Ultra and the Battle of the Bulge
Greg Utrecht
officer who knew about Ultra. [Naftali 1993 PhD thesis] The supporting
documentation at the National Archives supposedly says that although his
interrogators knew he was OSS, he convinced them that his mission was
psychological assessment of civilian populations.
My theory is that the Germans found out the British were reading their
mail.
This knowledge enabled them to surprise us at the Battle of Bulge. If this
is so, then the Germans would have used strict radio silence before the
Battle, and the radio silence would have been ordered from the very top.
Does anyone know anything about German radio silence before the Battle of
the Bulge?
--
"Reason and experience both forbid us to expect
that national morality can prevail in exclusion of
religious principle." - George Washington
Omar Wessel
except perhaps at the very top. I do know that Hitler was
convinced that something was going on. Prior to the Buldge
offensive he ordered a total radio blackout, but he also took
other precautions such as moving troops and tanks only at night
and hiding them in the Ardennes.
The Ultra list was very small, and the allies went to extremes
to keep it so (read about the decision to allow the bombing of
Coventry without evacuating anyone). I can't imagine any OSS
officer, with knowledge of Ultra, being allowed anywhere near
the front.
Omar
Rich Rostrom
<fr...@compuall.net> wrote:
>I have read that in September 1944 the Nazis captured an American OSS X-2
>officer who knew about Ultra. [Naftali 1993 PhD thesis] The supporting
>documentation at the National Archives supposedly says that although his
>interrogators knew he was OSS, he convinced them that his mission was
>psychological assessment of civilian populations.
>
>My theory is that the Germans found out the British were reading their
>mail.
This is _not_ confirmed by any other evidence. The Germans made
no systematic change to Enigma or change from Enigma to other
cipher systems.
For instance, they continued to use Enigma for operational
signals between U-boats at sea and Navy HQ.
The Germans did suspect there was some degree of leakage
through Enigma. They knew all along that if an Enigma suite
was captured, the traffic on the keys used by that station
would be compromised for up to a month, when new keys were
issued. What they didn't realize is that the Allies could
find or deduce Enigma keys, and read signals without any
help from captured keys.
>This knowledge enabled them to surprise us at the Battle of Bulge. If this
>is so, then the Germans would have used strict radio silence before the
>Battle, and the radio silence would have been ordered from the very top.
>Does anyone know anything about German radio silence before the Battle of
>the Bulge?
The Germans did practice radio silence beforehand, but there
were several reasons for this. First, the availability of land
lines greatly diminished the requirements for radio signalling.
Previously, Germans had been fighting in the air or at sea, or
in France where land lines were sabotaged, or in Africa where
there were no land lines.
Second, Hitler ordered very tight security over the plan and
its details. Many units did not get their orders till the
night of the attack.
Third, the Germans knew that even when messages were not
read, the volume of radio messages and the call-signs of
the senders and receivers could tell a skillful analyst a
great deal about the senders.
The Germans were ordered not to use thir radios till the
attack.
--
It seemed incredible that the petty manipulations | Rich Rostrom
we had done so quietly in the dark could result in |
such a glorious catastrophe. | rrostrom@
--- Vladimir Peniakoff, _Popski's Private Army_ | 21stcentury.net
jh39@.remove.dial.pipex.com
>My theory is that the Germans found out the British were reading their
>mail.
As that theory flies in the face of all the official, and unofficial,
intelligence histories published to date perhaps you could expand on
and, preferably, document the reasons behind your theory.
There were a number of reasons behind the Allies being caught
flat-footed by the Bulge attack, penetration of Ultra is not one.
Barry
Dan McKenzie
off information actually came from intercepted messages, sent back to Japan
by a military attachi called Oshimura, who had the ear of the Furher. this
information decoded on the Magic equipment was passed on to the forces in
Europe.
Dan McKenzie
Rich Rostrom <rros...@21stcentury.net> wrote in message
news:rrostrom-72A416...@news.21stcentury.net...
Louis Capdeboscq
> My theory is that the Germans found out the British were reading their
> mail.
How modest from the German spy who discovered this never to have boasted
about it, be it to his superior or to later historians !
> This knowledge enabled them to surprise us at the Battle of Bulge.
There are a number of reasons why the Allies were surprised by the German
attack, but German knowledge of Enigma wasn't among them.
> Does anyone know anything about German radio silence before the Battle of
> the Bulge?
Very strict instructions about radio silence were issued. This had nothing
to do about Ultra, but about the fact that you can very easily localize a
major deployment just by listening to the volume of traffic.
