War of Shadows
Page 46
ACT I. CHAPTER 4. THE MACHINE IS THE FUTURE
1. Wilkinson, Facets, 132.
2. Welchman, Hut Six, 31; “Architectural History Report of Bletchley Park,” chap. 5.1, Bletchley Park, www.bletchleypark.org.uk/resources/filer.rhtm/683101/eh+-+chapter+5.1.pdf (accessed Mar 15, 2016); Mavis Batey, Dilly: The Man Who Broke Enigmas (London: Biteback, 2017), loc.1682, Kindle; Kathryn A. Morrison, “‘A Maudlin and Monstrous Pile’: The Mansion at Bletchley Park, Buckinghamshire,” Transactions of the Ancient Monuments Society 53 (2009): 81–106.
3. Batey, Dilly, loc. 1670 ff.; Welchman, Hut Six, 31; Michael Smith, The Secrets of Station X (London: Biteback, 2011), loc. 500ff., Kindle; Wilkinson, Facets, 132; Sinclair McKay, The Secret Life of Bletchley Park (London: Aurum, 2010), 12; Morrison, “Maudlin and Monstrous,” 103–104.
4. Smith, Station X, loc. 480ff.; Batey, Dilly, loc.1682; Richard Aldrich, GCHQ: The Uncensored Story of Britain’s Most Secret Intelligence Agency (London: Harpers, 2010), 22–24; Morrison, “Maudlin and Monstrous,” 103–104.
5. Aldrich, GCHQ, 22–23; Smith, Station X, 291ff.
6. Wilkinson, Facets, 132.
7. Stephen Budiansky, Battle of Wits: The Complete Story of Codebreaking in World War II (London: Viking, 2000), 26–27; John Ferris, Issues in British and American Signals Intelligence, 1919–1932 (Fort Meade, MD: Center for Cryptologic History, National Security Agency, 2015), 51.
8. William F. Friedman, “A Brief History of the Signal Intelligence Agency,” NSA, June 29, 1942, revised April 2, 1943, www.nsa.gov/Portals/70/documents/news-features/declassified-documents/friedman-documents/reports-research/FOLDER_528/41771299081038.pdf (accessed February 3, 2019).
9. John Ferris, “The Road to Bletchley Park: The British Experience with Signals Intelligence, 1892–1945,” Intelligence and National Security 17, no. 1 (2002): 75.
10. “U.S. Entry into World War I, 1917,” US Department of State, Office of the Historian, https://history.state.gov/milestones/1914-1920/wwi (accessed October 22, 2018); Mark Lubienski, “The Zimmerman Telegram,” London Historians’ Blog, https://londonhistorians.wordpress.com/2018/03/23/the-zimmerman-telegram/ (accessed October 22, 2018); “Text of Germany’s Proposal to Form an Alliance with Mexico and Japan Against the United States,” New York Times, March 1, 1917, 1; Batey, Dilly, loc. 618ff.; Aldrich, GCHQ, 15.
11. Jack Robinson, “The British Official Secrets Act: An Examination” (Arlington, VA: Center for Naval Analyses, 1972), apps.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/745043.pdf (accessed November 11, 2018); Aldrich, GCHQ, 17; Smith, Station X, 130ff.; Ferris, “Road to Bletchley Park,” 67, 73; Jeffrey T. Richelson, A Century of Spies: Intelligence in the Twentieth Century (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995), 65. Cf. FO 1093/313, C/4278, April 3, 1940.
12. Welchman, Hut Six, 8; Greenberg, Welchman, 10.
13. Brigadier John Tiltman: A Giant Among Cryptanalysts (Fort Meade, MD: Center for Cryptologic History, National Security Agency, 2007).
14. BPA, unnumbered file. Handwriting tentatively dates photo as spring 1939. Brigadier John Tiltman shows the same image of Tiltman but dates it as 1942. The London location makes an earlier date more likely.
15. Welchman, Hut Six, 33–34; Penolope Fitzgerald, The Knox Brothers (London: Flamingo, 2002), 126ff., 188–189, 230; Smith, Station X, loc. 240ff., 366ff.; McKay, Secret Life, 13–14; Batey, Dilly, loc. 618ff.
