Enigma Code Never Broken

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Dunash

Banned
WI the British code breakers at Bletchley Park hadn't managed to break the Nazi Enigma codes (or U110 hadn't been captured with its Enigma rotors intact, or the 2500 valve Mark II Colossus computer had failed) and Ultra had failed to reveal the U Boat Wolf Pack routes in the critical summer 1941, Rommel's plans, Kursk Offensive info handed to Stalin, D Day preparations etc, could it literally have cost the war, or is Ultra's role overplayed?
 
Depends upon who you ask. Codebreaking was essential for the Uboat war (not strickly Ultra though), and useful in other places, but Ultra simply wasn't used that much, and when it was, it wasn't always believed.

Now, in the Pacific (none of this was Ultra), codebreaking was far more useful, but the odds were so badly stacked against the Japanese in any case we are really talking more about how long it takes, not whether it will happen or not...
 
Other methods of intellegence gathering were well developed and those would have been even better absent Enigma decrypts. To use some examples from radio intellegence. The Brits put a lot of effort into direction finding of the German submarine signals - the HuF DuF system. For much of the war the direction finding and signal analysis were more important vs the submarines than Enigma decrypts.

Without ULTRA coming down from above the field commanders would have paid more attention to things like prisoner interrogation, patrol reports, air recon, decrypts of low level coded messages. At higher levels more attention would have been paid to developing spy networks.

There are some examples of dependance on ULTRA causing Allied failures. ie: in the spring of 1943 the Allied Generals from Ike, to Brit 1st Army commander Anderson, and the US Corps commander Fredendal being suprised by Kesselrings offensive in Tunisia. Their intel chiefs were to focused on ULTRA material and not watching the front line reports from the lower level intel officers.

Overall the Enigma decrypts were a major benefit, and certainly shortened the war several months. But they were not a pancea without which the Allies would have lost the war.
 

Kongzilla

Banned
Yea I think Ultimately it would make little difference. A few more convoys would get attacked because they wouldn't avoid the Ambushes. But that just means more U-Boats would get destroyed in fights.
 
Scott Rosenthal said:
Codebreaking was essential for the Uboat war
I'm far less sure of that. IMO, HF/DF & traffic analysis would do nicely, in the absence of Ultra.
Scott Rosenthal said:
in the Pacific (none of this was Ultra)
Nor even Enigma, so not an issue.
Scott Rosenthal said:
codebreaking was far more useful
Especially where the maru code was concerned...
Carl Schwamberger said:
For much of the war the direction finding and signal analysis were more important vs the submarines than Enigma decrypts.
Agreed.
Carl Schwamberger said:
Without ULTRA coming down from above the field commanders would have paid more attention to things like prisoner interrogation, patrol reports, air recon, decrypts of low level coded messages. At higher levels more attention would have been paid to developing spy networks.
Absolutely right. In fact, it might have prevented surprise in the Ardennes in '44: there was so much reliance on Enigma, the mass of other intel revealling things were odd was overlooked.
Carl Schwamberger said:
Overall the Enigma decrypts were a major benefit, and certainly shortened the war several months. But they were not a pancea without which the Allies would have lost the war.
Agreed. It did materially shorten the war.
 
Something that seems often overlooked is the codebreaking efforts of B-Dienst in breaking most allied codes, such that convoy re-routing through Ultra intelligence resulted in U-boat re-routing. British and American confidence in the security of ciphers was as flawed as in the German case.
 
WI the British code breakers at Bletchley Park hadn't managed to break the Nazi Enigma codes (or U110 hadn't been captured with its Enigma rotors intact, or the 2500 valve Mark II Colossus computer had failed) and Ultra had failed to reveal the U Boat Wolf Pack routes in the critical summer 1941, Rommel's plans, Kursk Offensive info handed to Stalin, D Day preparations etc, could it literally have cost the war, or is Ultra's role overplayed?

First - Enigma was not broken by "the British... at Bletchley Park". Enigma had been cracked in the 1930s by Polish analysts. German changes had defeated the Poles by 1939, but the Poles saw how to overcome those changes - they simply did not have the resources.

