[Scan-DC] SIGINT 1914-1945

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You need to read this book:
http://www.petermatthews.info/49-2/ 



SIGINT The Secret History of Signals IntelligenceSIGINT The Secret History of Signals Intelligence is a book that puts the signals intelligence operations of two global conflicts into context. Bletchley Park’s part in the last war has been well documented but how did their opponents fare in that great intelligence conflict? The book outlines the history of signals intelligence from its inception at the beginning of the last century and traces the continuous thread of its development since then. One measure of this extraordinary continuity is shown in the leadership of Britain’s cryptographic team during much of the Second World War; Alastair Denniston, the leader and much of the team were first recruited in 1914 as the first war began. Germany also had a continuing tradition of signals intelligence experience in its veterans. One of them Wilhelm Flicke, whom the author befriended in Berlin just after the war, started his cryptographic career serving the Kaiser’s Imperial German Army. Germanys part in the signals intelligence war is related with the use of captured documents and reminiscences of Flicke and his veteran comrades.Wireless Communications
Britain’s cryptographic skills and their management have dominated signals intelligence, as it was known in “Park”, for longer than most people realise. At the turn of the century, a decade before the First World War, the first experimental radio signals were transmitted from London by its Italian inventor. In 1912 the Titanic, using the new radio signalling device installed by Marconi, summoned aid when she had hit the iceberg. If that had happened just a year or so earlier there would have been no radio and no signal, the great liner would have vanished without trace. It would have been the world’s greatest maritime mystery. The lesson was not lost on mariners so when war came in 1914 wireless communications had become universally accepted on both sea and land and so, inevitably became a weapon of war. The weapon was double bladed, messages meant for commanders of armies or fleets of warships could be intercepted by the enemy.Breaking the Kaiser’s Code
The British Admiralty began intercepting coded messages of the Imperial German Navy within days of the war being declared almost by accident. Breaking the cipher in enemy messages in room 40 of the Admiralty in Whitehall soon began. The cryptographic agency they developed in the First World War out-performed much that Bletchley Park achieved during the second. Room 40s interception and decoding German radio messages changed the shape of battles at sea and on land. The German Army also intercepted messages, the Imperial Russian Army revealed their positions as they advanced on Berlin allowing General von Hindenburg to defeat and rout the Russians so savagely that it shattered their army and changed the course of the war. The French Deuxieme Bureau’s skills in cryptanalysis gave them a great advantage in the Battle of the Marne which they knew as the Miracle of the Marne. Stopping the German army’s advance on Paris was not really a miracle but due to French expertise in deciphering the enemy’s battle orders. In Room 40 under the direction of Winston Churchill as First Lord of the Admiralty was able to track the position and course of all German submarines at sea by using the ir radio transmissions although they had not developed effective anti- submarine weapons until later in the war. Tracing radio signals enabled Room 40 to direct the British Grand Fleet to intercept the warships of the German Hochseeflotte in several naval engagements including Jutland. Room 40s outstanding agreement was the interception of German diplomatic transmissions offering support to Mexico in preparation for an attack on America. President Woodrow Wilson was outraged and saw it as a hostile act which caused the USA to declare war on Germany that virtually finished it with an armistice.Between the Wars
The huge increase of communications showed that coding and decoding messages needed to be automated so coding machines were developed of which Enigma was only one. Signals intelligence agencies in Europe practiced their skills in preparation for the conflict to come. As the war began, the team that had run Room 40 almost twenty years before at the Admiralty had been kept together, they moved into Bletchley Park to form its foundation and begin its glory years. In Germany, a skeleton signals intelligence agency that had survived since the war ended in 1919 was resurrected by Hitler as he came to power. The Wehrmacht’s Abwehr agency was just one of several agencies that operated in Nazi Germany, fighting each other as well as the enemy and creating a fatal flaw in the intelligence system of the 3rd Reich. At the end of the war an Allied investigation team designated TICOM (Targeted Intelligence Committee) in which the author was involved investigated Germany’s signals intelligence network. They thought they knew the Nazi intelligence structure intimately but found to their surprise that there was a complete German agency that had been set up in 1933 about which they knew nothing.Decoding Europe’s War
