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Table of Contents . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .iii

Preface and Acknowledgments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .1A Note on Terminology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5Acknowledgments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7

Chapter 1: Background . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .11The Context of European and Nazi Anti-Semitism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .11Previous Histories and Articles . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .14

Chapter 2: Overview of the Western Communications IntelligenceSystem during World War II . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21Step 1: Setting the Requirements, Priorities, and Division of Effort . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .24Step 2: Intercepting the Messages . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .29Step 3: Processing the Intercept . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .36Step 4: Disseminating the COMINT . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .43From Intercept to Decryption � the Processing of a German Police Message . . . . . . . . .51

Chapter 3: Sources of Cryptologic Records Relating to the Holocaust . . . . .61The National Archives and Records Administration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .61The Public Record Office . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .67Miscellaneous Collections . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .71

Chapter 4: Selected Topics from the Holocaust . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .75A. The General Course of the Holocaust and Allied COMINT . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .76B. Jewish Refugees, the Holocaust, and the Growing Strife in Palestine . . . . . . . . . . . .86C. The Vichy Regime and the Jews . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .89D. The Destruction of Hungary�s Jews, 1944 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .99E. Japan and the Jews in the Far East . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .97F. Nazi Gold: National and Personal Assests Looted by Nazis

and Placed in Swiss Banks, 1943 - 1945 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .104

Chapter 5: Some Observations about Western Communications Intelligenceand the Holocaust . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .121What was Known from COMINT . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .122When the COMINT Agencies Knew . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .123Some Further Observations Regarding the Available Archival Records . . . . . . . . . . .126

There are limited COMINT agency records about the Holocaust . . . . . . . . . . . . . .126There are significant differences between the archival records holdings

of the cryptologic agencies of the United States and Great Britain . . . . . . . . . .128

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The Western communications intelligence agencies collected many moreintercepts than they finally processed during the War . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .130

There are pertinent uses for the available records from the COMINTagencies related to the Holocaust . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .131

Appendix 1: Selected Allied Monitoring Stations (MS) and Designators . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .135

Appendix 2: Annotated Sample of Diplomatic Translations and German Police Decrypt . . . . . . .137

Appendix 3Attached Documents . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .139Vrba-Wetzler Cable, 26 June 1944 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .140German Foreign office message to Buenos Aiers regarding a

pension applicant�s Jewish wife, 13 January 1943 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .146Spanish diplomatic message referring to Raoul Wallenberg . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .147VN 1260: German translation of intercepted U.S. Department of State

message from embassy in Bern, Switzerland, 19 October 1944 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .148[DOS Nr. 6927] Regarding the status of interned Hungarian Jews . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .149German report of results of deportation of Hungarian Jews,

30 December 1944. From O.S.S. source �George Wood.� . . . . . . . . . . . . . .150

Bibliography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .155

Glossary of Terms, Abbreviations, and Acronyms . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 159

Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 161

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This book is dedicated to those cursed with the memoryof this horror and to those who assumed the burden ofits remembrance.

There is no river but memoryRaise up, raise up a pillar ofour tears.

�Leaving Sodom� by Ann Lauinger

Surely, the grimmest part of the SecondWorld War was the Holocaust (or Shoah). Thisentailed the systematic and wholesale destructionof European Jewry and other groups such asSlavs, Poles, and Romany (Gypsies), among oth-ers, which the Nazis had deemed �inferior� andthen slated for destruction because of race, blood,or disability. In fact, one of the major war aims ofNazi Germany was the extermination of globalJewry. During the war years, Europe�s landscapewas scarred by the presence of concentration,labor, and death camps. Einsatzgruppen (opera-tions groups), and numerous German Policeunits roamed the western Soviet Union in thewake of the Wehrmacht, slaughtering Jews,Slavs, and Bolsheviks. Collaborationist regimes ofnations allied to or conquered by the Axis powerscooperated with the Nazi security forces in extin-guishing national or resident refugee Jewish pop-ulations. The darkness that overwhelmed Nazi-occupied Europe and threatened other nations inthe world was only slightly lessened by individualacts of courageous opposition and the example ofthe nation of Denmark, which smuggled virtuallyits entire Jewish population to safety in Sweden.By the end of the war, it has been estimated thatEurope�s Jewish population had been reduced tosomewhere between a third to a quarter of its1939 level.1

In the years following the war, a number ofhistories, memoirs, and specialized studies aboutthe Holocaust were published. These works werebased on a variety of private and official sources

that were then available to the public. For thelongest period, one element that was largely miss-ing in the historical accounts was the records ofthe various Western intelligence agencies, such asthe American Office of Strategic Services (OSS)and Britain�s M.I.6. Also absent was the intelli-gence gathered by the wartime Allied communi-cations intelligence (COMINT) agencies, mostnotably the British Government Code and CypherSchool (GC&CS), the U.S. Navy�s OP-20-G, andthe U.S. Army�s Signals Intelligence Service (SIS).The revelations in the mid-1970s of the Alliedcode-breaking successes � the deep and persis-tent exploitation of Axis codes, ciphers, andcommunications, popularly referred to as �Ultra�� only whetted the appetite of Holocaustresearchers. Once it was known that Allied code-breakers had pierced the Reich�s deepest secrets,the question posed was how much more informa-tion would be available for researchers?

Beginning in the mid-1970s, scholars of theHolocaust who had wanted to utilize the archivedmaterial of the wartime code-breaking agenciesfocused their research on the then availablerecords at the United States� National Archivesand Records Administration (NARA) and theUnited Kingdom�s Public Record Office (renamedthe National Archives in 2003). During the firstfew years after the Ultra revelations, these scho-lars discovered little significant informationabout the Holocaust in the wartime records of theBritish GC&CS and the American SIS. Theserecords, by the way, were stored in the recordgroups of their modern successor agencies. Therecords of the SIS were to be found in RecordGroup (RG) 457, the records of the NationalSecurity Agency (NSA). The GC&CS records wereplaced in Group HW, the records of theGovernment Communications Headquarters

Preface

(GCHQ). The actual number of records in eithergroup was not large by any measure; nor werethey particularly revealing. For example, inNARA by 1990, there were about 150 translationsof intercepted wartime Japanese, German, andVichy diplomatic messages that referred to theHolocaust, while at the PRO there may have beenfewer.2 Considering the nature and scope of theHolocaust � every country in Europe and many oftheir colonial holdings were affected in somefashion by what the Nazis were doing � the num-ber of publicly available records seemed meager.

At the same time, the records that were avail-able seemed to have large gaps in the subject mat-ter that they covered. Topics of enormous impor-tance to understanding the Holocaust, such as thedepredations of the police and SS units in Russia,the operations of the death camps, and theroundup of the Hungarian Jews, barely werementioned in the extant material. Especiallywhen compared to the large body of records fromthese and other events during the Holocaust, thatthere were so few items from communicationsintelligence sources in the British and Americanarchives during the 1970s seemed to invite disbe-lief, ridicule, or suspicion.

Researchers also could construe the absenceof significant archival holdings of the wartimerecords of the Allied code-breaking agencies tomean that further, still unreleased, caches ofrecords existed. These �absent� records werebelieved to be in either one of two forms: finishedintelligence in the form of reports still classifiedand therefore withheld from the public, or thereexisted troves of �raw,� or undecrypted, Axis mes-sages at these agencies. Exacerbating the situa-tion was the publication, during the decade of the1980s, of the official multivolume History ofBritish Intelligence in the Second World War.3

This enormous history referenced British recordsof intercepted Nazi messages about theHolocaust, mainly those of the German Policewho were one of the primary agents for the mas-sacres of hundreds of thousands of Jews and oth-

ers in the western Soviet Union. The history alsoreferred to intercepted messages from the SS con-cerning the slave labor populations at a numberof concentration camps.4 Ironically, the actualrecords used to write the history still were notaccessible by the public.

In a way these scholars were correct in theirobservations. Even by the late 1980s, the Britishand Americans still had much World War II cryp-tologic material to release. It was not until anumber of further significant releases of wartimerecords of the Signal Intelligence Service and theGovernment Code and Cypher School throughthe decade of the 1990s that the amount ofCOMINT material available to researchers of theHolocaust dramatically increased.5 By early2004, at NARA, over 600 translations anddecrypts of various intercepted messages aboutthe Holocaust could be found in the recordgroups of the National Security Agency. Theseincluded some decrypts of German Police mes-sages that reported the massacres of Jews andother groups. Others are messages from mostlydiplomatic sources that bear witness to suchevents as the roundup of Jews in Hungary andother countries in occupied Europe. At the PRO,the complete set of German Police and SSdecrypts were available to be reviewed by thepublic.6

Even with the releases of the 1990s, the U.S.government still held back significant collectionsof U.S. government records about the Holocaust.But the remaining wartime records, and thosefrom the postwar period that relate to theHolocaust and to Nazi and other Axis power warcrimes will soon be declassified and releasedthanks to the efforts of the United StatesInteragency Working Group on Nazi War Crimes(IWG). Established in January 1999 in accor-dance with the Nazi War Crimes Disclosure Act(P.L. 105-246), the IWG was charged with locat-ing, inventorying, and recommending for declas-sification all classified Nazi war criminal recordsheld by the United States government. The act

was amended in 2000 to include declassificationof U.S. government records pertaining toJapanese war crimes and war criminals.7 Many ofthe records that were released under the aegis ofthe Disclosure Act were from U.S. intelligenceagencies. Hopefully, the release of these recordswill help dispel those claims and charges madeover the years by some scholars and Holocaustsurvivors that �there had to be more records� orthat the intelligence agencies were �holding backrecords.�8

To this historian, the problems thatresearchers and scholars of the Holocaust hadhad over the years with the number of availableCOMINT records appeared to lay elsewhere thanjust with the paucity of this material. Similarreactions to the later several releases of wartimerecords to the NARA and the PRO suggested tome that the issue was a fundamental one: Thatresearchers and scholars still misunderstood thebasic operation of the Allied wartime COMINTsystem. Many people did not understand howthe wartime code-breaking agencies procured,processed, and disseminated communicationsintelligence. They did not realize that there weretechnical and institutional constraints and limita-tions under which GC&CS and SIS operated.Also, it was not generally well understood thatthere were priorities established for collectionand decryption of Axis and neutral communica-tions and that higher authorities in Allied intelli-gence and military operations had set these.

Many people also did not know that theoperational needs of these agencies largely deter-mined what wartime records were retained afterthe war, how the existing records were controlled,where the relevant records resided in variousnational archival collections, and who wasresponsible for their release. In short, the story ofCOMINT records relating to the Holocaust ismuch more than a simple matter of the number ofpages available to the public at various nationalarchives.

In considering all of the above, I determinedthat a historical guide would be useful forresearchers, scholars, and the general public.Such a guide could help Holocaust researchersgain a better understanding of how Allied com-munications intelligence reported intelligence onthe Holocaust. It would explain the variety ofmaterial that would be encountered in therecords of the wartime cryptologic agencies. Thisguide, then, will concentrate on three topics thatwould be of interest and utility to scholars and thegeneral public. First, it explains how the Westerncommunications intelligence system operatedduring the war. It will consider how well the sys-tem operated and what were its limitations. Thislatter point is important when considering howWestern COMINT handled intelligence about theHolocaust. Second, the guide describes how thewartime records of the SIS and GC&CS currentlyare organized in the national archives of GreatBritain and the United States, where theserecords can be found, and the various formatsthey come in. Third, the guide summarizes whatinformation is available from SIGINT recordsabout the Holocaust. This summary consists ofboth a general chronology of the Holocaust andselected incidents for which significant communi-cations intelligence records are available.

Despite the scope and detail of some of thematerial contained in this guide, it is not intend-ed as a narrative history of the Holocaust basedon the records of Western communications intel-ligence agencies. The major reason is that thearchived COMINT records cannot sustain such ahistory. There are too many important parts ofthe history of the Holocaust for which no com-munications intelligence was collected. As will bedemonstrated later in this work, communicationsintelligence could not reveal high-level Nazi poli-cy deliberations regarding the Jews and othergroups. On occasion, communications intelli-gence could �tip off� an impending action by Nazisecurity forces, as in Italy in the fall of 1943. Butthis advantage was rare. More often, COMINTwas best as a chronicle of some campaigns that

already were under way such as the massacrescarried out by the German Police units in thewestern USSR in 1941 and the roundup of theHungarian Jews in mid-1944.

Although something of a historical narrativeof the Holocaust is presented in the last chapter ofthis guide, it is meant to be a selected summary ofthe available information from COMINT records.It is beyond the scope and means for historians ofcryptology to rewrite the story of the dreadfulevents of the Holocaust. Their mission is to dis-cover the relevant records and write the history ofcryptology and place that story within the contextof larger events of the Second World War. Itremains for historians of the Holocaust to utilizecompletely within their narratives the historicalinformation provided by the records of the Alliedcode-breaking agencies.

This guide will limit its focus to the two majorWestern COMINT agencies that produced intelli-gence about the Holocaust during the war: theBritish GC&CS and the U.S. Army�s SIS. Early inthe war, the U.S. Navy�s cryptologic element, OP-20-G, contributed some intercept of diplomaticcommunications, but by mid-1942, it ceded thiswork completely to the SIS and concentratedalmost exclusively on Axis naval communica-tions. A number of smaller Allies contributed tothe overall Western radio intelligence work.These included Canada, Australia, New Zealand,and others. However, the American and Britishsecurity concern to protect Ultra sometimes cir-cumscribed the contribution of these smallerallies. Among these, refugee Polish cryptologistscontributed major intercept and code-breakingefforts against German Police communications.Their work will be discussed later in the guide.

It is important to mention that the British hada limited COMINT relationship with the SovietUnion. Among other things, this included anexchange of technical information on GermanPolice ciphers. (But it stopped short of revealingthe Enigma breakthrough.) The Russians certain-

ly were in a position to intercept more police mes-sages than the British (or the Poles). And theywere able to read the same German Police mes-sages as the British. But Western researchers donot know to what extent and for how long theRussians were able to exploit German Policeradio traffic. Also, it is not known if the Sovietsretained these decrypts in their archives after thewar. These uncertainties mean that this guide willforego any consideration of the Soviet contribu-tion to communications intelligence about theHolocaust. This subject must await futureresearchers gaining access to the appropriatearchives in Moscow.9

The background chapter to this guide offersbrief summaries of the history of anti-Semitismin the West and the early Nazi policies inGermany, as well as a short review of the limitedbody of historical and memoir literature prior to1997 that pertains to both cryptology and theHolocaust. Chapter 3 will describe the generalsystem by which communications intelligencewas produced by the Allies during World War II.This description will encompass the system fromthe establishment of collection priorities, throughthe intercept of targeted Axis and neutral com-munications, next to the processing or analysis ofthe intercept for intelligence, and finally to thedissemination of the produced intelligence. Justas importantly, this section includes observationson how the nature of the communications intelli-gence process affected the collection of informa-tion concerning the Holocaust. Chapter 4 will listthe various locations for relevant records of theAmerican and British cryptologic agencies heldby the National Archives and RecordsAdministration and the Public Record Office.This chapter will also include a description andsome examples of other smaller relevant recordsholdings. Chapter 5 will briefly review the avail-able COMINT material that is part of the histori-cal narrative of the Holocaust. This chapterincludes a brief overview of the course of theHolocaust and somewhat more detailed descrip-tions of specific topics that include the refugee

problem and Palestine, Vichy and the Jews, theroundup of the Hungarian Jews, the situation ofthe Jews in the Far East under the Japanese, andGerman-Swiss trade and financial transactionsduring the war. Finally, Chapter 6 considers someimportant general observations about cryptologyand the Holocaust. In a way, these observationsare a summation of the material presented in theguide.

A Note on Terminology

Since the first revelations of the Ultra secret inthe mid-1970s, the public has been exposed to anumber of arcane terms associated with the busi-ness of making or breaking codes. Unfortunately,there has been a tendency among many scholarlyand popular writers and reporters to confuse ormix terms. This misuse of terms often led to someinaccuracies in their texts such as referring to theGerman Enigma machine as a �code machine.�Although most of these terms are not relevant tothis work, a few necessarily have to be used toaccurately describe various activities and items ofthe Allied communications intelligence system.So I will define the most important ones andexplain how they are used in this monograph.

COMINT is the acronym for communicationsintelligence and can be defined as measurestaken to intercept, analyze, and report intelli-gence derived from all forms of communications.This definition describes most accurately theentire Western system to exploit Axis communi-cations. The COMINT system included the code-breaking centers at Bletchley Park in GreatBritain and the American centers at ArlingtonHall, Virginia, just south of Washington, D.C. Italso includes the monitoring stations manned byAllied radio operators that listened in and copiesAxis and neutral radio transmissions. It furthercovers the work of the various Allied staffs andunits that took the analyzed messages, picked outthe intelligence that mattered and forwarded it towhatever Allied command, ministry, department,or leader that would need it.

A similar term, signals intelligence, or SIG-INT, is often used synonymously with communi-cations intelligence in many histories of wartimeintelligence. Signals intelligence is a term thatencompasses a much broader category of electro-magnetic emissions than just those used for com-munications. This category includes such emis-sions as radar and navigation beacons. DuringWorld War II, Western technical intelligence tookan active interest in collecting such signals usedby the Axis so that countermeasures could bedeveloped against them. The famous British�window,� or chaff (strips of aluminum thatreflected radar signals and created interferenceon German radar screens) was an effectiveweapon against German warning radars duringthe Allied bomber offensives. The Britishemployed technical deceptive measures to defeatthe Germans navigational beacons used by theLuftwaffe to guide its bombers during night raidsagainst British cities.10

Cryptology is defined as the study of the mak-ing and breaking of codes and ciphers.Cryptography is the development of codes andciphers. A code is defined as a method in whicharbitrary groups of letter, number, or other sym-bols replace words, phrases, letters, or numbersfor the purposes of concealment or brevity. Toencode is to transform plaintext into a code. Todecode is to break a code back to its underlyingplaintext. A cipher is a method of concealingplaintext by transposing letters or numbers or bysubstituting other letters or numbers according toa key. A key is a set of instructions, usually in theform of letters or numbers, which controls thesequence of the encryption of text and the decryp-tion of cipher back to the original plaintext.Transforming plaintext into cipher is calledencryption. Breaking the cipher back to plaintextis called decryption. Cryptanalysis is the analy-tic method whereby code or cipher is broken backto the underlying plaintext. Traffic analysis is themethod by which intelligence is derived from theanalysis of the communications activity and ele-

ments of messages short of the actual cryptanaly-sis of a message.

Two examples of famous ciphers from WorldWar II are the Axis cipher machines, the GermanEnigma and the Japanese Purple (known to the

Japanese as the 97-shiki O-bun In-ji-ki, orAlphabetical Typewriter �97). Both machines

substituted letters for plaintext elementsaccording to daily settings (key) for eachmachine. Interestingly, most ciphers usedby all sides during the war overwhelminglywere manual in nature. That is, theyinvolved the use of paper charts and key.Such a manual cipher was the double trans-position cipher used by German Police unitsto encrypt their reports about the massacresof Jews, partisans, prisoners, and Sovietcommissars to Police headquarters inBerlin.

Codes used during the war usually camein the form of a book. On each page of thecodebook, a plaintext word or phrase wasaligned opposite its code group equivalent.Examples of a code include that used by theSoviets for its espionage messages known

through the Allied cover name as Venona and theJapanese operational naval code, JN-25. Bothcodes utilized books of code values for plaintext,

Enigma Machine(Courtesy of National Security Agency)

Purple Analog(Courtesy of National Security Agency)

but added an additional element: key, in the formof groups of numbers that were used to encryptthe code groups, further concealing the �true�code groups. This practice made decoding evenmore difficult: before a cryptanalyst could recov-er the plaintext value behind a code group, he orshe first had to recover the true code group. Anexample of an ordinary code used during the warwas the so-called �Black Code� used by the UnitedStates Army military attachés. This system wasexploited by both Italy and Germany to greateffect in 1941 and was probably Field MarshallErwin Rommel�s best source of intelligence dur-ing the battle for North Africa.11

To facilitate the understanding of readers whomay be uncertain of the above jargon or uncom-fortable with it, I will use terms like �cryptology,��communications intelligence,� �COMINT,� �sig-nals intelligence,� and �SIGINT� interchangeablyeither as adjectives or as nouns by which todescribe or identify the overall system the Alliesused to exploit Axis cryptography and communi-cations. Using these five terms as general descrip-tors will not sacrifice accuracy and probably willmake the text more readable. Other terms fromcryptology, used once, will be defined as they areencountered in the text.

Acknowledgments

This guide took over five years to complete,far longer than originally planned when I beganin late 1998. Why did it take so long to finish?Initially, like many other historians of cryptology,I believed that there was not much material avail-able and felt therefore that a guide could be pub-lished within a relatively short time. In 1999 Ipreviewed the guide in a paper delivered at theCryptologic History Symposium held at FortGeorge G. Meade, Maryland. At the time I feltthat relevant record sources mostly had beenexamined by scholars. A review of the symposiumpaper in an intelligence journal had emphasizedmy remark about the �scanty� amount of commu-

nications intelligence records.�12 But I was wrong.The Interagency Working Group (IWG) on NaziWar Crimes (that soon included ImperialJapanese Imperial Records), which I joined inearly 2001 as a technical advisor to its staff,already was deep into an extensive review all therecords of Nazi crimes held by the many agenciesand departments of the United States govern-ment, including its intelligence agencies. Therecords that were unearthed by the various intel-ligence agencies, and the clues they provided tosupplementary finds in the British Public RecordOffice and the U.S. National Archives, indicatedthat there were many more pages of cryptologicrecords than earlier believed. Every further meet-ing of the IWG and the associated HistoricalAdvisory Panel I attended had uncovered morerecords. I realized I had to delay the completionof this guide until the search by the IWG nearedcompletion. The wait, I believe, was well worth it.

Within the National Security Agency, therewere many people who contributed their efforts,directly and indirectly, to the publication of thisGuide. First of all, the Publications Team of theCenter for Cryptologic History (CCH) did itsusual magic and turned my initial �heap ofwords� into the presentable form it now is. Manythanks go to the tireless efforts of LulaGreenwood and Barry Carleen. Within the CCH,Dave Mowry, Sharon Maneki, and David Hatchreviewed my manuscript and offered many usefulpoints. Elsewhere, I am grateful for the insightfrom Robert L. Benson and Rona Lerner. Therewere others who contributed to this guide fromthe NSA, yet they cannot be mentioned by name.I wish to thank them publicly for their help.

Because of the scope of the information in thisguide, it was necessary to consult with many indi-viduals outside of the NSA. Although personalresearch provided much historical background tothe Holocaust, the many months that I spentreviewing the literature of the Holocaust couldnot provide me with that astute insight that isgained only from a deep and sustained profes-

sional study of a subject. So I queried a number ofacademic historians, independent scholars, andresearchers familiar with the Holocaust for help.In all of my correspondence with them, I encoun-tered nothing but gracious and full cooperation.My questions were patiently and quicklyanswered, requests for material were filledpromptly, and several people took time from theirbusy schedules to review the manuscript. I hopethat our effort was a mutually rewarding learningexperience. Their cooperation suggests thathistory is more than a mere academic discipline;at times it can be a true community of effort,even, if at times, it can be a bit contentious. Withthis experience in mind, I wish to thank the fol-lowing people for their incisive and useful com-ments on my manuscript: Gerhard Weinberg,Richard Breitman, Rebecca Boehling, Colin�Brad� Burke, David Alvarez, Christopher Lovett,Sebastian Laurent, Miriam Kleiman, and RonZweig. A very special thanks go to Stephen Tyas,Ralph Erskine, and Rebecca Ratcliff for both theircomments on the manuscript and for sharingtheir historical research from the Public RecordOffice. And a final thanks to the archivists of theU.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in selectingimages from their photographic archives.

If there are any errors in this guide, then, inthe eloquent words of the Qur�an: �If I err, I errjust on my own.�

Robert J. HanyokFort George G. Meade, MD

2004

Notes1. Precise figures for the destruction of European

Jewry are difficult to arrive at. Among other reasons,poor national census bases, a reluctance by someEuropean nations to account for Jewish losses, and anuncontrolled refugee flow during and after the warhave contributed to the continuing imprecision anddiscrepancies in the estimates. Most statistics are, inreality, good estimates. One source is Leon Poliakovand Josef Wulf, eds, Das Dritte Reich and die Juden:Dokumente und Aufsaetz (Berlin: Arani-VerlagGmbH, 1955). The Jewish population of September1939 Europe is estimated at 8.3 million. The numberof Jews murdered is put at 5.97 million or aboutseventy-two percent. Another source, Wolfgang Benzin Dimension des Volksmords: Die Zahl derJudischen Opfer des Nationalsocialismus (Munich:Deutscher Taschebuch Verlag, 1991) places the finaltoll at 6.26 million Jews.

2. In the U.S. National Archives, some of therecords in RG 457, �The Records of the NationalSecurity Agency/Central Security Service,� can befound both the original version and a �redacted� ver-sion. This confusing situation resulted from thestricter requirements for declassification of the mate-rial released in the mid-1980s. By the mid-1990s,many of the earlier restrictions had been eased andoriginal version of some of the material from the initialreleases was transferred to the Archives without anydeletions. Good examples of these dual versions can befound by comparing redacted Japanese translationsfound in Entry 9011 (notated also as �SRDJ�), orredacted French Vichy diplomatic translations, Entry9021 (notated also as �SRDV) with the original,unredacted translation that can be found in theHistorical Cryptographic Collection, Boxes 286 to 516.

3. F. H. Hinsley, et alia, British Intelligence inthe Second World War: Its Influence on Strategy andOperations. (Volumes I-III) (London, Her Majesty�sStationery Office, 1980 to 1990) Volume IV.F.H. Hinsley and C.A.G. Simkins, Security andCounterIntelligence (1990). Volume V. MichaelHoward, Strategic Deception (1990).

4. Hinsley, Volume II (Appendix 5), 669-73.5. For example, in 1996 the National Security

Agency released some 1.3 million pages of World War

II records to the National Archives. This material wasplaced in the Historical Cryptographic Collection(HCC). The records originated with the U.S. Army�scryptologic agency known primarily as the SignalsIntelligence Service. In this release were GermanPolice messages and many more diplomatic messagesfrom other countries, such as Switzerland and theVatican, which referenced the Holocaust.

6. The numbers may yet change. At the PRO, thereare a substantial number of GC&CS diplomatic trans-lations still to be released to HW 12. Also, at NARA inRG 457, HCC, there are numerous boxes of so-called�Summary Translations� that consist of single pageswith several short diplomatic translations. A singlesheet can contain as many as five short translations,some of which are relevant to the Holocaust.(See Chapter 4 for an example of one of these�Summaries.�)

7. Although a final count of records released underthe Act remains to be made, as of January 2004,almost 700,000 pages from the Central IntelligenceAgency, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, theNational Security Agency, and the U.S. Army had beenreleased. It is expected that the IWG will release threevolumes of reports in 2004. There will be an overallreport on the working group and its collaboration withother federal agencies. There also will be two volumesof reports by IWG-associated historians about thenature and significance of the declassified and releasedrecords. One volume will cover Europe while the otherwill consider Asia and the Pacific.

8. This historian personally encountered suchcharges, as well. At a NARA-sponsored symposium onRecords and Research relating to Holocaust-era Assetsin December 1998, a colleague from CIA and I wereconfronted by several Holocaust survivors who angrilyclaimed that our agencies were withholding recordsabout certain Nazi war criminals. As it turned out, theyhad recently received negative responses to Freedomof Information Act requests concerning specific warcriminals. They believed that NSA and CIA were with-holding records on these individuals.

9. For further information see Hinsley, Vol. II, 57-65 and Bradley F. Smith, Sharing Secrets with Stalin:How the Allies Traded Intelligence, 1941-1945(Lawrence KS: University Press of Kansas) 1996, 109-

111. Aspects of the proposed early British COMINTliaison with the Soviet Union can be found in PRO,HW 14/18, August 1941.

10. Probably the most complete and entirely read-able book on the subject remains R.V. Jones�s TheWizard War. British Scientific Intelligence, 1939-1945(New York: Coward, McCann & Geoghegan, Inc.,1978).

11. See David Kahn, Hitler�s Spies: GermanMilitary Intelligence in World War II (New York:Macmillan Publishing Co., 1978), 193-5, and TheCodebreakers (New York: The Macmillan Company,1967), 472-4; Bradley F. Smith, The Ultra-MagicDeals And the Most Secret Special Relationship, 1940-1946 (Novato, CA: Presidio Press, 1993), 111-112. Fora description of U.S. diplomatic codes and ciphers dur-ing the period, see Ralph E. Weber, United StatesDiplomatic Codes and Ciphers, 1775-1938 (Chicago:Precedent Publishing Co., 1979), 250-254.

12. Ralph Erskine. �Three Conferences.�International Intelligence History Association (Vol. 7,No. 2, Winter 1999). The paper also is mentioned inJames Bamford�s Body of Secrets: Anatomy of theUltra-Secret National Security Agency from the ColdWar through the Dawn of a New Century (New York:Doubleday, 2001), 10-11.

The Context of European and Nazi Anti-Semitism

Anti-Semitism has been part of European his-tory perhaps as early as Alexander�s Empire in the4th Century B.C.E. What has varied over the cen-turies since then has been the intensity of the ani-mosity towards Jews, as well as the basis for it,whether it was grounded in political, religious,cultural, or ethnic differences. The early Romanemperors generally had a difficult relationshipwith Jews in the Empire. There was a major prob-lem over the ritual of emperor worship, whichJews refused to perform. Imperial adjudicationwas required to settle disputes between Jewishand Gentile communities in such cities asAlexandria and Rome. After Constantine�s reign(337 C.E.), the Christian emperors and churchleaders placed administrative and legal restric-tions on the Jewish population of the RomanEmpire, although, for religious reasons, Jewswere tolerated.1

In early Medieval Europe there was popularhostility against Jews, but it was unsystematicand was charged with a clearly religious tone �more anti-Judaic than anti-Semitic. This attitudechanged, though, in the 11th and 12th centurieswhen the zeal and intolerance of the Crusadesspawned more virulent and violent anti-Semiticatrocities. During the First Crusade in 1096,Jewish communities, mostly in the Rhineland,were plundered and their inhabitants sometimesmassacred by crusader armies on their way to theHoly Land. The following two centuries saw thegrowth of official policies that established ghet-toes, discriminatory laws, and financial victimiza-tion. In 1215 the Catholic Church�s FourthLateran Council prescribed absolute ghettoiza-tion for urban Jewish communities and decreed

that Jews wear a yellow label as a sign of theirpariah status.2

The religious wars of the reformation onlybrought more massacres and mistreatment forthe Jews, especially in Germany. It was not untilthe Enlightenment and the French Revolutionthat conditions ameliorated somewhat when civilrights and citizenship were granted Jews. But inthe latter part of the nineteenth century, anti-Semitism resurged throughout Europe. The cen-turies-old religiously based anti-Semitism contin-ued to attract adherents. This old version wasjoined by a new strain that grew out the national-istic fervor that dominated European politics wellinto the twentieth century. It was based on pseu-do-scientific social and biological theories ofracial differences that emphasized cultural, eth-nic, and stereotyped physical differences. In somenationalist lexicons, Jews were now classified asmembers of the Semite �race.�

The racial core of Nazi ideology was obviousfrom the earliest days of the movement inMunich. Early proponents of Nazism also hintedat the future destruction of Jewry. When theNazis came to power in 1933, some anti-Semiticmeasures were adapted, but the initial policywas relatively unstructured. This changed inSeptember 1935, when Hitler announced the pas-sage of the Nuremberg Laws that, among others,prohibited relations and marriages betweenJews and other Germans, forbade Jews to fly theGerman flag, and deprived them of citizenship. Inlater years during the war, American intercepts ofGerman consular radio and cable traffic recordedhow the effect of these laws was extended to over-seas German Jews. These intercepts reportedincidents in which individuals as far away asArgentina and China were deprived of German

Chapter 1

Background

citizenship because their Jewish parentage ordenied state pensions unless a Jewish spouse wasdivorced.3

In the first years of the Nazi regime, the prin-cipal method for removing Jews from Germanywas emigration. To �encourage� Jews to leave, theNazis instituted a number of discriminatorymeasures that included the �aryanization� of theGerman economy, and, after the Anschluss withAustria, the placement of the mandatory �J�stamp in German passports held by Jews. By thebeginning of the war, more than half of Germanand Austrian Jews had emigrated abroad. Someaspects of the early Jewish emigration fromGermany appeared in the occasional Japanesediplomatic message from Berlin intercepted bythe United States.4

In 1939, for European Jewry, two importantevents occurred that pushed their fate in thedirection of the �Final Solution.� The first was inJanuary 1939, when the control of anti-Semiticpolicy in Germany was delegated to the SS(Schutz Staffel). Operational control was placedspecifically in the SS�s Reich Main Security Office(Reichssicherheitshauptamt or RSHA) under SSGeneral Reinhard Heydrich. Heydrich controlledall Reich security services, including the SecurityService (Sicherstheitsdienst or SD) and theGestapo (Geheime Staats Polizei or Secret StatePolice). Later, Adolf Eichmann was placed incharge of Department IVA4b of the RSHA, whichwas responsible for administering the �Jewishproblem.�

The second occurred in September 1939 whenGermany invaded Poland. England and France,honoring a defense pact with Poland, declaredwar on Nazi Germany. With these actions, theSecond World War began, and the fate ofEuropean Jewry was changed for the worse. Thewar ended Germany�s original plan to rid itself ofits Jewish population through emigration andexpulsion. As more countries fell under its sway,the number of Jews under Nazi control grew dra-

matically. The early policy of enforced expulsionwas useless; there was nowhere to send them,even to the colonies of the nations they had con-quered as with the bizarre scheme to create aJewish reservation on the French-held island ofMadagascar off the Southeast African coast.

