Germans discover Ultra

At some point in the war, the germans discover ultra - the allies are reading their enigma messages

One option is to change everything

Another is to trick the allies with some massive deception operation prior to changing codes. So, for example, the allies think strongest part of the atlanric wall is normandy and the weakest is pas de calais. Or they think the germans have a couple of a-bombs ready and waiting for d-day.

What is the most damage the germans could do?
 
The damage to the Germans from Enigma decrypts was so enormous that it would be far too expensive for Germany not to revamp its crypto.

Any deception operation based on sending false information on known broken keys would require continuing use of Enigma for all real traffic as well. Otherwise the Allies would instantly realize that the Germans had discovered the break.

The only remotely comparable sacrifice of this sort that I know of occurred during the Cold War in Berlin. American and British intelligence figured out that a phone line used between two KGB offices in East Berlin ran underground near the border with the western zone.

The US and UK spooks dug a tunnel under the border to the cable run, and tapped it into it. (IIRC, the taps were installed by British technicians and monitored by US listeners.) The results were useful, but not explosive.

As it happened, one of the British operatives was George Blake, a Soviet mole, so the Soviets knew all about the operation. But if they abruptly shut down use of that phone line, that would reveal the existence of a mole and possibly "blow" Blake. So KGB headquarters never told their Berlin people about the tap!

Anyway, it's very important to determine when the Germans realize Enigma is broken. It could happen in 1940. It's not widely known, but the break into Enigma in early 1940 was a joint operation of GCCS at Bletchley Park in Britain and a group of French and Polish exile cryptanalysts working for the French Deuxiéme Bureau at PC Bruno, SE of Paris. The two groups shared all deductions about Enigma. From March 1940 until June, they each decrypted a few thousand Enigma messages. (At this time, neither country had the processes in place to use Enigma effectively; the main effect was to reveal to British leaders the scope of German victory, and that it would be useless to send any additional forces.)

PC Bruno was evacuated, with the Poles going to Algeria. They were later brought back to unoccupied France, and resumed breaking Enigma until after TORCH. This work was still under "official" French intelligence; that is, the Vichy government. (But it it does not appear that the French spooks ever told Vichy civilian leaders about it; nor even Darlan, who was in charge of reorganizing French intelligence after the armistice.)

The leak could happen if the evacuation of PC Bruno wasn't "clean"; that is, if papers were left behind exposing the work, or some of the personnel didn't get away in time. Or some official "in the know" might tell the Germans - for money or other rewards, or perhaps anger towards Britain after Operation CATAPULT, which sank French ships and killed over a thousand French sailors. (Perhaps including the key man's only son?)

The effect would not be in damage the Germans could do to the Allies, but in damage the Allies would not do to the Germans. Most of the intelligence from Enigma was about the conditions and strength of German forces. It made Allied commanders' jobs much easier knowing almost as well as the Germans what the Germans had.

The great exception was in naval activity, where Enigma messages often were operational orders directing ships and submarines to specific locations. Bletchley Park started reading German navy Enigma in mid-1941. This allowed the Admiralty to redirect convoys around U-boat scouting lines.

The German tactic was to spread out a group of U-boats. When a convoy position was reported to HQ in France, HQ ordered the U-boats (faster than a convoy) to gather ahead. They would attack in mass at night ("wolfpack"). But when the British were reading the orders, they could "play blind-man's-bluff with their eyes open". Allied shipping losses dropped by over half until early 1942, when the Germans introduced a new Enigma variant for U-boats, and dropped again after Alan Turing broke the new key in November.

ULTRA was also tactically important in the Mediterranean; it told the Allies where to find Axis ships running between Italy and North Africa.

Finally, ULTRA included messages between Abwehr HQ in Germany and its outstation in Spain, which "ran" most of the purported German agents in Britain. These were actually double agents under British control. By reading German internal discussions about these agents, the British could "tune" their performances to be more convincing.

ULTRA was enormously valuable, but exactly how valuable is not easy to say.
 
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I think it's likely the Allies would eventually figure out the Germans found out about their code-breaking efforts through the XX agents. Or from the leaking house that is Abwehr.
 

hammo1j

Donor
Surprised the Germans never transmitted fake information to test security as the OP mentions.

"The reactor in Munich university Building 242 has been observed to sustain a reaction generating further useful products."

Then when Mosquitoes hit that very place in a daylight raid the Nazis know something is up with their encryption
 

hammo1j

Donor
Nex ting you nose an ol Fritz gwan an stuck another wheel on that thang.

Gay guy Turing saying 'darlin I can't see you tomorrow'

Lover boy saying 'why not? Is it me?'

