Voices of the Codebreakers

Personal Accounts of the Secret Heroes of World War II

Michael Paterson

• Publisher: Greenhill Books
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9781784383145
• Topic: Política y relaciones internacionales
• Subtopic: Inteligencia y espionaje

Alongside the open conflict of World War II there were other, hidden wars - the wars of communication, in which success depended on a flow of concealed and closely guarded information.Smuggled written messages, secretly transmitted wireless signals, or months of eavesdropping on radio traffic meant operatives could discover in advance what the enemy intended to do. This information was passed on to those who commanded the armies, the fleets and the bomber formations, as well as to the other secret agents throughout the world who were desperately trying to infiltrate enemy lines. Vital information that turned the tide of battle in North African desert and on the Pacific Ocean proved to have been obtained by the time-consuming and unglamorous work of cryptanalysts who deciphered the enemy's coded messages, and coded those for the Allies.From the stuffy huts of Bletchley Park to the battles in the Mediterranean, the French and Dutch Resistance movements and the unkempt radio operatives in Burma, the rarely-seen, outstanding stories collected here reveal the true extent of the 'secret war'.The ongoing need for secrecy for decades after the war meant that the outstanding achievements of wartime cryptanalysts could not be properly recognised.With vivid first-hand accounts and illuminating historical research, VOICES OF THE CODEBREAKERS reveals and finally celebrates the extraordinary accomplishments of these ordinary men and women.

1

CODES AND WAR

The ether was open. Into it all nations could discharge messages of the highest importance. Equally important was the complicating factor that all nations might, if they wished, receive or stop these messages. We were all involved in the problem of safeguarding our own information, of discovering and nullifying that of the enemy. It was not enough merely to prevent the latter from giving messages to its own forces and allies. It was vital that we should receive those messages and turn them to our own purpose.i

Parallel with the open conflict that raged between 1939 and 1945 there were other, hidden wars, and what they all had in common was that they were wars of communication, in which success depended on a flow of concealed and closely guarded information. Sometimes this meant a smuggled written message, at others a secretly transmitted wireless signal, or weeks and months of eavesdropping on the radio traffic of the enemy.

Many thousands of people took part in these secret wars. Some trained for long periods to carry out sophisticated campaigns of espionage; others committed a single impulsive or premeditated act of defiance. One of these hidden conflicts was the struggle of underground forces against the occupying Germans or Japanese. Another was the battle to obtain secrets, or carry out sabotage, by the spies who served both sides. A third was the war waged by armies of clerks, typists, linguists, analysts and assorted academics to discover the intentions - and weaknesses - of the enemy by breaking its codes. In Britain, it was only in 1974 that the publication of Group Captain FW Winterbotham’s book The Ultra Secret revealed the huge significance of this work and the extent to which it had contributed to victory.

The war imposed the necessity of secrecy not just on official and military personnel but on people who found themselves displaced, imprisoned or in some way unable to express their feelings freely. One example was the deliberate damaging of Axis war materiel made by forced labour in German-controlled countries. Alfred Spickett, a wireless officer in the British Merchant Navy, recalled an attack on his vessel by enemy aircraft in which little damage was done:

What none of us realized at the time was that we had in fact been hit by two aerial torpedoes. Very fortunately for us, both had failed to explode.

Anyone reading this might think it odd that both torpedoes had failed to explode. I must admit I did myself. A possible explanation, given later by a naval bomb expert in Rosyth, was that they were getting quite a number of torpedoes and bombs which failed to explode, and they were sure it was due to sabotage in a number of factories in German ‘occupied’ countries. I remember this same chap telling me that in one of the bombs they had subsequently dismantled (which had been dropped near London) they had found a hand-written note in the front section of the bomb which made it clear that it had been made in the Skoda works in Czechoslovakia. Written in English, the note had gone on to say: ‘This is the best we can do to help you.’ These particular factory workers were successfully interfering with the mechanism in both bombs and torpedoes, thus preventing them from exploding.

While some put their lives at constant risk in enemy territory, others laboured at routine deskwork, far from scenes of conflict or danger. The most significant of these were the men and women who sought to break the codes and ciphers of the Axis powers.