When exactly the mass murder of the Jewswas ordered as policy is not absolutely certain. Inlate July 1941 Reich Marshall Herman Goeringsigned the order that Heydrich had drafted call-ing for a �final solution� (Endloesung) to theJewish presence in German-occupied Europe.Two things about this order are significant. First,it was signed after massacres of Jews and othergroups in Russia had begun in the wake of theGerman invasion. Second, this order also needsto be understood as part of Hitler�s positionregarding Jews and their association withBolshevism. In January 1939 Hitler had threat-ened the Jews with annihilation, but he made thisthreat within the context of a potential war, andthen as part of the struggle against the�Bolshevikization of the earth.�5 In whateverterms or context it was stated, though, thedestruction of Europe�s Jews was a prime Nazigoal during the war.6 During the final phases ofthe planning for the invasion of the Soviet Union,the SS and the German General Staff approvedplans for killing Jews as part of the policy toliquidate all �undesirables,� which includedSoviet political, military, and security officials.7

Following on the heels of the victoriousWehrmacht, Einsatzgruppen, along with numer-ous German Police battalions and SS units, mas-sacred almost three-quarters of a million SovietJews in the first ten months of the invasion.

In late 1941 and into early 1942, the decisionsand the first steps to exterminate all otherEuropean Jews were taken. In January 1942Heydrich met with senior officials from the SS,the Police, the Foreign Office, the Nazi Party, andReich Chancellery and Ministry of Justice in theBerlin suburb of Wannsee to map out the cam-paign of mass murder. As a guide to future plans,

Heydrich referred to the earlier order fromGoering for the Final Solution he claimed he haddrafted. Like the earlier order signed by Goering,the decision at the conference to exterminateEurope�s Jews was taken after several actionsalready had begun. These included the operationsof the first death camp at Chelmo in westernPoland that had started already in December1941. A month earlier, in Kovno, Lithuania,police units began murdering German Jews whohad been deported there. And the constructionof Auschwitz-Birkenau, begun in December 1941,was accelerated. The time of �night and fog�(Nacht und Nebel) over Nazi-occupied Europehad arrived.

The Holocaust differed in two significantways from other examples of twentieth-centurygenocide. First of all, the Nazis did not simplyindulge themselves in an orgy of massacres andother atrocities. Instead, to facilitate their policyof extermination, the Nazis borrowed from thepanoply of twentieth century science and technol-ogy. They adopted techniques, equipment, andprocesses from engineering and basic sciencessuch as chemistry. They also adapted modernbusiness methods, technology, and techniquesfrom the fields of accounting, administration,transport, and bureaucratic organization. TheNazi and SS hierarchy took an avid interest in theprogress of the extermination and demandedconstant reports from subordinates, units in thefield, and the death camps. While not always con-sistent and efficient, the Nazi machine was organ-ized along methods that allowed for measure-ments of progress and any necessary �improve-ments� to the existing system.

Secondly, the Nazis moved to eliminate Jewsfrom countries they had overrun during the war.The extranational nature of the Holocaust wasthe aspect that most differentiated it from otherexamples of genocide in the twentieth century,such as that perpetrated on ethnic Armenians bythe Ottoman Turks in 1915-16 and the KhmerRouge depredations in Cambodia from 1975 to

1979. As the Germans conquered Europe, theyimmediately established the administrative andenforcement machinery to seize and kill Jews liv-ing in the occupied countries. In this task variouscollaborationist regimes and local fascist organi-zations sympathetic to the Nazis helped theGermans in a number of ways. Some of theseregimes murdered their own Jews or shippedthem to the concentration camps in EasternEurope. Other countries expelled non-nationalJews and ethnic groups acquired through territo-rial acquisition, as happened in Bulgaria, orrounded up foreign Jews and shipped them totheir deaths in the east as did France. The conti-nental scope and bureaucratic nature of the exter-mination program compelled the Nazi apparatusto coordinate its efforts over an extensive region,from the Atlantic to the steppes of the westernSoviet Union.

Both of these aspects of the Final Solutionforced the Nazis to rely on modern communica-tions to facilitate their efforts � both to satisfy theSS command in Berlin for progress reports and tocoordinate their far-flung efforts over theEuropean continent. Where underground cablesystems existed, the Nazi authorities made use ofthem for their communications. The Allies couldnot monitor the ground cable system in continen-tal Europe. However, the cable system�s reachwas limited. Where the local system had beendestroyed during combat operations or had notyet been constructed, and this was common inmost of the regions of the western USSR, thecommand in Berlin had to rely on radio commu-nications to control the particular missions of thedispersed police units and Einsatzgruppen, aswell as receive reports on their �progress.�Meanwhile, diplomatic missions and nongovern-mental organizations around Europe reported onthe roundups and massacres they witnessed orabout which they had received information.These communications also made it possible forAllied signals intelligence agencies to intercept,exploit, and disseminate information to theirleadership about the Holocaust.

Previous Histories and Articles

For nearly thirty years after World War II, theUnited States and Great Britain generally suc-ceeded in keeping completely secret from thepublic the story of the exploitation of the GermanEnigma and many other Axis codes and ciphers.8

This success was largely possible because of thewillingness of the tens of thousands of wartimeemployees of the Western cryptologic services tokeep silent about the secret. However, there werea few tears in the shroud over this period.

In 1967 a Polish historian, WladyslawKozaczuk published an account of the Polishbreakthrough against Enigma, Bitwa o tajemnice(The Secret Battle).9 Kozaczuk was the first tostate that the Poles had solved the GermanEnigma. This book, though, received little atten-tion outside of Poland. In 1973 Gustave Bertrand,the former chief of the French Army�s radio intel-ligence branch, published his memoirs, Enigma:Ou la Plus Grande Enigme de la Guerre, 1939-1945 (Enigma: Or the Greatest Mystery of theWar), which revealed some more about the earlyAllied exploitation of Enigma. 10 Bertrand hadplayed a minor, if not unimportant role in thePolish breakthrough against Enigma. He haddeveloped a contact in the German Ministry ofWar who turned over to him technical informa-tion and keying material for the Enigma.Bertrand, whose own country�s code-breakingcapability had deteriorated in the years after theFirst World War, passed the material to thePolish Cipher Bureau. Like Kozaczuk�s work,Bertrand�s book made little impression. Germanhistorians, who had reviewed Kozazcuk�s book,tended to dismiss the claims that the Poles or anyof the Allies had broken Enigma. The secret stillstood into the 1970s.

Therefore, outside of intelligence circles, onlya handful of people, mostly scholars, knew aboutthe Allied cryptanalytic success against Enigmawhen, in 1974, F.W. Winterbotham�s book The

Ultra Secret was published.11 Winterbotham wasa Royal Air Force officer who formed the SpecialLiaison Units that distributed Ultra to militarycommands. But he was not involved in actualcodebreaking and other cryptologic activities.Winterbotham�s book created a shock wave in theintelligence and historical communities. TheBritish government contemplated legal actionagainst him, but finally declined to prosecutehim. The Ultra Secret went on to become a bestseller. Many historians scrambled, perhaps pre-maturely, to incorporate Winterbotham�s revela-tions into the narrative of World War II.Winterbotham�s book, though, was full of errors,distortions, and omissions. Among other things,he attributed the solution to the Enigma to a spywho smuggled a complete machine out ofGermany. This ignored the Polish contribution.He also claimed that the British won the Battle ofBritain solely because of Ultra�s contribution.This claim ignored the far more critical rolesplayed by Britain�s early warning radar networkand Fighter Command�s centralized commandand control system.

There was no mention in Winterbotham�sbook about what information there might havebeen about the Holocaust from Ultra sources.Interestingly, prior to the publication of TheUltra Secret, there was some information alreadyavailable about codebreaking and the Holocaust.The first inkling of what SIGINT records mighthold about the Holocaust had appeared inGustave Bertrand�s Enigma. In the course ofdescribing the operations of a small, multination-al, Allied covert communications monitoring sitein southern France, Bertrand revealed that thissite had intercepted and decrypted GermanPolice messages that contained informationabout massacres in the western Soviet Union.Bertrand stated that the site, over the course of alittle more than two years, had intercepted overthree thousand German Police messages. Herelated the substance of a police message from 21August 1941 that reported that 5,130 Jews had

been shot by SS and police units.12 Most ofBertrand�s story was repeated in WladyslawKozaczuk�s Enigma, published in Polish in1979.13 The information about the German Policedecrypts in the books from France and Polandlargely went unnoticed. This was probablybecause the works were slow to be translated intoEnglish, and the rather meager information theycontained about the massacres was subsumedwithin the interest generated by the much broad-er revelations about the effect of the exploitationof Enigma on the course of the war. Anotherproblem was that Bertrand�s reference to thepolice decrypts was based largely on his recollec-tions and personal notes. There were no copies ofthe intercepts or decrypts available.

The first account in English that discussedUltra information in connection with theHolocaust was Walter Laqueur�s The TerribleSecret, first published in 1980. This book trackedthe knowledge of the Holocaust among variousgroups such as German civilians, internationalJewish organizations, officials of the major Alliedand neutral countries, the leaders of the Jewishcommunities in Europe and America, andnongovernment organizations such as theInternational Red Cross. His account carriedsome additional details over the previous histo-ries that had referred to the decrypts of theGerman Police messages. He also mentioned thatthe British were reading the Enigma messages ofthe German railway service, and, as a result, thissuggested that the British had the capability totrack the movement of trains throughout occu-pied Europe, which would have included thetrains transporting Jews to the death camps inthe east. It appears that Laqueur had some accessor knowledge of British code-breaking effortsagainst the German Police, SS, and railwayEnigma ciphers. He refers to some specificdetails from the police decrypts, but it is notclear if he had seen specific documents fromGC&CS because they had not been released tothe public.14 Laqueur also interviewed PeterCalvocoressi, an important figure in the opera-

tions of one of the analytic centers at BletchleyPark. He also may have been a source ofLaqueur�s information.

In the same year as Laqueur�s book,Calvocoressi published his wartime memoir, TopSecret Ultra.15 Calvocoressi had a more detailedknowledge of the British code-breaking effortthan Winterbotham. In this book, he painted amore detailed and technically accurate picture ofthe operations of the GC&CS� center at BletchleyPark. Calavocoressi also added a gruesome detailthat tied in Engima cryptanalysis with theHolocaust. He claimed that German cryptogra-phers used the numbers of the slave labor popu-lation from the daily SS concentration campreports, encrypted in a �medium grade cipher,� toset the keys (wheel settings) for their Enigmamachines.16 But like the previous works,Calvocoressi used no source documents. Theyremained classified.

The publication that provided the firstdetailed description of what allied communica-tions intelligence knew of the Holocaust was SirHarry Hinsley�s five-volume series, BritishIntelligence in the Second World War, publishedbetween 1979 and 1990. Volume II, published in1981, contained an appendix on the policedecodes which described the operations of theEinsatzgruppen and police units on the EasternFront and the SS messages about the death andlabor camps.17 Hinsley, who had worked on theGerman naval intelligence section at BletchleyPark during the war, and his editorial and writingstaff had been given access to GC&CS records,decrypts, and translations of intercepted Axismessages for the purpose of writing the history.Again, the material, while cited in the work, itselfremained classified and inaccessible to the publicand would remain so some fifteen years after thefirst volume of Hinsley�s history had been pub-lished.

Hinsley�s work also was based partly on amultivolume history of wartime activities pro-

duced by the GC&CS in the years immediatelyafter the war. Volume XIII of the Air and MilitaryHistory series concentrated on the exploitation ofthe communications and encrypted messages ofthe German Police and other Reich securityorganizations. It contained a short description ofintelligence derived from concentration campsand an appendix that listed individual massacreson the Eastern Front contained in selecteddecrypted police messages.18 Many of these vol-umes would be released to the British archives inthe 1990s.

In 1984 a monograph was published in theJournal of Historical Review that reviewed thepublished literature of wartime intelligence,including the Police decrypts, which carriedinformation about the massacres and the concen-tration camps.19 The article called into questionwhat the intelligence actually revealed about theNazi�s ultimate plan for the elimination ofEurope�s Jews. Unfortunately, the journal inwhich this article appeared was a well-knownforum for that faction of scholars and researchersassociated with a movement known as�Holocaust denial.�20 Rather than discuss theintelligence about the Holocaust and how Alliedofficials differed over its meaning, or review theNazi program of silence and obfuscation aboutthe Final Solution, the author claimed that thegaps in Allied intelligence suggested that manyaspects of the Holocaust, such as the gassings atAuschwitz, were a fiction. However, the amassedevidence from captured records and the testimo-ny of Holocaust victims and perpetrators over-whelms the article�s contention. Later releases ofPolice decrypts to the PRO would illustrate howthe missing intelligence was attributable togreater German security measures and the limita-tions in the communications intelligence system.

Two shorter pieces that dealt with theGerman Police and the Holocaust appeared in themid-1990s. The first was a monograph, SIGINTand the Holocaust, by Robert L. Benson, a seniorresearcher at the National Security Agency,

known for his major role behind the release ofthe NKVD espionage messages referred to asVENONA. The other was a short piece in the NewYork Times Magazine, �The Holocaust Was NoSecret,� by William J. Vanden Heuvel. The articlein the Times probably was published in the wakeof news stories, featured initially in earlyNovember 1996 in the Washington Post, aboutthe discovery of decrypts of German Police mes-sages in the NSA Record Group 457 atNARA.21Both Vanden Heuvel�s and Benson�s arti-cles focused on the revelations contained in thedecrypts of the German Police and SS messagesabout the massacres in Russia. Both authors alsograppled with the question of why Allied leaders,especially the British prime minister, WinstonChurchill, who knew of the atrocities, did not doanything to publicize, impede, or stop them? Asthe two authors pointed out, there was reallynothing that the Allies could have done to stop orappreciably retard the slaughter except to totallydefeat the Nazis as soon as possible.22

As has been seen above, the critical elementabsent from all of these early works was thesource material itself � in this case, the collectionof decrypts of the German Police and SS mes-sages. It also has been mentioned that an incom-plete set of these decrypts had been discovered inRG 457 by American University history professorRichard Breitman in June 1996. This set of policedecrypts was part of a larger 1996 NSA release ofwartime records to the National Archives thatnumbered some 1.3 million pages. The set ofGerman Police messages had been obtained byNSA from GCHQ in the mid-1980s and had beenincorporated into the large release. The set thatNSA had acquired was only a small portion of amuch larger set of German Police messages thatwere still classified and resided in Britisharchives. (See Chapter 4, pages�. about the back-ground to the acquisition of these messages byNSA.) The publicity around the discovery of thepolice messages in the U.S. National Archiveshelped generate sufficient public pressure for the

release to the public of the complete set of policedecrypts by the Public Record Office in May 1997.

It should be pointed out, though, that sincethe early to mid 1980s, translations of Axis andVichy diplomatic messages that contained limitedinformation about the Holocaust had been avail-able at the National Archives in the United States.These documents were located in the NSA RecordGroup 457. Beginning in 1979, NSA had turnedover �redacted� (that is, copies of documents withthe still-classified portions blacked out) copies oftranslations of Axis and Vichy diplomatic mes-sages to the National Archives. Unfortunately,there was no topical index for the collections,which totaled almost 150,000 pages. Those indi-vidual translations that were relevant to theHolocaust lay buried away in their archival boxesand remained largely untouched by researchersfor years.23

The first full use of any of these records in ahistorical study of the Holocaust did not occuruntil 1998 with the publication of Official Secretsby the same Professor Richard Breitman ofAmerican University in Washington, DC. Thebook contained a description of how the policemessages were collected and processed byGC&CS. The largest part of Professor Breitman�swork looked at the response of the Allied govern-ments to the course of the Holocaust, especially inlight of information available from intelligencesources including the decrypts of the GermanPolice and SS units. Using these, he was able,among other insights, to accord a far more signifi-cant role to the police units in the Holocaust, aswell as reaffirm the importance of the Nazis poli-cies of secrecy and deception that disguised thenature and scope of the Holocaust.24 His bookalso detailed the information contained in the SSconcentration camp reports mentioned earlier byCalvocoressi.

It took nearly twenty-five years from the pub-lication of Winterbotham�s book about the Ultrasecret for many of the official records of the

American and British wartime cryptologic agen-cies to be released to the public. Among therecords were the collections of decrypts of trans-lations of Axis and neutral messages, primarilyGerman, which dealt with the Holocaust. Thedelayed release of the communications intelli-gence records did not impede scholarly researchand understanding of the overall Holocaust phe-nomenon. Mountains of records had been avail-able that documented Nazi planning and execu-tion of the Final Solution. At worst, the lack of thismaterial probably affected Holocaust scholarshipof specific incidents. For example, the lack ofpolice decrypts and translations may have con-tributed to scholars underestimating for decadesthe major role of the German Police in the mas-sacres and other atrocities committed in thewestern USSR.25

Notes1 Michael Grant, The Jews in the Roman World.

(New York: Barnes & Noble, 1973), 284-7.2 Norman Cantor, The Civilization of the Middle

Ages (New York: Harper Collins, 1993), 365-7.Richard Fletcher, The Barbarian Conversion: FromPaganism to Christianity (New York: Henry Holt &Company, 1997), 292, 317-8.

3 See Berlin (Auswaertig) to Buenos Aires, 13January 1943, SIS # 78845, NARA RG 457, HistoricalCryptographic Collection, Box 359; Berlin(Auswaertig) to Tientsin, 4 August 1944, SIS # 135165,NARA, RG 457 HHC, Box 429; and Berlin(Auswaertig) to Tientsin, 15 December 1944, H-158178, RG 457, HHC, Box 456.

4 Multinational Diplomatic (MND) Translation,Washington to Tokyo, 17 January 1939, SIS #3494,NARA RG 457 Records of the National SecurityAgency/Central Security Service (NSA/CSS),Historical Cryptologic Collection (HCC), Box 286.

5 Raoul Hillberg. The Destruction of EuropeanJews. 3 Volumes (New York: Holmes and Meier,1985. the Revised and Definitive Edition), 393.

6 Gerhard Weinberg, A World at Arms: A GlobalHistory of World War II (Cambridge: CambridgeUniversity Press, 1995), 95-6, 191-2.

7 Richard Breitman. Official Secrets: What theNazis Planned. What the British and AmericansKnew (New York: Hill and Wang), 36-7.

8 News of the American exploitation of theJapanese diplomatic cipher known as Purple had beenrevealed in part in the immediate postwar period dur-ing a bipartisan U.S. Senate committee investigation ofthe Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. As part of thehearings, the important diplomatic translations,including the famous fourteen-part message, werereleased in their entirety. Subsequently, a number ofhistories of the attack utilized the information to pro-pound a number of interpretations about the attack.Interestingly, during these hearings, a reference wasmade to the British helping the Americans to �decodeGerman messages.� This brief allusion to readingGerman cryptographic systems was published in aTime magazine article on 17 December 1945.

9 Wladyslaw Kozaczuk, Bitwa o tajemnice: Sluzbywywiadowcze Polski I Rzeszy Niemieckiej 1922-1939(The Secret Battle: The Intelligence Services of Polandand the German Reich, 1922-1939) (Warsaw: KsiazkaI Wiedza, 1967).

10 Gustave Bertrand. Enigma: Ou la Plus GrandeEnigme de la Guerre, 1939-1945 (Paris: Plon, 1973).

11 F. W. Winterbotham. The Ultra Secret (London:Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1974).

12 Bertrand, 117-8.13 Wladyslaw Kozaczuk. Wkregu Enigmy

(Warsaw: Ksiazka I Wiedza, 1979) Kozaczuk�s Bitwa otajmnice predated Bertrand�s and Winterbotham�snarratives. It has been suggested that The Secret Battlewas the predecessor to Enigma. If so, then it mighthave contained the earliest reference to the intercep-tion of the police messages about the massacres inRussia. The source in Enigma about the police mes-sages (p. 139) is quite similar to that in Bertrand�s book(117-8). However, this author was unable to settlewhether The Secret War contains such a reference tothe police messages.

14 Walter Lacqueur. The Terrible Secret:Suppression of the Truth about Hitler�s Final Solution(New York: Henry Holt and Company, Inc., 1998),84 �6.

15 Peter Calvocoressi, Top Secret Ultra (New York:Pantheon Books, 1980).

16 Ibid., 15. This author is unable to determineconclusively whether this claim is true or mistaken inwhole or in part. German concentration camp slavelabor population reports were marked �ZIP� by theBritish. This indicated that the messages had beenencrypted in a high-level system like Enigma, not a so-called �medium-grade cipher,� as Calvocoressi report-ed, which would have been marked �PEARL.� Also, thehighest setting for any of the 3 wheels of an Enigmawas �26.� So the highest number available was�262626.� A German code clerk conceivably couldhave selected a six-figure number (or a set of two orthree-figure numbers) from a concentration campreport by which to set the wheels. Whether theGermans used this on a regular basis (or at all) cannotbe determined.

17 F. H. Hinsley, et alia. British Intelligence inthe Second World War. Its Influence on Strategy andOperations, Volume II (London: Her Majesty�sStationery office, 1981), Appendix 5, 669-73.

18 E. D. Phillips. GC&CS Air and Military History.Volume XIII. The German Police (London need pub-lisher and date), 81-86, 234-6.

19 K. C. Gleason, �The Holocaust and the Failureof Allied and Jewish Responses.� Journal of HistoricalReview (Vol. 5, Nos. 2, 3, 4; Winter 1984), 215.Gleason correctly reports that, early in the war, manyAllied intelligence organizations lacked conclusiveinformation about the scope and nature of Germanplans for the Jews and other groups. He is also correctthat some Allied intelligence analysts were not awareof the extent of Nazi atrocities. As an example of thisignorance, Gleason states that photo interpreters ofthe United States Army Air Force could not determinethe nature of the activities at the Birkenau complex.They were not aware of the camp�s primary role as adeath camp. Later photo interpretation specialistsfrom the Central Intelligence Agency could not discov-er any large group of victims at Birkenau, though onephoto from 25 August 1944 showed about 1,500 peo-ple being processed near the gas chambers.

There are several problems, though, withGleason�s explanation. For one, he fails to mentionthat the technical capabilities of Allied photo inter-preters were limited compared to current technology.They would have been hard pressed to find even large

groups of victims with the optical analysis equipmentavailable in 1944. Also, he does not mention that therewere only a limited number of aerial photography mis-sions, perhaps five, flown between the initial one inearly April 1944 and the last when Birkenau was dis-mantled in November 1944. Such aerial missionscould take only �instant� snap shots. They did notlinger for several passes or extended overflights. Thefirst flight in early April occurred before the flood ofHungarian Jews arrived as part of SS operations toeliminate that country�s Jews commanded by AdolfEichmann. Interestingly, this April mission did photo-graph a new rail spur that, unknown to the photointerpreters, was part of the upgrade of Birkenau�sfacilities to handle the anticipated influx of HungarianJews. The next mission was flown on 26 June near theend of the first phase of the German deportations.Many of the deported Hungarian Jews had alreadypassed through the gas chambers and the crematoria.For a full description, see Dino A. Brigioni and RobertG. Piorer, �The Holocaust Revisited: A RetrospectiveAnalysis of the Auschwitz-Birkenau ExterminationComplex. (Studies in Intelligence, 45th SpecialAnniversary Edition, Fall 2000), 87-106.

20 The JHR is the publication of the Institute forHistorical review, which is a loosely organized scholar-ly association ostensibly dedicated to revisionism ofconventional historical interpretations. However, in itscontent, the JHR carries a heavy emphasis of articlespressing a revisionist or denial viewpoint about theHolocaust. For more on the history and purpose of theJournal and the IHR, see Michael Shermer and AlexGrobman, Denying History: Who Says the HolocaustNever Happened and Why They Say It? (Berkeley CA:University of California Press, 2000), 43-46, 73-80,etc.

21 �Decoded Cables Revise History of Holocaust.�Washington Post, 10 November 1996, Vol. 119, No.341, A1

22 Robert L. Benson. �SIGINT and the Holocaust.�Cryptologic Quarterly (Vol. 14, No. 1, Spring 1995)71-76; William J. Vanden Heuvel. �The Holocaust WasNo Secret.� New York Times Magazine (December 22,1996) 30-31.

23 In the early 1980s, the National SecurityAgency released a number of sets of translations of

Axis and Vichy messages and special research papersto the National Archives. These records actually werecopies of the original translations and research papers.Information in the translations still considered classi-fied had been redacted, or blacked out, from the origi-nals. These redacted versions of the records are distin-guished by the prefixed digraph �SR� in the seriesnotation, e.g., �SRDJ� for Japanese diplomatic transla-tions, or �SRA� for translations of Japanese militaryattaché messages. The diplomatic translations ofinterest were Japanese, or SRDJ; German, or SRDG;Vichy, or SRDV. Another set of diplomatic transla-tions, categorized as �multinational,� or all countries,to include Axis and Vichy, was released in 1996 as partof the so-called Historical Cryptographic Collection(HCC), which the 1.3 million pages were labeled. Thediplomatic translations in the HCC were not redacted.

24 Breitman, 67-8.25 Ibid., 5-7.

During the Second World War, the UnitedStates and Great Britain operated the principalWestern Allied code-breaking agencies. TheCommonwealth countries of Canada, Australia,and New Zealand, and Britain�s colony of Indiaprovided substantial support with personnel andmaterial, especially in the Middle East, Pacificand Asia theaters of combat. There were lessercontributions from small European nationaldetachments that had escaped from Poland,France, and the Netherlands East Indies. By war�send, this multinational effort had brought to ahigh-level of proficiency a worldwide system thatintercepted, decrypted, translated, and dissemi-nated intelligence derived from Axis and neutralcommunications.1

A popular perception about Western commu-nications intelligence and its subsidiary code-breaking function, often generally referred to as�Ultra,� was that this information was availablefrom all Axis and neutral sources at all times tothe Allied commanders and leaders. This view issimply not true. The war between the Axis cryp-tographers to devise and emplace systems to pro-tect their communications and the Allied cryptol-ogists to collect and exploit those same communi-cations (and the mirrored struggle between Alliedcryptographers and Axis cryptologists) wasmarked by victories and defeats on both sides.Although there were major successes by the Alliesearly in the war, notably the exploitation of someversions of the German Enigma and the Japanesediplomatic machine system, known as Purple, thestruggle for cryptologic supremacy was not set-tled until the midpoint of the war when the fullresources of the Allied cryptologic effort finallyachieved a general and consistent inroad intomost, but still not all, major Axis cryptographic

systems. Even then, there remained gaps andshortcomings in the overall Allied capability thatproduced unpleasant tactical military surprisesfor the Allies later in the war, such as at theGerman Second Ardennes Offensive in December1944. Several Axis and neutral cryptographicsystems were never exploited due to a paucity ofAllied intercept, the strength of the particularAxis code or cipher, or the late date of a crypto-graphic system�s introduction into operation. Inshort, the Ultra success by the Allies was nevertotal or constant when measured in terms of thetotal number of enemy or neutral codes andciphers that could be broken or the duration oftheir exploitation. Where the Allies succeededwas in the exploitation of those Axis communica-tions and cryptographic systems that were criticalto the conduct of certain battles and campaigns.This ability also allowed the Allies the ability togauge the strategic intentions of Berlin and Tokyoin a depth that otherwise would have been lackingif there had been no recourse to the informationfrom Ultra, Magic, and the host of other systems.2

Trying to describe or graphically representthe entire Western COMINT system can be diffi-cult. Some initial attempts were made bythe U.S. services. One of the more popularearly graphic efforts was a chart devised bythe War Department�s G-2 (Intelligence), �AMessage from Originator to MIS.� This versionwas taken from the postwar Army history TheAchievements of the Signal Security Agency inWorld War II and is reproduced here.3 It illus-trated the system that started with the transmis-sion of a message by an originating entity. It thendetailed several intermediate analytic steps to thepoint where the translation of the original inter-cept was disseminated to the War Department.

Chapter 2

Overview of the Western Communications Intelligence Systemduring World War II

The system this chart illustrated was limitedto those cryptologic functions from intercept totranslation that were performed by the Army�sSignal Intelligence Service at Arlington Hall. Thechart failed, though, to describe why a certainmessage was to be intercepted in the first place.There were numerous Axis and neutral radio ter-minals and networks to intercept. What was theprocess that determined which one was moni-tored? Similarly, the chart also left out what hap-pened to the intelligence after it reached thePentagon. To whom did this information go andhow did it get there? Was it handled any differ-ently than intelligence from other sources such ascaptured documents? In short, the chart failed toexplain the place and role of cryptology within the

context of the activities of the larger Allied intelli-gence system.

The production of Allied communicationsintelligence during World War II was a multistepsystem. It began with the determination of a hier-archical priority of intercept of Axis communica-tions and was completed with the disseminationof the intelligence derived from it. This systemcan be likened to a �closed cycle� in which allsteps were interrelated. Within this process a sig-nificant change to one step affected all the others.For example, a reordering of requirements due toa change in capability or a crisis in a military the-ater�s situation would affect what was collectedand processed. The rise or decline of cryptanalyt-ic effectiveness, efficiency, or advances in tech-

A Message from Originator to MIS

nology or techniques could affect what terminalswould be monitored in the future and what intel-ligence gained from them would be disseminatedand to whom it would be sent.4

Besides being distinguished by the interde-pendent nature of its operations, the COMINTsystem, especially as practiced by the British, wasnoteworthy for the operational interaction of itsanalysts That is, individuals at all points in thesystem contributed information that others coulduse in their separate jobs. This interaction deve-loped partly from the background of a large num-ber of the individuals who worked in the crypto-logic agencies during the war. Many people whoworked at Bletchley Park and Arlington Hall werecurrent students, graduates, or faculty recruitedfrom universities and other schools that prizedcooperation and an intellectual detachment. Anda majority of these hires were women.5 More so,the leadership of the cryptologic agencies encour-aged the continuation of this free flow of ideasand information. Even those who merely loggedin intercepted messages were encouraged to con-tribute insights and observations.6 One high-ranking American observer, who visited Bletchley

Park in May 1943, noted that the British person-nel approach was � bold and forward-looking� animaginable conception of the possibilities ofobtaining results from attention to details andinfinite pains.�7 The result of this approach was asystem, which was described by William F.Friedman as �unified at the top and operationallyintimate below.�8

The wartime Western Allied communicationsintelligence system consisted of the followingsteps: setting requirements, priorities, and divi-sion of effort; intercepting messages; processingthe intercept; and disseminating the resultingintelligence. Each step consisted of a number ofsubordinate processes that contributed to itscompletion, though each process was notemployed against every intercept or cryptograph-ic system. Also, each step was affected by a num-ber of technical and institutional constraints, aswell as political/strategic influences or contingen-cies that further determined how effectively a stepwas carried out. Many of the subordinate process-es and the constraints and outside influences foreach step will be described in the proceeding sec-tions.