So in July 1939, the Poles gave all their findings to Britain and France. (It was a French spy that had supplied them with the German operating manuals for Enigma and other documents that enabled the initial break.)

Then after the fall of Poland, the Polish analysts escaped to France, where they resumed work under French control, in partnership with the British at Bletchley Park. The break in early 1940 was a joint effort, and both groups deciphered thousands of messages before the French capitulation in June.

Now here's where it gets really weird: the official French intelligence service adhered to Vichy France. However, they arranged for the Poles to resume work at a location in unoccupied southern France. This work continued all the way up to November 1942, when the Germans marched in after TORCH. IOW, the Vichy French government had the Enigma secret. I'm pretty sure that the spooks never told Petain or Laval about it, though.

But... WI after Mers-el-Kebir, some anglophobic spook leaks the whole thing to Germany. The Germans don't believe it, but they follow up by raiding the Polish center in southern France (illegal under the capitulations, but that's what Skorzeny is for). And ULTRA dies young.

Now, what are the effects?

Considerable at every stage. Some people think that ULTRA was not important because it rarely provided operational intelligence which could be used immediately. What they overlook is that ULTRA provided Allied commanders with an absolutely authoritative picture of German strengths, weaknesses, and expectations.

When one reviews some of the contemporary analysis, it is often shocking to see how mistaken it was. For instance, in 1942, the former U.S. attaché in Romania returned to the U.S. and reported on conditions in Europe. He was certain the Germans had 10,000 or more aircraft and a huge airborne force available to invade Britain.

The British, of course, knew better - much better. They could be certain that there were no large German forces that they didn't know about. Indeed, they could be certain about the strengths of German forces on every front and in every branch: they were reading the Germans' own strength returns.

This allowed them to lay out their own plans with near-perfect confidence, and to anticipate most German moves.

ULTRA was helpful, if not decisive, in the Battle of Britain. It provided daily status updates on the German air fleets. Bletchley Park continually read reams of Luftwaffe traffic, which was carefully indexed and analyzed at Bletchley Park. It was said that by 1942, the men who knew the most about the Luftwaffe in all its aspects were in Britain.

ULTRA intercepts were key to the "Battle of the Beams" during the Blitz.

ULTRA in 1941 allowed the Allies to route convoys around U-boat patrols. This ended the first (and most dangerous) success of the U-boat wolfpacks, saving about 2 million tons of shipping.

ULTRA was a major asssist in the "Double-Cross" System: the British controllers could read what the Germans were saying to each other about the double agents.

ULTRA enabled Allied air and naval forces to intercept many supply ships between Italy and Africa.

In 1942, the Allies lost U-boat Enigma, and suffered another period of horrendous losses. But they were able to stay in the game, barely, with naval Enigma from coastal and patrol forces, which escorted U-boats out to and in from sea, and from the U-boat training command.

At the end of 1942, the Allies regained U-boat Enigma, which allowed them both to evade the U-boats at sea, and to find and kill them. By mid-1943, the U-boats were broken - but a mere two weeks of Enigma blindness in March cost over 300,000 tons sunk.

So - remove ULTRA, starting in August 1940.

First effect is during the Battle of Britain. Dowding's policy of reserving fighter strength to ensure that every raid was opposed depended in part on knowing how many planes the Germans had available each day. Without that information, he would have to use guesswork, and would make a lot more mistakes. The Germans would never gain complete control of the air, but they would do a lot more damage to the RAF.

Next is the Battle of the Beams. R. V. Jones figured out that the Germans were using radio beams to direct their bombers in part by reading Enigma traffic that included beam settings.

If the British don't crack naval Enigma... Britain loses a lot of shipping in late 1941, and will have to give up any offensives in the Middle East after July (no CRUSADER). 1942 is even worse than OTL and the losses continue into 1943. This endangers OVERLORD.

The Double-Cross system won't break down - the Germans were just two gullible. But there will be mistakes and failures. The British may not pick up GARBO - they learned of him from ULTRA intercepts. The complete success of BODYGUARD and FORTITUDE in deceiving the Germans won't happen.

Bottom line - much heavier Allied losses in a longer war.
 