16. Smith, Station X, loc. 371, 531.
17. Smith, Station X, loc. 240ff., 374; Ferris, “Road to Bletchley Park,” 73; Greenberg, Welchman, 28; José Ramón Soler Fuensanta, Francisco Javier López-Brea Espiau, and Frode Weierud, “Spanish Enigma: A History of the Enigma in Spain,” Cryptologia 34, no. 4 (2010): 301−328.
18. Welchman, Hut Six, 12–13, 31 ff.; Fitzgerald, Knox Brothers, 230.
19. Wilkinson, Facets, 137–140; Welchman, Hut Six, 35; Smith, Station X, 561ff.; Morrison, “Maudlin and Monstrous,” 103–104.
20. I have based my account of Welchman’s early work mainly on his own: Welchman, Hut Six, 34ff. As he was working from memory, he made some minor errors. For instance, he says that German operators connected eleven pairs of letters daily on the plugboard. Logically this would have provided the maximum number of permutations, but the actual practice was ten connections. See Greenberg, Welchman, 212. Terminology for various aspects of Enigma varies from source to source. I have sought to use the simplest terms that are faithful to the time, while avoiding the foreign words that were sometimes used at Bletchley Park.
21. HW 14/1, “Enigma: A Position,” Appendix 1, refers to the “main discriminant” as being German air force traffic. This was the Red key.
22. Jacek Tebinka, “Account of the Former Chief of Polish Intelligence on Cracking the Enigma Code of 31 V 1974,” in Ciechanowski et al., Rejewski, 210; HW 25/12, Denniston report on Pyry conference, May 11, 1948, via Stanislaw Ciechanowski and Eugenia Maresch, “Disclosure of the Enigma Secret to the Allies (Pyry, July 1939): Documents in the British Archives,” in Ciechanowski et al., Rejewski, 221, 226ff.
23. Hugh Sebag-Montefiore, Enigma: The Battle for the Code (London: Wiedenfeld & Nicholson, 2011), loc. 655 ff., Kindle.
24. Woytak, “Conversation,” 54–55.
25. Woytak, “Conversation,” 57; Gordon Welchman, “From Polish Bomba to British Bombe: The Birth of Ultra,” Intelligence and National Security 1, no. 1 (1986): 89–92. Sebag-Montefiore, Enigma, loc. 1139ff.
26. Sebag-Montefiore, Enigma, loc. 962ff.
27. Ciechanowski, “Polish Contribution,” 105–106.
28. HW 25/12, Denniston report, 220–230. There was a third member of the British delegation, a naval officer in charge of radio interception named Humphrey Sandwith. Afterward, some participants recalled a man named “Sandwich,” whom they suspected was really Stewart Menzies, the deputy of dying MI6 chief Hugh Sinclair. So myths are born. Menzies wasn’t there. See Woytak, “Conversation,” 57, where Rejewski recounts the suspicion that the man was Menzies.
29. HW 25/12, Denniston report, 226.
30. Welchman wrote of his view in 1939: “To discover the internal wiring of the rotors by purely cryptanalytical means appeared to be an insoluble problem.” Even after learning decades later of Rejewski’s work, Welchman doubted that Rejewski could have worked out the wiring for the newly added wheels of Enigma, writing, “It seems to me that the Poles must have obtained the new five-wheel Enigma by capture or some other nefarious means.” Welchman, Hut Six, 12, 16.
31. HW 25/12, Denniston to Bertrand, August 3, 1939, in Ciechanowski and Maresch, “Disclosure,” 236.
32. HW 25/12, Denniston report, 226; HW 25/12, Knox on Pyry Conference, August 4, 1939, in Ciechanowski and Maresch, “Disclosure,” 239; Woytak, “Conversation,” 56–57.
33. Sebag-Montefiore, Enigma, loc. 9070ff.; Tebinka, “Account of the Former Chief,” 211; HW 25/12, Bertrand to Denniston, August 4, 1939, in Ciechanowski and Maresch, “Disclosure,” 238.
34. Rejewski, “Remarks,” 81; Ciechanowski, “Polish Contribution,” 108.
35. “Hitler, in Warsaw, Cites It as a Warning,” New York Times, October 6, 1939, 5.