Bletchley Park

Two other aspects of the Allied COMINT sys-tem need to be considered before we proceed withthe description. First of all, when we talk of anAllied system, we are really describing two dis-tinct national systems, that of the United Statesand Great Britain. While both countries carriedout similar communications intelligence activi-ties, we shall see that there were a number of dif-ferences between them in organization, securityrestrictions, equipment, training, and even tech-nical jargon. Like much of the rest of the specialrelationship between the United States and GreatBritain, the wartime Anglo-American COMINTrelationship was marked by a search for ways tomake the two national systems work in a morecooperative fashion.

Another characteristic of the wartime alliedcryptologic agencies was the phenomenal growthexperienced by both as the war progressed. In1939 cryptologic organizations that barely num-

bered a few hundred were, by war�s end,staffed by tens of thousands of civilians andmilitary personnel. As a representative reg-ister of this massive growth, consider thatthe U.S. Army�s signals intelligence arm wasproducing about forty translations a week inJanuary 1942. By the time Japan surren-dered, it was turning out about 1,025 trans-lations a week.9 Also, during the war, boththe GC&CS and the SIS grew organically.They had to design, build, refine, and modi-fy their organizations, equipment, structure,practices, and procedures while they alsoworked against Axis cryptography and com-munications. In 1939 American and BritishCOMINT were local cottage workshops. By1945 they had become a joint global indus-trial concern.

What follows is a description of the com-munications intelligence system with aparticular eye to the ways in which itsoperations influenced how it obtained anddistributed intelligence about the Holocaust.

Step 1: Setting the Requirements, Priorities,and the Division of Effort

For the Allies, perhaps the most difficult stepin the COMINT process was simply to decidewhat Axis communications to intercept, decipher,and report. To visualize the potential size of theAxis communications target is to grasp the scopeand nature of the problem facing the Allied cryp-tologic agencies, especially early in the war: thou-sands of radio terminals on hundreds of radionetworks around the world supporting Axis mili-tary, naval, diplomatic, security, intelligence, andcommercial entities. All of these utilized hun-dreds of cryptographic systems from simple handciphers to complex book codes and intricatemachines such as Enigma, Purple, and Tunny.10

Added to this initially uncharted wilderness werethe hundreds of military, diplomatic, and com-mercial communications networks of importantneutral and Axis-friendly countries, notably

Arlington Hall

Vichy France, Turkey, Sweden, Spain, Portugal,Switzerland, the Vatican, and the nations of LatinAmerica. These networks, too, had potential assources of intelligence and could not be ignored;many were the targets of Allied cryptologists.

Early in the war, the Allied communicationsintelligence effort could not adequately monitorthe existing Axis communications networks,much less even hope to cover it completely. TheBritish, beginning in September 1939, and laterthe Americans in late 1941, lacked the facilities,the personnel, and the technology to adequatelymonitor all of the Axis terminals that mattered. Itwould take time for the influx of money, training,and the development of administrative and tech-nical support organizations to create the impres-sive Allied COMINT structure that existed by theend of the war.

Meanwhile, the disparity in capabilitiesbetween the Allied cryptologic agencies and theAxis communications networks forced the intelli-gence staffs in Washington and London to priori-tize the Axis communications terminals and cryp-tographic systems that had to be attacked. Thisprioritization was determined by a number ofgeneral factors. First of all, there had to be eitheran already demonstrated or a reasonably highexpectation that intelligence of value to the wareffort could be derived from a terminal�s mes-sages. Another factor, which could override allothers at times, was the perceived current strate-gic or tactical military needs of the moment. Forall practical purposes, these factors were military-oriented. They dictated target listings throughoutthe war and dominated all prioritization schemesfrom strategic priorities to those in individualtheaters of operation.

The COMINT agencies, too, had their ownconsiderations to add to the calculations for tar-get priority. Usually, these considerations reflect-ed the agency�s own measure of its technical abil-ity to intercept or to exploit cryptanalytically aparticular Axis terminal or a general target cate-

gory such as �Japanese military.� The feelingwithin the SIS leadership, for example, was thattasking of radio links was far more complex thanto be left to the whims of intelligence officers. Inearly 1943, the SIS disagreed with the idea thatthe War Department�s G-2 could just hand it a listof radio terminals to go after. One memorandumstated that there were other factors �in the chainof events leading from G-2�s desires to actualresults.� Rather, it continued, the priority of a tar-get radio terminal should be determined first bywhether a monitoring station could hear it andthen whether any cryptographic systems used inits traffic could be read or were being studied.11

As an example of how requirements werelevied and how they changed with the war, it isuseful to look at the experience of the SIS. For theoverall U.S. COMINT effort, the SIS was respon-sible for intercepting and processing Axis mili-tary, weather, and air force communications traf-fic. It also was responsible for exploiting interna-tional diplomatic communications. This was acarryover from its success with the Japanesediplomatic cipher machine known as Purple. InApril 1942, G-2 gave the Signal Security Service(SSS), as the Signal Intelligence Service was soonto be called, a set of priorities for collection andprocessing (which included cryptanalysis andtranslation).12 The first priority included allGerman, Japanese, and Italian military traffic.Second priority was given to all Axis militaryattaché communications. Axis diplomatic trafficamong their respective capital cities was in thethird priority. The fourth priority was for all so-called German �administrative� radio nets, whichprobably referred to German illicit intelligenceand security radio networks. The diplomatic mes-sages of other countries, minor Axis and neutrals,were spread across priorities five to eight.13

Nearly a year later, in March 1943, the priori-ty list had changed somewhat. The priority list forcollection and analysis was organized now intogroups identified by letters that ranged from �A,�the highest, to �G,� the lowest. For the SSS, the

Japanese Army was now the most important tar-get. This was tagged �#1 Special ResearchProject,� which probably referred to the mainJapanese army code that was still unexploited atthe time.14 Weather traffic was also part of GroupA, as were certain diplomatic links betweenTokyo and Moscow, Berlin, and Rome. Germanmilitary had fallen to the bottom of Group �B,�along with Japanese diplomatic messages toEurope (other than other Axis capitals) and�Security� (intelligence, espionage and securityelements such as police) messages.15 The latterreference to �Security� traffic is interestingbecause the SSA still lacked the means to inter-cept consistently the communications of theGerman security agencies such as the Abwehr(military intelligence), the SD, and the GermanPolice. The Americans had few monitoring sitesthat could intercept such communications in theEuropean theater. There were some U.S. Armyradio intercept companies in England and NorthAfrica, but they were tasked with collectingtactical German military radio traffic. A noteattached to the tasking for these intercept unitsindicated that the coverage of the German securi-ty elements was primarily for the purpose oftracking the volume of traffic and reporting thisto Army counterintelligence.16

The SIS already was somewhat familiar withGerman Police communications and cipher sys-tems. In February 1941, then SIS Major AbrahamSinkov, one of William F. Friedman�s originalcryptanalytic staff, had headed a small technicalexchange mission to GC&CS. It was this missionthat provided the British with a working Purpleand Red Japanese diplomatic cipher machines.During the ensuing technical discussions, one ofBritain�s foremost codebreakers, John Tiltman,provided Sinkov with detailed information onhow the so-called German Police cipher worked.He was informed that the descriptor �GermanPolice� applied to the systems used by theSchutzpolizei, the SD, the SS, and the line OrderPolice battalions and regiments. Sinkov was toldthat the information in the police messages was

useful for mapping associated German militaryunits.17 However, at the time the U.S. had no wayof intercepting these communications; the crypt-analytic information was useless except for train-ing.

As for the remainder of the revamped 1943SIS overall requirements, these consisted mostlyof targeted diplomatic communications frommost minor Axis, neutral, and some minor alliednations. As in the previous year�s priorities theyremained spread across the lower priority Groupsfrom �C� to �G.� For example, the tasking require-ment for intercept of diplomatic messagesbetween Washington and major neutrals wasnow at the Group �D� level. The requirements tointercept diplomatic messages from the Vatican,Latin America, and European countries to else-where other than Washington were covered inGroups �E� and �F.�18

In the various combat theaters of operation,cryptologic working arrangements between theBritish and Americans followed de facto nationaltheater command responsibilities. In Europe theBritish were preeminent for the first two years ofthe war. A gradual cooperative effort with theUnited States Navy�s OP-20-G cryptologistsdeveloped during the lengthy U-boat campaign inthe Atlantic. In the European Theater ofOperations (ETO), the GC&CS, and the support-ing British service units, remained the principalAllied cryptologic agency when it came to theAxis military and air force. In the Pacific theater,the American army and naval cryptologic organi-zations supervised allied intercept and code-breaking operations. In the China-Burma-IndiaTheater, there were British stations in Ceylon andIndia that had American contingents. Also,Canadian, Australian, and New Zealand person-nel served at various Pacific and Asian sites withthe Americans and British.

These worldwide operations required that theUnited States and Great Britain eventually had toestablish corresponding divisions of effort and

responsibility for setting requirements, intercept,processing, and dissemination. Otherwise, therewould be problems with redundant operations,and misallocated resources. Also, the rules, meth-ods, material, and channels for technical andintelligence exchanges needed to be ironed outbetween the two countries. The two countries hadto make a general agreement to govern opera-tions around the world. For the first eighteenmonths of the war, the GC&CS and the SIS andOP-20-G had a number of separate and limitedreciprocal interchanges. By mid-1943, these vari-ous working relationships were institutionalizedin a series of agreements between the British andthe U.S. War Department, which culminated inthe so-called BRUSA (Britain-United States ofAmerica) Agreement of June 1943.19 (The U.S.Navy would sign a separate, more limited, agree-ment. It was known as the Extension Agreementand applied to an earlier 1942 exchange arrange-ment known as the Holden Agreement.)

The main provisions of the BRUSAAgreement were the exchange of technical intelli-gence (sources and methods) and a division ofeffort in the daily activities of collection, analysis,and dissemination of intelligence. The two Alliesformally agreed to the exchange of finished intel-ligence. There was no exchange of �raw� (unde-crypted) intercepts, except for U-boat messages,and possibly some examples for training purpos-es.20 The monitoring sites, though, would sendtheir �raw� intercept to the national centerresponsible for processing it. The agreement didnot include so-called �nonservice� (nonmilitary)intercepts. This uncovered category principallyentailed Axis and neutral diplomatic and intelli-gence-related (illicit espionage and internal secu-rity organization) messages. Both countries con-tinued individually to decrypt and exchangediplomatic translations, though a later mecha-nism for exchange between GC&CS and ArlingtonHall was established in August 1943. As a result ofthis later agreement, the two Allied cryptologicagencies targeted the diplomatic traffic of everymajor Axis power, minor Axis ally, minor Allied

power, and significant neutral, though the totalamount collected against each country varied. Asfor the category of Axis intelligence messages,another division of effort was arranged. TheBritish collected and processed German intelli-gence and security-related messages in occupiedEurope: the United States, principally the UnitedStates Coast Guard, collected and processed Axisoverseas illicit and overt espionage radio traffic,notably Abwehr messages from Latin America,North Africa, and the Far East.

In essence, the BRUSA Agreement formalizedthe realities of the division of effort in the combattheaters that had existed since 1942. TheAmericans took the responsibility for Japaneseservice and nonservice communications, whilethe British oversaw that of the German andItalian military and security forces. This agree-ment did not preclude either country from collec-tion and analysis of each other�s missions. In fact,both sides exchanged personnel who were thenintegrated fully into each other�s efforts. Threespecial SSA units were established in Britain towork alongside the British in the areas of collec-tion, analysis, and security. American cryptolo-gists could be found at various British interceptand analytic sites, including Bletchley Park. U.S.radio intercept units stationed in England andNorth Africa intercepted and analyzed Axis com-munications in the European and North Africantheaters, but they passed the take to the Britishanalytic centers.21

Great Britain retained authority over the pro-duction of communications intelligence inEurope, while the Americans controlled similaractivity in the Pacific. Because of this divisionof effort, German military communicationsremained a lower priority for the U.S. Army code-breakers at Arlington Hall Station for the rest ofthe war.22 Tactical communications intelligence,that is, intercept and analysis of plaintext mes-sages or those encrypted by low-level codes andciphers that were sent by Axis tactical or opera-tional-level combat units, was produced by Allied

cryptologic elements attached to Allied militarycommands or units in Europe and North Africa.Theater or local commanders controlled the oper-ations of these units and were the main recipientof that type of communications intelligence.

As mentioned above, the priorities for collec-tion and processing shifted during the waraccording to current strategic needs and capabili-ties. This shift was especially obvious when itcame to diplomatic targets. A good example of theshifting priorities of an individual target country�scommunications can be seen in the Allied effortagainst Switzerland�s diplomatic radio traffic.During previous European conflicts, Switzerlandhad remained neutral. As a result, that nation hadtaken on certain roles such as representing theforeign interests of belligerents. These includedmonitoring the conditions in prisoner-of-war andinternee camps, supporting International RedCross relief activities, and allowing Swiss localesto be used for unofficial contacts betweencombatants. Considering these historic roles,Switzerland�s diplomatic communications natu-rally were a target of interest for the Allied cryp-tologic agencies.

The GC&CS had been analyzing Swiss diplo-matic messages since 1939, and the Americansbegan their separate attack in December 1942.But both agencies produced few translations dur-ing this period. There were some technical rea-sons for this paucity of communications intelli-gence. One was that for their European messagetraffic the Swiss relied mostly on the Europeancable network that was inaccessible to Alliedcommunications monitoring sites. In addition,the Swiss used a large number of codes andciphers � over ten systems, mostly manualciphers and codes, and an early version of theEnigma cipher device for their diplomatic traffic.Yet, the most important reason for the small out-put of translations of Swiss traffic was that, earlyin the war, the messages to and from Bernappeared to carry little intelligence of value.23 Theintercept of Swiss diplomatic messages continued

for the purposes of training and cryptanalyticcontinuity, but not for reporting intelligence. Byearly 1943, the Americans downgraded the inter-cept priority of various Swiss diplomatic termi-nals to fourth and fifth priority on its list.24

This situation changed in the summer of 1944when the Allies discovered that the Swiss diplo-matic cables now carried important informationon the conditions in the Balkan capitals that werebeing overrun or threatened by the advancingRed Army. Of particular interest was the situationin Budapest, Hungary. The several changes ingovernments and the German-supported coup inOctober 1944 had kept the Hungarians in theconflict. Furthermore, the Germans were in themidst of a roundup, which had begun in the sum-mer, of the sizable Jewish population in Hungaryfor transport to the death camps and slave labordetails in German war industries. A review of thediplomatic translations from this period issued bythe SIS shows a marked increase in the number ofpublished translations of Swiss diplomatic mes-sages. Allied interest in the Swiss diplomaticmessages continued late into the war as concerngrew over the possible fate of prisoners andinternees under Japanese control. The Swiss,working in concert with the International RedCross, reported their findings on camp and pris-oner conditions throughout Asia. Another pointof interest for the Allies concerned the activities ofGerman banking officials who were negotiatingpayments and commercial accounts with theSwiss for German purchases of war material andcurrency exchanges. (See section V.F. for moredetails on this last point.)

One of the problems that bedeviled Alliedcryptologists who tried to set requirements wasthat the intelligence value of the information car-ried on various communications networks orindividual terminals could not always be predict-ed. The above example of Switzerland shows howreality did not always match expectations. On theother hand, useful intelligence could come fromunexpected sources. For example, one of the best

sources for insight into Nazi Germany�s strategicplans and Hitler�s own appreciation of possibleAllied moves came from the Purple decrypts ofJapan�s ambassador in Berlin, Baron OshimaHiroshi. Oshima had developed a rapport withmost of the Nazi hierarchy, especially Hitler andJoachim von Ribbentrop, the German foreignminister. They confided to Oshima some of theReich�s most important secrets. These personalconnections made his long reports to Tokyo agold mine of information on a number of topics,from German development of new weapons toHitler�s own appreciation of the Allied troopstrength and strategic options for landing inWestern Europe in 1944.25 Oshima reportednothing on the concentration camps or massacresin the western Soviet Union, though a few of mes-sages to Tokyo suggest he was aware of the situa-tion of the Jews. (See section V.E. pages 100-101)

In a similar fashion, British codebreakerswere probably surprised by the first bits of infor-mation about the massacres and camps thatappeared on certain German Police radio net-works, such as those servicing the police units inthe Soviet Union and SS and SD units in occupied

Europe. The Allied intercept and processing ofGerman Police and SS communications original-ly was performed as a supplementary source tointelligence about the German military, principal-ly to gather administrative data and order of bat-tle information. The police and SS communica-tions also contained intelligence on German civil-ian morale and other domestic security concerns,information about the results of Allied air raids,and escapes by Allied POWs.26 The police mes-sages were also targeted since the manual crypto-graphic system used was similar to systems usedby Wehrmacht units.27

However, London and Washington wouldnever make gathering intelligence about the fateof Europe�s Jews and other groups targeted fordestruction by the Nazis a major requirement foragencies like GC&CS and SIS. Both would collect

and process some informationabout the roundups, massacres, andthe camps from Police and diplo-matic communications. Yet, thisinformation was a byproduct, per-haps even incidental to the coveragesecurity and diplomatic nets. Theprimary purpose of the COMINTrequirements placed on BletchleyPark and Arlington Hall was to gainintelligence dictated by the militaryexigencies of the war. Whateveradvantage was gained from theintercept of Axis communicationsrelated to the Nazi atrocities was oflittle use to the current Allied prose-cution of the war, except in a limit-ed way for propaganda against theAxis.28 Later, the British wouldgather it with the intent to use intel-ligence as evidence in proposed

postwar war crimes tribunals. (See pages 50-51for eventual fate of this intelligence.)

Japanese ambassador to Germany Baron Oshima meetingwith Nazi foreign minister Joachim von Ribbentrop

Step 2: Intercepting the Messages

After the requirements had been set, the nextstep was intercepting the radio terminals thatwere designated the highest priority targets. Itwas at this juncture in the communications intel-ligence system that the general requirements hadto be translated from the vague entries such as�German military� to a list of targeted radio sta-tions that could be monitored by Allied radiointercept personnel. Before discussing the allot-ment of target stations to monitoring stations, itis necessary to describe the communications theAllies monitored. There were two major types ofcommunications media that were targeted: cable(or wire) and radio. Both had their advantagesand shortcomings.

The first of these, cable intercept, proved to bea useful but limited source of communicationsintelligence. At the war�s outset, both the UnitedStates and Great Britain invoked wartime infor-mation contingencies and imposed restrictionson telegram and cable traffic to, through, andfrom both countries. All such wire traffic � per-sonal, commercial, and diplomatic � was subject-ed to censorship review. Each residentforeign diplomatic mission was requiredto submit a copy of each message it sent,even in its encrypted form, to the appro-priate government censorship office.The main reason for this was to controlthe flow of information out of the coun-try that was critical to the war effort.29 InEngland, the General Post Office over-saw this program, sometimes referred toas �traffic blanketing.�30 The British alsoimplemented censorship practices at alloverseas Commonwealth cable termi-nals located in such places as Malta, NewDelhi, Gibraltar, and Barbados.31 In theUnited States, the government, throughthe Office of Censorship run by ByronPrice and staffed by civilians and contin-gents from the Army and Navy, receivedcopies of all such wire traffic (before

transmission overseas or upon receipt from anoverseas terminal) from the various cable andwireless telegram companies such as MackayRadio, Western Union, Radio Corporation ofAmerica, and Global Wireless.32 These compa-nies had terminals in New York, Washington, DC,New Orleans, Louisiana, Galveston, Texas, andSan Francisco, California. Copies of cable trafficthat passed through overseas U.S. and British ter-minals on to other countries were also collectedunder the wartime restrictions. This coverageaffected mostly diplomatic, personal, and com-mercial cable traffic between Europe, the UnitedStates, Latin America, and Africa.

This cable intercept had the primary advan-tage of simplifying the intercept problem. Allmessages flowing through an American orCommonwealth terminal were accessible toAllied cryptologists. Another advantage was theerrorless copy of the intercepted cable message;each message usually was free of transmissiongarbles and missed cipher groups that could hin-der exploitation, except for errors by the origina-tor�s code clerk. The collection of cable messageswas inexpensive for the cryptologic agencies since

Copy of Netherlands cable from U.S. Censorship Office

the national censorship offices performed thetask.

On the other hand, there were limitations tothis collection method. For example, only cablessent between Washington (and other U.S. termi-nals with overseas connections such as SanFrancisco, New Orleans, and New York) andan overseas terminal were available to theAmericans. Messages sent on cables not routedthrough American- or Commonwealth-controlledterminal stations were beyond intercept. Therewere few means then to obtain these cablesexcept through covert means, such as placing tapsor suborning cable clerks. These methods riskedeventual exposure and were difficult to hide andcontinue without discovery by foreign securityagencies.

Another difficulty was that some of the target-ed countries knew or suspected that the Alliesprobably were reading their cable traffic. Todefeat the intercept and possible exploitation oftheir cables, some diplomats were warned bytheir capitals to take certain precautions whensending cables, even encrypted ones. For exam-ple, Axis diplomats in Europe and the UnitedStates were told to careful when they includedexcerpts of public speeches and newspaper sto-ries in their messages. They were warned not toquote them verbatim because the excerpts werealso available to Allied codebreakers and could beused as �cribs� to break the enciphered messages.To defeat the Allied cable censors, some countriessent sensitive correspondence by diplomaticpouch or courier.33 Of course, the courier pouch-es could be searched covertly (�tossed� was theexpression) by Allied agents. But this techniquewas difficult to arrange and, if discovered, was apossible source of diplomatic embarrassment. Itappears that Allied agents probably did this any-way. In early 1942, the U.S. Office of StrategicServices, and its predecessor, the Office of theCoordinator of Information, received copies ofdiplomatic messages from the British SecurityCoordination. A number of these messages

appear to have been obtained in this manner.34

(See Chapter 4, pages 65-6).

In occupied Europe, Nazi military and occu-pation authorities made use of cable telephone ortelegram systems where available, thus denyingthe Allies access to these communications. Also,during the years of the war, the Germans, espe-cially the military, expanded, repaired, andimproved the European cable backbone networkin occupied Europe in order to support theiroperations. In four years, the German army near-ly doubled the size of the European cable trunknetwork to 6,900 miles.35 This cable expansiondenied more intercept to the Allies.

The other and much larger and lucrativesource of Allied intercept was radio communica-tions. Since its introduction at the turn of the cen-tury, radio communications had expanded dra-matically. As technology advanced and industrywas able to mass-produce components and radiosets, the speed and distances that informationcould be transmitted grew. Many advanced coun-tries had developed complete national-level com-munications networks that served private andpublic functions. When the war began, govern-ments quickly took over many facilities and con-verted them to military or other official uses. Theuse of these in place systems presented moreproblems for Allied intercept stations since theyhad to match Axis capabilities.

Many Axis and neutral diplomatic missions,not needing or trusting the Allied-controlledcable systems, transmitted their diplomatic mes-sages by long-range, high frequency (HF) radio.36

Axis naval and air force units and organizationsrelied on long-range HF radio for their communi-cations, unless ground-based cable systems wereavailable. Some communications operated onlower frequency bands similar to those used bycommercial broadcast stations. Many Axis unitsused low-power high frequency radios to commu-nicate with their local commands that reduced

the chance for interception by Allied monitoringstations.

The Axis used different modes of communica-tions on the many frequency bands. The mostcommon mode was manual morse, the famous�dit-dah� or on-off keying of a continuous wavesignal. This mode appeared on all frequencies,and all service and government elements used it.The Axis also used teleprinter systems for high-volume traffic among command centers, thoughthis appeared late in the war. Voice communica-tions was also heavily used. Most often thisappeared at higher frequency ranges. The mostcommon users were aircraft pilots communicat-ing among themselves and with ground con-trollers. Some aircraft and ground stations usedlong-range HF voice systems, though this wasrare because of the lack of security.37

German Police units operating in the westernUSSR used both long-range high frequency andthe shorter-distance low frequency and mediumfrequency manual morse communications tosend reports about their activities from majorcommand centers in Minsk and Kiev to head-quarters back in Berlin. Police battalions receivedradio or courier reports from companies anddetachments in the field. The battalions, in turn,sent their radio reports over HF radio to regi-mental headquarters in the region in which theyoperated.38

For the Allies, intercepting Axis and neutralradio communications of interest presented amyriad of problems. The most obvious problem,as mentioned earlier, was simply the number andlocation of Axis radio terminals � perhaps sever-al thousand. In order just to hear these radio sta-tions meant that the Allies had to develop exten-sive corps of thousands of radio intercept opera-tors to man the monitoring stations to collect theAxis and neutral communications for intelli-gence.

The major Allied radio intercept organiza-tions were, for the British, the Radio SecurityService (belonging to M.I.6), the General PostOffice, and those units of the various services ofthe British armed forces, known as the �Y-Service.� For the Americans, the radio interceptpersonnel were assigned to the SignalIntelligence Service (Army) and organized underthe Second Service Battalion, OP-20-G (Navy),the United States Coast Guard, the Officeof Strategic Services, and the FederalCommunication Commission. Canada operatedthe Examination Unit of the Canadian NationalResearch Council. A number of men and womenfrom other Commonwealth countries also per-formed as intercept operators. These includedpersonnel from Australia, New Zealand, andIndia. Commonwealth military personnel whoperformed intercept services were organized intounits known as Special Wireless Groups.Additionally, contingents from smaller Alliedforces also intercepted Axis communications.

All of these personnel were stationed at mon-itoring facilities located around the world. Thesefacilities ranged from large field stations, such asat Beaumanor, Leicestershire, England, or VintHill Farms in Virginia, to small direction findinghuts in Alaska or Scotland. It is difficult to get aprecise total number of Allied monitoring sites.Many stations did exist for the duration of thewar. Some served only to support a campaign.Many stations were limited to a direction findingfunction only. Some sites, such as the U.S. Navystation at Muirkirk, Maryland, originally werecommercial radio stations that were taken overby the military. American sites, including thoseof the Army, Navy, Coast Guard, OSS, andFCC numbered over seventy-five. British andCommonwealth stations numbered around sixtyand were located in the British Isles and overseasin Australia, Ceylon (Sri Lanka), Egypt, Palestine,Malta, Iraq, Kenya, and India.

Generally, Allied overseas monitoring sta-tions supported the commands in the theater of

operation in which they were located. For exam-ple, in early 1942 U.S. Army radio intercept com-panies that were assigned to locations in theBritish Commonwealth, such as in NorthernIreland, or in the Atlantic region, at sitesin Iceland and Newfoundland, interceptedGerman military, naval, or espionage communi-cations.39 In the Pacific and Asian theaters, somefield stations were manned by a mix of personnelfrom the United States and Commonwealthcountries, such as the large sites at CentralBureau Brisbane and the Wireless ExperimentalCenter in India. Other facilities were mannedalmost exclusively by personnel from one nation,such as the Americans at the U.S. Navy radiointercept site in Hawaii and the British in Ceylon.On the other hand, in the Southwest Pacific areaof operations, Australian detachments accompa-nied SIS units to forward intercept sites in NewGuinea and the Philippines to support GeneralMacArthur�s advance.40

Most field sites were controlled and mannedby one service element: army, navy, air force, orsecurity service, such as M.I.6 or the OSS. This

arrangement was not absolute; other service con-tingents or nationalities could be present. Also,intercept missions could cross service boundariesand responsibilities. For example, early in thewar, U.S. Navy sites did collect diplomatic com-

Intercept operations of USA Signal Radio Intelligence Company,

Fifth U.S. Army in North Africa(Courtesy: National Security Agency)

An intercept section at MS-1, Vint Hill Farms, Virginia

munications. But service priorities usually pre-vailed when it came to mission assignment. Forexample, a tentative 1943 intercept assignmentlist for the major SIS monitoring station #1, locat-ed at Vint Hill Farms, Virginia, was dominated byinternational diplomatic and commercial termi-nals. The number one assignment block includedall government traffic between Tokyo and Rome,Bern, Vichy, Ankara, and Stockholm. The secondand third tier priority was both German andItalian weather traffic (known as �WX�). Thefourth priority was all government traffic to andfrom Berlin to Manchukuo, Madrid, occupiedChina, and Lisbon. Interestingly, the only mili-tary traffic assigned to Vint Hill Farms was that ofGermany and it was reserved for the lowest prior-ity.41

Eventually, the assignment of targets by city(or �circuit�) and specific types of messages wasdropped because it was considered inefficient.Too often, there was needless duplicative copy ofthe same radio traffic. In mid-1943, the SISadopted the procedure of tasking by frequencyand terminal callsign. This targeting method wassimilar to that used by the British when taskingtheir field sites.42 The British also pioneered thecentral control of all collection sites. FromBletchley Park, GC&CS could direct the activitiesof all the British intercept sites, though its meas-

ure of control over service monitoring stationsmay have been less certain.43

By early 1944, the American and British siteswere experimenting with a joint and centralizedauthority that controlled collection of importanttarget networks. Field sites informed a controlauthority by teleprinter of current targets beingcollected. The control station then assigned anyremaining priority target terminals that were notbeing monitored. Field sites also sent in weeklyreports on their coverage that allowed refinementby oversight committees in both countries, theY-Committee (later Y-Board) in Great Britain,and at Arlington Hall.44

Still, even with the number of intercept anddirection finding facilities that eventually wouldbe built during the course of the war � over 130 �the Allies would never have enough monitoringpositions and radio receivers to match the num-ber of Axis transmitters and the volume of radiotraffic they sent. Precise numbers on messagestransmitted by the Axis and those intercepted bythe Allies are not readily available. Instead oneestimate is that a Japanese area army commandcould send as many as 1,400 messages a day.45

Some educated estimates by veterans and schol-ars of Allied wartime cryptology tend to supportthe contention that Allied intercept never resem-bled the popular analogy to a vacuum cleaner inwhich all Axis traffic was �scooped up in theether.� If anything, Allied intercept more closelyresembled a form of �sampling.� There is one esti-mate that the U.S. managed to intercept only 60percent of all Japanese naval communications inthe time leading up to and at the time of theJapanese strike at Pearl Harbor.46 In rare cases,where the high-level interest existed that couldfocus resources, more complete coverage could bearranged. During the United States-Japan negoti-ations leading up to Pearl Harbor, all but a few ofthe messages between Tokyo and its embassy inWashington were intercepted. But such thoroughcoverage was not the norm.