Suppose you move to a room full of foreigners whose language they don't
speak. Even without understanding a word, you'll soon be able to tell their
approximate relationship: who'se close to whom, who is whom's boss, etc.
Ditto with radio traffic.
Even if Enigma had been uncompromised by the Allies, normal signal
intelligence would have detected the deployment of two new armies in the
Ardennes sector. And that was what the Germans wanted to avoid.
Greg Utrecht
about Ultra. There seem to be three problems that the group has identified:
1) that Ultra was actually well protected, 2) hardly any Americans knew
about Ultra, and 3) the German Army had plenty of reasons to use radio
silence.
1) The Polish, French and British cryptologists who devised the algorithms
were the key to Ultra, and the British Ultra secret system for intercepting
decoding and disseminating German Enigma machine codes was one of the keys
to winning the European war. Nevertheless Ultra was not well protected, and
the American OSS officer that I mentioned was not the only Ultra-aware
Allied officer to be captured. Bruce Lee's 1995 Marching_Orders describes
how British Brigadier General Hadden, who was Ultra aware, was captured in
Sepember 1944 and spent the rest of the war as a POW [p.169]. I recall
Hadden being quoted as saying he didn't tell the Nazis about Ultra.
2) An entire organization of Americans were indoctrinated into Ultra. The
X-2 branch of OSS was set up to be the American counterpart of the British
Twenty Committee, also known as Committee XX, also known as Double Cross.
Double Cross were the people responsible for double agents, deception and
misinformation, and X-2 were their American pupils. The American that I
mentioned is described in Naftali's 1993 PhD Thesis "X-2 and the
Apprenticeship of American Espionage 1942-44". (Available from UMI,
1-800-521-0600 in the US) The capture is discussed on page 650 and in the
notes on 656. Some quotes: "had been indoctrinated into ISOS in London."
If he "were captured and tortured and talked he could blow the entire Ultra
system."
The OSS reports that are quoted in the thesis are in RG 226/122/4 US
National Archives. These papers ask us to believe that someone could resist
a determined interrogation about the structure of American intelligence
without revealing Ultra. I don't believe it. I think any reasonable
person, after reading these documents, would question whether after 56 years
we really know what led to the Battle of the Bulge. "An OSS officer named
Gertrude Legendre was captured with him." "James Murphy (chief of X-2)
believed that Legendre had provoked (him) into taking this risk." In
Legendre's second autobiography [Gertrude Sanford Legendre,
The_Time_of_My_Life, Charleston, Wyrick and Co., 1987] she stated that he
died from an Allied bombing attack because he was left on the roof of the
prison hospital. She stated that she did nothing more than stand up when he
asked if anyone wanted to visit the front lines. Was this woman responsible
for the Battle of the Bulge?
3) The Germans did have many good reasons for radio silence. Some posters
mirror Ronald Lewin's reasons on his page 356: no resistance movements, no
secret agents, no German with knowledge of the attack west of the Rhine,
troop movements by night, cloudy weather. These are the same reasons
General Omar Bradley gave in 1951, 23 years before the Ultra secret was
revealed. [A_Soldiers'_Story pp 460-461] I'm asking what Lewin states on
355 about deception: "credit must be given to the Germans for concealment of
their forces and their intentions..." If the Germans knew about Ultra, they
wouldn't let anyone know they knew. If the Germans knew about Ultra they
wouldn't stop using Enigma machines. Instead, if the Germans knew, then
they would use Enigma to deceive. If the Germans knew, after the war no
German officer was likely to say 'yes we knew the British were reading
Enigma' - not if they knew Ultra was one of the most important secrets of
the Cold War. If the Germans knew about Ultra the history books would not
show it. World War II is like a house of mirrors. Deception of the other
guys information system was everywhere. How much of the truth do we really
know?
Bibliography of Ultra books:
FW Winterbotham, Ultra Secret, 1974
Ronald Lewin, Ultra goes to War. 1978
Ewen Montagu, Beyond Top Secret Ultra, 1978
Thomas Parrish, The Ultra Americans, 1986
Bruce Lee, Marching Orders,1995
---
"Let us with caution indulge the supposition that morality
can be maintained without religion." - George Washington
Louis Capdeboscq
> 3) The Germans did have many good reasons for radio silence.
Exactly. A lot of the radio intelligence used against the U-boats in the
Battle of the Atlantic had nothing to do with Ultra: plain old DF.
Ditto on the Eastern Front: the Germans initially were very good at radio
intelligence (yet they didn't have Ultra). The Soviets learned that lesson,
among others, and became masters - all without Ultra.