36. Gerwarth, Hitler’s Hangman, 141ff.; Browning, Origins, 25–35.
37. Fraser, Knight’s Cross, 142–143; Reuth, Rommel, 37–40.
38. On the handicaps that Hitler created by commanding from the front, see Hoffman, Hitler’s Personal Security, xi. On the shared love of danger, see Reuth, Rommel, 15–16; Fraser, Knight’s Cross, 142–143.
39. “Hitler, in Warsaw”; Reuth, Rommel, 39.
40. Welchman, Hut Six, 71–72; Mavies [sic] Batey, “Marian and Dilly,” in Ciechanowski et al., Rejewski, 72.
41. Andrew Hodges, Alan Turing: The Enigma (London: Vintage, 2014), 30–32, 73–74, 99–100, 263–265, Kindle; David Boyle, Alan Turing: Unlocking the Enigma (Endeavour, 2014), 17, 21–27, 55–59, Kindle.
42. HW 14/2, “Enigma—Position,” November 1, 1939.
43. HW 14/2, “Investigation of German Military Cyphers: Prog
ress Report,” November 7, 1939.
44. HW 14/1, Denniston to “The Director” [Sinclair], September 16, 1939.
45. Welchman, Hut Six, 75–77. Unsigned version of Welchman’s plan: HW 14/2, November 18, 1939. It refers to Welchman in the third person, is addressed to Denniston, and was likely written by Travis following his discussion with Welchman. See Greenberg, Welchman, 33–35.
46. Beckett, Rommel, chap. 1; Reuth, Rommel, 22, 35ff.; Fraser, Knight’s Cross, 142–143.
47. Reuth, Rommel, 43; Beckett, Rommel, chap. 1; Pimlott, Rommel and His Art of War, 36; Fraser, Knight’s Cross, 151.
ACT I. CHAPTER 5. THE FLAW IN THE MACHINE IS THE MAN
1. Lugol, Egypt and World War II, 38–39.
2. FO 407/224, J131/92/16, Lampson to Halifax, January 5, 1940; J580/92/16, Lampson to Halifax, February 7, 1940.
3. FO 407/224, J457/92/16, Lampson to Halifax, February 3, 1940; J580/92/16, Lampson to Halifax, February 7, 1940; J582/582/16, Lampson to Halifax, February 8, 1940, Enclosure, “Political Review of the Year 1939.”
4. IWM, Document 4829, Maunsell memoir, 6–7, 13.
5. Nir Arielli, Fascist Italy and the Middle East, 1933–40 (Houndmills, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010), 160.
6. Bagnold, Sand, Wind, 121–123; CAB 44/151, “The History of the Long Range Desert Group (June 1940–March 1943),” reprinted in Special Forces in the Desert War, 1940–1943 (Kew, Richmond, Surrey, UK: National Archives, 2008), 14.
7. “Architectural History Report of Bletchley Park,” chap. 7, Bletchley Park, www.bletchleyparkresearch.co.uk/research-notes/architectural-history-report-bletchley-park (accessed March 12, 2016); Smith, Station X, loc. 600ff.; Bletchley Park: Home of the Codebreakers (Briscombe Port, UK: Pitkin Publishing, 2015).
8. Stuart Milner-Barry, “Hut 6: Early Days,” in Codebreakers: The Inside Story of Bletchley Park, ed. F. H. Hinsley and Alan Stripp (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993), 89–90; Welchman, Hut Six, 84–85.
9. Joan Murray, “Hut 8 and Naval Enigma, Part I,” in Hinsley and Stripp, Codebreakers, 113–114. HW 14/6 X4228/G, August 8, 1940, lists F. H. Hinsley’s pay as £260 per year, a low rate because of his young age. The memo states that the standard pay for this rank was £300 for men and £260 for women. HW 14/6, Denniston to Moore, August 31, 1940, lists Clarke’s raise from her starting pay of £3 to £3 15s. The film The Imitation Game shows Clarke reaching Bletchley Park after answering an advertisement for crossword puzzle buffs. Like much else in the film, this is a cinematic fiction.