Sample intercept: German naval attachØ mes-sage from Berlin to Tokyo copied by the U.S.Navy site W located at Winter Harbor, Maine

Besides the large difference between the levelof Axis communications and the Allied monitor-ing capability to collect it, there were a number ofother technical limitations that hindered com-plete and effective Allied intercept operations.Atmospherics, such as local weather and the pres-ence of sunspots, affected reception of communi-cations, especially those on the high frequencyrange, which was the most commonly used trans-mitting frequency band. The location of monitor-ing stations was critical to hearing enemy trans-missions. The sheer distance between the trans-mitter and the monitoring station could deter-mine whether the latter could hear its target. Thetime of day and the season could also influencethe range and clarity of communications. Atnight, the composition of the layers in the atmo-sphere changes, producing two effects: increasingthe range at which radio communications can beheard, while creating nonreception areas, knownas �skip zones.� The local topographic conditionsin which a radio transmitter was located played arole in how well a radio signal could be heard atan intercept site. Mountains, heavily forested ter-rain, or jungle dampened radio transmissions,while deserts increased the range of a transmis-sion. The frequency and power output of thetransmitting terminal also mattered. The sensi-tivity of the monitoring equipment at an interceptsite was a crucial element.

All of the above environmental factors wereconsidered when the Allies selected locations fortheir monitoring stations around the world. Animportant part of this process was the work ofteams that performed field studies of potentialsites. The results of their surveys determined thelocation of the monitoring stations.47 One of themost productive Allied intercept stations againstJapanese military communications originatingfrom Japan was the U.S. Army�s site at Two RockRanch outside of Pentaluma, California. An U.S.Army site that specialized in intercepting interna-tional diplomatic communications was locatednear Asmara, Ethiopia.

At the monitoring station, the capabilities ofindividual intercept operators could make a dis-tinct difference in what was copied or missed �the difference between so-called �clean� copyusable by cryptanalysts or linguists, or that rid-dled with missing or mistakenly heard charactersor groups that hindered recovery of message text.The ability of Allied intercept operators variedaccording to training and experience. The train-ing of these specialized personnel included gene-ral skills in communications procedures andmodes of transmission, as well as training tai-lored towards specific communications targets,such as instruction in the difficult Japanese tele-graphic kana code. As intercept operators gainedexperience, their �copy� would become usable.

Two sites primarily intercepted GermanPolice communications. The first was the BritishArmy Y-station at Beaumanor in Leicestershire,located about eighty miles northwest of London,England. Beaumanor was one of the largestBritish intercept sites and operated with 140radio receivers by the end of the war. The primarymission of Beaumanor was German military com-munications and included that of the GermanPolice. Because of the vast distances between theoperational police units and their various head-quarters hierarchy that extended back to Berlin, avariety of radio frequencies were used. Theseextended from the low frequency band associatedwith commercial broadcasts up to the standardhigh frequency bands used by the military.

The site was able to copy police messagesfrom Russia on all of these frequencies. In fact,once the initial recovery of the police radio net-work was completed, that is, identifying all oftheir stations, operating frequencies and sched-ules, the collection effort was not too difficult tomaintain, despite changes by the Germans. Inearly September 1942, the police changed theircallsigns, but not their frequencies or schedules.The Y-operators at Beaumanor were able to

quickly equate the new and old callsigns within afew days.48

The other allied monitoring station thatcopied police and SS communications merits ashort consideration because of its unique contri-bution to the intercept of Axis communicationsrelating to the Holocaust, as well as the curiousstory of the site itself. P.C. Cadix (P.C. stood forPoste de commandement or command post) wasa covert Allied intercept site located in the south-eastern part of unoccupied Vichy France at theChateau de fouzes near the town of Uzes. The sitewas manned by a polyglot team of Poles, exiledSpanish Loyalists, Free French, and the occasion-al stray Englishman. The monitoring station orig-inally had been formed in late 1939 by ColonelGustave Bertrand, head of the French Army�sradio intelligence organization, the section d�examener (S.E). In its initial configuration thesite was first known as P.C. Bruno located nearParis, France.

Following the fall of France in June 1940, theteam that had manned P.C. Bruno, after spendinga short exile in Algeria, returned secretly to south-ern France. From October 1940 to November1942, P.C. Cadix, as the site now was named,intercepted German high frequency communica-tions in occupied France and elsewhere. Becauseof the peculiarities of HF radio propagation men-tioned above � such as the interval of the angle ofreflection off the ionosphere of the sky wave of aradio signal, known as the skip distance, andextended propagation of HF and lower frequencybands during the night � P.C. Cadix was able tomonitor German radio traffic from the Russianfront at night, and signals from Germany to theunits during daylight. Because of this situation,Beaumanor and P.C. Cadix split the work onGerman Police traffic, with the British copying oneven days and the French site working the policenets on odd days.49 Among the radio messagesintercepted by Bertrand and his team were over3,000 sent by German Police and the SS forma-tions, many of which contained reports of the

atrocities committed by these units.50 P.C. Cadixtransmitted the decrypts by radio to BletchleyPark. Ironically, these transmissions wereencrypted with an Enigma.51 Cadix continued tooperate until late 1942 when it was forced to shutdown, and its staff had to flee pursuing Germansecurity forces during the occupation of VichyFrance that followed the Allied invasion of FrenchNorth Africa.

It is most important point to understand thatthe intercept of an Axis message was the initialstep in the communications intelligence process.The quality of the intercept pretty much definedwhether that message eventually could be usefulfor Allied intelligence. Radio reception conditionsand the abilities (or lack thereof) on the part ofmonitors dictated the duration and difficulty ofthe subsequent analytic exploitation of intercept-ed messages, or even if the analytic effort could bestarted at all.

Step 3: Processing the Intercept

Once the enemy�s messages were intercepted,and if they were not decrypted at the site, thenthey had to be forwarded to theater or nationalcenters for processing. Generally, tactical militarycommunications, that is, those between Axisunits of division-size and below, were decryptedand translated at a large intercept site or at inter-mediate processing centers located in such placesas Hawaii, Egypt, Ceylon, and Australia. Alliedtactical field intercept units also could monitor,decrypt and translate low-level encrypted orplaintext enemy messages and pass them along totheir immediate commands. So-called higherlevel cryptographic systems � and this meant alltraffic encrypted by Enigma, Purple, and othermachines as well as Axis and neutral diplomaticmessages � were processed at the major analyticcenters of Bletchley Park outside of London,Berkeley Street in London, England, OP-20-GHeadquarters on Nebraska Avenue, N.W.,Washington, D.C., and at Arlington Hall Stationin northern Virginia.

Early in the war, intercept sites within theU.S. or U.K. sent the intercepted messages to thenational centers over cable by encrypted teletype-writer. Overseas facilities sent their material byair transport. This meant that intercept couldtake weeks to arrive at a processing center. Laterin the war, when enciphering communicationsequipment had been installed at major overseasintercept sites, the intercepted cipher text couldbe transmitted by enciphered radio or underwa-ter cable to the national centers for decryptionand translation. To securely transmit this inter-cept back to the processing centers, the WesternAllies used their own high-level cipher machines,notably the British TypeX or the American SIGA-

BA, both of which were considered unbreakableby Axis cryptologists.52

By war�s end, this enciphered communica-tions system linked most of the Allied interceptand processing centers together in a worldwidenetwork that allowed intercept from a remotelysituated monitoring site to reach the appropriateanalytic center. In the United States, so-calledtraffic or signal centers were set up inWashington, San Francisco, California, andSeattle, Washington. These centers relayed theintercepted traffic from overseas stations viacable to the Signal Security Agency at ArlingtonHall, Virginia. British or Commonwealth inter-cept destined for the SSA came from London

Allied Communications Network(Source: RG 457, HCC, Box 843, Lines of Communication Traffic Exchange )

through the British Security Coordination locatedin New York City. The BSC also relayed Canadianintercept from Ottawa, Canada. U.S. field stationsas far away as Kunming, China, and Asmara,Ethiopia, could get their intercept transmitted toSSA Headquarters within a day via this series ofradio and cable relays. The chart on page 37 fromJune 1945 illustrates the network.

Once the intercepted messages arrived at thecenters, they were sorted by target country andservice element. The copy was then distributed tothe appropriate target country office for analysis.So-called traffic analysts performed the initialevaluation of message �externals.� (The Britishreferred to traffic analysts as �discriminators.�)This traffic analytic process can be likened to thestudy of the outside of a mail envelope. Evenwithout reading the enclosed correspondence of apiece of mail, the recipient�s and sender�s identityand addresses, the postmark, weight and size ofthe envelope, the postage class, special handlinginstructions, and the history of prior correspon-dence between the two canreveal much about the con-tent of individual letters.

At Arlington Hall Station,analysts from the B-I sectionperformed the initial reviewof the intercept. The exter-nals they studied includedparts of the intercept suchas station callsigns, messageprecedence (or its urgency),message serial number, thenumber of recipients andrelays (if used), and tips tothe cryptographic system.These items were studied forclues to the content of themessage and perhaps theidentity of the ultimate recip-ient. For example, manydiplomatic messages weresent to radio terminals with

only the notation of the ministry for which it wasintended, such as �Ministry of Foreign Affairs.� Ifpossible, the analyst would try to determine towhich department the message was addressed.The analyst would review the files on previousintercepts to see if there were any clues that indi-cated the message�s recipient.

From there, the message, or a copy of it, wasrouted to the appropriate code breaking office. AtBletchley Park, cryptanalysis was done at Hut 6for military, air, police, and the SS, or at Hut 8 fornaval traffic. The GC&CS site at Berkely Street inLondon received diplomatic and commercialintercepts. At Arlington Hall, the SSA cryptana-lysts worked in section B-III, which handled allmilitary and diplomatic intercept. The cryptana-lytic task, the actual recovery of the message con-tents from its encoded or encrypted format, was aformidable one due to the enormous number ofpossible cryptographic systems employed by tar-get countries. Allied codebreakers had to contendwith almost 500 codes and ciphers.53 For exam-

Typical Arlington Hall analytic section

ple, British cryptanalysts worked against over 100German cryptographic systems.54 Many coun-tries employed numerous cryptographic systems.For example, France (including the Vichy,Gaullist, and Giraudist factions) used over 100systems for its armed forces, diplomatic, andcolonial communications. Switzerland had avail-able over ten manual systems and a simplifiedversion of Enigma just for its diplomatic mes-sages.55 Not all countries used all of their systemsall of the time. Some systems were reserved formessages of certain levels of importance. Somemilitary or naval encryption systems weredesigned for use by a single command or region.For some countries, most of their communica-tions were encrypted using relatively few systems.For example, although the Vatican was known tohave nine diplomatic systems available for itsapostolic delegates, it used only three systems,and one of those was so seldom used by theVatican that American and British codebreakerscould make no progress against it.56

It has been popularly portrayed that Alliedcryptologists often could read enemy messagesbefore the intended recipient. In a few instancesthis was true, such as occurred with some Purpledecrypts prior to Pearl Harbor. Generally,though, this capability was rare. The ability toexploit encrypted traffic in a reasonable time afterintercept was possible only after the cumulativeapplication of physical resources and months ofhuman analytic effort devoted to a single systemsuch as Purple or the constellation of Enigmavariants.57 Allied cryptologists did not reach thatlevel of expert or timely exploitation for all Axiscryptographic systems.

Another aspect to the cryptanalytic processwas the constant risk that Axis cryptographerswould change or replace current codes or ciphersthat the Allies were exploiting. This danger exist-ed for all major Axis cryptographic systems.There was a notable example of this in January1942 when the German Navy replaced the three-wheel Enigma used by the U-boats with a newer

four-wheel version. As a result of this move, theAllies were unable to exploit U-boat messagesencrypted in the new Enigma until November1942. In another example, in September 1941 theGerman Police began to change over its currentmanual encryption system, a double transposi-tion cipher to another, a double playfair.58 Thischange was completed by early November.Although the playfair was quickly broken, in factit was a simpler system; this switch illustratesthe inherent risk that faced Allied codebreakersevery day during the war.59 (See pages 49-50 formore on the background to this change.)

It is also true that not all foreign cryptograph-ic systems warranted the same level of cryptana-lytic effort that had been made against the Purplemachine or the various versions of the Enigma.There were a number of reasons for this. Aspointed out above, there were quite a numberof systems to attack, far more than the numberof available cryptanalysts. For many systems,including manual codes and ciphers and somemachine systems, not enough intercept wasacquired to allow for their successful or timelycryptanalysis. Depending on the systems� com-plexity and potential for intelligence, some codesor ciphers would be exploited relatively quickly;others, because of their difficulty, took a greatdeal of time and resources to break. For example,the high-level German diplomatic systems,known as Floradora and GEE, took, respectively,four and five years for Allied codebreakers tosolve.60A few machine cipher systems, such as theGerman Gestapo Enigma, known as TGD defiedAllied cryptanalysis completely during the war.61

The British had a large section in Hut 6 atBletchley Park devoted to the decryption of thepolice ciphers. There were good technical, crypto-logic reasons for this extensive effort. The texts ofdecrypted police messages sometimes providedcribs � plain text assumed to be present in enci-phered messages � to those messages encryptedwith the Enigma by other services such as theWehrmacht. Also, many Wehrmacht and

Luftwaffe operational units retained reserve manu-al ciphers similar to the police system in case ofEnigma failure, or used them for messages of a lessimportance.62 As for intelligence value, the policemessages were important because they providedinformation on much more than the massacres ofJews in Russia. They contained information abouteconomic, political, and social conditions inGermany and occupied Europe, the suppression ofresistance groups in the conquered countries, thepolitical situation in Italy after the fall of Mussolini,news of Allied POW escapes, the effects of Alliedbombing on the morale of German civilians, andthe SS plunder of art and other cultural items fromother countries.63

For systems that had been broken, there wasvirtually no retroactive effort by the Allied cryptol-ogists to solve so-called �back traffic.� For example,there was no plan to go back and read the high-levelGerman diplomatic messages that had accumulat-ed prior to the cryptanalytic breakthroughs in 1944and 1945. In another case, by early 1944, the WarDepartment�s Special Branch conceded that therewas no way that some 200,000 interceptedJapanese military messages, encrypted and encod-ed in systems that were now exploitable, which hadbeen stock-piled, would ever be read by the Army.Arlington Hall conceded that there was too muchcurrent intercept arriving from the field and justkeeping up with that flow negated any chance forwork on the old messages. Also, the Army�s analystshad to stay on top of the current systems in case theJapanese changed them. The author of a memoran-dum reviewing this situation at Arlington Hallcould only muse about how much �priceless intelli-gence� was lost. 64

How much of the total intercept ultimately wasexploited cryptanalytically is not known. There isno quantitative data about how many possible mes-sages may have been missed (or copied too poorlyfor use by the code-breaking sections). There is notmuch data about intercepted messages encoded orencrypted in cryptographic systems that wereunbreakable. Likewise, there is little statistical

information available to determine an overall suc-cess rate for Allied codebreakers. The few recordswith statistics concern how many messages wereintercepted and how many were broken. If the inci-dent about the Japanese Army messages related inthe preceding paragraph can be used an indicator,then it is possible that a substantial number of mes-sages were intercepted but not exploited. In reality,the general rate of successful decryption or decod-ing of intercepted messages may not have been par-ticularly high, and this estimate includes messagesthat were partially exploited. For example, in fiscalyear 1944, the Allies intercepted about 576,000Axis and neutral diplomatic messages. The SSAcryptanalytic branch at Arlington Hall, B-III, man-aged to solve about 89,000, or a rate of slightly lessthan 15.5 percent.

This low rate, though, does not mean that theAllied codebreakers failed to produce intelligence.For one thing, the priorities established by theAllied staffs ensured that the communications mostimportant to the war�s prosecution received themost coverage and analytic attention. Axis militarysystems, such as U-boat Enigma traffic, wereexploited in much larger numbers and a greaterrate relative to intercept than targets of lower inter-est such as neutral diplomatic networks.65 As forthe diplomatic problem, the major targets of inter-est, Japanese embassies in Axis and neutral capitalswere the highest priority and accounted for approx-imately 54 percent of all diplomatic translations.66

Success for the Allied cryptologic effort must bemeasured in the intelligence gathered that affectedthe course and outcome of the war. Still, the gener-al result of the codebreaking was that a relativelysmall percentage of the intercepted messages wereavailable for the next set of analysts � the transla-tors.

Translations of the decrypted high-level Axisand neutral messages were done at Huts 3 (militaryand air) or 4 (naval) at Bletchley Park, at BerkeleyStreet in London (diplomatic and commercial), andat the B-III section of Arlington Hall Station. Atranslation took a few steps to complete. Initially, a

linguist would complete a worksheet. Usually thistook the form of the decrypted text with a word-to-word translation. Next, the linguist would composea draft English text based on the worksheet. A finalversion of the text would then be written. Usuallythis form carried any comments considered neces-sary for the reader of the translation. For example,if a particular passage proved to be difficult andopen to other interpretations, that bit of text in theoriginal language would be included in a footnote.

The translation problem facing the cryptologicagencies was enormous. The nature, size, and logis-tical needs of the language problem proved to be asdaunting as that of decryption. The target coun-tries, Axis, minor allied, and neutral, used three-dozen languages. The mixture was an almost devil-ish variety that ranged from relatively familiarEuropean languages, such as French, German, andSpanish, which were taught at many American andBritish schools, to the unfamiliar and rarely taughtAmharic, Arabic, and Thai.67

At the beginning of the war, one of the majorissues confronting the Allied cryptologic organiza-tions was that they had to produce a large enoughcadre of linguists to handle the range of languagesfound in the decrypted messages. This early lack oftranslators created a bottleneck in the processing ofintercept. For example, during the month of March1943, SIS had received over 114,000 intercepts,mostly Japanese Army, but also weather and diplo-matic messages. Yet, Arlington Hall could produceonly 4,500 translations. The problem was a lack oftranslators to handle the load.68

Once training programs were running and pro-ducing linguists, other problems intruded. Again,wartime priorities often defined the direction of thelinguistic training effort. For the Americans,Japanese was the language emphasized in its train-ing programs. This emphasis was driven partly bythe division of effort with the British, though thelatter had their own Japanese training program.Other languages of interest were not ignored, butAmerican linguistic training was dominated by the

needs of the war against Japan. Besides the domi-nance of Japanese language needs, another prob-lem was other organizations that competed with thecryptologic agencies for these rare linguists. Themost important was the Allied Translator andInterpreter Section (ATIS), which performed criti-cal roles such as POW interrogation and translationof captured enemy documents in all combat the-aters.

Once assigned to analytic centers, the work ofthe linguists was supposed to be verified at varioussteps for correctness and readability. Nonetheless,the quality of translations the cryptologic agenciesproduced during the war varied. In the archivalrecord collections, researchers easily can findnumerous excellent translations, and many withserious shortcomings in grammar, syntax, andvocabulary. Many of the problems probably arosefrom technical gaps in linguistic resources.Linguists not only had to become proficient in alanguage, as they went along in their work they hadto learn or develop specialized glossaries for mili-tary, nautical, and aerial jargon, equipment refer-ences, and so on.69 The text of diplomatic messagesoften used the exactingly precise language that wasdifficult to render into equivalent English. Manydiplomatic messages reported conversations andinterviews with individuals that had been translat-ed from the language of the host country. Also,messages were composed with a background con-text that assumed a prior understanding betweenoriginal sender and intended recipient. If the lin-guist had not seen any previous messages, allusionsto other individuals, issues, and the significance oftopics in the text could be opaque to an Allied trans-lator. For the recipients of the translations, though,these shortcomings may have not always posed aproblem: the main ends to translation were avail-ability and utility, not elegance and erudition.

The rapidity at which a translation could becompleted varied, as well. The above difficultiesaffected the turnover from decrypt to translation.Further, if an intercept was considered important,and the decryption could be done quickly, it would

be translated relatively quickly. If not, it could besome time before a translation was completed anddisseminated, perhaps weeks or even months. Anexample of this difference can be illustrated by twodiplomatic intercepts of late June 1944 fromBudapest. Both messages had been received atArlington Hall one day after being intercepted bythe U.S. Army�s monitoring station in Asmara,Ethiopia (MS-4). The first intercept was a 26 June1944 Hungarian diplomatic message to Ankara,Turkey, that reported world reaction to the initialroundup of Hungarian Jews. It took Arlington Hallfrom 27 June to 16 December 1944 to complete itsdecryption and a formal translation to be issued �almost six months. The second intercept was of aVichy diplomatic message from Budapest toAnkara, Turkey, that reported the situation of agroup of Lebanese Jews trapped in Budapest. Ittook Arlington Hall from 13 June to 24 June todecrypt and translate this message, or only elevendays.70

The specific reason (or reasons) for the longdelay in issuing the translation of the Hungarianintercept is not known. The quick processing of theVichy intercept probably can be explained by thelong familiarity of Arlington Hall analysts withVichy diplomatic cryptographic systems that hadbeen solved about two years earlier, as well as thecomparatively easier French plain text. The delay inprocessing the Hungarian intercept suggests moredifficulty with Hungarian cryptography, as well asproblems with the Magyar language. The long pro-cessing time for the Hungarian intercept does notmean that information of intelligence value it mayhave contained would have been held back until afull translation was done. In a heat of operationalnecessity, intelligence could be passed informally.

At the beginning of the war, the United Statescryptologic agencies were producing only a few sep-arate series of translations, notably the diplomaticseries by the SIS and Japanese Navy translations byOP-20-G. These early series of translations sufferedfrom a number of limitations. There were too fewbeing written; they were not timely; and the trans-

lations suffered from missing portions of text. Asthe war progressed, both army and navy code-breakers got better at breaking Axis and neutralcryptographic systems, and began to exploit moresystems. As the number and variety of readableintercepts increased, the number of resulting trans-lations also grew.

The initial translation series proved to be inad-equate to handle the growing flood of intelligence.The analytic centers created additional specializedtranslation series that were categorized by topic,source, or administrative needs. By the end of thewar, the U.S. cryptologic elements were producingover sixteen separate series of translations. Somewere for a general intelligence audience, such asthe Japanese military translations. Others were forthe cryptologic elements themselves. These seriesusually carried the notation �CI� for �CodeInstruction.� Most of the translation series had noor very little information about the Holocaustbeyond a passing reference. The two that containedthe most information were the �H� (MultinationalDiplomatic) and the �T� (Reserved, or RestrictedDiplomatic) series.71 These two series are discussedin some detail in Chapter 3, pages 61 to 64. TheBritish created fewer translation series compared tothose of the SIS.

Although a precise accounting of the final tallyof finished translations produced by the Westerncryptologic agencies is beyond this study, it shouldbe pointed out that the intercepts that were trans-lated represented only a part of what previously hadbeen decrypted, which, in turn, was a portion ofwhat originally had been intercepted. Even by theend of the war, the overall rate on some targets wasstill relatively low. In July 1945, an InspectorGeneral survey of OP-20-G activities indicated thatonly 10 percent of all intercepted Japanese navalmessages were being fully processed and dissemi-nated to the various military commands.72 Recallthat the number of decrypts produced by B-III in1944 was 89,000 (out of 576,000 intercepts, or 15percent); the estimated number of translations forthe same period is about 50,000. This represents

about 56 percent of the decrypts, but only 8.6 per-cent of all diplomatic intercepts.73

The 1944 American total of diplomatic transla-tions issued is surprisingly close to that of GC&CSat the start of the conflict. In 1940 the Diplomaticand Commercial Section of GC&CS reported that ithad received (intercepted by radio or cable, oracquired through espionage) 100,000 telegrams,read 70,000 of them, but circulated only 8,000.The British numbers also represent another aspectof this problem mentioned earlier: the relativedearth of intelligence of importance that was con-tained in the intercepted messages. The low figureof translations disseminated through the Britishgovernment, some 8 percent of all interceptsdespite a 70 percent success rate of decryption,suggests that many messages that London inter-cepted contained little intelligence of importance tothe prosecution of the war. The intercepts werelargely of minor neutrals and allied governments inexile.74

Once the translations were completed, otherintelligence analysts reviewed them for usableinformation. At Hut 3, this work was done in theindexing sections. These individuals, many of themwomen, extracted those elements of intelligencethat contributed to the larger information matrixesthat were important to the war�s prosecution �order of battle, equipment listings, names of indi-vidual officers, etc. At Hut 3, a senior indexer wouldflag the information that needed to be entered intolarge index card catalogues for further use. Theinformation was entered onto index cards, cross-referenced, and stored in cabinets within Hut 3 forfuture reference.75

No information was overlooked. Even that datathat appeared innocuous and subsequently notimportant by the Axis, could reap benefits fromgood indexing. For example, prior to the war, theBritish intercepted messages from the Italian AirForce in North Africa. The messages containedseemingly mundane information: specifics aboutrepairs of the engines to Italian aircraft. Many of

the messages listed engines by serial number. AlertBritish analysts compiled these serial numbers. Thepayoff was that, by knowing the status of almostevery aircraft engine, the British could develop acomplete picture of the size, composition, andavailability of aircraft to the Italian Air Force inNorth Africa when hostilities began in September1940.76

Step 4: Disseminating the COMINT

Once a translation was completed, thereremained the problem of getting the intelligence itcontained to the military and civilian leaders andorganizations that needed it. In Britain, the JointIntelligence Committee, which served under theChiefs of Staff, produced intelligence reports for therest of the government. The JIC had been function-ing since before the war (when it had been calledthe Joint Intelligence Subcommittee). The majorservices and Foreign Office were represented on it.The services and the Foreign Office, which wasresponsible for M.I.6, and, ultimately, GC&CS, fun-neled intelligence to the JIC, which, in turn, dis-tributed it to the necessary recipients. The JIC alsoissued the military, political, diplomatic, and eco-nomic estimates of the war.77

Early in the war, in the United States the SISproduced and disseminated COMINT to otheragencies and commands, usually in the form oftranslations. This system soon broke down. TheArmy codebreakers were swamped by the increasein messages to exploit. SIS was unprepared organi-zationally and lacked the resources to distribute theCOMINT. It reported communications intelligencein a haphazard fashion; no effort was made to checkthe signals intelligence against other sources.Organizationally, the SIS remained within theSignal Corps. Its product had to go to G-2, the WarDepartment�s intelligence arm. Another organiza-tion, the Special Branch, was formed under the con-trol of the War Department�s operational intelli-gence arm, the Military Intelligence Service. SpecialBranch thereafter would handle the analysis of theCOMINT product from SIS, combine it with other

sources of intelligence, and then disseminate what-ever useful intelligence gained from it to the rest ofthe government. Special Branch produced the�Magic� Summary and also other special topicalstudies.78 In 1944 Special Branch was broken upand subsumed under the War Department�sMilitary Intelligence Service, which took over themanagement of COMINT analysis and dissemina-tion.79

For the Allies, this last step in the communica-tions intelligence system potentially was the tricki-est because it was the one most likely to compro-mise Ultra to the Axis. It was recognized early in thewar that such information, being at once the bestsource for Axis plans, intentions, and capabilities,also could be the most ephemeral of all intelligencesources. To lose the advantage that Ultra conferredon the Allies � what Churchill on one occasioncalled his �golden eggs� � could have been criticalto the progress of the war, if not to its outcome. Thiswas especially true in the early years of the conflictwhen Ultra was just about the only edge that abeleaguered Great Britain had against the militaryand naval forces of Germany and Italy in the vari-ous combat theaters. A method was needed to allowaccess to the intelligence derived from Axis com-munications, known variously as �Boniface,� �MostSecret Source,� or Ultra, to those who had the �needto know,� especially in overseas commands. Yet,that method had to ensure that the cryptologicsources would not be compromised and subse-quently lost.

Within the British government and ministries,the Ultra material was distributed to the intelli-gence and service ministries that required it. As ageneral rule, copies of all Ultra translations ordecrypts were sent to Secret Intelligence ServiceHeadquarters in London and the intelligencedepartments of the three services. This distributionscheme varied, though, as the war progressed. Agood example of this change can be seen with thedissemination of the German Police decrypts. Forexample, in August 1941 eight copies of policedecrypts were produced and distributed. One copy

went into the files. Two copies went to M.I.6 HQ,while another was transferred from the Service tothe Ministry of Economic Warfare. A fourth copywent to the Air Ministry intelligence section. Thefifth copy went to M.I. 8, British Army Y staff. TheWar Office section responsible for occupiedEurope, M.I. 14, received a copy. One final copy wassent to Bletchley Park as part of a standing intelli-gence exchange, known as the B.P.I.E.

Starting in late 1942, the police decrypts carrieda distribution list that contained both office desig-nators and named individuals within M.I. 6 or theintelligence section of the Air Ministry or WarOffice. Why the distribution became name-specificis not clear, though it may have reflected a matur-ing topical specialization by individual analystswithin M.I. 6 and other ministries. Also, after 1943it appears that copies of the police decrypts, includ-ing those of the SS, were passed to the Americancontingent at Hut 3 in Bletchley Park. For example,in August 1944, a Lieutenant Colonel Taylor, mostlikely Lieutenant Colonel Telford Taylor, the G-2Special Branch representative to Bletchley Park,received a copy of an SS message detailing the railtransport of almost 1,300 Jews from Hungary toAuschwitz.80

To solve the security problem posed by dissem-inating Ultra to overseas commands, the Britishdeveloped a system to control of the distribution ofCOMINT and, concurrently, to minimize thechance of its exposure. In August 1941 an organiza-tion, the Special Liaison Units (SLU), was formedunder the control of the Chief, Secret Service, thatadministered the dissemination of Ultra to Britishcommands in the Middle East. Soon, SLUs werepresent at every command of the British armedforces. These units were staffed largely by Royal AirForce personnel who were familiar with the signalsintelligence sources and could offer technical back-ground information concerning the intelligence.The unit also enforced the security regulations thatprotected the Ultra intelligence.

The units, many of which were attached to thevarious Allied commands around the world,received the Ultra intelligence from Hut 3, mostcommonly in the form of a translation. The intelli-gence was transmitted by enciphered radio, cable,or carried by a courier. When normal communica-tions service was not available to an SLU, the trans-mission of Ultra information to the field was han-dled by Special Communications Units (SCU). Thetranslation, or the message that contained it, car-ried a special designator (two- or three-letter com-bination) known as a delivery group that specifiedthe recipients. A single translation could carry sev-eral delivery groups depending on how many com-mands had the �need to know.�81 The SLU, in turn,dispatched special representatives who deliveredthe information to those individual commanders,ministry heads, and diplomats cleared to receive it.

Keeping the lists of recipients approved, or�cleared,� to receive Ultra was another facet of theSLU system. The lists were fairly limited; recipientsusually were high-ranking ministers or militaryofficers, generally no lower than corps commanders

or their equivalents in the other services. For exam-ple, in the United Kingdom, a late 1944 Ultra distri-bution list for the Supreme Headquarters AlliedExpeditionary Force of cleared army and air forcepersonnel ran some twenty pages and includedabout 500 names.82 Yet, when one considers thesize of SHAEF, and the subordinate commandsinvolved, this listing is not particularly large.

The Americans developed their own version ofthe SLU, called the Special Security Officer or SSO.The SSO system was sponsored by the WarDepartment�s Special Branch and officially wasadopted by the War Department in late 1943 as themain method of Ultra distribution to major U.S.commands. The SSO liaisons were first establishedin the Pacific, Southwest Pacific, and China-Burma-India Theaters. Eventually, by spring 1944 an SSOwas set up in Europe to support GeneralEisenhower, although an SLU counterpart also waspresent. Like their SLU counterparts, these officerspersonally handled all aspects of the Ultra traffic.They received the intelligence messages sent fromthe War Department, carried the intelligence totheir designated recipients, briefed them, and thenreturned with the material.83

The other major American system of distribu-tion of communications intelligence was by sum-mary report. This distribution method began withthe early typewritten �Magic� Diplomatic Summaryand was published first in March 1942. The sum-mary remained limited to senior officials within theWashington, D. C., area: the White House and theWar, Navy, and State Departments. A subordinateoffice of the Special Branch of the MilitaryIntelligence Service compiled this summary. It wasa digest of relevant translations based mostly ondiplomatic sources with a preponderance of Purple,or Japanese diplomatic translations. Some othersources of information included mostly prisonerdebriefings and digests of reports from aerialimagery. Occasional press and OSS-produced intel-ligence sometimes would be slipped into a summa-ry, but COMINT material clearly dominated thecontent of the summaries, sometimes ranging over

Sample Ultra translation with delivery groups

90 percent in a single issue. Occasionally, commu-nications intelligence was the only source in a sum-mary.84 It was understandable why this was calledthe �Magic� Diplomatic Summary.