> These are the same reasons General Omar Bradley gave in 1951,
Whether or not you believe Bradley, the point is that radio silence is
desirable whether you suspect that the enemy reads your message or not. So
German radio silence isn't a proof that they knew about Ultra.
> If the Germans knew about Ultra, they
> wouldn't let anyone know they knew.
This is silly. When you find out that the enemy is reading your mail, the
first thing you do is change your cypher. At various occasions, both the
Germans and the Allies found out that their codes were broken, and changed
them.
Radio traffic IS very useful, it's an enormous inconvenience to have to do
without it for security reasons.
> If the Germans knew about Ultra they
> wouldn't stop using Enigma machines.
No, but they would change their encoding tables. Enigma WAS unbreakable for
the time, if used properly.
> Instead, if the Germans knew, then they would use Enigma to deceive.
To what aim ? They couldn't be sure that the Allies would catch on to the
deception, and meanwhile the cost (loss of communications) would be
enormous.
> If the Germans knew, after the war no
> German officer was likely to say 'yes we knew the British were reading
> Enigma' - not if they knew Ultra was one of the most important secrets of
> the Cold War.
Indeed. On the other hand, once the British put Ultra into the open, there
would be no reason for the Germans not to admit they knew about it if they
had.
> If the Germans knew about Ultra the history books would not
> show it.
And why not ?
Mike Lennia
> Yes this flies in the face of almost everything that has been published
> about Ultra. There seem to be three problems that the group has identified:
> 1) that Ultra was actually well protected, 2) hardly any Americans knew
> about Ultra, and 3) the German Army had plenty of reasons to use radio
> silence.
Writing in _Bodyguard of Lies_ (1975), here's what Anthony Cave Brown has
to
say on the subject:
"By September 1944, the German signals chiefs were beginning to suspect
that
Enigma might be a principle source of the Reich's agony. Whether traitors
had
revealed all his plans to the Allies, as Hitler continued to believe, or
whether the Allies had in some way managed to penetrate German ciphers, the
security of Enigma was in question; and possibly as a result of
Lindemans's*
information, the Wehrmacht began late in 1944 to replace it. The task of
manufacturing and distributing new machines, and of retraining the
thousands
of operators involved, proved to be impossible in the short time left to
the
Third Reich, and the Wehrmacht continued to use Enigma. However, German
suspicions about its security almost certainly played a part in the
extraordinary precautions which OKW adopted to protect the secrets of its
Ardennes counteroffensive at Christmas 1944."
*Lindemans was an Abwehr double agent in the Dutch underground who
according
to Brown revealed the secret of Ultra to the Germans in November 1944.
The proposition doesn't seem quite so cut and dried as all that. Even
though
the Wehrmacht resumed use of wireless (and Enigma) after the Battle of the
Bulge, it appears that Ultra wasn't quite the secret that it had been in
years prior. One interesting point Brown makes is that the Allied
intelligence effort had become so dependent on Ultra that it failed to
utilise other methods available to forewarn the Ardennes counteroffensive.
Greg Utrecht
The Internet is not always instantaneous and I did not see your first
message.
Louis Capdeboscq wrote
> Exactly. A lot of the radio intelligence used against the U-boats in the
> Battle of the Atlantic had nothing to do with Ultra: plain old DF.
> Ditto on the Eastern Front: the Germans initially were very good at radio
> intelligence (yet they didn't have Ultra). The Soviets learned that lesson,
> among others, and became masters - all without Ultra.
I have no expertise in this area.
> Whether or not you believe Bradley, the point is that radio silence is
> desirable whether you suspect that the enemy reads your message or not. So
> German radio silence isn't a proof that they knew about Ultra.
Somehow the German army convinced the Allies that a number of German
divisions were in places where they weren't. My point about Bradley is that
he wasn't free to tell the whole truth in 1951.
> This is silly. When you find out that the enemy is reading your mail, the
> first thing you do is change your cypher.
In every instance? When the Germans captured the Allied secret agent code
named DARTMOUTH, the first thing they did was use DARTMOUTH to deceive the
Allies.
> Indeed. On the other hand, once the British put Ultra into the open, there
> would be no reason for the Germans not to admit they knew about it if they
> had.
One might also ask why the Papurt/Legendre story did not come out until
1993.
> > If the Germans knew about Ultra the history books would not show it.
> And why not ?
For the arguments I have given.
Thank you for your arguments. I do not have good answers to everything you
say. Merci.