Communications, whether by radio or letter, had to be shrouded in secrecy, with use of passwords, code words, euphemisms and gibberish to baffle enemy eavesdroppers. This was characteristic of all ‘secret wars’ and was much in evidence by the start of the conflict in 1939. A story published a year earlier in the United States, when many Americans knew little about the shadow lengthening across Europe, made use of a code as its central theme. Address Unknown, a short novel by Katherine Kressman-Taylor, became a bestseller in the US. It greatly increased awareness of the evils of Nazism and has since come to be regarded as a highly important historical document (the Nazis themselves placed it on their list of banned literature). The book is set in the years in which Hitler consolidated power. A Jewish art dealer in America takes revenge for betrayal on his ex-partner, a German living in Munich. By the simple device of sending frequent letters - knowing that they will be read by the Gestapo - whose meaningless contents suggest a developing plot, the dealer is able to have his former friend ruined and arrested. One of them reads:

February 15, 1934

Dear Martin,

Seven inches of rainfall here in 18 days. What a season! A shipment of 1,500 brushes should reach the Berlin branch of your Young Painters’ League by the weekend. This will allow time for practice before the big exhibition. American patrons will help with all the artists’ supplies that can be provided, but you must make the final arrangements. We are too far out of touch with the European market and you are in a position to gauge the extent of support such a showing would arouse in Germany. Prepare these for distribution by March 24th: Rubens 12 by 77, blue; Giotto 1 by 317, green and white; Poussin 20 by 90, red and white.

Young Blum left last Friday with the Picasso specifications.

He will leave oils in Hamburg and Leipzig and will then place himself at your disposal.

Success to you!

Eisenstein.

Once war began, millions of people made use of personal codes to keep in touch with their friends and relations in circumstances where security considerations, or capture, might rob them of freedom of expression. Lieutenant GP Darling, RN, whose usual form of address in letters to his parents was ‘My Dearest Ma & Pa’, sent them a set of instructions when he was called to active duty. He was concerned not so much with letting them know he was alive and well as with passing on to his superiors a report of what had happened, plus confirmation that sensitive materials aboard his vessel had been disposed of. After personal news and messages came this:

Now for something serious. I must make provision for being captured by the enemy. As soon as possible I will write to you and the manner of my writing will give you the following information. Forward the decoded version to Vice-Admiral Submarines, Northways, Swiss Cottage, London. If in doubt get in touch with Reggie Drake at Blockhouse.

(1) ‘My Dearest Mother & Daddy’ = Confidential books and aschesii destroyed.

(2) ‘My Dearest Mother’ = Confidential books destroyed.

(3) ‘My Dearest Father’ = Asche destroyed.

(4) ‘Best Love, Godfrey’ = Sunk by depth charges.

(5) ‘Love, Godfrey’ = Sunk by mine on surface.

(6) ‘Best love from your loving son, Godfrey’ = Sunk by torpedo on surface.

(7) ‘Love from your loving son, Godfrey’ = Rammed.

Keep this locked away and keep it to yourselves please.

Understandably, there were cases where cryptic meanings were ascribed to what were actually straightforward words or phrases. One such incident took place in 1943 in Burma, the result of a misunderstood abbreviation. The regional headquarters of OSS (the Office of Strategic Services, which was running clandestine American operations) in India received a radio message asking for supplies from one of its officers, who was in command of a remote unit of guerrillas recruited from the local Kachin people. Included in this were the letters CMA. These baffled the operator on the receiving end, and eventually it was decided that they stood for ‘Citation for Military Assistance’, presumably suggesting that an award be created to acknowledge the tribesmen’s loyalty and support. This was duly done, the result being a silver medal adorned with the American eagle and hung from a green silk ribbon decorated with embroidered peacocks. A number of these were dropped with the rest of the supplies and were handed out to the guerrillas, who greatly appreciated them. Only later did it become clear that CMA had stood for ‘comma’.

Commercial radio and BBC services offered possibilities for secret communication. Agents could, for instance, listen for pre-arranged signals in the form of a particular piece of music. It was for this reason that the United States Government forbade radio stations to play any music requested by listeners for the duration of the war. When broadcasting to occupied Europe, the BBC made regular use of the first bars from Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony as an ‘opening theme’ to its nightly broadcasts. Initially this habit puzzled both the German security services and the resistance. Since the music was written by one of their country’s greatest composers, the Germans could scarcely object to it; they had failed to realize that the first four notes sounded like a Morse code signal: dot-dot-dot-dash, representing the letter V, for victory. It was a subtle indication that, no matter what Axis propaganda was telling the local population, the Allies were winning the war.

The most famous use of radio code words was the communication between the European resistance movements and Britain. Agents in France, the Low Countries and Scandinavia would send wireless signals in code (often at great personal risk, for the Germans used location-finding equipment to track them down) and listen to the nightly broadcasts of the BBC from Bush House in London for a reply. Twice every evening a batch of announcements, disguised as and including personal messages, was broadcast in the appropriate language. Many of these sounded absurd. Some of them were deliberately intended to confuse and irritate listening German counter-intelligence operatives, while others had clear meanings for specific groups. A British officer, CW Kemson, who served with a unit of French maquisards in 1944, described what happened when one of its leaders was wounded and required medicines from England:

His physical state was very poor and it worried them. They could only communicate with London at predetermined times and they had to wait until the 24th to ask for urgent supplies. This took place at 9.30 a.m.

