How Much Did British and American Generals Know About Ultra?

Anaxagoras

Banned
Reading through Second World War literature, one finds confirmation that the higher ranking Allied commanders were "privy to the Ultra secret" or words to that effect. This seems to include Army-level commanders like Patton and Simpson as well as Eisenhower and Montgomery. But how much did they really know? Eisenhower seems to have been briefed all about Bletchley Park, but did the army commanders know anything about Ultra beyond that the information was the result of British breaking of the Enigma transmissions?
 
There were different levels, & those were not necessarily tied to rank. ULTRA informaion was usually delivered via a 'RAF signals unit' attached to the US HQ. A Intel officer from this unit would read the ULTRA message to the authorized US recipients. The messages were written for the specific recipient & were written to conceal the source. To aid in this information from other sources than Enigma decrypts was included in the ULTRA messages.
 
The thing is, did they even know that? The wording seems fairly unambiguous, but, I think, only at first glance.

It's the difference between 'The ULTRA secret' (Eg: The ULTRA program exists and gives good Intel) and 'The secret of ULTRA' (Eg: The German codes were cracked.) One might well know the first but not a clue as to the second.

Remember the great lengths with which the ULTRA Intelligence was obstructed: It was never acted on without the pretense than something other than SigInt being the cause.

A, for example, a cover story of a well placed Berlin source might have been promulgated, and thus, a General could be 'privy to the ULTRA secret' whilst knowing nothing at all about it.

Or, I'm arse-talking. It happens.
 

Errolwi

Monthly Donor
At the other end of the spectrum of useful employment and sophistication, General Freyburg figured out that the only way he could be getting the information that he was (on Crete) would be breaking of German radio codes. But High Command was too scared of tipping off the Germans to actually make useful redeployments - even though Crete pre-invasion was very disorganised, and moving brigades about could easily be a simple change of plan.
 
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