The war began and the German army out fought the Allies in France but as the British Expeditionary Force began its evacuation from Dunkirk the first break in Luftwaffe codes was made by Bletchley Park. In the Western Desert the Germans had begun to break codes as well with the help of their Italian allies. While the Americans were still neutral an Italian spy had stolen a code book from the American Embassy in Rome and passed it to Berlin. Colonel Fellers, an American military observer in Cairo with the British 8th Army, he was shown all their positions and plans, he reported his observations by radio to Washington every evening. The Abwehr were listening and the colonels decrypted messages were on Hitler’s desk the following morning; the wireless equipment that received them is pictured on the back cover of the book. The intelligence gave Rommel a reputation as a great General in the Desert Campaign, earning him the nick name of the “Desert Fox” until the colonel’s leaking signals were identified just before the Battle of El Alamein. Ferrers cost British dearly and probably extended the fighting in that region by years so he was sent back home to the USA. There he was awarded a medal for his expert military reporting.SIGINT in the Pacific
Europe was not the only theatre of war in which signals intelligence played a major part as the war became truly global. German intelligence documents record the negotiations between Japan, Hitler’s ally and Russia, his enemy. Their agreement included an exchange of Signals intelligence “know how” enabling the Japanese to attack Pearl Harbour and the Russians to attack the German army before Moscow. The war was reshaped into a global one by that agreement. As the war progressed Japanese codes began to be broken by the Americans, enabling them to glean the knowledge to win the great sea battles of Midway and Coral Sea even though their ships were outnumbered. Signals intelligence shaped virtually all the major engagements at sea and on land in the global war with commanders on both sides straining to gain an insight into the enemy’s Order of Battle by the interceptions of enemy messages. The strategic direction of armies and great battle fleets of warships using signals intelligence in two wars is a great adventure story covering nearly half a century. As the war finished there was a further thread in the continuity of signals intelligence.The Cold War
As Germany was defeated the victorious allies began to squabble between themselves. The tension between the Anglo American Alliance and the Soviet Union began to grow. The United States was unprepared and had no intelligence evaluation of Red Army strength or intention: so they turned to their old enemy – Germany. The German army’s complete intelligence network operating against the Russians was “lifted” by General Gehlen, the officer in command and sold to the newly formed CIA for millions of dollars. The Gehlen Organisation, or the Org as it was known, provided most of the intelligence about the Russian intentions and strengths during the first decade of the Cold War. When Germany became a sovereign state in 1956 the Org became a part of the BND (Bundesnachrichtendienst) or West German Federal Intelligence Agency with Gehlen at its head. Today it is a world class intelligence agency – so you see there is continuity in the development of signals intelligence.My friend Wilhelm Flicke joined the Org, probably in 1948, there are photos of him in the book during the war and also afterwards at his desk working in one of the Orgs cover organisations. He died in mysterious circumstances in 1950; some of his papers are held by the United States National Security Agency in Washington D.C. under the title of Kriegsgeheimnisse im Aether (Secret War in the Ether). Others, were given to the author who was instrumental in lodging some (badly) typed manuscripts in the rare books section of London’s Imperial War Museum library.SIGINT The Secret History of Signals Intelligence, author Peter Matthews is published by the History Press at £18.99The photo of the changing of the guard at Spandau Jail marks a turning point in the SIGINT story. During the authors duties in providing security for Hess, Raedar and other Nazi war criminals in the prison that he first met the American TICOM personnel team. It was their investigation into German signals intelligence operations during the war that gave access to SIGINT secrets that are the basis of the book. Recent Posts Book Nomination UPCOMING APPEARANCE ON ‘THE ONE SHOW’ ON BBC BOOK NOMINATED FOR PRIZE Crack the Code German Abwehr IntelligenceSent via the Samsung GALAXY S® 5, an AT&T 4G LTE smartphone