With the closer liaison between GC&CS andSIS, and the resulting access to more intelligence,the number of American summary reports grew. AEuropean version, the �European Summary� wasstarted in late 1943. Special Branch representativesin Britain culled Enigma translations published byHuts 3 and 4 for items to include in this summary.The European Summary was based more on trans-lations of Axis military intercept than the MagicSummary. Also, the distribution of the EuropeanSummary was limited to about a dozen copies sentto Washington.85 Except for two examples, a com-plete set of this summary series has yet to be locat-ed in any archival holdings in the United States. InJuly 1944 a �Far East Magic Summary� was started.It summarized the military, political, and diplomat-ic Magic translations and military intelligencereports related to the campaign against Japan. Itwas published through the surrender of Japan inSeptember 1945.86 This latter summary carried noinformation on the Holocaust.

Access to the �Magic� Summary was limited,usually with only a few copies hand-carried to theWar, Navy, and State Departments, and the WhiteHouse. The service chiefs, General George Marshallof the Army and Admiral Ernest King of the Navy,saw them, as did their deputies for intelligence andoperations. Secretary of State Cordell Hull and theAssistant Secretary of State, Adolph Berle, receivedthe summaries. Whether the copies of the summa-ry were returned immediately to Arlington Hallwhen reviewed or held in a secure area for a shortperiod is not clear. Whatever the case, it appearsthat the copies of the summaries eventually werereturned to Special Branch.

How much communications intelligencereached the �top,� that is, the desks of PrimeMinister Churchill and President Roosevelt,depended both on their individual predilection and

the selection process by their staffs. Churchill hasbeen portrayed accurately as a voracious consumerof Ultra information. In September 1940 Churchillrequested that �C,� Stewart Menzies, the head ofM.I.6, provide him daily all Enigma messages.�87

This request clearly was impractical because of thenumber of decrypts. By summer of 1941, Churchillwas receiving a daily brief from �C� that summa-rized important Ultra material. Bletchley Park pro-duced a veritable daily banquet of information fromwhich Churchill simply feasted. Sprinkled through-out the daily briefings are reports about the mas-sacres of Jews in Russia, Hitler�s directive to shootGerman political refugees taken prisoner with FreeFrench units, Jewish internees in North Africa usedto unload Axis ships in Tunisia, anti-Jewish hostil-ity in Turkey, Himmler�s instruction to the SS toremove all works of art from Florence, Italy, rumorsof the German Reichsbank hiding gold and sensi-tive documents, and SS orders to move Jewishinmates to Dachau late in the war.88

Churchill used the intelligence from the dailybriefings for planning strategy and berating com-manders who were slow to exploit local advantagesthat he saw from Ultra decrypts.89At these brief-ings he also was informed of sensitive political andintelligence issues, such as the danger of passingUltra to the Soviets, increasing German signalssecurity, and the chance that Ultra might be com-promised by a �precipitous� military action againstField Marshal Erwin Rommel�s Headquarters.90

The daily summaries he received from BletchleyPark during the war, as contained in the PRO seriesHW1, illustrates the depth and breadth of the intel-ligence brought to his attention.

On the other hand, FDR seems to have been liv-ing on, if not quite a monk�s diet, then certainly asomewhat leaner ration when compared toChurchill�s appetite for Ultra. It was not thatRoosevelt was uninterested and ignored the intelli-gence from radio intercepts. He referred to thePurple translations closely during the failed negoti-ations with Japan prior to Pearl Harbor. He did, infact, continue to receive this intelligence in various

forms throughout the war. The most notable wasthe �Magic� Summary. Roosevelt�s aides wouldbrief him in the morning or afternoon (or both) onthe highlights from the various summaries. TheWhite House also received �translations of interest�from either the Army�s Signal Intelligence Serviceat Arlington Hall or Special Branch throughout thewar. Sometimes he would ask to read some of thetranslations used in the summary. All of his aideshave reported that the president was extremely wellinformed from the intelligence. Usually when thepresident went abroad to conferences, such asCasablanca and Cairo, the Magic material was for-warded to him.91 And FDR would complain about alack of intelligence on a particular issue he foundimportant. For example, in November 1943 hecalled the secretary of war, Henry Stimson, and thesecretary of the navy, Frank Knox, to the WhiteHouse to complain about a lack of intelligence onthe domestic and political situations insideJapan.92

It appears that other U.S. officials were notalways satisfied with the distribution of �Magic�information to the president and his use of it.General George Marshall, who well understood theimportance of the COMINT, established a newsummary system in early 1944 for PresidentRoosevelt, creating a presidential �Black Book� ofbriefings. He did this after discovering that FDRwas not getting or reading the Magic decrypts fromthe Army. In February 1944 he addressed a memoto President Roosevelt specifically on this issue. Inthe first paragraph he reported that he had learnedthat the president �seldom sees the Army sum-maries of �magic� material.� Marshall laterexplained that a new arrangement of material hadbeen prepared and that the president should availhimself of these.93

It is difficult to determine the precise contextfor Marshall�s complaint. FDR was receiving intelli-gence daily, indeed even on occasion demanding it.Marshall may have believed that Roosevelt was notutilizing �Magic� when making wartime decisions.Certainly, Roosevelt�s approach to wartime leader-

ship differed substantially from Churchill�s. UnlikeChurchill who hectored his generals and admiralsfor action, and often used Ultra as his hammer,FDR left the execution of the war to his militarychiefs. Roosevelt preferred a personal workingrelationship with his commanders. They woulddevelop and carry out operations subject to hisapproval. As long as his military commanders keptFDR�s confidence, they were free to direct the mili-tary operations of the war. Perhaps to a person ofMarshall�s business-like attitude, FDR couldappear maddeningly casual or detached from thedirection of the war, especially when compared toChurchill�s tendency to get involved to the point ofalmost meddling.94

A review of the �Magic� Diplomatic Summaryfiles shows that they contained very little informa-tion about Axis atrocities or crimes against Jews orother groups in occupied Europe. There were per-haps three or fours items a year beginning in mid-1942.95 Additionally, from the set of translationsSIS forwarded to the White House from early 1942to the middle of 1945 only one � an Irish diplomat-ic message from Rome in October 1943 � can befound that had anything to do with the Holocaust.96

Whether these few reports from American signalsintelligence on the Holocaust eventually werebriefed to President Roosevelt is unknown. Thissmall number of references in the summaries isinteresting because U.S. COMINT produced over400 translations dealing with aspects of theHolocaust. Almost of these were from diplomaticsources. Also, it seems that Roosevelt never saw theGerman Police decrypts that GC&CS had producedearlier in the war.97 This gap, though, may beexplained by the fact that the German Police and SSmostly had stopped reporting by radio about themassacres in Russia and the concentration campsby the end of 1942. Whether he was apprised of theinformation in the British decrypts through othersources, possibly the OSS via its exchange with theBritish Security Committee in New York, isunknown. The president had other sources of infor-mation about the Holocaust, including the OSS, hisadvisors, like Rabbi Stephen Wise, and personal

briefings from first hand observers like JanKarski.98

Throughout the war, President Roosevelt�sreaction to the news of the Holocaust could be char-acterized as sympathetic, but also as realistic andrestrained. He did authorize the Allied Declarationcondemning the Nazi killing of the Jews in late1942. He also publicly denounced the Nazi execu-tion of civilians in October 1941. The presidentfavored the postwar retribution against Axis warcrimes. Yet, he believed that the best course to endthe killing was the successful and quick defeat ofNazi Germany.99 Furthermore, Roosevelt, likeChurchill, understood the political problems thatwould follow from any statement that singled outNazi atrocities against the Jews. The Germanscould very well use any specific declaration aboutthe Holocaust against the Allies as a propagandaweapon. And, on occasion, they did, denying claimsabout gassing of Jews and publicizing stories aboutJewish control of the Allied war effort.100

There was also an overriding security consider-ation regarding the dissemination of Ultra materialabout the Holocaust. Publicizing any informationbased on Ultra could seriously compromise thework at Bletchley Park, especially the exploitationof the German high-level Enigma and its many vari-ants. If the Germans had been warned that theAllies had penetrated their most secret ciphers andcodes, they could have installed new systems. Alliedcodebreakers then would have been returned to thedifficult early days of the war when Enigma�s work-ings were a mystery. If such a compromise hadoccurred in 1941 or 1942, the attendant loss ofinformation could have adversely affected theAllied strategic posture against Germany.

The fear of compromise of Ultra sources right-ly dominated and formed the entire British (andlater American) administration of the dissemina-tion of intelligence derived from it. The Allies devel-oped some ruses and cover stories to protect thesesensitive cryptologic sources.101 The initial Britishapproach to disguising Ultra material was to make

it appear to have originated from a traditional espi-onage or agent source. The original cover name forEnigma decrypts was �Boniface,� and the materialfrom Bletchley Park was issued by M.I.6 to furtherdisguise its source. This cover name was used tosuggest that the information came from an agenthigh in the German command that was controlledby M.I.6. This approach may have secured the cryp-tologic source, but it often subverted the impact ofthe Ultra material since many recipients were skep-tical of what they assumed was human agent infor-mation. But the British leadership appeared toaccept the loss of some operational efficiency aslong as security was maintained.102 By late 1941,though, the volume of Enigma decrypts hadincreased dramatically as had the number of recip-ients. This growth forced the British to finallyextend the initial SLU presence in the Middle Eastand give more recipients the �need to know� aboutthe source of Ultra intelligence.

While this expansion of approved recipientssolved one aspect of the security problem, it still leftthe problem of compromise of Ultra informationthrough its use in military operations. When therewere no other intelligence sources to account forknowledge of Axis plans and moves, the Allies hadto devise ways to disguise the role of Ultra informa-tion. An example of this was the British use ofreconnaissance aircraft flights to �discover� Axisconvoys in the Mediterranean that were knownalready through Ultra. When British codebreakerslearned the date and route of an Axis supply con-voy, the Allies would schedule many days of airreconnaissance over the route.103 In the Pacific, theaerial ambush of Admiral Yamamoto in April 1943had been based on a decrypt of the valuableJapanese naval code, JN-25. The cover story, toldto the U.S. Army Air Force pilots who carried outthe mission in case they were captured, was that theinformation on Yamamoto�s flight came from Alliedcoast watchers.104 In another interesting example,shortly after the German invasion of the USSR, theBritish supplied the Russians with signals intelli-gence based on high-level cryptanalysis. However,London was aware that the Germans could exploit

many Soviet ciphers and that Berlin could discoverUltra information in Moscow�s radio traffic.Therefore, London disguised the Ultra it gaveMoscow and characterized it as �a most reliablesource.�105 In all of the above cases, a subterfugewas used to cover the real source of the informa-tion. Still, no matter the deception or cover for thereal source of information, there was always achance of discovery by the Axis. And this fearweighed heavily on the Allied codebreakers.

The handling of the information derived fromthe German Police decrypts from the Russian frontin the summer of 1941 points to the dilemma justdiscussed. On 24 August 1941, Winston Churchilldelivered a radio speech about the atrocities com-mitted by the police on the Eastern Front. It wasbased on information derived from police decrypts.The prime minister was aware of the Germandepredations against Jews and other target groupsin Russia since the start of the invasion. He mayhave been motivated to make the broadcastbecause of the shocking information in the reports.In the radio address, Churchill mentioned thatRussian inhabitants from entire districts werebeing exterminated, but he made no reference toJews being a specific target of the police units.Instead, Churchill made a general statement aboutGerman Police executing Russian �patriots.�Perhaps in the first months of the invasion, theprime minister had not yet understood the empha-sis on the Jewish target by the police and SS.106

Even though the sole source for British know-ledge of the massacres in the western Soviet Unionwas the police decodes, it appears that Churchillwas not sensitive to the potential for compromisewhen he included a reference to the police execu-tions in his broadcast. Nor is it certain if senior offi-cials of M.I.6, GC&CS, or the Joint IntelligenceCommittee were themselves sensitive to the possi-bility of a compromise of the police decodes.Churchill may have viewed the military situation inAugust on the Russian front as critical. Certainly,there were members of his cabinet who believed

that the Soviet Union was facing defeat.107 He mayhave wanted to bolster domestic British support forMoscow�s struggle by delivering the speech.

A probable result of Churchill�s speech was that,on 12 September 1941, Kurt Daluege, the com-mander of the German Police units, sent a messageto all of his command to cease transmission ofreports by radio of the mandated executions on theRussian Front. A second probable effect ofChurchill�s speech was that, in November 1941, thepolice changed the manual encryption system fortheir messages from a double transposition cipherto a double playfair system, the latter of which,ironically, was a relatively easier system forBletchley Park to exploit. The British cryptologistsbelieved that Daluege�s order and the cryptograph-ic change were inspired, in part, by Churchill�sbroadcast.108 Although the order to cease reportingby radio had been sent on 12 September, nearlythree weeks after the broadcast, it is likely thespeech influenced the German changes. Daluege�s12 September order probably was preceded by aperiod of deliberation within the police leadershipand staffs in Berlin about the practice of radioingreports of massacres. Not to be overlooked as a pos-sible influencing factor, as well, is that Daluege�sorder may have reflected a long-standing concernwith the cryptographic shortcomings of the policecipher and that the speech was the impetus for afinal decision to rectify a long-standing crypto-graphic security issue.109

The dissemination of information derived fromUltra sources presented a constant security risk forthe Allies during the war. The compromise of thiscapability, that is, of the cryptanalytic exploitationof any of the high-level Axis cryptographic systemscould have closed a valuable source of information.Churchill�s speech condemning German atrocitiesin Russia, by referring to the role of the GermanPolice, contained a reference to the source of intel-ligence that may have tipped the Allied advantagein this one case.110 And it appears that the Germansquite likely changed their cipher in response to theprime minister�s broadcast. That the Germans

replaced the then current police manual cipher sys-tem with one easier to exploit was a matter of goodfortune for the codebreakers at Bletchley Park; theopposite, that is, the replacement with a strongercipher system, was just as likely an outcome. Thereliance on intelligence from singular cryptanalyticsources such as Ultra only increased the potentialfor a major compromise of the Allied codebreaking.For the Allies, no matter the demands of the situa-tion, whether it was countering an Axis militaryoperation or revelations about the police mas-sacres, the best security policy to follow was toavoid risking the disclosure of their cryptologicsecrets throughout the war.

In October 1942 the British began to accumu-late information on war crimes by the GermanPolice units to be forwarded to the Foreign Office,which would keep the dossier. This arrangementhad been agreed upon between Sir AlexanderCadogan, the permanent undersecretary for foreignaffairs and the head of M.I.6, Stewart Menzies,following a suggestion by Sir Victor Cavendish-Bentick who chaired the Joint IntelligenceCommittee.111 Two Foreign Office officials were togather the information. How it was to be organizedis not certain. Notes attached to the police decryptssuggest that the evidence was to be organized intothree categories: (a) the number of people shot ormaltreated in known and unknown areas, (b) offi-cial responsible with summary of atrocities eachhad perpetrated, and (c) a listing of Police, SS, andArmy units and a summary of the atrocities eachhad committed.112

At war�s end, the Foreign office had gatheredtogether a number of Police and SS decrypts. In lateMay, Cavendish-Bentick approached Menziesabout the classification of the material and whetherthat would mean it could not be turned over to theNuremberg War Crimes Commission. Menziespassed the request to Edward Travis, the director ofGC&CS after 1942. The response from Travis wasthat the Police decrypts that contained informationabout the massacres and other atrocities in Russiawas �medium-grade� and could be released to theprosecution at Nuremberg. (The category was

known as PEARL, referring to material derivedfrom low-level cryptanalysis such as the manualciphers used by the Police. This category was laterrecast as PINUP and included everything NOTderived from high-level cipher systems such asEnigma.) Travis added that the concentration campmessages could not be released because they con-tained some SS Enigma material, known as�Orange.�113

This material, though, was never used at theNuremberg War Crimes Trials in any of the prose-cutions of major or other criminals. Many Policeofficials were included in the group of lesser crimi-nals, or Category 2, and some of them were tied toatrocities in the decrypts.114 Another striking fea-ture with regards to the absence of the decrypts inthe Nuremberg evidence was that the head of thestaff for the American prosecutor, Chief JusticeRobert Jackson, was none other than ColonelTelford Taylor. Prior to the trials, Taylor had super-vised the exchange of Ultra material with theBritish from 1943 to 1945. As part of the BRUSAAgreement in June/July 1943, Taylor probably hadreceived copies of Police decrypts from later in thewar.115 But he most likely did not receive copies ofany Police decrypts from prior to the agreement.

Telford Taylor (right front), formerly head ofSpecial Branch liaison with London, now abrigadier general, pictured with his staff at

Nuremberg War Crimes Trials (Source: NARA)

Taylor had worked at accumulating evidenceagainst Axis war criminals for two of the generalcounts against the accused, that is, crimes againstpeace and crimes against humanity. Consideringthat some of the material, namely, the lower-leveldecrypts such as those of the police, could havebeen used as evidence, the failure by Taylor to uti-lize the material seems to demand an explanation.This is especially pertinent since one possible resultof this unwillingness to use the decrypts was thatmany Police junior officers, noncommissioned offi-cers, and rank and file police were not investigatedfor war crimes immediately after the war.116

There are probably two explanations for whythe decrypts were not used by any of theNuremberg tribunals. The first was that, accordingto Taylor, sufficient evidence already existed in theforms of captured documents, eyewitness testimo-ny, and the depositions of the accused senior Policeand SS officials. Taylor also deferred to the British,who, he contended, had more expertise aboutGerman organizations such as the Police, the SS,and others.117

The second reason, and perhaps the more com-pelling one in light of the ensuing thirty-year cloakof secrecy that dropped around Ultra, was the over-riding concern by both British and American intel-ligence officials to keep secret the advantage gainedfrom the wartime exploitation of high-level Germancryptography. In the immediate postwar situationin Germany (and later for Japan) intelligence offi-cials in both countries were concerned about resur-gent national feelings or the chance that under-ground resistance movements might start upagainst the occupation governments. The Alliescould suppress such potential movements byexploiting any ciphers or codes that might be usedby the insurgents.

Also, the Western Allies took the long viewwhen it came to protecting Ultra. New threats toworld security could arise in the future. If therewere a general awareness of the Allied success incodebreaking, then any future enemy would be on

guard against the possibility that its communica-tions might be exploited, and this would hamperany American or British effort against them.118

From Intercept to Decryption � the Story ofOne German Police Message.

How the COMINT process functioned can beillustrated with an example of this German Policemessage of 16 June 1942 from commander of thePolice in central USSR to Reichsfuehrer HeinrichHimmler and the Chief of the Order Police, KurtDaluege in Berlin. The message, Nr. 14, was sentfrom Mogilev (callsign �SQF�) in Byelorussia toBerlin (callsign �DQH�) on 16 June 1942. The mes-sage was intercepted on 3742 KHz at 9:51 PM(GMT) at the British Army intercept site atBeaumanor (BMR) by shift operator �A115.� Thehandwritten changes to certain characters in thecipher groups indicate that operator �115� had diffi-culty in copying the message. Another message wassent some time after �14,� but the operator wasunable to copy it due to man-made interferencethat is notated as �QRM.� The interference couldhave come inadvertent transmissions from other

Intercept copy (NARA, RG457 HCC, Box 202)

radio stations near the same frequency or fromSoviet radio jammers trying to prevent theGermans from communicating with one another.

Once copied, the message was sent fromBeaumanor to Hut 6 at Bletchley Park for process-ing. The important information from the interceptwas entered onto a form such as the �W/T (wirelesstelegraphy) Red Form� shown above. The ciphergroups, with corrections or alternates, were enteredinto the blocks on the sheet. Other intercept infor-mation � callsigns, frequency, time of intercept,and organization � was entered on the form. Once

completed, this form would be forwarded to acipher clerk, who would apply the day�s key anddecipher the intercepted message.

Once the deciphering of message Nr 14 wascomplete, the text would be entered onto the day�sother German Police decrypts (Nr. 21) by Hut 3 fordissemination. If the message were to be transla-ted that job would have been completed at Hut 3.A rough translation of the message isas follows:

To: Reichsfuehrer SS and the Chief of the OrderPolice.

On the Bobruisk to Mogilev road, [there was]a skirmish with partisans: 16 men from the 51st

Police battalion were killed. In the town of Borki[Unlocated. There are several towns namedBorki in present day Belarus � author.] weaponsand ammunition were discovered, buried in theground in the usual manner. The inhabitantswere liquidated. From: Senior Officer SS andPolice Chief Central Russia.

Western communications intelligence duringthe war grew from a set of small national efforts toa partnership that spanned the globe. It consistedof the major cryptologic agencies of the UnitedStates and Great Britain with supporting contin-gents from the Commonwealth as well as fromother Allied nations. Western COMINT compriseda multistep system that set priorities for the collec-tion, processing, and intelligence signals intelli-gence. Western COMINT primarily targeted Axismilitary, naval, and diplomatic communications.Secondary targets included the less important Axis

Decrypt of Police message (NARA, RG 457, HCC, Box 1386)

Copy of W/T Red Form (NARA, RG 457, HCC, Box 202)

communications and those of neutral countries.Axis and neutral communications that carried themost information about the Holocaust, GermanPolice and international diplomatic were targetedmainly for the intelligence that these networksmight contain that supported the main war effortagainst the Axis. Information about the Holocaustthat appeared on these networks was collected as abyproduct of the main COMINT effort.

Notes1 See Euna O�Halpin, �Small States and Big Secrets:

Understanding SIGINT Cooperation between UnequalPowers during the Second World War.� Intelligence andNational Security (Vol. 17, No. 3, Autumn 2002), 1-16.For more on the relationship with France, see RG457,HCC, Box 1277, Folder 3732, �Liaison with the French onSignal Intelligence Matters,� 28 November 1944; andPRO, HW 14/3, January-February 1940, �Liaison withFrench and Poles.� For relationship with Netherlands,see PRO, HW 14/18, August 1941, �SIGINT Exchangewith Dutch in the Far East.� For more on the relationshipwith the Poles, see, among others, PRO, HW 14/8,regarding a Polish-manned intercept station inStanmore, England.

2 For example, see Carl Boyd, Hitler�s SecretConfidant: General Oshima Hiroshi and MagicIntelligence 1941 - 1945 (Lawrence, KS: University Pressof Kansas, 1993), pages 57-74, about Axis plans for 1942and pages 117-139 for German appreciation of the Alliedintention in 1944. Also, see Hinsley, Vol. I, pages 429-493, about COMINT and other intelligence sourcesregarding German plans and preparations for the inva-sion of the Soviet Union known as OperationBarbarossa.

3 SRH-349, The Achievements of the SignalSecurity Agency in World War II (Washington DC: TheAssistant Chief of Staff , G-2, 1946).

4 Memorandum for the Deputy Chief of Staff fromMajor General Clayton Bissell, Subject: InterceptFacilities. 8 September 1944. SRH-145, 200-201. AlsoMemorandum for Mr. McCloy from Colonel CarterClarke, no subject 16 March 1944, SRH-145, 158-A.

5 For more on the phenomenon of women in theseagencies, see Jennifer Wilcox, Sharing the Burden:Women in Cryptology during World War II (Fort

George G. Meade, MD: Center for Cryptologic History,1998), SRH-152, �Historical Review of OP-20-G,� 1945,3; Alvarez, 115-119.

6 �German Traffic Analysis in Sixta,� NARA, RG457, HCC, Box 1429, Folder 4729.

7 �Report of Colonel McCormack�s TDY to London,May-June 1943.� NARA, RG457, HCC, Box 1119, Folder3600, June 1943.

8 William F. Friedman, �E Operations of the GC&CSat Bletchley Park,� NARA, RG 457, HCC, Box 1126,Folder 3620.

9 SRH-349, Appendix, �Bulletin production �Average Daily Volume of Translated Messages,� 1December 1941 � 31 August 1945.

10 The Enigma and Purple cipher machines are wellknown from the literature of World War II. Less famous,but important as sources of intelligence, were someother Axis cipher machines. Tunny was the cover nameapplied to the Lorenz Company�s on-line encipheredteleprinter known to the Germans as Schluesselzusatz40 or SZ-40. GC&CS first broke it in late 1942.

11 Memorandum from Major Brown to Mr.Friedman, 28 January 1943. RG 457, HCC, Box 1432,Folder �SSS Intercept Priorities Memorandum.�

12 The Signal Intelligence Service underwent manytitle changes during the war. From 1929 to 1942, it wasthe Signal Intelligence Service. In June 1942 it wasbriefly renamed the Signal Intelligence Service Division.One month later it was again renamed the SignalSecurity Division (SSD). In 1943 the SSD became theSignal Security Service. In late summer 1943, the SSSbecame the Signal Security Agency (SSA). It remainedthe SSA until 15 September 1945 when the SSA wasrenamed the Army Security Agency (ASA).

13 Memorandum, �Expansion of Signal IntelligenceService.� 18 April 1942, SRH-145, 25.

14 The SIS would achieve its first cryptanalyticbreakthrough against the main Japanese army code inApril 1943. In January 1944, Australian troops capturedthe entire cryptographic library of a Japanese Army divi-sion that clinched the mastery of the Imperial Army�scodes and ciphers. See Edward Drea, MacArthur�s Ultra,61-92, for details of the year-long struggle.

15 That the German military traffic was placed inGroup B was a further indication that the two countrieswere arriving at a division of effort dictated by geography

and expertise. Throughout 1942, SIS had been workingon an ability to exploit Enigma, but lacked sufficientintercept, expertise, and technical information. TheBritish refused to allow the SIS to join in the exploita-tion. However, by mid-1943 a compromise to exchangewas worked out that formed the basis for a more formalexchange of all Axis intelligence. See Benson, 99-108.

16 One interesting multiforce, multinational inter-cept operation against clandestine Axis radio stations inNorth Africa occurred in North Africa in late 1944. A spe-cial effort included personnel from the SIS, the OSS andFree French forces, who operated intercept and direc-tion-finding stations in Algiers, Tunis, and Morocco. RG457, HCC, Box 1417, Folder 4619, �Special Report onClandestine Radio Activity in North Africa.� The OSS,though excluded from performing cryptanalysis byFDR�s directive of July 1942, and prohibited from receiv-ing COMINT by a May 1942 agreement among the Army,Navy, and FBI, still established its own intercept andD/F stations outside of the U.S.

17 Major Sinkov�s Report of Cryptographic Mission,1941.� NARA, RG 457, HCC, Box 1296; also see Benson,19-20.

18 Memorandum, �Priorities for Operations of theSignal Security Service.� 8 March 1943. SRH-145,Collection of Memoranda on Operations of SISIntercept Activities and Dissemination, 1942-1945.(Fort George G. Meade, Maryland, 1983), 92.

19 The story of the BRUSA Agreement, which pro-ceeded from earlier negotiations, is, itself, a tale ofbureaucratic complexity. The American Army and Navyeach made agreements with the British. They then hadto make one between themselves. See Benson, 97-133,and Bradley Smith, 105�170. See also �Army-NavyAgreement Regarding Ultra.� RG 457, HHC, Box 1413.

20 This major exception, the processing of unde-crypted U-boat radio traffic by both the United Statesand Great Britain, began in earnest in late 1942 followingthe Holden Agreement of October 1942. After theinstallation of the American-built �bombes� at the OP-20-G Headquarters on Nebraska Avenue, N.W., inWashington, DC, the U-boat cipher text was transmittedthere for decryption. The resulting translations werethen transmitted to the appropriate Allied naval com-mands. Eventually, the bombes were turned againstGerman Luftwaffe and Wehrmacht Enigma traffic. For

more on the Holden Agreement, see Ralph Erskine,�The Holden Agreement on Naval Sigint: The FirstBRUSA?� Intelligence and National Security, (Volume14, No. 2, Summer 1999), 187-197.

21 SRH-349, 32.22 Memorandum: Assistant Chief of Staff for

Intelligence, Subject: Priorities for Operations of theSignal Security Service.� March 8, 1943, SRH � 145.

23 David H. Hamer, Geoff Sullivan and FrodeWeirud, �Enigma Variations: An Extended Family ofmachines.� Cryptologia (Vol. XXII, No. 3, July 1988);SSA �Effort against the Swiss Cipher Machine (SZD).�NARA RG 457, HCC, Box 1284; History of the SignalSecurity Agency in World War II, Vol. 2, 237.

24 Memorandum, March 8, 1943. SRH-145.25 Boyd, 178-9.26 Phillips, 5-10.27 Hinsley, Vol. 2, 670.28 On how the Allies handled this information,

among others see Walter Laqueur, The Terrible Secret(New York: Owl Books, 1998), 202-4.

29 War Department Memorandum, October 19,1942, �Experiment in Intercepting Cable Transmission.�NARA, RG 457, Box 1276, �Secrecy of Radio and Cables.�

30 Information on the censorship mission of theGeneral Post Office is located in pieces HW 53/10 to HW53/12.

31 �Report of Colonel McCormack�s TDY toLondon,� June 1943, Tab B, �Berkeley Street,� 1.

32 Initially, the U.S. Army and Navy performed thiscensorship mission. It was assumed by the Office ofCensorship, which picked up the military censorshipprograms. This censorship also included all mail enter-ing and exiting the United States. Telephone calls,whether over cable or radiotelephone, also were moni-tored, For a history of the Office of Censorship, seeMichael Sweeney, Secrets of Victory: The Office ofCensorship and the American Press and Radio in WorldWar II (Chapel Hill, North Carolina: University of NorthCarolina Press, 2001). Of interest is that the eventualcommander of the SIS, Colonel Preston Corderman,began his wartime service in the Office of Censorshipdirecting and training postal censors.

33 For example, see Lisbon (Foreign Minister) toWashington, 22 June 1944, MC-916, in which theWashington embassy is reminded to paraphrase public

text, such as speeches, so as to avoid the use of them asplaintext cribs. Also, Washington (Hopenot/Baudet) toAlgiers, 13 May 1944, MC-806, in which the FrenchCommittee for National Liberation is reminded that allcables can be obtained by the �enemy� and exploitedbecause the cables were encoded with Vichy codes. RG457, HCC, Box 879, �Code Instructions.� Also, Tokyo(Shigemetsu), 9 August 1943, warning that the Alliesmay purposely print news stories that diplomats wouldquote and thereby could endanger Japanese codesbecause plaintext would be known. NARA, RG 457, HCC,MND Translation #93904. Finally, Berlin (Oshima) toTokyo, 5 March 1944, CI-1813, in which the Japanesediplomats in Germany discreetly instruct Tokyo to keepnew communications routes secret from the British�telegraph office.� RG 457, HCC, Box 954, folder 2863,�Japanese Message Translations Categorized as CI(Code Instructions) for Diplomats, 1943-45.�

34 �Intercepted Diplomatic Messages,� NARA, RG226, Entry 210, Boxes 400, 402, 406 , et alia.

35 Kenneth Macksey. The Searchers: RadioIntelligence in Two World Wars (London: CornellUniversity Press, 2003), 108-9.

36 Radio frequencies are part of the electromagneticspectrum. The most used frequency bands during WorldWar II were very high frequency (30-300 Megahertz),high frequency (3-30 Mhz), medium frequency (300kilohertz � 3 Mhz), and low frequency (30-300 Khz).

37 During the war, in 1943, the Allies developed andfielded a secure speech unit for use on HF radiotele-phone circuits among the Allied commands and capitals.The system, named SIGSALY, was contained in anequipment hut that weighed 55 tons. For more on thissee J.V. Boone and R.R. Peterson, The Start of theDigital Revolution: SIGSALY. Secure DigitalCommunications in World War II (Fort George G.Meade, MD: Center for Cryptologic History, 2000).

