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WAR OF SECRETS: CRYPTOLOGY IN WWII
Cryptology is the study of secret codes. Being able to read encoded German and Japanese military and diplomatic communications was vitally important for victory in World War II, and it helped shorten the war considerably.
Vital to Victory:
In WWII, wireless radio communication was very important for directing military forces spread all over the world. But radio messages could be intercepted, so secret information -- plans and orders -- had to be transmitted in secret codes. All the major powers used complex machines that turned ordinary text into secret code. A German machine called Enigma and an American device known as SIGABA are on display in an exhibit in the museum's Air Power Gallery.
The Allies were able to read German messages very early in the war thanks to brilliant work by Polish and British mathematicians. In the 1930s, Polish cryptanalysts (code-breaking experts) copied the German Enigma machine with the help of a German traitor, and solved its letter-scrambling patterns. They later shared this knowledge with France and Britain. Intelligence from decrypted Enigma messages, code-named "ULTRA," was extremely secret, and very few people knew about it. While the Germans never found out the Allies could solve their codes, they suspected it as their ability to sink Allied shipping slipped dramatically in 1942. This led the German Navy to add an additional rotor to their Enigma machines, and the submarine "wolf packs" once again started taking their toll of shipping.
Cryptanalysts also exploited Japanese codes. By late 1940, the U.S. Army and Navy could read Japanese diplomatic messages between Tokyo and embassies in London, Washington, Berlin and Rome. American experts named the Japanese code PURPLE, and they called intelligence from these messages MAGIC. Unfortunately, the PURPLE diplomatic code did not provide specific military information, so Americans had no advance knowledge of the Pearl Harbor attack of Dec. 7, 1941.
As the war went on, Allied analysts combined MAGIC and ULTRA intelligence. Japanese communication ironically played an important role in the war in Europe, since Tokyo wanted information from its diplomats about German and Italian progress. Intercepting these Japanese messages gave Allied commanders vital information about Nazi weapons production and German plans to defend Europe from invasion. Allied leaders also knew from MAGIC that Japan would not surrender unconditionally unless forced. |