Ancientone

Banned
First - Enigma was not broken by "the British... at Bletchley Park". Enigma had been cracked in the 1930s by Polish analysts. German changes had defeated the Poles by 1939, but the Poles saw how to overcome those changes - they simply did not have the resources.

So in July 1939, the Poles gave all their findings to Britain and France. (It was a French spy that had supplied them with the German operating manuals for Enigma and other documents that enabled the initial break.)

Then after the fall of Poland, the Polish analysts escaped to France, where they resumed work under French control, in partnership with the British at Bletchley Park. The break in early 1940 was a joint effort, and both groups deciphered thousands of messages before the French capitulation in June.

Now here's where it gets really weird: the official French intelligence service adhered to Vichy France. However, they arranged for the Poles to resume work at a location in unoccupied southern France. This work continued all the way up to November 1942, when the Germans marched in after TORCH. IOW, the Vichy French government had the Enigma secret. I'm pretty sure that the spooks never told Petain or Laval about it, though................................

.

Yes, what rum goings on--leaving such valuable codebreakers within reach of the Germans!
Ever since the first book about Ultra and the Enigma de-crypts came out in the 1970s (Bodyguard of Lies) the role of Bletchley and codebreaking has grown by leaps and bounds in the public imagination and it gets bigged-up more ever year. Now here is a funny thing. When the book was published everything about the work of GC&CS was still Top Secret and the author obtained his information from snippets revealed in memoirs, anecdotal evidence from retired intelligence personnel and declassified American documents. Bit by bit more info about British Intelligence activities has dribbled into the public domain and almost all of it is about Ultra, very little about HUMINT--however the vast bulk of material is STILL classified or unobtainable to researchers outside of the intelligence community. (British decrypts of Japanese signals for a start).
Now when one considers that everyone at GC&CS and those who were cleared to receive Ultra and informed of its source, were threatened with summary execution if they revealed the secret (including General Officers), why on earth would they leave Rejewski and Zygalski in France?
A cunning plan perhaps? Although the Pole's early work was the big breakthrough and was the catalyst for British attacks on Enigma and later Lorenz machines, in practice they used different and far faster methods. Already by May 1940 the British methods had leapfrogged ahead of the Polish and French work and it comes to mind that leaving the two cleverest Poles within reach of the Germans was a double blind. The Poles had only achieved the theoretical method of decrypting Enigma and could only reassemble occasional messages after days, sometimes weeks of work, without using reams of punch cards, designed by them, but produced at Bletchley, a feat also matched by the Swedes and Russians later in the war.
Had the Germans captured the Polish boffins they would have known that, under certain circumstances, some Enigma traffic could, sometimes, be decrypted--but then they knew that anyway and the very fact that these men had been left alive and in France would suggest that their work was not that important.


(FYI. Far from PC Bruno (the Polish codebreaker team) decyphering thousnads of messages, they actually identified just 17% of the keys from September 1939 to May 1940, this when the Germans were using a "call and repeat" system that gave four chances to recognise a key. On 10 May the Germans changed the procedure and analysts had to rely on sloppy operator techniques and "cribs."
 
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Dom

Moderator
Other methods of intellegence gathering were well developed and those would have been even better absent Enigma decrypts. To use some examples from radio intellegence. The Brits put a lot of effort into direction finding of the German submarine signals - the HuF DuF system. For much of the war the direction finding and signal analysis were more important vs the submarines than Enigma decrypts.

Without ULTRA coming down from above the field commanders would have paid more attention to things like prisoner interrogation, patrol reports, air recon, decrypts of low level coded messages. At higher levels more attention would have been paid to developing spy networks.

There are some examples of dependance on ULTRA causing Allied failures. ie: in the spring of 1943 the Allied Generals from Ike, to Brit 1st Army commander Anderson, and the US Corps commander Fredendal being suprised by Kesselrings offensive in Tunisia. Their intel chiefs were to focused on ULTRA material and not watching the front line reports from the lower level intel officers.

Overall the Enigma decrypts were a major benefit, and certainly shortened the war several months. But they were not a pancea without which the Allies would have lost the war.

Holy Necromancy, Batman!

You've been bumping up ages dead threads all over the forum. Please stop that.
 
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