he simply transferred out and the code switched over?
 
From accounts of Rommel's success, it appears reading Black helped him significantly. He was also reading British plain language signals, which also helped.

Yes. The big SIGINT leak for 8th Army was too much sloppy chat on local radio. The Germans had a very efficient radio intercept unit under a man named Seebohm, at Rommel's HQ, which produced lots of good intelligence.

But during First Alamein, a British-Australian counterattack routed the Italian Sabratha Division, and an Allied spearhead unit attacked the HQ itself. (Rommel wasn't there.)

The HQ fought off the attackers, but the radio intercept section was overrun, Seebohm and most of his men were killed, and a lot of their files were captured. The British looked at the files and immediately cracked down on loose radio chatter. Also, of course, Seebohm's experts couldn't be fully replaced.

How much Eighth Army traffic B-Dienst was also reading, IDK; I'd guess at least some.

Not much, actually. British higher-level military ciphers (TYPEX) were never cracked.
 
Quote:
How much Eighth Army traffic B-Dienst was also reading, IDK; I'd guess at least some.

Not much, actually. British higher-level military ciphers (TYPEX) were never cracked.

There was some gained from traffic analysis. Even if you can read the message text from a TYPEX or ENIGMA encryption some clues can be had from technical & context analysis. But, that also was reduced/lost as the Brits improved their radio discipline and the German sigint unit was broken. TYPEX of course was not the only message security used by the Brits and some of the other 'codes' may have been penetrated. I've run across relatively little on this part of it, other than the problems with the Brit naval codes.
 
Not knowing much about the affair did the British make use of the breach operationally once it had been discovered? Seems like a win-win situation for them, purposely not mention it and use it as emotional blackmail in Washington whilst also using it to feed Rommel bad intelligence before their next major operation. Or was he simply transferred out and the code switched over?

Not 100% clear. A lot of the pertinant Brit records seem to be still locked up. T Holt in his exhaustive book on Brit deception ops 'The Deceivers' describes a number of radio based deception ops in the Med theatre from 1942, but he does not have much technical detail so I could not connect them directly to compromised codes/message channels.
 
Quite a bit as I understand it. There was a considerable 'clean up' by the Brits in mid 1942. I suspect a lot more than large artillery strikes and Colossal Cracks came to the 8th Army with Monty.

Montgomery looks to have been very very lucky with the timing of his appointment. Inherits a stabilised line and the other side suddenly looses two very useful sources of information.
 
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