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From: weemba@brahms.BERKELEY.EDU (Matthew P. Wiener)
Newsgroups: net.politics,net.crypt
Subject: Re: ENIGMA and the Eastern Front
Message-ID: <11798@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU>
Date: Tue, 11-Feb-86 08:02:38 EST
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Posted: Tue Feb 11 08:02:38 1986
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In article <11796@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU> tedrick@ernie.berkeley.edu.UUCP (Tom Tedrick) writes:
>>>You know of course that information from ULTRA was passed
>>>to the Soviets throughout the campaign on the Eastern Front.
>I had to piece this together from some of the hundreds of books

I knew, of course, while you had to piece this together?  Be fair!

>in this area that I have read. For example, it was well known
>that the plans for the Kursk offensive had been compromised,
>but not until recently how. I wrote an article which should
>appear in the proceedings of Eurocrypt 85, whenever it comes
>out, but the field seems to be open for a lot more historical
>analysis if anyone cares to give it a shot.

I was under the impression that Soviet penetration of OKW was rather
high--"the Red Orchestra".  The only reason we know more about their
penetration of Japan is because their spy Sorge was caught.  This, I
think, is a more natural explanation of Soviet intelligence.

>I think if one reads some of the books on Enigma, like the
>"Ultra Secret" and the new book on Alan Turing, then rereads
>the books about the war with an eye towards picking out
>the influence of ULTRA, a lot that was unclear in the past
>becomes clear. I can give you a list of things I read if you
>like, most of them are in the UCB main library. A few that come
>to mind are books by von Manstein, Kesselring, Paulus, Guderian,
>"The Rommel Papers", Zhukov, etc. As I said there are hundreds more ...

Concerning Enigma, the book by Winterbotham, _The Ultra Secret_, is
not very good.  He passes on many false stories, including the famous
one that Churchill let Coventry get bombed to keep Ultra secure.  R
Lewin, _Ultra goes to War_, is quite good, with an emphasis on the
Western front, not on the mental wizardry.  At least one book using
declassified Purple sources has come out, detailing Purple's role in
the Pacific theatre.

You have me beat for WWII memoirs by a long shot.  But as I said, I
think there is another, more plausible piecing together of the clues
you have found.

>>I must admit I am *very* surprised.  I find it hard to believe the
>>US/UK would want Stalin to know how good our intelligence was.  It
>>was a delicate issue just sharing Enigma intercepts with the US!
>
>Quite right. It was evidently a very difficult job deciding what
>information to give the Soviets, and to disguise the source.
>I certainly don't know every detail as to what passed to them.
>The Soviets aren't too cooperative about discussing such things :-)

I'm not convinced.  I thought you were going to tell me about all the
now declassified Bletchley Park reports you read, etc.  Aegean Press
is publishing as many of them as they can.

There are several flaws in your theory.  Where did the British listen
in on to encrypted transmissions about Eastern front troop movements
and dispositions?  By asking the Soviets?  Remember, intelligence was
gained not by one or two key messages, but a slow putting together of
all sorts of clues, including correlation of German statements about
Allied troops and terrain with known facts about the Allies.  Except
there weren't known facts about Soviet troops and terrain!  And the
physical process of decryption wasn't free either.  Given a choice
between another dozen submarine intercepts or a dozen Eastern front
army intercepts, I think the British would have gone unhesitatingly
for the submarine messages.  Their food supply depended on it.

Tom, I think you lose.

ucbvax!brahms!weemba	Matthew P Wiener/UCB Math Dept/Berkeley CA 94720