38 NARA, RG 457, HCC, Box 202, �Study of GermanPolice Communications.�

39 �Radio Intelligence Companies, Locations, 3-20-42.� SRH-145, �Collection of Memoranda on Operationsof SIS Intercept Activities and Dissemination, 1942-1945.� 6.

40 Geoffrey Ballard, On ULTRA Active Service. TheStory of Australia�s Signals Intelligence During World

War II. (Australia: Spectrum Publishing ltd., 1991),238-252.

41 �Directive for Station 1, listed in order of priority(tentative).� 30 January 1943. RG 457, HCC, Box 1432,�SSS Intercept Priorities Memorandum.�

42 �History of Intercept Control,� June 1944, NARA,RG457, HCC, Box 1128, Folder 3634, �History ofIntercept Control.�

43 This control was not without a struggle. Severaltimes early in the war, service intelligence heads tried tolimit GC&CS control through bureaucratic maneuvers inthe Y-Board, a committee under the JIC that managedintercept operations. See Hinsley, Volume II, 23-4 andMacksey, 129. Also PRO HW 14/30, �GC&CSDirectorate, Policy Papers,� �No. 6. I.S.,� 1 March 1942.

44 Memorandum from Williams, �InternationalW/T Services. Cover in the U.K.� 21 January 1944, and�History of Intercept Control,� June 1944, NARA,RG457, HCC, Box 1128, Folder 3634, �History ofIntercept Control;� also see Macksey, 160-2; SRH-349,15-16.

45 Edward Drea, MacArthur�s Ultra: Codebreakingand the War against Japan, 1942-1945. (Lawrence KS:University Press of Kansas, 1992), 52-53.

46 Philip H. Jacobson, �A Cryptologic Veteran�sAnalysis of �Day of Deceit�.� NCVA Cryptolog, (Vol. 21,No. 1, Winter 2000), 3.

47 See RG457, E9032, Box 584, Folder �OptimumIntercept Locations, 1943� 1943 1201 and Box 1382,Folder �Choice Site for Station AY,� 1944 0328.

48 �German Police and SS Traffic,� NARA, RG 457,HCC, Box 1386.

49 PRO, HW 14/11, �Report on German Section No.4, I.S.,� 2.

50 Bertrand, 118.51 Ibid., 129-30.52 Stephen Budiansky, Battler of Wits: The

Complete Story of Codebreaking in World War II (NewYork: The Free Press, 2000), 286.

53 �Cryptanalytic Short Titles,� NARA, RG 457,HCC, Box 941, Folder 2740; �Tentative Trigraphic List ofCryptanalytic Short Titles,� Box 1370, Folder 4289;Frank B. Rowlett, The Story of Magic. Memoirs of anAmerican Cryptologic Pioneer (Laguna Hills, CA:Aegean Park Press, 1998), 253-5.

54 Hinsley, Vol. 2, Appendix 4, 656-668.

55 Rowlett, Ibid.; �Cryptanalytic Short Titles.��Cryptanalytic Branch Annual Report for Fiscal Year1944,� NARA, RG 457, HCC, Box 1116, Folder 3567.

56 �History of the Solution of Vatican Systems inSSA and GCCS, 1943-44.� (Washington: September1944) RG 457, HCC, Box 1284.

57 For example, it took Frank Rowlett�s team in SISfrom April 1939 to September 1940 to break Purple.GC&CS codebreakers took from September 1939 to July1940 to master the Luftwaffe�s Enigma, and until June1941 to exploit the Kriegsmarine version of Engima.

58 For an explanation of the double playfair cipher,see �Study of German Police Traffic,� NARA, RG 457,HCC, Box 202.

59 For a discussion of the relative difficulty ofboth systems, see William F. Friedman andLambros Callimahos, Military Cryptanalytics Part I(Washington, DC: National Security Agency, 1956), 181-188, about Playfair systems. See Lambros Callimahosand William F. Friedman, Military Cryptanalytics, II(Washington, DC: National Security Agency, 1959), 431-433, for transposition systems.

60 For the work against the German systems, seeBudiansky, 218-220 and 310-11; Alvarez, 234. Also seeNARA RG 457, HCC, Box 942, Folder 2746, 11 May 1945,�GEE Problem�; Box 1317, Folder 3945, 1944, �Historyof Special German Diplomatic Net, Summer 1942 toWinter 1944.�

61 Nigel West. The SIGINT Secrets: The SignalsIntelligence War, 1900 to Today (New York: WilliamMorrow, 1988), 307. See Alvarez, 176, for the Allied fail-ure against Swedish systems. Hinsley, Vol. 2, Appendix4, 656-668, for a summary of success against all Germansystems.

62 Hinsley, Vol. II, Appendix 5, 670-2.63 Phillips, 7-11.64 � Memorandum for Colonel Clarke,� 3 January

1944. James L. Gilbert and John P. Finnegan, U.S. ArmySignals Intelligence in World War II. A DocumentaryHistory (Washington, DC: Center of Military History,1993), 63-4.

65 According to one historical review conducted bythe U.S. Navy, some 300,000 German Navy messageswere �read,� meaning they were decrypted by theAmericans or Commonwealth codebreakers. Of these,about 69,000 were German U-boat messages. About

49,600 U-boat translations were published betweenearly 1941 to June 1945 for a rate of around 72 percent.These translations are notated �SRGN� and are availableat NARA, RG 457, Entry 9019 and at the library of theNational Cryptologic Museum. �Historical Review ofOP-20-G, RS #77967, 8 October 1945, untitled back-ground notes, Author�s private collection.

66 This is a rough calculation determined by com-paring the number of translations of the Japanese diplo-matic collection at NARA, Entry 9011 (SRDJ), with thatof the Multinational Diplomatic collection, Entry HCC,Boxes 286-516.

67 Rowlett, 253-5; Contrary to popular opinion, theVatican messages were in Italian, not Latin. Switzerlandhad diplomatic codes for German and French texts toaccount for that nation�s major language divisions.

68 Memorandum for Colonel Carter W. Clarke,Subject: �Origins, Functions, and Problems of theSpecial Branch, MIS.� 15 April 1943, Gilbert andFinnegan, 55.

69 For example, see NARA, RG 457, Box 590, for�Glossary of Japanese terms,� and Box 619 for �Glossaryof German Army Equipments.� For German Police mes-sages, Boxes 202 and 1386 contain glossaries of abbrevi-ations and shorthand terms used by the Police in theirmessages.

70 MND Translations, Budapest to Ankara, 26 June1944, H-157087, RG 457, HCC, Box 455; and Budapest(Charmasse) to Ankara (AmbaFrance), 12 June 1944,SIS #127775. RG 457, HCC, Box 424

71 Briefly, these series are: A � �Sensitive DiplomaticTraffic,� Baker Cables � Translations exchanged withBritain, CG � Coast Guard translations of Axis illicitmessages, CI/AI/GI � �Code Instructions,� D �Japanese Military Attache translations, F � Japanese AirForce, FT � �File Texts�, J � Japanese military, JR �Japanese Water Transport, H- MultinationalDiplomatic, L � Military Attaché other than Japan,M � German traffic, not further identified, MC �Multinational (or Miscellaneous) Code Instructions, andT � �Restricted Diplomatic.� Interestingly, there was nospecial designator for the Japanese Navy translationsproduced by OP-20-G.

72 From: Naval Inspector General, To: Secretary ofthe Navy. Serial 001971, �Survey of OP-20-G Section ofNaval Communications Division of the Bureau of Naval

Personnel which Procures Uniformed Naval Personnel.�13 July 1945. RG 457, HCC, Box 1286. Item 23 (d)

73 Rowlett, 253-4 74 Non-notated and unsigned memorandum on

diplomatic cryptanalysis for 1940, 31 January 1941, HW14/11, �Government Code and Cypher School:Directorate: Second World War Policy Papers,� as citedin John Ferris, �The Road to Bletchley Park: The BritishExperience with Signals Intelligence.� Intelligence andNational Security (Vol. 17, No. 1, Spring 2002), 53-84.

75 Peter Calvocoressi, Top Secret Ultra (New York:Pantheon, 1980), 61-66.

76 J.E.S. Cooper, �Lecture on SIGINT History,�September 1961. Author�s copy. Also available at PROHW 3, Naval Intelligence Division and Successors:History of UK Signals Intelligence, 1914-1925.

77 Hinsley, Vol. I, 36-43.78 Many of these studies were of political and diplo-

matic topics. These studies were notated as SpecialResearch Histories (SRH). Some examples include:SRH-083, �Chung-King-Yenan Controversy,� and SRH-094, �French-Indo-China (Political Situation).� TheSRHs can be found in NARA, RG 457 and the Library ofthe National Cryptologic Museum.

79 See SRH-035, �History of Special Branch, MIS,War Department, 1942-1944,� 9 July 1979 and SRH-117,�History of Special Branch M.I.S., Jun 1944 � Sep 1945.�2 March 1981.

80 SRH-107, �Problems of the SSO System inWorld War II.� 13 December 1980.

81 HW 16/70, CIRO/PEARL/ZIP/AT 1194/ 14.8.4482 Hinsley, Vol. III, Part 2. 975-8, �Series Prefixes

and Delivery Groups used for SCU/SLU Signals toCommands.�

83 Bradley F. Smith, 181; �List of Ultra Recipientsand SHAEF G-2 Organization, Mission, and Function.�RG 457, Entry HCC, Box 1277, Folder 3735.

84 SRH-107, �Problems of the SSO System in WorldWar II.� 13 December 1980.

85 Gilbert and Finnegan, 10.86 One extant European Summary, dated 11 April

1945, carried two distributions. The first one listed 11recipients within the War Department; the second listedthe President, his Chief of Staff, and the CINC U.S. Fleet,and the Deputy Director Military Intelligence, British

Army Staff. SRH-005, �Use of CX/MSS Ultra by theUnited States War Department, 1943 � 1945,� 49.

87 The �Magic� Diplomatic Summaries are locatedin RG 457, Entry 9006, Boxes 1-19. The �Magic� Far EastSummaries are found in Entry 9001, Boxes 1-11.

88 Hinsley, Vol. I, 295-6. Churchill�s demand forthe COMINT grew out of dissatisfaction with the ten-dency of the JIC and the service intelligence directors topublish long appreciations, the �bulk of which defeatstheir purpose.�

89 In order, HW 1/1, Item 30, 28 August 1941; HW1/28, Item 643, 13 June 1942; HW 1/58, Item 1134, 24November 1942; HW 1/65, Item 1267, 28 December1942; HW 1/129, Item 3113, 26 July 1944; HW 1/149,Item 3658, 1 April 1945; HW 1/151, item 3713, 27 April1945.

90 Churchill received GC&CS items from �C� thathad not been given to the various department and min-istry chiefs. They often were unaware of the material theprime minister used to criticize them. Ibid., 295-6.

91 In order see HW 1/58, Item 1134, 22 November1942; Ibid.; HW 1/23, Item 469, 2 April 1942.

92 David Kahn, �Roosevelt, Magic, and Ultra.�Cryptologia (Vol. XVI, No. 4, October 1992), 289-319.

93 Christopher M. Andrew, For the President�s EyesOnly: Secret Intelligence and the American Presidencyfrom Washington to Bush (New York: Harper Perennial,1996), 139.

94 SRH-111, �Magic Reports for the Attention of thePresident, 1943-1944.� 1980; Bradley F. Smith, 187.

95 See Eric Larrabee, Commander-in-Chief:Franklin Delano Roosevelt, His Lieutenants and TheirWar (New York: Harper & Row, 1987), 11-12, 16, 643-4;James F. Schnabel, History of the JCS and NationalPolicy, 1945 � 1947. (Washington, DC: GPO, 1996), 3;Andrews, 125-6; Ibid., SRH-111.

96 Alexander S. Cochran Jr. The Magic DiplomaticSummaries: A Chronological Finding Aid (New Yorkand London: Garland Publishing Inc., 1982). From 1942to the end of the war in Europe, there were fewer than 12references to Jews or the Holocaust. For example,Summary No. 397 from 28 April 1943 contains informa-tion from a German diplomatic message to Dublin con-cerning Aryan spouses of Jews.

97 �Collection of Multinational DiplomaticTranslations of White House Interest.� RG 457, HCC,Boxes 833,1030 to 1032.

98 Persico, Joseph. Roosevelt�s Secret War: FDRand World War II Espionage (New York: RandomHouse, 2001), 218-220.

99 Jan Karski, an alias for a Polish intelligence couri-er, Jan Kozielewski, visited the Warsaw ghetto andBelzec. He came to London in late 1942 with informationabout the Holocaust. See Laqueur, 118-120, and E.Thomas Wood and Stanislaw M. Jankowski, Jan Karski:How One Man Tried to Stop the Holocaust (New Jersey:John Wiley & Sons, 1994).

100 Laqueur, 94-5.101 Breitman, 105, 151-3; MND Translation, Kabul

(Pilger) to Berlin, 10 May 1943, SIS #81006 (RG 457,HCC, Box 363), concerning Reuters News Agency publi-cation of information about gassing of the Jews; MNDTranslation, Berlin to Buenos Aires, 14 April 1943, SIS#82728(RG 457, HCC, Box 363), which urges theGerman embassy there to make no statement on theprotests against the perceived anti-Jewish policy ofChurchill. (This �anti-Jewish policy� is not furtherexplained in the German message.); MND Translation,Berlin to Far East stations (NPD (Neue Presse Deutsche)Broadcast), 3 March 1944, SIS #112776, (RG 457, HCC,Box 399) which urges German correspondents to pushstories about behind the scenes machinations of worldJewry.

102 Perhaps the most famous anecdote, thoughfalse, was the bombing of Coventry on 14 November1940. Winterbotham was the first to claim that Churchillallowed Coventry to be bombed to protect the Ultrasecret. (See his Ultra Secret, 94-96) However,Winterbotham got it wrong. Ultra carried no informa-tion on Coventry. For the correct story of Ultra andbombing of Coventry see Hinsley, British Intelligence inthe Second World War, Vol. I., Appendix 9, 528-48, andNigel West, A Thread of Deceit (New York: RandomHouse, 1985), 9-17.

103 Hinsley, Vol. I, 138, 145, 417, and 570-1.104 PRO, HW 1/XX, Item 1470, 13 March 1943,

Memorandum from SCU Algiers. For more, see Hinsley,Vol. 2, 283-7, about the Mediterranean convoys.

105 For the Yamamoto ambush, see SRH-288,�Radio Intelligence in WWII: Tactical Operations in the

Pacific Ocean Areas, April 1943.� 336-7, and EdwinLayton (along with Roger Pinneau and John Costello),And I was There, Pearl Harbor and Midway �Breaking the Secrets (New York: William Morrow andCompany Inc., 1985), 474-476.

106 Hinsley, Vol. 2, 58-67; see also Smith, SharingSecrets with Stalin.

107 Breitman, 93-4, 106.108 Hinsley, Vol. II, 87-9; Smith, Sharing Secrets

with Stalin, 30-33.109 Breitman, 92-96; Philipps, 84-5.110 It is also possible that another standing concern

of the police command was the possibility that someonewithin the police or SS organizations might reveal infor-mation about the massacres to the Allies or neutralcountries. Passing the reports by radio meant that anumber of people saw the messages: radio operators,code clerks, dispatchers, etc. Sending the reports bycourier limited the number of people who might seethem.

111 On 6 December 1941, the Nobel LaureateGerman author, Thomas Mann, made a radio speechfrom Los Angeles on the CBS network in which he calledattention to the massacre of 300,000 Serbs and�unspeakable deeds� against Jews and Poles. It is notclear if this speech provoked a similar reaction from theGermans. � New York Times, 7 December 1941, Vol.XCI, No. 30,633.

112 HW 14/54, �GC&CS Directorate, Policy Papers.�1942, October 1-10.

113 NARA RG 457, HCC, Box 1386, �German Policeand SS Messages.�

114 HW 14/128, �GC&CS Directorate, PolicyPapers.� 1945 May 16-31, Notes from 26 and 28 May.The British developed a number of categories of covernames for the various German cipher systems, bothmachine and manual. Here are some representativeexamples:

Luftwaffe: Colors (Red, Yellow)Weather: Vegetables (Leek, Garlic)Army: Birds (Albatross, Bullfinch)SS: Fruit (Orange, Quince, Grapefruit)Police (Playfair): Games (Rummy, Poker) 115 Breitman, 218.116 For example, a Colonel Taylor, presumably

Telford Taylor, was named in the distribution for

CIRO/PEARL/ZIP/AT 1194/14.8.44, HW 16/70,�German Police Decrypts.�

117 Breitman, 219-221118 Robert E. Conot, Justice at Nuremberg (New

York: Harper & Row Publishers, New York, 1983), 16119 Smith, Ultra-Magic Deals, 212-214

There are two major locations of cryptologicrecords of interest concerning the Holocaust, theNational Archives and Records Administration(NARA) in the United States and the Public RecordOffice (PRO) in the United Kingdom. (Since April2003 the Public Record Office has been renamed. Itis now the National Archives.) The record collec-tions in both archives reflect the unique approach-es to records management and disposition taken byboth countries. In addition to the national archivesof both countries, the library of the NationalCryptologic Museum also contains partial sets ofcertain PRO holdings in which there occur occa-sional references to the Holocaust.

The National Archives and RecordsAdministration

The cryptologic records at NARA in CollegePark, Maryland, that contain information pertinentto the Holocaust are located in Record Group (RG)457, the records of the National SecurityAgency/Central Security Service (NSA/CSS), andthe RG 226, the records of the Office of StrategicServices (OSS). Another major cryptologic collec-

tion, the Commander Naval Security Group seriesin RG 38, the records of the Chief of NavalOperations, most likely does not contain any rele-vant material except for duplicates of that found inRG 457. Also, while it is logical for World War IIcryptologic records to be in RG 457 - the NSA is themost recent successor to the wartime SIS - the pres-ence of such material in the OSS records group willrequire an explanation that will be given below. Therelatively recent discovery (2000) of relevant cryp-tologic records in the OSS group, which was part ofthe records review process conducted under theauspices of the Nazi War Crimes and JapaneseImperial Records Interagency Working Group, issymptomatic of the peculiar and sometimes unpre-dictable nature of the intelligence exchange processduring World War II. The implication of this dis-covery is that there may be more such recordslocated in records groups hitherto considered unre-lated to communications intelligence operations.

There are five collections of records in RG 457that hold material relevant to the Holocaust. Thefirst one is the collection of German Police (GP)decrypts (these messages are referred to as decrypts

German Police Decrypts, ZIP/G.P.D.353/14.9.41. Decrypt No.1 is from the Senior Commander of the SSand Police in Southern Russia to Heinrich Himmler, the Chiefs of the Order and Secret Police and the

Himmler s staff. (Source: NARA, RG 457, Box 1386)

Chapter 3

Sources of Cryptologic Records Relating to the Holocaust

and not translations because the text is in the orig-inal German) and technical reports about the policeciphers. The decrypts are located in Box 1386 in theHistorical Cryptographic Collection (HCC), whichis also referenced as Entry 9032. The NSA collec-tion of police and SS decrypts is only a small por-tion � the exact percentage is unknown � of themuch larger PRO collection located in HW 16 (SeePRO section). These German Police decrypts weretransferred to NARA as part of a January 1996 NSArelease of 1.3 million pages of previously classifiedWorld War II records. In Great Britain, the GermanPolice and SS messages were released to the publicin 1997 when the British Public Record Office madethese available in early May of that year.

These police decrypts first came to the NSAbecause of the postwar search for Nazi war crimi-nals. The decrypts originally were not part of anywartime exchange; these messages were intercept-ed and decrypted well before the BRUSA exchangeagreement of mid-1943. They arrived in the U.S. asa result of a 1982 request by the U.S. JusticeDepartment�s Office of Special Investigations(OSI), relayed through the National SecurityAgency to the British SIGINT organization, theGovernment Communications Headquarters(GCHQ). The OSI was reviewing files of individualssuspected of being war criminals who may haveentered the United States after the war. It wasbelieved that the decrypts might help in the investi-gations since they contained much information onthe personnel, organization, and operations of theGerman Police and SS units that operated in thewestern Soviet Union during the war.

There are four other boxes in the HCC that holdtechnical information about the German Policeciphers and organization. In Box 202 there is a fold-er, �Study of German Police Traffic,� that containstechnical reports on the cipher system used by theGerman Police. There is an instructional guide onthe system and some sample undecrypted anddecrypted police messages. Another Box, 171, in theHCC contains a glossary titled �German PoliceAbbreviations.� This document is useful when read-

ing the decrypts since the address portion of policeand SS messages contain numerous abbreviations,in German, of SS and Police title and organizations.Similarly, the texts of many police messages con-tain German language abbreviations and shorthandreferences to units and activities. In Box 91 of theHCC, there is a copy of volume XIII of the GC&CSAir and Military History series about the GermanPolice. Finally, Box 1279 in the HCC contains a fold-er titled �German Police Material� that holds someadditional technical publications on the GermanPolice, the SS, and SD. These are mostly short U.S.War Department and British reports on the organ-ization, ciphers, and activities in Russia. There arealso many reports on Abwehr illicit agent radio netsand organization of overseas espionage rings.

The second collection of records is known as theMultinational Diplomatic Translations and is locat-ed in boxes 286 to 516 of the HistoricalCryptographic Collection, in RG 457. This collec-tion consists of individual translations of diplomat-ic communications issued or received by the Armycryptologic organization at Arlington Hall. Thereare over 202,000 individual translations in this setthat total a little under a quarter million pages. Thecollection extends from early 1939 and runs to the14 August 1945 Japanese acceptance of the Alliedsurrender demands.

The diplomatic communications of virtually allcountries of significance were targeted and collect-ed during the war. Included in this mix were themajor Axis powers, minor Axis allies, minor Alliednations, Allied governments-in-exile, neutralnations, and some nongovernmental organizations(NGO) such as the Jewish Agency for Palestine andthe International Red Cross. The latter sent theirmessages via commercial cable or used the diplo-matic communications facilities of certain coun-tries, such as Switzerland. The proportion of inter-cepted messages from individual countries reflect-ed the wartime priorities of the Allied commandsand the technical capabilities of the Allied crypto-logic agencies. Japan was the priority diplomaticCOMINT target, and the translations of its mes-

sages account for as much as 54 percent of the totaltranslations in this collection. The translations ofintercepted German, Swiss, French (Vichy andGaullist), and other nations� diplomatic messagesaccount for much smaller percentages of the totaltranslation collection.

The translations of German diplomatic mes-sages would be of particular interest to those inter-ested in the Holocaust. These translations, though,consist mostly of consular traffic, press releases byGerman news services, and traffic from embassieslocated in countries of less importance to Germanysuch as Afghanistan, Argentina, and the Republic ofIreland. This diplomatic radio traffic was encoded

using a codebook and then further enciphered withan additive phrase. This system was a code namedFLORADORA by the Allies and was partlyexploitable beginning in 1943. German high-leveldiplomatic communications to embassies locatedin countries important to Germany such as Japan,Spain, and Switzerland, etc., were encrypted in aone-time pad (OTP) that, for most of the war, resis-ted the efforts by both American and British crypt-analysts. However, in March 1945, this system suc-cumbed to American codebreakers at ArlingtonHall.1

It should be mentioned here that, when itcomes to the national diplomatic translations, there

is some overlap among other entries within RG457. This is because in the early to mid-1980s,NSA separately released Japanese, German, andVichy French diplomatic translations.2 Certaintechnical information was sanitized from theseearly releases. The original versions of the trans-lations remained at NSA until their release in1996 as part of the aforementioned HistoricalCryptographic Collection. The diplomatic trans-lations in the HCC appear in a number of forms.It can be either an original version of the transla-tion or, in the case where the original paper ver-sion has been lost or put on microfilm, a copy ofthe original. During the war, the translationswere typed on stencils, and then numerous blueditto copies were run off and distributed. TheHCC set of translations contains both ditto pagesand xeroxed copies of these sheets.

The third relevant collection is known as theMultinational Diplomatic Summaries. This col-lection is not to be confused with the so-called�Magic� Summaries that were digests of diplo-matic messages from other countries, but mostlyJapan, and included with intelligence from othersources. The �Magic� Summaries were issued bythe Special Branch of the U.S Army�s MilitaryIntelligence Service (MIS) of the WarDepartment�s General Staff. The summariesunder discussion here actually were a compila-tion on one or more pages containing a number of

Diplomatic translation message from VichyMinister in Washington, Henry Haye, to Vichy

regarding American visas for foreign Jews in France

shorter translations from a single diplomatic target,for example, Spain. Why this approach was taken,instead of issuing a single translation for individualmessages, is not fully understood. These sum-maries contain some fairly long texts and occasion-ally have items of high interest. Arlington Hallissued four sets of these summaries: In addition tothe multinational set, there were ones for theJapanese, German, and French (which includedVichy) diplomatic messages. They are notated asfollows: SMM � Summary of MultinationalMessages; SFM - Summary of French Messages;SGM - Summary of German Messages; and SJM -

Summary of Japanese Messages. These Summariesare scattered throughout the HistoricalCryptographic Collection. Most can be found fromboxes 881 to 902, 933-4, 948, and 1281.

The fourth collection is what is popularlyreferred to as the �Nazi Gold� translations and canbe found in Entry 9009 of RG 457. This collectionof translations is of Swiss diplomatic messagesbetween Washington and Bern from August 1945 toJune 1946. Of the total of 371 translations, about170 are related to the Allied Tripartite Commission� Swiss negotiations in Washington, DC, on the

issue of the disposition of lootednational gold from European countriesoverrun by the Germans and Germanassets retained in Swiss banks and cor-porations. The negotiations lasted fromMarch to June 1946 and produced theWashington Accord. These translationswere released in the spring of 1997as part of the 1997 interagencyPreliminary Report on U.S. and AlliedEfforts to Recover and Restore StolenGold and Other Assets Stolen orHidden by Germany During WorldWar II. More details on this topic canbe found in Section VI.E.

The fifth collection resides in theHistoric Cryptologic Collection in boxes517 to 521. This set of translations isentitled �Decrypted Diplomatic Traffic(Primarily German and Japanese) fromWorld War II,� and is referred by itsshort title, the �T-series.� Originally,this collection was meant to containtranslations from sensitive or restricteddiplomatic sources. When it was start-ed in 1943, the collection consisted oftranslations of Axis diplomatic mes-sages that detailed espionage activitiesoriginating in the Japanese embassyin Madrid and the German embassiesin Kabul, Afghanistan, and Dublin,Republic of Ireland. Later, with the

Sample SMM Swiss message about Jews in Hungary

expanded American exchange with the British, gov-ernment agencies contributed more translations tothis series from other sources considered �sensi-tive.�3 These included messages from the Vatican toits apostolic delegates, radio and cable traffic of theFrench Committee for National Liberation, Polishand Czech intelligence reports from occupiedEurope, and selections from the so-called Bostonsource, the OSS source inside the German ForeignOffice.

Boston was the cover name given to documentsfrom the German Foreign Office (AuswaertigesAmt) taken or copied by a mid-level official, Fritz

Kolbe, who passed them to the OSS station chief inSwitzerland, Allen Dulles. Kolbe, assigned the cov-ername �George Wood� by the OSS, passed thesedocuments to the OSS from 1943 through 1945. TheAllies found these documents of great interest.Some of the documents, mostly Foreign Office mes-sages, were translated and then incorporated by theSIS into the �T-series.� Some of the messages werefrom the German embassy in Bern, Switzerland,and concerned issues such as Swiss-German trade,currency negotiations, and transit permissions forsupply trains from Italy. A few were from theGerman mission in Hungary that was in charge ofrounding up the Jews in Hungary and sendingthem to Auschwitz. (See Chapter 5.) Although notstrictly communications intercepts, the messagesacquired from Kolbe were included in the transla-tions of the T-series.4

Another group of translations of interest in theT-series consists of messages between the Vaticanand its apostolic delegates stationed in severalcountries. The British had intercepted and decrypt-ed Vatican diplomatic messages from before thewar. The messages that could be exploited werelargely administrative and were of little intelligenceinterest to the Allies. Beginning in late 1944,though, there were a number of intercepted Vaticanmessages dealing with the relief of refugees andprisoners of war (mostly Axis), as well as Vaticanintercession for the release of high-profile Catholicsand other internees held by Germany in variousconcentration and detention camps. In severalmessages, the Vatican urged its delegate inGermany to intervene on the behalf of prisoners,among whom were French politicians held inGermany since 1940, individuals such as a SignoraNavet and her daughter held in Ravensbruck, andthe royal family of Prince Rupprecht of Bavaria,which was rumored to have been transported toGermany.5 There are about seventy-five Vaticantranslations in this series.6

All of the above-mentioned records, decryptsand translations, are categorized as �basic� intelli-gence documents, that is, primary product from

T-2574, 17 April 1945, from Apostolic Delegate inLausanne, Switzerland, to the Vatican regardingreports of deportees from camps in Germany

(Source: NARA, RG 457, Box 520)

the intercepted original. Another set of records inRG 457, located in the Entry ��Magic� DiplomaticSummaries� (a portion are carried also in Entry9006), has been a popular source of research forscholars since their release in the early 1990s.However, the �Magic� Summaries, produced bySpecial Branch, are digests of the much greaterbody of translations, and do not offer anywherenear the detailed information available in the latter.The information is summarized under five majorcategories: (1) military, (2) political, (3) economic,(4) psychological and subversion (mainly items onpropaganda, nationalist agitation, and resistance

movements), and (5) miscellaneous (for example,outbreaks of epidemics).

The �Magic� Summaries were a major methodof disseminating selected information from thetranslations of intercepted Axis and neutral com-munications, as well from other intelligencesources such as press, foreign radio broadcasts,prisoner of war debriefs, U.S. diplomatic reports,and traditional espionage. The COMINT easily isthe largest single source of information in theSummaries. The Summaries often contain anappreciation of the information by the Special

Branch analysts. The �Magic� Summariesare much less important as a research toolabout the Holocaust. The only incidentcovered with any depth is the roundup ofthe Jews in Hungary during the latter partof 1944. A survey of the summaries revealsonly about twenty entries of variousdegrees of details on subjects related tothe Holocaust; this is out of a total ofaround 11,000 entries in the entirewartime Summary series. These fewentries also are only a fraction of the manyhundreds of translations available in RG457 that reference the Holocaust. (SeeChapter 2, pages 45-47 , for more onthe role of the �Magic� DiplomaticSummaries.)

In Record Group 226, the records ofthe Office of Strategic Services, there arelocated some translations of interceptsproduced by the British GC&CS duringthe war. These translations were discov-ered in mid-2000 as part of a review ofwartime OSS records under the provisionsof the 1999 Nazi War Crimes Act. Theappearance of these COMINT translationsin OSS records initially surprisedresearchers. A directive from PresidentFranklin Roosevelt signed in July 1942had ruled against the Service performingcryptologic functions, specifically code-breaking. Only the Army, Navy, Federal

Magic Diplomatic Summary, No. 1103, 2 April 1945.Source: NARA, RG 457, Entry 9006

Bureau of Investigation, and United States CoastGuard could produce communications intelligence.The directive had been meant to prevent govern-ment agencies, other than the SIS, OP-20-G andthe FBI, from performing cryptanalysis. Somehow,the Army and Navy construed the order to meanthat these other agencies were to be denied accessto all COMINT information, as well.7 The result wasthat government agencies such as the OSS, theFederal Communications Commission, and Officeof Wartime Information were denied access toAmerican-produced communications intelligence.

