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written using a one-time pad. As far as I know, decoding such a message 
without having the key is so close to being impossible that it isn't worth 
attempting.

> Now the question: In WWII, how did they generate the random data to
> make one-time pads? And, how many distinct, different one-time pads
> were made?

Those are excellent questions to which I would enjoy hearing the answers. 

Achieving true randomness in any data stream is not a trivial exercise. In 
fact, supposedly it is extremely difficult. I did some investigating about this 
some time ago, and was surprised at what I found then.

> If the message were now in machine readable form, it could be quickly
> tested against a library of different one-time pads, but that would
> have been next to impossible 70 years ago.

Well, as far as I know, once a one-time-pad has been used, all extant copies 
of it are destroyed.

Again, as far as I know, the only possible way to break a coded message 
written through use of a one-time-pad is that the basic random number 
generator which formed the pad was not truly random, but did have some 
repeating sequence or sequences in it.

Even so, it would take a super-computer and many, many man-hours of 
work, or some extremely unusual luck, to decode such a message.

In the case of this message, I think we are simply out of luck.

I doubt if even Babbage's Analytical Engine could do anything with it! (Hee 
hee!) :-)

Ken W7EKB