BCD001
As they Germans were fighting close to their borders, the use of radio as a
means of communication would have diminished, as they would be able utilise
the telephone system, and thus Enigma machines would be in direct telex
contact rather than radio contact ..... remember their lines of
communication were getting shorter, unlike the Allies, therefore unless the
Allies weer able to intercept their telephone system secrets such as this
would be kept better.
Clive
worr
> mail.
Perhaps more to the truth was the the German lines had consolidated on the
boarder of their home soil. Hence there was no need for radio
communication.
Ultra simply went quiet on the Western Front because they Germans were
using
land lines.
However, when Hitler himself took command of the defense of the West
afterwards he used the radio almost exclusively to forward his ridiculous
commands.
Worr, out
Louis Capdeboscq
> The Internet is not always instantaneous and I did not see your first
> message.
It's ok, I don't do instantaneous response either !
> Louis Capdeboscq wrote
> > Whether or not you believe Bradley, the point is that radio silence is
> > desirable whether you suspect that the enemy reads your message or not.
So
> > German radio silence isn't a proof that they knew about Ultra.
>
> Somehow the German army convinced the Allies that a number of German
> divisions were in places where they weren't.
Not really, they convinced the Allies that a number of German divisions were
not deployed at the front, while they were. And the Allies mostly allowed
themselves to be convinced, but that's part of the game...
Anyway, this illustrates that deception is an integral part of strategy, to
achieve surprise. The Germans would try to deceive the Allies about their
intentions (as they had done in 1940), no matter what. This certainly
doesn't prove that they knew about Ultra.
> > This is silly. When you find out that the enemy is reading your mail,
the
> > first thing you do is change your cypher.
>
> In every instance?
In every instance that I know of, at least...
> When the Germans captured the Allied secret agent code
> named DARTMOUTH, the first thing they did was use DARTMOUTH to deceive the
> Allies.
Yes, but that secret agent wasn't giving the Allies the key to all German
tactical / strategical transmissions ! The Germans could control the
information sent to the British. When the enemy reads what your forces are
saying on the radio, you can't control that information, short of saying
"people, be aware that the enemy has broken our code, so don't use your
radios for tactical purposes anymore" and hoping that your forces obey your
orders, while POW's keep quiet about it when the enemy asks them. So you
change your code.
Greg Utrecht
> Not really, they convinced the Allies that a number of German divisions
were
> not deployed at the front, while they were.
Right. The Germans deceived the Allies. This is what Lewin said in 1978.
I'm saying they used Enigma messages as part of the deception. And I
provided evidence of a POW they *could* have found out about Ultra from.
> Anyway, this illustrates that deception is an integral part of strategy,
to
> achieve surprise. The Germans would try to deceive the Allies about their
> intentions (as they had done in 1940), no matter what. This certainly
> doesn't prove that they knew about Ultra.
I was careful in my original post not to suggest that anything that came
afterwards proved anything that came before. My arguments in paragraph 3
were in support of the idea that if they had known about Ultra, they would
have kept it secret in order to deceive the Allies.
> Yes, but that secret agent wasn't giving the Allies the key to all German
> tactical / strategical transmissions ! The Germans could control the
> information sent to the British. When the enemy reads what your forces are
> saying on the radio, you can't control that information, short of saying
> "people, be aware that the enemy has broken our code, so don't use your
> radios for tactical purposes anymore" and hoping that your forces obey
your
> orders, while POW's keep quiet about it when the enemy asks them. So you
> change your code.
I imagine a well orchestrated, secret deception plan such as Lewin refers
to, except that I argue the Germans used Enigma as part of the plan. "Don't
use the Enigma except to say what is in the script" is not the same as
telling all the radio operators "our codes have all been broken." Mr.
Lennia's post provides information about German suspicions, the time
involved in obtaining new Enigma equipment as well as extraordinary security
precautions, which I have not read.
Your argument seems to be that if the Germans knew Enigma had been broken,
they would have stopped all radio traffic and used some other code. That
would have let us know, and been a declaration of defeat in the cryptography
war. Any POW interrogations about Ultra would have been classified for 30
years or more. A lack of such reports doesn't prove anything. If we
thought they knew that we knew about Enigma, we wouldn't want them to know
we knew, and they wouldn't want us to know they knew. In saying this I am
being deliberately ridiculous, to make a point about deception and counter
espionage.
Several posters have given the arguments that radio traffic naturally grew
less as the German army retreated from France. I am asking whether there
was *no* radio traffic or if the Germans just got lucky and there was no
radio traffic related to the attack. For example a leave being cancelled,
or a weather report from a new location, and so on.
What we know for certain is the Ardennes surprise attack took place, and the
Germans could have found out about Ultra beforehand. I think the Germans
knew and they deceived the Ultra system to achieve surprise in the battle.