Michel sent the message in the code transcribed, and after ‘contact’ they were overjoyed when Gineste received confirmation signifying that an important message was to follow. The same day at 7 p.m. and 9 p.m. the BBC sent among the personal messages ‘The height is at the corner.’ At 11 p.m. a drop was received at Boulieu, and several hours later George was out of danger.

The message to London in code had read as follows:
Send Boulieu serum anti gangrene and anti tetanus for Maxime and other wounded awaiting medical equipment STOP column of about 270 vehicles transport to Figeac. Remain in contact with HQ STOP.

The information exchanged in these announcements was critical to the success of the D-Day operation. It informed the Allies of the strength of opposition they might expect in Normandy, and enabled the resistance to learn where the attack was coming, so that they could sabotage strategic transport routes or tie down German troops.

Radio could, of course, be used to deceive as well as inform. Hitler and many of his generals believed that an Anglo-American invasion, which they anticipated in April or May 1944, would be launched across the Straits of Dover in the neighbourhood of Calais, since this was the narrowest part of the English Channel, and that an attack anywhere else would merely be a feint to draw the defenders away. The Allies had no intention of assaulting this heavily protected region but, knowing that their radio communications were listened to by the enemy, set out to create an entire phantom army that would be based in south-east England in apparent readiness to make the move that Hitler was expecting.

This meant the invention of fictitious divisions, all with numbers, commanding officers and even specially designed insignia. It also meant the invention of radio call signs for each unit, and regular sending of Morse signals between them, so that enemy listeners could use these to track the ‘movements’ of the different formations. It required an endless exchange of radio messages between non-existent units - the relaying of orders, the requesting of supplies, the movement of immense columns of vehicles and the creation of camps, supply dumps and headquarters. From October 1943, German listeners began to hear, amid this storm of chatter, references to a body called FUSAG (First United States Army Group) and to the divisions and army groups attached to it. From these they deduced that 34 American divisions were massing in Kent and Essex (in fact 11 of them did not exist) and estimated that a total of 79 Allied divisions would be ranged against them in the invasion. The Allies, in fact, had only 47.

Radio was not the only means of conveying this sense that a mighty army was waiting to strike. Nevertheless nothing breathed life into the ghostly echelons of First Army Group more effectively than its radio traffic. For days and even weeks after the landings in Normandy, the Germans continued to waste time and resources on this force. On 9 June ‘Cato,’ a trusted (but ‘turned’) Axis agent, sent a message from England saying:

The present operation, though a large-scale assault, is diversionary in character.

Later in the month a situation report by German Intelligence noted that:

Not a single unit of the 1st United States Army Group, which comprises around 25 large formations north and south of the Thames, has so far been committed.

Clearly, continuous and detailed access to the enemy’s communications was a vital factor in winning the war. It not only revealed the intentions, strengths and weaknesses of the Axis powers, but their reaction to Allied measures, initiatives and deceptions. Their communications were, naturally, sent in code for reasons of security, and it was therefore a major task of Allied Intelligence to gain access to these.

***

The reading and interpretation of ciphers and coded intelligence was extremely difficult, for it was not simply a matter of breaking a single code and then sitting back to listen in. While the Germans and Italians used a cipher machine invented in 1918 (and first used for banking security) for sending secret messages, there were many variations of the codes they employed. Germany’s army, navy and air force, for instance, as well as its foreign office, each used different configurations. In addition, these were changed at frequent intervals as a matter of routine. It was also necessary that they keep track of a huge flow of signals dealing with every aspect of combat, supply and administration. Group Captain Fred Winterbotham, who coordinated the Special Liaison Units throughout the war, remarked:

At the height of the conflict the German war machine was sending well over two thousand signals a day on the air. It will be recognised therefore, that when, from time to time, we were able to intercept a number of signals and break the cipher, their contents covered a very wide field.

The Allied codebreakers, working in the Government Code and Cipher School at Bletchley Park and at other sites, therefore had constantly to attempt to reopen sources of information that had been closed to them. In some cases, they never succeeded in breaking a code; in most, however, they were able to unravel the mysteries time and again.

Those who worked on the codes might see no more than a single ‘piece of the jigsaw’ and have no understanding of how the paper in their hand fitted in with overall developments. The information they assembled was code-named Ultra (for ultra-secret). It was analysed and passed to commanders in the field through military personnel called SLUs (Special Liaison Units) who were attached to the various armies and lived with the troops in the theatres of war. Though Ultra was obtained by British intelligence, much of the information was shared with the United States Government, at Churchill’s request, even before America entered the conflict. Once the two nations were officially allies, SLUs were attached to US forces and Ultra was made available to senior American officers on exactly the same basis as to British.

For those who were engaged in the cryptographic war at secret locations in Britain, their distance from the fighting and the often numbing monotony of their work did not prevent them from sometimes sharing the triumphs and tragedies of their ...