'No, it mah German lover, can't make out a single word he saying...'

Would Turing's massive intellect be able to defeat the combinatorial complexity of an extra wheel on the enigma Fruit machine?
 
The Abwehr were just incompetents commanded by a traitor.
Had the Abwehr and all other intelligence been put under SD control before, maybe they would have a chance of finding out about Ultra.
Heydrich might be a fanatic asshole, but at least he was competent and pragmatic.
The rest of the SD are mostly thugs in it for the loot or arrogant pricks who think they're kings of the world.
So, in other words, its a 50/50 chance they find out after the SD take over
 
I think it's likely the Allies would eventually figure out the Germans found out about their code-breaking efforts through the XX agents. Or from the leaking house that is Abwehr.

The Allies will find out immediately when the Germans completely revamp their cipher system and nothing can be decrypted. Or even before that, when the Germans order all field HQs to stop using Enigma for any sensitive message. The German navy would recall all U-boats to base, to be equipped with new cipher kits. (A few boats would be left on station doing independent patrol to keep a modicum of pressure on the Allies.)
 
Surprised the Germans never transmitted fake information to test security as the OP mentions.

1) The Germans might have noticed all the occasions when the Allies did things that might have been inspired by Enigma decrypts; but they didn't.

2) That was in part because the Allies took great care to provide alternate explanations for any action taken on the basis of ULTRA.

3) The German cryptologists thought they had proven mathematically that Enigma was unbreakable, so they never did any critical evaluation of the system in practice.
 
"The reactor in Munich university Building 242 has been observed to sustain a reaction generating further useful products."

Who, exactly, in the German armed forces in the field, needs to know this, you reckon?
Because Enigma wasn't used for communications between a research project and the central Nazi government. It was used to talk with subs, advanced airfields, spearhead ground formations, that sort of outliers.
 
I think it's likely the Allies would eventually figure out the Germans found out about their code-breaking efforts through the XX agents. Or from the leaking house that is Abwehr.

They would find out immediately, as soon as the Germans make the major effort of replacing all machines.

They would also immediately reassess any intel gathered in the previous period, starting with enormous things ("we have an A-bomb ready") and with anything that has not panned out ("U-420 to position X", and an U-Boot is sunk there, is intel that panned out; "10 bunkers ready in the Cotentin peninsula", and nobody in the French resistance reported them, is intel that hasn't panned out).
 
Those paying attention should have realized by the continuing failure of the submarine expeditions between France and Japan. Wasn't I-30 the only sub to complete one, Japan to France and back? I-52, one of the big cargo subs, was sunk in the Bay of Biscay by the Bouge (one of the early CVEs) hunting group, IIRC.

My initial thought,

Regards,
 

Ramontxo

Donor
The Germans surely had occasions to suspect something' fishy was happening. The Brits used enigma to target the ressuply "Milk Cows" subs and deliberately left one of them to return. Good or bad luck happens and she was found and sink by conventional means. Even them the Germans didn't suspect
 

CalBear

Moderator
Donor
Monthly Donor
Nex ting you nose an ol Fritz gwan an stuck another wheel on that thang.

Gay guy Turing saying 'darlin I can't see you tomorrow'

Lover boy saying 'why not? Is it me?'

'No, it mah German lover, can't make out a single word he saying...'

Would Turing's massive intellect be able to defeat the combinatorial complexity of an extra wheel on the enigma Fruit machine?
Don't.

Trolling is a BAD THING!
 
Because Enigma wasn't used for communications between a research project and the central Nazi government. It was used to talk with subs, advanced airfields, spearhead ground formations, that sort of outliers.

Radio (and therefore Enigma) was actually used to a surprising degree within Germany. The German telephone and telegraph networks were not all that developed and were often saturated. Also, later in the war, bombing damage often broke up the lines. or knocked out exchanges.

But even before the war, Enigma was used by the German railway system and by the Wehrkreise, the domestic "military districts" of the Wehrmacht, These had their own Enigma keys, which were broken by the Poles and later at Bletchley Park.

However, it should be noted that when the German army was driven back into Germany in 1944, much of the previous radio traffic went to ground lines, so the Allies had much less coverage. This effect helped mask the concentration of German forces for the "Bulge" counterattack.
 
But even before the war, Enigma was used by the German railway system and by the Wehrkreise, the domestic "military districts" of the Wehrmacht, These had their own Enigma keys, which were broken by the Poles and later at Bletchley Park.

My understanding is that very little of the Railroad's traffic could be read, it was filled with jargon, slang, contractions and usages that only fellow railroaders understood, so a good example of breaking the code, having the messages but being stymied to make sense of what is said. In effect like coding another code.
 
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