10. John Herivel, Herivelismus and German Military Enigma (Cleobury Mortimer, UK: M&M Baldwin, 2008), 76–77; BPA, Daniel Jones, “The Genius Still Embarrassed by His Success,” Milton Keynes on Sunday, October 27, 2001; Peter Calvocoressi, Top Secret Ultra (London: Cassell, 1980), 13; Welchman, Hut Six, 86.
11. HW, 14/6 X4228/G, August 8, 1940, lists Margaret and Penelope Storey as being promoted from Grade III to Grade II clerks, with a pay of five shillings per week. Neither Cambridge nor Oxford has records of Margaret Storey studying there. “Storey Household,” entry from 1939 UK population register, Find My Past, https://search.findmypast.com/record?id=TNA%2FR39%2F2464%2F2464B%2F007%2F30 (accessed September 26, 2016); “Margaret Elizabeth Storey,” Ancestry, https://person.ancestry.co.uk/tree/12985624/person/26451775027/facts (accessed December 5, 2016); “Harry Storey,” Ancestry, https://person.ancestry.co.uk/tree/12985624/person/13691236196/story (accessed December 5, 2016); Nikki Swinhoe, interview, December 7, 2016; Pauline Flemons, interview, December 21, 2016; James Hodsdon, email correspondence, December 2016; Dorelle Downes, interview, February 26, 2017; Nicholas Fenn Wiggin, interview, October 1, 2017. Late in the war, Storey wrote a rhymed spoof of her own reports, in which various forms of intelligence were each known by a single letter. A red stamp at the top labels it “Top Secret ‘U.’” One section reads,
The ‘O’ reports of 16/3
And 10th of April; and the ‘K’
Report of 7/2; the ‘P’
Report sent out on Saturday
Had nothing that seemed to be
Worth mentioning in any way.
HW 8/19, “Enemy Intelligence Report Nr. 1000,” April 11, 1944.
12. CD, January 3, 1940, January 10, 1940, January 15, 1940, January 17, 1940, February 3, 1940, February 14, 1940, February 18, 1940, February 26, 1940, February 28, 1940.
13. Herivel, Herivelismus, 78–79.
14. Rejewski (“Remarks,” 81) says the sheets were sent from Bletchley Park to the Polish team at Gretz-Armainvilliers in December 1939. Batey (“Marian and Dilly”) says Turing brought them in January 1940.
15. HW 14/1, To Denniston, October 18, 1939; HW 14/3, Denniston to Menzies, January 9, 1940; Menzies to Rivet, January 10, 1940; Greenberg, Welchman, 40; Ciechanowski, “Polish Contribution,” 109; John Jackson, ed. Solving Enigma’s Secrets: The Official History of Hut 6 (Redditch, UK: Book-Tower, 2014), chap. 2, Kindle. (This is a published edition of HW 43/70, the official and secret history of Hut 6 written immediately after the war. Despite being an internal history, it is based in part on memory rather than documentation.)
16. HW 14/3, January 25, 1940.
17. Eugenia Maresch, “The Radio-Intelligence Company in Britain,” in Ciechanowski et al., Rejewski, 188, 189n3.
18. Jackson, Solving Enigma’s Secrets, chap 2.
19. Herivel, Herivelismus, 77; Greenberg, Welchman, 40. HW 14/3, To C. S. S., January 25, 1940, refers obliquely to the first breaks. There are conflicting accounts of when the break was achieved in France and for the keys of what date. January 17 is the date most commonly given for the key and possibly for when it was broken.
20. Batey, Dilly, loc. 1859ff.; Welchman, Hut Six, 98–103, 120; Greenberg, Welchman, 44, 253–255. Dilly’s method made use of instances where both errors appeared in order to find which wheel orders, combined with the indicator of the first message (the cillie), could produce the indicator of the second message. With the number of possible wheel orders reduced to a few, using the Zygalski sheets was much faster.
21. HW 3/119, “The History of Hut Three (January 1940–May 1945),” 1:27; HW 43/64, “The History of Hut 3 (1940–1945),” 2:356; Milner-Barry, “Hut 6: Early Days,” 91–93; Welchman, Hut Six, 88.