However, the explanation for the appearance ofsuch records in the OSS files was quite simple. Byearly 1943, the OSS had been allowed to send a staffto join the counterintelligence group of BritishSecret Intelligence Service, known as M.I.6, SectionV. The Radio Security Service (RSS) was the princi-pal interceptor of radio traffic sent by Axis illicitagents and security and intelligence organizations.All decrypts of topical interest to counterintelli-gence, which included Axis espionage, intelligence,and security activities, were sent to this site. ByMarch 1943, OSS counterintelligence (X-2) person-nel had joined their British counterparts and weresoon sharing all such decrypts.8 Most of thedecrypts, and some translations, were strictly espi-onage or security related. Amongst these transla-tions and decrypts were those of the SS, the SD andGerman Police. These latter groups, while they per-formed counterespionage operations and criminalinvestigations, were charged with eliminating Jewsand other groups targeted by the Nazis.

Of particular interest to historians are the trans-lations of messages concerning the roundup of theJews in Rome during October 1943. These transla-tions include messages from Police Leader KarlWolff, who had arrived in Rome to oversee the sit-uation; Herbert Kappler, the German Police attachéin Rome; and Ernst Kaltenbrunner, SS General andhead of the Reich Security Office (RSHA) thatincluded the SD. Whether any of these translationsreached the OSS reporting element, the Researchand Analysis Branch, is not currently known. In all

likelihood, the British may have restricted the X-2organization in regards to what other branches ofthe OSS could have shared the German decrypts.The SD translations can be found in RG 226, Entry122, boxes 1 and 2.9

The OSS also benefited from another exchangearrangement with M.I.6 that started early inAmerica�s involvement in the war. Beginning inMarch 1942, the OSS (and its predecessor, theCentral Office of Information) received, via theBritish Security Coordination (BSC) element inNew York City under Sir William Stephenson,copies of so-called �Q� material, or copies of inter-cepted diplomatic messages, most likely, again, tohave come from M.I.6. Interestingly, this materialpredates the formal exchange program of 1943between the American and British cryptologicagencies. It is not always clear what the source (orsources) of the translations may have been. Somemay have been received from postal and cable cen-sorship offices. It also appears that many of thesediplomatic messages may have been purloinedfrom diplomatic pouches or couriers. Almost all ofthe translations are marked with the caveat �MostSecret Source,� which was a standard British refer-ence to intelligence derived from high-level crypt-analytic processes.

Many of the translations in the OSS files consistof excerpts from the original diplomatic messages.Also, most of these translations are of messagesfrom lower level diplomats, attachés, or consularofficials of neutral countries or Axis friendlyregimes like Vichy France. The contents of themajority of translations are about internal condi-tions in Europe. Some of the translations containreferences to the situation of Jews in various coun-tries, but these are not common. The �Q� series canbe found in Entry 210, boxes 400, 402, 403, 405,408, 412, and 415.10

The Public Record Office

The central collection of cryptologic records ofthe Government Communications Headquarters,

as the GC&CS has been known since after WorldWar II, is located at the Public Record Office, Kew,United Kingdom (in Southwest London). Therecords include material dating from 1914 to 1946.British PRO record grouping designations differfrom the NARA record group system. The Britishuse the term �Class List� instead of Record Group tospecify the records of a single ministry, agency, orcommission. The Class List is followed by a numer-ical designator, one or two digits that specifies a col-lection of related records. This is followed byanother set of digits called a �piece� or �folder� thatrefers to a specific record, which could be a singledocument or set of documents. Within �HW� are49 series, each an individually titled collection ofrecords, usually representing types of correspon-dence and records of singular COMINT targets orfunctions, such as intercept activity or administra-tion.

However, for purposes of searching and locat-ing records, the PRO/National Archives catalogueuses a different set of descriptors for the locationsof the folders/pieces. This system is used by the on-line search engine called the PROCAT. Consider forexample, the reference HW 16/46. This would con-sist of the Class List HW 16, German PoliceDecrypts, with a piece or folder 46, �Illustrations ofwar crimes from the GPD.� For a researcher, thecatalogue divides this reference in the followingmanner: �HW� is called the Department; the two-digit designator �16,� or German Police Decrypts, isthe series; while the two-digit group to the right ofthe dividing slant, �46,� is known as the �sub-series� that consists of a group of related �pieces�within a series.11

The GC&CS records are, for a number of rea-sons, more extensive in time and scope than thoseof the American cryptologic agencies held in RG457 at NARA. For one thing, British cryptology wasengaged in intercepting communications in Europeeven before hostilities began in 1939. The Britishhad intercept facilities in the British Isles and impe-rial holdings in and around Europe, such asGibraltar, Egypt, and Palestine. From these sites,

the British intercept organizations, such as theRadio Security Service, as well as numerous mili-tary monitoring facilities, could collect, analyze,and distribute reports based on the communica-tions of the Axis and neutral nations. Also of partic-ular value was the British censorship office thatobtained copies of selected letters posted overseasas well as all cable traffic moving through Londonand other overseas British or Commonwealth con-trolled cable terminals. This collection effortincluded message traffic of the Allied governments-in-exile based in London, and the missions of all theneutral countries.

SS concentration camp monthly report on slavelabor population in Buchenwald for November

1942. ZIP/GPCC82/3.12.42. Source PRO, HW 16/10

In the GC&CS records, information about theHolocaust have been found in the following ClassLists:

HW 1 � GC&CS Signals Intelligence Passed tothe Prime Minister, Messages and Correspondence.

HW 12 � GC&CS Diplomatic Section andPredecessors: Decrypts of Intercepted DiplomaticCommunications (BJ Series).

HW 14 � GC&CS: Directorate: Second WorldWar Policy Papers.

HW 15 � GC&CS and GCHQ: Venona Project:Record

HW 16 � GC&CS: German Police Section:Decrypts of German Police Communications dur-ing [the] Second World War.

HW 19 � GC&CS: ISOS and ISK Sections:Decrypts of German Secret Service (Abwehr andSicherheitdienst) Messages (ISOS, ISK, and otherSeries).

HW 29 � GC&CS: untitled �CommercialReports,� January 1938 -December 1945.

HW 1 is the collection of GC&CS signals intelli-gence materials that was passed to the primeminister. It consisted of the intelligence materialselected (and often briefed) by the head of M.I.6, SirStewart Menzies (known as �C�), whose serviceadministratively controlled Bletchley Park.Normally, this material was presented to the primeminister daily, sometimes even twice a day; but itwas not uncommon for Churchill to demand more.The intelligence consisted mainly of Enigmadecrypts, Axis and neutral naval intelligence, anddiplomatic translations of interest (known as �BJ�s�for �blue-jackets,� or �Black Jumbos�). There are3,785 folders or pieces of material in the briefingfiles of the prime minister. For the most part, thereis no general content title list for a particular vol-ume, so the files have to be reviewed individually.For example, the piece HW1/62, is listed with thetitle �no description available,� but it is fromSeptember 1941, when the P.M. was informed ofGerman Police massacres on the Eastern front.12

HW 1�s contents illustrate Churchill�s voraciousappetite for all levels and kinds of intelligence:

strategic, tactical, military, diplomatic, security,and scientific. After late 1941, the prime ministercontinued to receive occasional intelligence on theHolocaust.

Perhaps the most pertinent class list, HW 16, isthe German Police decrypts. This collection consti-tutes the most complete set of existing policedecrypts. Within this department there are fourpieces or series, 16/44 to 16/47, which are titled,�GP (German Police) War Atrocities � Executionsin Russia.� The first, 16/44, contains miscellaneousnotes and working aids to the police decrypts, suchas order of battle, names of the police units� com-manding officers, breakouts of the police and SSradio callsigns, and of the abbreviations to theaddresses of the decrypts. This series closely followsthe contents of those in boxes 1386 and 202 of theHCC in the NARA RG 457 and probably was thesource for the latter. The next three series contain anumber of decrypts that illustrate the scope andnature of the executions carried out by the policeunits, especially in the central and southern frontsof the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union.

HW 16/10 contains the German PoliceConcentration Camp (GPCC) monthly reports ofthe inmate totals for a number of camps. Thesetotals include arrivals, losses, and various national-ities and groups, including Jews. These reports didnot carry information about those who arrived inthe trains and were immediately murdered in thegas chambers. Instead, these reports list theinmate, or slave labor population totals. As trans-mitted by the Germans, these were formatted mes-sages, known as �proforma� reports, that is, theintercepted text was a series of numbers precededby a columnar indicator. The sending and receivingpolice or SS organizations understood the meaningof the columns and the figures. The Bletchley Parkanalysts recovered the meanings for the variouscolumns of figures in the reports. The camps didnot all send the same categories of figures in thesereports. For example, Auschwitz (identified as �F�in radio traffic) would send population totals for thebeginning and end of the day. Buchenwald (identi-

fied as �D�) sent only a single daily total.13 A num-ber of other files in this series contain messagesfrom concentration camps, notably HW16/17 toHW 16/26. (See Section 5.A, pages 78-80, for moreon these reports from the slave labor camps, as wellas the recent discovery of an intercepted report ondeath totals from selected death camps in Polandfor 1942.)

Another relevant series is HW 19, the records ofthe section in GC&CS that was responsible fordecrypting messages of the Abwehr, German mili-tary intelligence, and Sicherheitsdienst, or intelli-gence arm of the SS.14 Messages from Abwehragents and foreign reporting centers that wereencrypted using manual systems (paper codes andciphers) were called ISOS, Intelligence (or Illicit)Source Oliver Strachey. The decrypts of Abwehrmessages encrypted with an Enigma device wereknown as ISK, or Intelligence Source Knox forA. Dillwyn Knox. Strachey and Knox were seniorleaders in GC&CS. Both were veterans of theAdmiralty�s famous World War I code-breakingoperation known as Room 40, whose most famousexploit was the decoding of the ZimmermannTelegram in 1917. A third subseries within HW 19 iscomposed of SD messages known as ISOCICLE(breakout unknown) that were encrypted with SDmanual ciphers.

Messages relating to all aspects of the Holocaustare sprinkled throughout this series. For example,series HW 19/237 contains SD reports on the situa-tion in Italy after its surrender to the Allies. Thereare as many as 1,500 messages in this subseries.Some of the messages report the roundup of theJews in Rome in October 1943. Others detail thetransfer of Albanian gold, probably seized original-ly by Fascist Italy when it occupied Albania in 1939,to Berlin and the attitude of the Vatican to events inand around Rome. Other subseries containinginformation on Jews in Italy can be found in sub-series HW 19/238 to HW 19/240. Another sub-series, HW 19/236, deals largely with events inBulgaria. Of the nearly 2,000 decrypts in this sub-series are some reports about the expulsion of non-

Bulgarian Jews, emigration of Jews to Palestinethrough Bulgaria, messages about Finnish Jews,and the Jewish population in North Africa.

HW 29, the �Commercial Reports,� containstranslations of commercial code messages inter-cepted by the British during the war. Commercialcodes were designed primarily to decrease trans-mission time and message length by reducing stan-dard business expressions and statistical entries inbusiness correspondence to a series of short codegroups. Shorter messages meant cheaper commu-nications costs. Commercial codes were availableto the public and therefore did not provide securityfor the contents of business correspondence.Businesses and financial institutions, such as banksand insurance companies, could produce cus-tomized versions of the standard commercial codesfor security and privacy purposes, but this was notdone often probably due to the cost of designingcustom code variants and printing sufficient copiesfor all recipients.

There are 321 folders containing 61,188 transla-tions of commercial messages in HW 29. They runfrom January 1938 to December 1945. They arelabeled with the prefix �CS,� which probably stoodfor �commercial series.� There are a number ofmessages from the Reichsbank in this collection.Some messages deal with credit transactions foroverseas official German diplomatic and militaryrepresentatives such as consuls and attachés.However, there are some Reichsbank cables andmessages that are part of gold sales and purchases,currency exchanges, and trade activity with neutralcountries such as Switzerland.

There are two other Class Lists that containcommercial reports. One is HW 31, �Commercialmessages sent in privacy company codes.� This listcontains some 2,770 reports that run from June1943 to August 1945. These reports carry the prefix�PRI.� The other Class list is HW 32, �CommercialMessages passed over diplomatic channels.� Thislist spans March 1942 to June 1945. There are32,471 translations in this list and are prefixed by

�COM.� It is not known presently if these last twocommercial Class Lists carry any information aboutthe disposal of funds, gold, or property looted bythe Nazis.

A number of other HW series house collectionsof diplomatic decrypts and translations producedby GC&CS, dating from 1919 to 1945. While thereare a number of relevant translations, it is not cer-tain how many pertain to the Holocaust. One series,HW12, contains translations of diplomatic mes-sages from 1919 to 1945. Since 1997, the Britishhave been slowly releasing the body of wartimediplomatic translations. This turnover to the PROwas completed in early June of 2003.

The diplomatic translations are arranged inmonthly files for a single year and then further sub-divided alphabetically by country. The largest por-tion of the collection consists of translations fromall European countries leading up to and includingthe end of the war. Many of the intercepted mes-sages were of the governments-in-exile of theminor allied nations that resided in Great Britain.GC&CS also intercepted messages from manycountries in the Middle East, such as Iraq, SaudiArabia, and Egypt. Of peculiar interest is theGC&CS continued to intercept diplomatic messagesfrom the United States up to early 1942.15 FromSeptember 1939 to September 1945, GC&CS pro-duced more than 74,000 translations of intercepteddiplomatic messages.

Two other series contain diplomatic transla-tions that might pertain to the Holocaust. They areHW 36, �Reports of German Diplomatic Messages�(1942-1943), and HW 37, �Diplomatic DecryptsPassed to the Secret Intelligence Service forDistribution� (1935-1945).

One final Class List deserves mention and thatis HW 13, �GC&CS: Signals Intelligence, World War2.� This collection is composed of summary reportspublished by GC&CS. Of interest are pieces HW13/118 to 13/124 (26 July 1941 - 6 April 1945) thatare titled �Reports on Railway Movements based on

German Army and Air Force High-grade Traffic.�16

During the war, GC&CS was able to exploit the so-called German railway Enigma, known as �Rocket,�and then later as �Blunderbuss� and �Culverin.�The railway Enigma was exploited beginning inFebruary 1941. The decrypts initially wereprocessed and reported by GC&CS. But its effortswere hampered by the esoteric format and text ofthe messages. An element of the British Ministry ofEconomic Warfare (MEW), the Railway ResearchService, soon complemented the Bletchley work.The information from these messages was aboutGerman military logistics shipments. They provedto be useful in determining future German strategicand theater military initiatives.17

Since the Nazis made use of the railway systemof Germany (and later that of occupied Europe) totransport Jews to the death camps, it would seemthat there should be much information in thesesummaries. However, it is not clear from the limit-ed research conducted of these files if they containany such information. To date, messages abouttrains transporting Jews to the camps have beenfound only in HW 16, the decrypts of German Policemessages.18

Miscellaneous Collections

There are other collections of cryptologicrecords that have a few translations among themthat apply to the Holocaust. These records includethe intercepts and translations of clandestine com-munications from European communist partyorganizations and resistance groups to Moscow(known as ISCOT, or Intelligence Source Scot), theCommunist International (MASK), and Sovietintelligence organizations (Venona). These collec-tions are available in whole at the Public RecordOffice/National Archives or in part at the UnitedStates National Archives and the library of theNational Cryptologic Museum at Fort George G.Meade, Maryland.

The Venona translations probably are the mostfamous of the three collections. These are the trans-

lations of messages between various Soviet intelli-gence network controls, or �rezidants,� and theMoscow headquarters of Soviet intelligenceagencies � the NKVD (Narodniy KomissariatVnutrennikh Del, �Peoples Commissariat forInternal Affairs�) and the GRU (GlavnoyeRazvedyvatelnoe Upravleniye, �Main IntelligenceDirecorate� of the Soviet General Staff). There areonly two translations in the over three thousandthat refer to any aspects of the Holocaust. Theseinclude the movement of German gold into Swissbanks and a discussion of the Wallenberg family.19

The Venona translations are available in RG 457 atNARA in College Park, Maryland, the PRO (HW15), and at the library of the National CryptologicMuseum.20

The ISCOT material, named after the head ofthe section at the GC&CS that handled illicit com-munications, is a collection of translations of mes-sages between the various European (and Asian)communist party organizations and resistancegroups and party headquarters in Moscow duringWorld War II. These messages were intercepted,decrypted, and translated by the GC&CS andturned over to the responsible section in M.I.6.They date from mid-1944 to the end of the war. Ofthe nearly 1,500 translations, only six pertain to theHolocaust. The ISCOT translations are located atthe PRO in series HW 17, pieces 39-118,Government Code & Cypher School Decrypts of theCommunist International (COMINTERN). A set ofthe ISCOT translations also is available in thelibrary of the National Cryptologic Museum.

Finally, there is the so-called MASK materialcollection, which consists of intercepts of COM-INTERN material decrypted by the famous Britishcryptanalyst, Brigadier J.H. Tiltman, from 1934 to1937. The Communist International was theadministrative conduit through which foreign com-munist parties were controlled and financed byMoscow. The messages in the collection are fromthe International�s headquarters in Moscow to var-ious local communist party organizations in severalEuropean countries, the United States, and China.

The reports are mostly what one would expect:espionage and illegal tradecraft, party and networkfinances, propaganda, travel plans of COMINTERNagents, and messages about domestic political, mil-itary, and economic situations. There are severalmessages that report on conditions in Germanyafter Hitler�s accession to power and the situationin Austria prior to the Anschluss of 1938. Althoughthere is no direct information about anti-Jewishmeasures, there are references to the concentrationcamps that, in those early years of the Nazi reign,held a large number of opposition political inmatessuch as communists, social democrats, and others.The MASK translations (and decrypts in French)are located in folders 1 to 38 of HW 17.21 TheNational Cryptologic Museum�s library also has aset of the MASK translations.

ISCOT 399, issued 21 October 1944 (intercepted25 June 1944) reporting the gassing of Hungarian

Jews at Auschwitz (Osvencim)

Even though there are number of translationsrelating to the Holocaust from the above threesmaller collections, they represent only a small por-tion of the actual number of messages transmittedon these illicit radio networks. It is possible that thearchives of former Soviet intelligence organizationsand the COMINTERN may contain a number ofmessages concerning all aspects of the Holocaustand other Nazi depredations.

Notes1 For more on the Allied effort against German

diplomatic systems, see Alvarez, 164-6.2 These are: Entry 9011, Japanese Diplomatic

Messages (SRDJ) and Japanese-German DiplomaticMessages (SRDG); and Entry 9021, Vichy FrenchDiplomatic Messages (SRDV).

3 The British placed restrictions on �sensitive� mate-rial that the Special Branch representatives attached toGC&CS work centers could see and pass back to G-2 inWashington. This material was referred to as the�Reserved Series.� See �History of Special Branch,� 21fn., NARA RG 457, Entry 9032, Box 1113.

4 A complete set of the Boston series can be found inthe records of the Office of Strategic Services, RG 226,Entry 210, boxes 440-446. Other captured Axis mes-sages were placed in similar relevant translation series.For example, Japanese messages, captured during thePhilippines campaign, were placed in the appropriateJapanese military (SR) and air force (SRF) translationseries available in RG 457, entries 9005 and 9012,respectively.

5 Vatican to Berlin, 11 October 1944, T-1124, NARA,RG 457, HCC, Box 518, �Decrypted Diplomatic Traffic;�Vatican (Montini) to Apostolic delegate to Germany(Eichstatt), 8 May 1945, T-1996, NARA, RG 457, HCC,Box 519, �Decrypted Diplomatic Traffic�; Vatican City(Montini) to Apostolic Delegate to Germany (Eichstatt),7 April 1945, T-2056, NARA, RG 457, HCC, Box 519.

6 Information regarding the British and Americancryptanalytic effort against Vatican codes and cipherscan be found in RG 457, HCC, Box 1284, �History of theSolution of Vatican Systems in SSA and GCCS, 1943-44.�(Washington: September 1944)

7 Benson, A History of CommunicationsIntelligence 54-5. Along with the OSS, the Federal

Communications Commission and the Office ofCensorship, both of which were conducting small-scaleintercept and cryptanalysis, were barred from furthercryptologic work. The Coast Guard�s intercept and code-breaking sections were absorbed into the Navy�s crypto-logic effort and designated as OP-20-GU.

8 Bradley F. Smith, The Ultra-Magic Deals, 149.9 This set is only part of the larger collection con-

tained in the PRO. The distribution list of British officialswho received the translations from this period namedeight individuals and their departments � four fromM.I.6, one from M.I.5, and one each for the Directors ofIntelligence for the Army, Navy, and Air Force.

10 Other translations that were distributed throughOSS and passed on to other U.S. government elements,such as the U.S. Department of State, carried the caveats�Secret Source,� or �A Most Reliable Source.� These dis-tributed versions usually had certain pieces of sourceinformation, such as the name of the official underwhose signature the message was sent and the date ofthe message, removed or �sanitized� from the originalversion. Interestingly, it appears that none of thesediplomatic translations were shared with the SIS. Also,these translations, for the most part, are from minorneutrals and some even cables from diplomats that con-tain mostly personal information. A useful discussionabout one particularly important translation of a Chileandiplomatic message concerning the situation of Jews inPrague in November 1941 can be found in the RichardBreitman monograph �What Chilean Diplomats Learnedabout the Holocaust.� It is available at the NARAInteragency Working Group website: http://www.archives.gov/iwg/research_papers/breitman_chilean_diplomats.html

11 For a more detailed and complete description ofthe catalogue and the PROCAT search system, go tothe PRO/National Archives website at http://cata-logue.pro.gov.uk. The equivalent NARA on-line searchengine is called ARC (archives research catalogue) and isavailable at the U.S. National Archives website:http://www.archives.gov.

12 �The Special Action Staff assigned to the 302ndPolice Battalion, subordinate to the regiment assigned toArmy Group South, reports shooting 4200 Jews.��Signals Intelligence Pass[ed] to the Prime Minister,

Messages and Correspondence.� HW 1/62, September1941.

13 In late 1942, the various concentration camps thatsent status messages by radio were identified by singleletters thusly: A � Oranienburg, B � Dachau, C �Mauthausen/Gusen, D � Buchenwald, E - Flossenburg,F � Auschwitz, G � Hinzert, H- Niederhagen, I � Lublin,K � Stutthof, and L � Debica. Two of these letters, andpossibly the others, may have been derived from the lastletter of the radio callsign of the camp. In those cases,Auschwitz was identified with callsign �OMF� andBuchenwald with �OMD.� Obviously, this list does notinclude all of the camps. See ZIP/OS 4/27.11.42, SectionII, �Concentration Camps,� PRO, HW 16/66 andPhillips, Lt. E.D., GC&CS Air and Military History Vol.XIII. The German Police. 83. Also, it appears that theDeath Camps in the General Government (the partof Poland directly overseen by the Nazis) had theirown letters: B � Belzec, L � Lublin, S � Sobibor, and T �Treblinka. However these designators may have beenarbitrarily assigned. See Peter Witte and Stephen Tyas,�A New Document on the Deportation and Murder ofJews during �Einsatz Reinhardt� 1942.� Holocaust andGenocide Studies (Vol. 15, No. 3, Winter 2001), 468-486,fn 8, 480.

14 The SD merged with the Reichssicherheitshau-pamt (RSHA) or Reich Security Office in September1939. The SD�s foreign activities, Branch III (Ausland)were transferred to RSHA VI, or foreign intelligenceheaded by Walter Schellenberg.

15 See HW 12/272, January 1942.16 These summaries are marked with the serial

�CX/MSS/SR.� The files of the MEW were transferred toFO 935.

17 Hinsley, Vol. 1, 357-8.18 See Breitman, 116-7, for a discussion of the rail-

way decrypts and potential importance to Holocaustresearch.

19 Venona Translation T840, 21 June 1945,Washington to Moscow, and T2201, 13 April 1942,Stockholm to Moscow, National Cryptologic Museum.

20 For a description of the messages and a short his-tory of their intercept and decryption see Robert L.Benson, The Venona Story (Center for CryptologicHistory, National Security Agency, Fort George G.Meade, MD; 2001), Reproductions of the Venona trans-

lations are also available online at the NSA website:http://www.nsa.gov/docs/venona/index.html

21 Curiously, many ISCOT and MASK decrypts werein French and were not translated by GC&CS intoEnglish. Also, many intercepted French diplomatic mes-sages, whether Vichy or Gaullist, which were exchangedwith the Arlington Hall remained in the original French.

As mentioned previously in this guide, therecords from the Allied COMINT agencies holdinformation on a wide array of incidents and cer-tain aspects of the Nazi campaign of extermination.However, a historian could not write a completegeneral narrative of the Holocaust based solely onthese records. The information from the records is,for the most part, episodic and partial. Where inthose few instances there is much detail, the infor-mation is often concentrated in a single aspect of alarger event.

For some these limitations may appear a disap-pointment. However, historians recognize them aspart of the landscape of the process of historicalreconstruction of events by utilizing data from anumber of sources. For historians of the war andthe Holocaust, the body of records composed of themessages decoded by the Allies is another sourceof information. By itself, the information fromdecodes is not a �secret key� to understanding thewar or the Holocaust. Instead, these decodes mustbe combined with information from all othersources to produce the narrative fabric that is histo-ry. In some cases, the decodes can add a new ortelling aspect to a story already familiar, provide theinsightful anecdote or quote, or allow the historianto add an exclamation point to a thesis.

This chapter of the guide is intended to demon-strate how some of the available information fromAllied cryptanalysis of Axis and neutral messagescan contribute additional information to the histo-ry of the Holocaust. This section will begin with ageneral review of the course of the Holocaust andwhat the information from decodes sometimes canadd to it. This will be followed by some selected top-ics for which there is more information fromCOMINT sources. These include the refugee phe-

nomenon and the growing strife in wartimePalestine, Vichy and the Jews, the destruction ofHungary�s Jews, Japanese attitudes and treatmentof the Jews in the Far East, and Swiss and Germanwartime trade and transfer of stolen gold and otherpersonal and national assets.

Before beginning this chapter, one generalobservation should be made. It is that Allied com-munications intelligence discovered nothing of theprewar and early wartime high-level Nazi planningfor the general campaign against Europe�s Jewsand other groups targeted for elimination. This sit-uation also was true for most of the large-scalewartime plans, such as the massacres in the west-ern Soviet Union or the death camps. There werefew exceptions to this trend, most notably the inter-cept and decryption of German police messagesthat indicated that Italian Jews were soon to besubjected to roundup and deportation to camps inOctober 1943. Usually, though, Nazi planning,preparations, and orders to carry out these opera-tions were not communicated in a means such asradio that could be intercepted by the Allied moni-toring stations. Plans and orders were delivered bycourier or were communicated orally at meetingsand thus denied to Allied monitors. As a result,information that could have warned of an impend-ing operation was missed. Generally, the communi-cations that supported activities such as theGerman Police massacres in the western USSRwere intercepted only after the latter had begun.The intelligence that was recovered came from avariety of communications sources: message trafficfrom neutral, Allied and Axis diplomats, Axis secu-rity forces, anti-Axis partisan groups, and Axis andAllied covert intelligence networks.

Chapter 4

Selected Topics of the Holocaust

A. The General Course of the Holocaust andAllied Communications Intelligence

Immediately after the conquest of Poland inSeptember 1939, German security elements movedto implement hostile policies directed against tar-geted segments of the Polish population and Jewsin general. A limited number of German Policemessages reported such events as the mass arrest ofPolish officers near Warsaw and the transfer of2,000 Jews from the town of Nasielesk to Novydvor(both towns about twenty kilometers north ofWarsaw).1 Yet, information about anti-Jewishactions in Poland remained sparse, and there wereno further decrypts of police messages in 1940 and1941 from Poland.2 The lack of intercepts of radiomessages suggests that the telephone and telegraphnetwork in Poland had been repaired by theGermans shortly after the occupation had begun.

During the second half of 1941, the Nazis madea number of decisions about the course of the planto exterminate the Jews. In late July, ReichMarshall Herman Goering signed a memorandumthat authorized the SS to plan for �the completesolution to the Jewish question within the Germansphere of influence in Europe.� The memo furthercalled for a Final Solution of the Jewish question.3

In October 1941, SS chief Heinrich Himmlerbanned any further Jewish emigration fromGerman-occupied Europe. In November 1941, thefirst massacres of German Jews, who had beendeported to the east, occurred in the Lithuaniancities of Riga and Kovno (Kaunas).

On 20 January 1942, in the Berlin suburb ofWannsee, Reinhard Heydrich, head of the ReichSecurity Head Office, chaired a meeting of seniorGerman officials from the SS, other security offices,the General Government (western Poland), occu-pied Poland, the German Foreign Office, and theMinistry of Justice to work out the details for thefinal solution of all European Jews. The Germanofficials discussed policies that had been in effectfor some time inside the Reich, and laid out a gen-eral plan for coordinating similar plans for coun-

tries allied to the Axis, as well as for occupiedEurope. The decisions reached at this meeting werenot revealed outside of Nazi leadership circles.Germany�s allies were uninformed of any impend-ing changes. This secrecy is suggested by a frag-ment of a Japanese diplomatic message from aboutthe time of the Wannsee Conference. A 28 January1942 message to Tokyo from the Japanese ministerin Sofia, Bulgaria, stated that the �German policytowards the Jews is well known. It is seen that theaim is their complete elimination from theEuropean continent (perhaps to the Island ofMadagascar).�4 But if the German policy decisionshad not been publicized at the time, the results ofthose policies already were being felt in the occu-pied territories of Europe and the Soviet Union.