With respect to America's British allies, I think the most likely second
place alternative explanation is that the British withheld Ultra from the
Americans. Somehow we Americans did not get good Ultra. I certainly do not
believe that! But it is an alternative explanation. German security
precautions that do not include their knowing about the Ultra secret comes
in third place.
Bon soir
Louis Capdeboscq
> Right. The Germans deceived the Allies. This is what Lewin said in 1978.
> I'm saying they used Enigma messages as part of the deception.
I'm saying that you don't need Enigma to deceive your opponent: the Germans
deceived the Soviets time and time again until 1943, and the Soviets
deceived the Germans numerous times, too. Despite the fact that none of them
had knowledge of the other's Enigma.
> And I
> provided evidence of a POW they *could* have found out about Ultra from.
There's plenty of evidence that the Germans *could* have found out that
their codes had been broken. The Allied codes were repeatedly broken early
in the war, and it still took the Allies a while to figure out what
happened, even though evidence was available very soon.
> My arguments in paragraph 3
> were in support of the idea that if they had known about Ultra, they would
> have kept it secret in order to deceive the Allies.
Yes, and I see that as giving up their communication system just for the
sake of *hoping* to deceive the Allies (no guarantee that the Allies
wouldn't realize what was on after a while). Military organizations *need* a
working communication apparatus, preferably a secure one, so I think they
would have done just the opposite. In fact that's what they did whenever
they had an inkling that their codes had been broken: look at how many times
they changed their codes, for instance...
> I imagine a well orchestrated, secret deception plan such as Lewin refers
> to, except that I argue the Germans used Enigma as part of the plan.
Yes, and I'm pointing out the fundamental difference that when you have an
enemy agent you have control over 100% of the information that this agent
provides, which isn't the case of relatively standard sets like Enigma. The
other part of the difference is that putting an enemy agent out of operation
doesn't harm the German war effort, while shutting down a vital ingredient
of the armed forces' communication system does.
> "Don't
> use the Enigma except to say what is in the script" is not the same as
> telling all the radio operators "our codes have all been broken."
Well, yes it is !
Any radio operator with half a brain will understand that "don't send
encrypted messages except to say what we tell you to" means that the codes
have been compromised.
> Mr. Lennia's post provides information about German suspicions,
I have no doubt about the Germans' suspicions. What I doubt is that they
used Enigma as a deception item.
> Your argument seems to be that if the Germans knew Enigma had been broken,
> they would have stopped all radio traffic and used some other code.
The Germans added another rotor to their Enigma in the course of the Battle
of the Atlantic, after they had become suspicious of Allied codebreakers.
I'm expecting the Germans to change the settings of their machines AND
enforce more strident security rules for Enigma users, if they had found out
that Enigma was compromised. After all, these measures would have plugged
the leak, and they could always stage dummy operators "mistakenly" using the
old setting.
> That
> would have let us know, and been a declaration of defeat in the
cryptography
> war.
Defeat is when your codes are broken. As soon as you realize it and do
something about it, it's a declaration that this particular defeat is over.
> Several posters have given the arguments that radio traffic naturally grew
> less as the German army retreated from France. I am asking whether there
> was *no* radio traffic or if the Germans just got lucky and there was no
> radio traffic related to the attack.
There was *much less* radio traffic. Which is one of the reasons why the
Allies remained unconcerned for so long: radio traffic levels didn't
indicate large forces.
There is always some radio traffic. It's when there is a lot, and it is
structured, that you can guess things are going to heat up, whether you
understand what the traffic is about or not.
Dave Gower
Greg Utrecht <fr...@compuall.net> wrote in message
news:soe2q0o...@corp.supernews.com...
>...If the Germans knew about Ultra the history books would not
> show it. World War II is like a house of mirrors. Deception of the other
> guys information system was everywhere. How much of the truth do we really
> know?
??? After 56 post-war years, 10 years after the end of the Cold War, it
would seem inconceivable that this could remain a secret. The implications
would have been enormous during the time, and it would be hot news even
today. Furthermore, with the release of Enigma secrets in the 70s the ban on
talking about all such issues was de facto lifted. Someone would have
blabbed by now.
Except in restrictive war-time conditions with press censorship, information
security is like a dike. One leak starts a flood. Once an issue is history
rather than a matter of current security the vigilance rapidly erodes. The
people who were responsible at the time have long since retired. Their
successors have other priorities.
What you describe would require a conspiracy of silence of incomprehensible
completeness and permanence. People just aren't that consistent.