22. HW 3/119, “History,” 21.
23. Welchman, Hut Six, 81; Greenberg, Welchman, 47, 206–207; Sebag-Montefiore, Enigma, loc. 1428. Welchman, working from memory, wrote that he had the idea for his improvement, known as the diagonal board, in autumn 1939. If that were correct, however, it would almost certainly have been incorporated in the first bombe, delivered in March 1940. It is more likely that he came up with the idea around the latter date, as other sources state.
24. Herivel, Herivelismus, 78–79.
ACT I. CHAPTER 6. THE ORACLES
1. F. H. Hinsley, “Bletchley Park, the Admiralty, and Naval Enigma,” in Hinsley and Stripp, Codebreakers, 78; David Kahn, Seizing the Enigma: The Race to Break the German U-boat Codes, 1939–1943 (London: Frontline Books, 2012), chap. 9, iBook; Richard Langhorne, “Francis Harry Hinsley, 1918–1998,” Proceedings of the British Academy 120 (2003): 263–274.
2. Christopher Morris, “Navy Ultra’s Poor Relations,” in Hinsley and Stripp, Code Breakers, 238; Weinberg, World at Arms, chap. 2. Cf. Noel Annan, “Book Review: No More an Enigma: Codebreakers: The Inside Story of Bletchley Park,” Independent, August 22, 1993, www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/book-review-no-more-an-enigma-codebreakers-the-inside-story-of-bletchley-park-ed-f-h-hinsley-alan-1462732.html (accessed December 15, 2018). In his account, Morris says the ships were to report to the “German War Office.” No such office existed in 1940; context indicates that he is referring to the German equivalent of the British War Office, which was responsible for the army but not the navy.
3. Geirr H. Haarr, The German Invasion of Norway, April 1940 (Barnsley, UK: Seaforth, 2011), chap. 3, https://books.google.co.il/books/about/The_German_Invasion_of_Norway.html?id=BqaeuAAACAAJ&redir_esc=y (accessed December 13,
2018); F. H. Hinsley et al., British Intelligence in the Second World War: Its Influence on Strategy and Operations (London: Her Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1979), 1: 113–125.
4. HW3/119, “History,” 1: 25–34; Jackson, Solving, chap. 3; Calvocoressi, Top Secret, 69; Smith, Station X, loc. 936–937.
5. CD, April 20, 1940, April 26, 1940, May 1, 1940, May 3, 1940, May 4, 1940.
6. Jackson, Solving, chap. 3.
7. “Conduct of the War (Hansard, 7 May 1940),” UK Parliament, https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/commons/1940/may/07/conduct-of-the-war#S5CV0360P0_19400507_HOC_329 (accessed December 18, 2018).
8. “Churchill Becomes Prime Minister,” BBC, www.bbc.co.uk/history/events/churchill_becomes_prime_minister (accessed December 18, 2018); Max Hastings, Finest Years: Churchill as Warlord 1940-45 (London: Harper Press, 2009), chap. 1, Kindle.
9. James Leutze, “The Secret of the Churchill-Roosevelt Correspondence: September 1939–May 1940,” Journal of Contemporary History 10, no. 3 (1975): 478–480.
10. Liddell Hart, Rommel Papers, 6.
11. This brief account of Rommel’s part in the May–June 1940 campaign draws on Beckett, Rommel, chap. 2; Reuth, Rommel, 43–44, 122–126; Fraser, Knight’s Cross, 186–187; Liddell Hart, Rommel Papers, 3–6. On the portrait, see Terry Brighton, Patton, Montgomery, Rommel: Masters of War (New York: Crown Publishers, 2009), 3–6.
12. Beckett, Rommel, chap. 2; Tim Benbow, “The Dunkirk Evacuation and the German ‘Halt’ Order,” Defense-in-Depth, https://defenceindepth.co/2016/07/11/the-dunkirk-evacuation-and-the-german-halt-order (accessed December 24, 2018); Fraser, Knight’s Cross, 187–189.
13. Herivel, Herivelismus, 100–106; Hinsley et al., British Intelligence, 1: 144–145. Herivel estimates that the first break with his method was on May 11 or 12. Hinsley gives the date of the first break as May 22. Hinsley’s description of one thousand messages being decrypted daily appears exaggerated.