The first indications from COMINT sources oflarge-scale efforts to annihilate Jews and otherscame shortly after the invasion of the Soviet Unionin June 1941. The Nazi policy for several groups liv-ing in Russia was one of extermination. This policyhad been established by the Nazi leadership somemonths before the invasion. In a speech to Germanmilitary leaders in March 1941 during the planningfor Operation Barbarosa, Hitler had explained thatthe upcoming campaign in the Soviet Union wouldbe different than all others, that a war of extermi-nation was at hand, and that Russia was to becleared of all racial groups that were not Aryan. Theslaughter of Jews would be complemented with thepolicy of allowing the hundreds of thousands ofRussian prisoners of war taken in the early part ofthe campaign to die of starvation, neglect, and dis-ease.5

In the wake of the invading Wehrmacht forma-tions came police and SS units charged with killing�undesirables� such as communist party officials,COMINTERN (Communist International) person-nel, commissars, and Jews in official positions.(Whether all Jews were included in the originalorders is unclear. Some latitude may have existed,but within a short time Jews everywhere in theoccupied Soviet Union were targeted for death.)6

Some of these formations were known as

Einsatzgruppen. There were four of these groupswhose manpower totaled about 3,000. They werecomposed of a mixture of SS and Sicherheitdienst(SD or Security Service) personnel. The fourgroups were assigned regions of operations.Einsatzgruppe A operated mostly in the Balticregion; Einsatzgruppe B, worked near Smolensk inthe western Russian Federated Republic alongmain axis of attack for German Army GroupCenter; Einsatzgruppe C operated area Kiev in thecentral Ukraine; and Einsatzgruppe D worked inthe southern USSR along the Black Sea coast andthe Crimea. Working in conjunction with thesegroups were some SS brigades, such as the Reiterand Cavalry Brigades. The largest single element ofthese forces was the German Police. Over thirtyreserve and regular German Police battalions,numbering about 12,000 policemen, participatedin the massacres in Russia. As far back as theWilhelmian Empire, German police had existed asparamilitary organizations organized into regionalor municipal formations. These formations wereknown as Ordnungspolizei (Orpo) or Order Police.Referred to originally as Uniformed Police, theseformations were easily integrated into the Germanmilitary and traditionally had performed rear areasecurity duties early in the war.7

Because of the vast distances involved and theinadequacy (and destruction) of the Soviet domes-tic telegraph and telephone cable communicationsystem, the police and SS units exterminating theJews and other groups relied on HF radio commu-nications to send their action reports and adminis-trative messages back to SS and Police headquar-ters. Within a month of the invasion, GC&CS,thanks to the British army intercept station atBeaumanor, and partly through the intercept andthe cryptanalytic work by the covert Allied site insouthern France, P.C. Cadix, was producingdecrypts and translations of the German reportsabout many of the massacres. The police and SSreports were specific about the numbers and cate-gories of victims: Jews, �Bolsheviks,� partisans,

�bandits,� and Russian soldiers are listed in thepolice unit reports sent to higher headquarters.8

The first intercept that referred to a massacreprobably was an 18 July 1941 radio message fromthe Police Regiment Center (that is, assigned toArmy Group center) that reported the execution of1,153 Jewish �plunderers� near the town of Slonimin Belorussia.9And the numbers of victims moun-ted as the police and other groups moved east intothe Soviet Union. On 3 August the SS Cavalrybrigade reported it had liquidated some 3,274partisans and �Jewish Bolshevists� (judischeBolschewisten).10 On 7 August 1941 the samebrigade reported that it had executed some 7,819people since the invasion had begun, while anaccounting of all actions in the sector where ArmyGroup Center operated totaled some 30,000 execu-tions.11 On 11 September 1941 Police RegimentSouth reported to Police and SS Headquarters thatit had liquidated 1,548 Jews.12 One of its subordi-nate battalions, the 314th, had shot 69 Jews.13

Within a short period, the German units were sup-plemented by formations composed of ethnicgroups such as Ukrainians, Lithuanians, and othersin the newly conquered territories. There is also a

German Police and Ukrainian militia shootingJews from the village of Chrystnowka (Courtesy:

United States Holocaust Memorial Museum)

suggestion that Germany�s lesser allies contributedto the massacres. A June 1942 Japanese messagefrom Budapest noted that Hungarian troops serv-ing in the rear near Kharkov in the Ukraine hadbeen �successful in mopping up some 38,000�guerillas.�14

Complementary information about the effectsof similar large-scale massacres or liquidationsfrom elsewhere in the occupied Soviet Union wasprovided by a Japanese diplomatic message fromBerlin in late February 1942. It contained a partiallist of �population changes� in the Baltic States thatthe Germans had occupied. The Japanese reportedthat in the first six months more than 180,000 civil-ians had been interned or executed. In Estonia itwas estimated that the male population betweenthe ages of 20 and 35 had declined about 45 per-cent.15

In late 1941 the Nazis began implementingsome of the legal and administrative machinery tocarry out effectively their plans for exterminatingEurope�s Jews, including those in occupied coun-tries. German police decrypts carried informationabout the rail transport of German Jews from citiessuch as Berlin and Bremen, to ghettoes in occupiedterritories to the east in cities like Kaunas,Lithuania, and Minsk in the Ukraine.16 Otherreports from neutral and Axis diplomats carried asmall amount of information on conditions in vari-ous countries. In Vienna a Japanese report fromlate February 1942 mentioned that 10 percent ofthe workers in the area were kept in concentrationcamps and that the police were watching all for sus-pect activity.17 A report from the Chilean consulatein Prague, dated 24 November 1941, carried infor-mation on the legal proscriptions against GermanJews: revocation of citizenship for German Jewsliving overseas and limits to property transfer andsales. The report also mentioned that Jews in theProtectorate would be sent to Poland or to Terezin[Theresienstadt] in Czechoslovakia.18

At the same time, another critical part of theNazi direct extermination plan began to operate �

the death camps. The Nazi system of camps,known generally as concentration camps(Konzentrationslager) had been started within ayear of Hitler�s accession to power. The early campswere used to incarcerate all �anti-social elements�and political opponents to the Nazi regime. Theseincluded Jews, communists, Social Democrats,trade union representatives, religious dissenters,homosexuals, ordinary criminals, and others. Overthe years the camp system expanded and diversi-fied into various functions. The most infamous, andlargest, was Auschwitz, which actually was a com-plex of about forty separate camps. Auschwitz hadbeen started in mid-1940 as a labor camp. In thefall of 1941, the Nazis began building the first�special treatment� (sonderbehandlung) camp,Birkenau. Birkenau represented the most sinisterpart of the Nazi plan for eliminating the Jews. On8 December 1941, the extermination camp(Vernichtunslager) at Chelmo, Poland, went intooperation. The less direct methods of extermina-tion, such as starvation and overcrowding that hadbeen employed in the ghettos like Warsaw andLublin, had proven too slow for the demands of theNazi hierarchy. The death camps were set up tospeed along the Final Solution.

The camps communicated periodic reports toSS and Police headquarters in Berlin by radio. TheSS had set up a radio network over which its gene-ral administrative communications were transmit-ted. The SS had their own version of the Enigmacipher machine, which they used to encrypt mes-sages that reported the conditions and the popula-tion counts of the various camps. The GC&CS,which broke this SS Enigma cipher in late 1940,gave the network, and the key used to encrypt thesecommunications, the cover name of Orange. Thisradio net carried most of the early reports from theconcentration camps sent in 1942. Each camp senta daily report, or a monthly report, listing for eachday the tally of laborers from various ethnic andnational groups. An example of a typical report,sent on October 3, 1942, detailed the totals andsubtotals of the slave labor population fromAuschwitz, which was identified by the single letter

�F� (derived from the last letter of the camp�s radiocallsign, in this case �OMF�). There were eightcolumns of numbers that broke down in this way:�Total at the beginning of the day,� �Increase,��Decrease,� �Total at the end of the Day,� �Jews,��Poles,� Unknown,� and �Russians.� These reportstallied only the slave labor population and not thosebeing executed upon arrival at the death camps.The numbers from the available messages usuallyreported significant changes to a camp�s popula-tion. For example, a report from Auschwitz forSeptember 1942 shows a loss at the end of themonth of about 32 percent of the total labor popu-lation. A report from Dachau for November 1942shows an increase in the labor force of about 2.5percent.19

Only recently have scholars discovered that theSS also radioed information to Berlin regarding theextermination totals of Jews in the death camps. Anarticle published in the late 2001 issue of Holocaustand Genocide Studies described a message sentfrom the SS leader in Lublin to the SS commands inCracow and Berlin on 11 January 1943.20 This mes-sage, located in the PRO in HW 16/23, enumeratedthe numbers of Jews eliminated as part ofOperation Reinhard (Einsatz Reinhar[d]t) at fourdeath camps in the General Government (Lublin,Belzec, Sobibor, and Treblinka) for both the lasttwo weeks of December 1942 and for the year 1942.The total number of persons eliminated for 1942was 1,274,166. This number agreed with (and prob-ably was) the basis for a statistical report of

September 1942 SS Report from Auschwitz listing available slave labor force. Handwritten notes are byBletchley analyst that read Total at beginning of day, Increase, Decrease, Total at end of day,

Jews, Poles, [unknown], and Russians. Source: PRO HW 16/10 ZIP/GPCC/3.10.42

Reinhardt�s effectiveness that had been commis-sioned by the SS leader Heinrich Himmler inDecember 1942. It appears the British analysts whohad decrypted the message missed the significanceof this particular message at the time. No doubt thishappened because the message itself containedonly the identifying letters for the death camps fol-lowed by the numerical totals. The only clue wouldhave been the reference to Operation Reinhard, themeaning of which � the plan to eliminate PolishJewry that was named after the assassinated SSGeneral Reinhard Heydrich � also probably wasunknown at the time to the codebreakers atBletchley.21

From February 1942 to about February 1943,these radio messages continued to be sent from thecamps to SS headquarters. However, there werelimitations to what could be learned from thesedecrypts. Not all the camps set up by the Germansin the east reported by radio; nor did the camps setup by minor Axis powers and Vichy France thatwere used to hold Jews for transport to the Nazideath and labor camps to the east. By early 1943,

these SS reports completely ceased to be sent byradio. It is likely that the SS leadership was con-cerned about the security of the information thatwas transmitted in these messages, not unlikeDaluege�s worries about Police messages in October1941. By this time it is possible that telephone ortelegraph lines had been run out to the camps andmessages could be sent without the worry of eaves-dropping. Later in the war, as conditions in EasternEurope worsened with the Russian advance, the SSmay have returned to using radios to communicate.GC&CS broke a few messages about the campsencrypted in the new SS Enigma key given the covername �Grapefruit.� But these decrypts remainedfew in number.22

From early 1942 until the end of the war, the SSorganized and oversaw a system in which Jewsfrom occupied Europe, and from Axis-alignedcountries, were transported to the various laborand death camps in Eastern Europe. AdolfEichman�s special bureau within the SS main secu-rity office that dealt with the evacuation of Jewsworked with the German Foreign Ministry to facili-tate this system. The transport of mass numbers of

January 1943 message listing number of Jews killed as part of Operation Reinhard(Source: PRO HW16/23 ZIP/GPDD 355a/ 15.1.43)

Jews required the cooperation of national govern-ments and their local security or paramilitaryforces. The scope and effectiveness of these cooper-ative arrangements varied according to country.Generally, Jews living in those regions underthe German direct administration (the GeneralGovernment), German military occupation(France, Serbia, and Salonika), and theReichskommissariate (Netherlands) were affectedthe most. Ironically, countries allied or associatedwith Germany had more latitude when it came topolicy towards their Jewish populations, thoughthis does not mean that their Jewish populationsultimately suffered less grievously. In countries likeHungary and Italy, resident Jewish populationstemporarily were spared being rounded up and sentto the camps. Before the war, the regimes in Romeand Budapest had imposed their own anti-Semiticmeasures that aimed at restricting the Jewish pres-ence in national economic, social, and culturalactivities. While more restrictions were added dur-ing the war, there were no large-scale incarcera-tions in concentration camps; nor were there anymajor deportations. However, these reprievesended when German SS and police units arrived inItaly shortly after its surrender in July 1943 andHungary in May 1944.23

The first non-German Jews transported to thedeath camps came from the Slovak Republic inearly 1942. (German Jews deported to the BalticStates and Polish Jews from the GeneralGovernment regions of Poland already were in theprocess of being sent to the first death camps.)Beginning in the summer of 1942, Vichy officialsstarted the deportation of foreign Jews from Franceto the camps in the east. (See Section C, VichyRegime and the Jews, for a description of worldreaction to this roundup.) By the fall of 1942, trainstransporting Jews to the camps at Auschwitz nowincluded Czech and Dutch Jews. Decrypts ofGerman police messages indicated that these trainssometimes were accorded priority routing throughthe German rail system.24

In 1943 the Nazi roundup of Jews extended tomore countries in occupied Europe. By March ofthat year, allied cryptologists were interceptingmessages from a number of sources that indicatedthat the Nazi plan was in full operation. In thesouthern Balkans, it was learned that Bulgarianauthorities had gathered up about 14,000 Jewsfrom occupied Thrace and put them in the concen-tration camps at Gorna Dzhumaja and Dupnitsa.In Macedonia, Jews living in Skopje and Bitolj hadbeen �stripped of their belongings� and left out inthe open near the latter town, and that manyinfants had died, presumably due to exposure to thecold. Other Jews from the region were shippedto the death camps by rail.25 A Japanese reportfrom May mentioned that some 4,500 Jews fromThrace who had been interned previously by theBulgarians had been shipped to Poland.26

Because it had aligned with Germany, Bulgariawas allowed to garrison adjacent stretches of terri-tory in neighboring Greece and Yugoslavia thatcontained large numbers of ethnic Bulgarians.Bulgaria carried out a campaign of expulsionagainst all foreign ethnic groups living in the newlyacquired lands. The Bulgarians expelled some30,000 Turks from Thrace and as many as500,000 Greeks who lived in the region. Jewsamongst the expelled ethnic groups lost theirBulgarian citizenship and were shipped to thedeath camps.27 Vichy diplomatic cables from Sofianoted that there was much popular opposition tothe wholesale removal of the Jews from these terri-tories. According to the French diplomats, theBulgarian government had explained to their mis-sion that, since Jews, as a group, desired Germany�sdefeat, it had arrested them as �enemies of thenation.�28 Still, Sofia resisted the wholesale surren-der of Bulgarian Jews to the Nazi killing machine.

In Romania during mid-1941, some 200,000Jews were deported to Transniestria, theRomanian-occupied region of the Ukraine. Thereabout 120,000 Jews were slaughtered by theRomanian occupation authorities. However, inNovember dictator Ion Antonescu ended deporta-

tions of Romanian Jews to the region. During theroundup of Jews in Hungary in 1944, Bucharest�sdiplomats worked to obtain passports and aid toRomanian Jews trapped there.29 Still, approxi-mately some 425,000 Romanian Jews perishedduring the war. This was about half of the prewarpopulation.

A Japanese report from Budapest regardingconditions in Greece mentioned that, since theGerman occupation, Greek Jews had been forced towear a yellow star. The Japanese also estimatedthat some 50,000 to 70,000 Jews had been sent toPoland and another 25,000 to 30,000 had beenexiled.30 Ultimately about 80 percent of all GreekJews died during the war.

Meanwhile, in the Netherlands, by June 1943messages from the Dutch communist undergroundto Moscow that were intercepted by British RadioSecurity Service revealed that there was substantiallocal opposition to the early May roundup of DutchJews. A 4 June message described how only 10 per-cent of the Jews in Amsterdam had appeared forregistration prior to deportation to the east. Thecity�s Jewish Council responsible for supervisingthe registration had failed to bring in the numberrequired by the Nazis for deportation to the east.Finally, on 26 May the Germans sealed off the cen-ter of Amsterdam and rousted out whatever Jewsthey could find.31 Some Dutch Catholic clericsprotested the roundups. Another translationreported that a pastoral letter was read on 16 Mayto protest the roundup and deportation. The lettercountered German arguments that the struggleagainst the Soviet Union was the equivalent of vic-tory for Germany. The letter added that, ��thosewho fight against bolshevism, which is condemnedso sharply through [one word missing], must notsuppress Christianity as this is being done by theNational Socialists.�32

The Nazi drive to transport Europe�s Jews to thecamps spread to other countries. In Italy, in lateJuly 1943, a coup in Rome unseated BenitoMussolini, who had been the Fascist dictator since

1923. Secret negotiations followed and Italy signedan armistice with the Allies. On 3 September Alliedtroops crossed over from Sicily and began the slowdrive north up the Italian peninsula. Hitler rushedadditional troops and security forces into Italy andpropped up a rump Fascist regime in northern Italyunder a recently rescued Mussolini. In lateSeptember 1943, Heinrich Himmler ordered theroundup and deportation of Jews living in Romeand dispatched SS General Karl Wolff to overseethe operation. Due to an unexpected cryptanalyticwindow of opportunity � the exploitation of an SDEnigma key beginning in late August 1943 � theBritish were able to monitor this operation fromSeptember through October 1943.33

The German police attaché in Italy, SS MajorHerbert Kappler, who also performed duties for theGestapo and SD, was placed in charge of the actualoperation to round up Rome�s Jews. He had report-ed to Berlin in early September that some Jews hadattempted to escape Rome on a train with Spanishdiplomats. He added that these Jews had boughtSpanish, Portuguese, and Mexican passports fromthe Vatican.34 Initially, Kappler had attempted toextort the Jewish community in Rome. The Irishminister in Rome reported to Dublin on 6 Octoberthat Rome�s Jews were required to supply theGermans with fifty kilograms of gold within twenty-four hours, or else 200 Jewish youth would be sentas hostages to Germany. According to the message,the �Vatican offered help,� though no specific aidfrom that source was mentioned.35 The messagealso noted that the Germans were looting the hous-es of wealthy Italians and taking silver, paintings,antiques, furniture, and jewelry. Presumably thosebeing robbed were Jewish, though it is unclear fromthe translation who was targeted. By the secondweek of October, SS General Ernst Kaltenbrunnercabled Kappler with the order to evacuate the Jewsfrom Italy without delay. He added that it was nolonger a question of using the Jews for labor, oreven trusting the local Italian authorities to do thejob. The longer the delay, the better chance that

Jews would move to the houses of sympatheticItalians and then disappear.36

The roundup began on 16 October. It was car-ried out by 365 German policemen from theSicherseitspolizei and Ordnungpolizei. Italianpolice units were not used by the Germans becauseof their �unreliability.� Kappler reported to Berlinthat 1,289 Jews had been arrested. After releasingthose of mixed blood, mixed marriages, foreigners,and family servants, some 1,002 were retained.Interestingly, Kappler reported that there wasmuch passive resistance by Italian citizens.37 Areport by Irish diplomats on 18 October thatclaimed, �All Jews in Rome, including women andchildren have been arrested,� clearly had exaggerat-ed the results of the initial German police drag-net.38 Actually, this first sweep arrested about asixth of Rome�s Jewish population. On 18 Octoberthe train with 1,007 Italian Jews left Rome.39 Areport from the Argentine ambassador from earlyNovember estimated that the Germans, using amunicipal �Civil register� had imprisoned some5,000 Jews, including men and women eightyyears old and infants.40 Arrests by the GermanPolice in Rome would continue for months after-wards. In early February 1944, the Japaneseambassador to the Vatican, Harada Ken, reportedto Tokyo that, on 4 February, police raided build-ings adjoining the Church of San Paolo�s, whichenjoyed extraterritoriality status under the LateranTreaty. Harada reported that some sixty peoplewere arrested, including Italian army officers, Jews,and draft dodgers. According to Harada, theVatican had �expressed regret� over the incidentand, in a letter to Rome�s diplomatic community,promised that indemnity proceedings would bestarted soon.41 Ultimately, about 20 percent of allof Italy�s Jews were victims of the Holocaust.

At about the same time that the German policebegan seizing Italian Jews, in Denmark thereoccurred one of the rare examples of an effectivenational humanitarian effort on behalf of its Jews.In early October the German occupation forces inDenmark planned a nationwide roundup of Danish

Jews. The Danes, including their monarch KingChristian, had publicly supported the Jewish popu-lation since the Germans had occupied the countryin April 1940. When news of the impendingGerman sweep became known, the Danish under-ground carried off the escape of virtually all ofDenmark�s 9,000 Jews to Sweden. The Germansreacted to this virtually empty bag of Jews withextreme embarrassment. German Foreign Officeinstructions to its press representatives overseascontained the broad statement that as of 2 October��they [the Jews] have been eliminated from thepublic life of Denmark and have been preventedfrom further poisoning the atmosphere. In conver-sations, please do not go into the subject deeply(my italics). Up to now, a few hundred full-bloodedJews have been deported to Germany.�42

In late 1943, as the Axis forces retreated west allalong the front before the resurgent Red Army, theNazi authorities were faced with the problem ofdestroying the evidence of the earlier massacresperpetrated by the Einsatzgruppen, police and SSformations. In October 1943 intercepted anddecoded radio messages of the SD revealed that theGermans were in the process of exhuming the sitesof mass executions and destroying the remains. Thetexts of the intercepted messages were written inthe obtuse language that the Germans used for allmatters pertaining to the Holocaust. These mes-sages indicated that such work, executed bySonderkommandos (Special Detachments), andincluded cleaning up �special places of work� in theBaltic region southwest of Leningrad, near thecities of Novgorod and Pskov. Interestingly, in try-ing to identify the murder sites, SS officials had torely on information from Latvian and Russian col-laborators.43

One of the most important sources of informa-tion about the death camps, specifically Birkenau atthe Auschwitz complex, was the Vrba-Wetzlerreport of June 1944. Rudolph Vrba and AlfredWetzler were two young Jews who had escapedAuschwitz in the spring of 1944. They made it safe-ly to Slovakia where they composed a report of what

they had learned while inmates at the camp. Therehad been some prior knowledge of Auschwitz fromother sources, but the Vrba-Wetzler report con-tained many new details. The report was carried toBudapest and then on to Bern, Switzerland. There acopy was shown to the OSS regional chief, AllenDulles, who, according to reports, was so shockedby it that he wired Washington about its contents.44

Another copy was cabled to the Czech government-in-exile in London. The cable was intercepted bythe British censors and turned over to GC&CS. Acopy of it was sent to Arlington Hall Station as partof the standard exchange program, but it did notreach the U.S. Army until early January 1945.

Among the details the two escapees providedwere the daily food ration level (300 grams or about11 ounces), the treatment policy for ill slave laborers(sent to the Krankenbau, literally sick place orinfirmary), the procedures for gassing those select-ed for immediate extermination, numbers andnationalities of those exterminated, the procedurefor killing �Aryan� prisoners (by shooting), the cre-ation of a half million false discharge documents tocover those who actually had been gassed, and a listof the SS camp leaders who were responsible forthese acts, as well as people identified as �crimi-nals� who also participated in killing Jews.45 (Seeattached document No. 1 for a complete copy of theversion of the Vrba-Wetzler cabled to London.)

More information about the camps was learnedwhen some in the east were overrun by the advanc-ing Red Army. In July 1944 Russian troops libera-ted the Majdanek concentration camp near Lublin,Poland. The German administrators had not hadthe time to dismantle the camp and destroy itsrecords, most of which were captured intact by theRussians. Journalists from Allied and neutral coun-tries were invited to view the camp. Reports carriedin Soviet newspapers estimated the number killedat Majdanek at over a million. After a review of thecaptured records, it was realized the Soviet estimatewas much too high. Later estimates ranged between175,000 and 235,000. In mid-September 1944, theFrench ambassador to Moscow, Roger Garreau,

cabled the French Committee of NationalLiberation (FCNL) in Algiers with a report on thenewspaper stories about the camp. He pointed outto the FCNL that of the executions for March 1944at the camp over 6 percent were French nationals.He also observed that the current publicity given�to the enormity of the crimes committed� was notenough. He urged that the committee consider pub-lishing the reports about the camp.46

As Nazi Germany�s military situation continuedto deteriorate during 1944, fears grew in the Alliedand neutral capitals that the Germans would accel-erate the extermination of Jews and others in theremaining camps, or that they would move prison-ers from the various slave labor camps into whatwas left of the Third Reich�s territory. What hadhappened to Hungary�s Jews seemed to set a prece-dent for what might come elsewhere in Europe.There a special SS detachment had arrived andorganized the deportation of Hungary�s Jews toAuschwitz and later marched thousands of otherJews to slave labor factories in the Reich. (SeeSection D of this chapter for a description of theaction against Hungary�s Jews.) In mid-1944, somecountries had begun diplomatic measures to pro-tect their own citizens, Jewish and Gentile, held bythe Germans or residing in Germany as foreignworkers. In other cases, neutral nations were askedby private groups to intervene with Germany tosave the remaining Jews held in Nazi-occupiedEurope.

In May of 1944, the Portuguese charge d�affairesin Vichy cabled Lisbon that during a meeting at theGerman embassy he had been told that orders weresoon to be given to return to France thosePortuguese workers who had been forcibly sent toGermany. At the same time, the Germans told thecharge that a visa for a collective passport for Jewswould be granted in another ten days. How theseplans turned out is not clear from the intercept; noris it certain specifically what group of Jews wasreferred to in the cable.47 In June, the Romanianambassador to Hungary signaled Bucharest thatseveral thousand ethnic Romanians living in north-

ern Transylvania were being rounded up to be sentto Germany and Hungary as forced labor. At least50,000 ethnic Romanians already had been con-scripted into labor battalions throughout Hungary.The ambassador reported that many towns in theregion of Transylvania had been �denuded of popu-lation.� He was going to protest these forced draftsto the German ambassador and the Hungarianprime minister.48 In the summer of 1944, the Irishand Spanish ambassadors in Berlin had brought tothe attention of the German Foreign Ministry theprecarious situation of numerous Jews held in acamp in Vittel, France. Many of the remaining Jewswere from South America and supposedly werebeing held to counter any possible actions againstGerman civilians interned in those countries since1942.49

In mid-October 1944, the Spanish ambassadorto the United States reported that he had met witha committee of American rabbis, who had been rec-ommended by Congressman Sol Bloom (D-NY),the chairman of the House Foreign RelationsCommittee. The rabbis delivered a memorandumthat stated, �Reliable sources indicated thatGerman authorities intended to exterminate allthose who are interned in Concentration Camps.�The rabbis asked that the Spanish governmentintervene with German authorities to respectinternment laws of countries and international law.The Spanish ambassador, Cardenas De Silva, addedhis own comment to Madrid that any action bySpain would bring about a �very favorable atmos-phere for our government and would change publicopinion in this [USA] country.�50 The next week,the Irish ambassador in Washington reported thathe had been asked by Leon Kubotinski, an official ofthe World Jewish Congress, if the Irish governmentcould follow the example of the Swedish diplomat-ic mission and help save some of Hungary�s threat-ened Jews51

In January 1945 the Jewish Agency forPalestine asked the Czech government-in-exile tosend a message to its representative in Stockholmto be relayed to the Soviet ambassador, Madame

Alexandra Kollontay. The message, intercepted bythe British, asked that the Soviets initiate some sur-prise military action to seize the German deathcamps in Poland before the Germans executed thethousands of Jews and �other anti-fascists� stillheld in them.52

By early March 1945, other countries, such asBrazil, France, Turkey, and Italy, had heard rumorsthat Jewish nationals held in the concentration orinternment camps were in danger. In many cases,these governments had been informed that theGermans had separated Jewish prisoners of warfrom the other prisoners. These countries appealedto neutral nations to intervene with theInternational Red Cross for help.53 Reich ForeignMinistry officials responded to these claims by issu-ing a statement that there was �no truth to theclaim� that Jewish prisoners of war are treated dif-ferently than others. Jewish persons, the statementsaid, were separated from other prisoners for thesake of �camp discipline.�54 Right up to the Nazisurrender, fears persisted of a possible last spasmof extermination of Jews held by the Germans. Anumber of neutral countries, including Sweden,Switzerland, and the Vatican, made demarcheswith Germany to not carry out this extreme meas-ure.55 A 17 April 1945 message from the Apostolicdelegate in Lausanne, Switzerland, to the Vatican,reported that Italians held in concentration campsin northern Italy in the late summer of 1944 hadbeen transferred to Auschwitz and other �unascer-tainable destinations.� The report added that theInternational Red Cross had gotten German assur-ance that these transfers had been suspended.56

In mid-February 1945, the Allied armies stoodprepared to cross the last major river obstacles toGermany: the Rhine River in the west and the Oderin the east. On 18 February 1945, the few remainingdiplomatic posts of the Third Reich received anextremely long (19 pages) message that contained astatement from the German foreign ministerJoachim von Ribbentrop. He instructed his diplo-mats to seek out a secret channel to relay the pointsin the address to �important English and American

personalities.� The speech possibly was done onRibbentrop�s own initiative. It was a rationalizationof Nazi Germany�s war against the world. Amongother points, it claimed that, in reality, Germany�swar all along had been a crusade against worldBolshevism. He further claimed that Germany hadliberated many ethnic groups from their oppressorsand that Nazism had a �positive attitude toChristendom.�

As for the effort to exterminate world Jewry,Ribbentrop had this to say:

The question of the Jews is a Germandomestic affair which, if Germanydoesn�t want to fall to Communism,must be solved in Germany. TheJewish Question in other countriesdoes not interest Germany, in fact, inGermany we are even of the view-point that we can cooperate withother countries in the solution of theworld�s Jewish problem.57

B. Jewish Refugees, the Holocaust and theGrowing Strife in Palestine

The history of the Holocaust is notable for theduration and intensity of the resulting refugeeflood. From the earliest days of Nazi rule inGermany in 1933, until the very end in 1945, Jewishrefugees from the Holocaust were an ongoing con-cern for many countries. In some nations, such asFrance, the Jewish refugee presence aggravatedalready tense domestic antipathies towards for-eigners and Jews. This domestic strife led to furtherrestrictions against foreign Jews. This large num-ber of those fleeing Nazi oppression would test theimmigration policies in other countries, such as theUnited States and Britain, whose refusal to eitherincrease or waive quotas on refugees sealed the fateof further thousands of Jews.

In the first years of the Nazi regime, Americanand British cryptology discovered little on therefugee issue. It was not until early 1939 that

American codebreakers began to pick up any reflec-tions of the refugee problem. These hints camemostly from intercepts of messages from Japanesediplomatic legations around the world, but mostlyin Europe, who were reporting to Tokyo on effortsby Jews to leave Germany and annexed Austria.This preponderance of Japanese diplomatic mes-sages as a source for information is an importantpoint. Knowledge on the part of American intelli-gence officials about the plight of Jewish refugeeswas filtered through the biases of Tokyo�s diplo-mats.

In one Japanese message from Washington toTokyo of 17 January 1939, the Japanese ambassa-dor recounted that, in late 1938, PresidentRoosevelt and Secretary of the Interior HaroldIckes had made public statements criticizingGerman treatment of the Jews. The U.S. StateDepartment had followed up with a note includingthe same charges to the German Foreign Ministry.The Japanese ambassador reported that Berlin hadresponded to Ickes� statements and requested thatWashington advise it of one instance in which anAmerican citizen had been mistreated. Berlinadded that if Washington could produce one case inwhich treaty rights had been violated it would settleit. According to the Japanese, in this case,Washington had conceded that no Americans hadbeen maltreated during the period in question. Tothe Japanese ambassador in Berlin, the Americanconcession had suggested that the issue wasresolved.58

Through the first nine months of the war, atleast until June 1940, Allied COMINT revealed thatJapanese steamship lines, notably Nippon YusenKaisha, were some of the prime carriers of Jewishrefugees from European ports to destinations,which, in many cases, were located in the FarEast.59 In one instance in early 1940, the Japaneseshipping lines encountered difficulties fromPortuguese authorities. It seemed that Jewish pas-sengers had received limited visit visas fromLisbon, but upon landing they had stayed instead ofdeparting for other destinations. To fix the prob-

lem, the Portuguese demanded that, from now on,Japanese shipping officials either get permissionfor extended visas or not allow Jewish passengersto leave the ships when they docked.60 These searoutes for refugees ended with the German inva-sion of France and the Low Countries in May 1940.

From the next year, until June 1941, one of theremaining principal avenues of escape for refugeeswas across the Soviet Union to its Pacific ports,principally Vladivostok. Typically, Jewish refugees,mostly Poles and Germans, obtained visas fromJapanese diplomats in the USSR or a nearby coun-try. They then secured transit papers from Sovietauthorities and traveled east along the length of theTrans-Siberian Railroad to the Pacific coast port ofVladivostok. From there the refugees wouldembark to Japan for further transit to ports in theUnited States, Latin America, or to the substantialand established Jewish settlement in Shanghai.From the translations it is not certain how manyJews eventually escaped over the Siberian route.

Some historians suggest that as many as 30,000Jews fled by this route, the majority of whom ulti-mately arrived in Shanghai.61

One of the interesting sidelights of this overt�underground� railroad was the contribution of theJapanese consul in Kaunas, Lithuania, ChioneSugihara. Sugihara was a diplomatic official whoalso doubled as an intelligence officer. He was sta-tioned first in Koeningsberg and later in Kaunas.He issued nearly 2,000 visas to Polish and GermanJews, often against Tokyo�s explicit orders, fromlate 1939 into 1940.62 He accomplished this beforethe consulate was closed after the occupation ofLithuania by the U.S.S.R.63

Another interesting aspect to the refugee phe-nomenon was the increasing number of Jews whoemigrated or fled to the British Mandate ofPalestine during the war. Palestine had been part ofthe Ottoman Empire for centuries. A small Jewish

Japanese consul in Kaunas, Lithuania, ChioneSugihara (Courtesy of the United StatesHolocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM))

Jewish refugees from Transnistria arrive at theAthlit reception camp in Palestine. (Source:Central Zionist Archives via the USHMM)

population had lived in Palestine. In 1917 Britishprime minister Arthur Balfour declared that thegovernment favored the establishment of a Jewishhomeland in Palestine, provided that nothingwould be done to �prejudice� the non-Jewish com-munities already there. After the First World War,the League of Nations made Palestine a Mandateunder British control. For the next two decades,there was a growing antagonism between Jewishimmigrants and settlers and the indigenous Arabpopulation. The British, in their 1939 White Paper,had set a limit of 70,000 Jewish immigrants as aconcession to the local Arab population. However,Arab leaders in the region, and especially inPalestine, complained to London that many moreJews than allowed for by the paper�s limit hadarrived during the war. An intercepted messagefrom the Japanese diplomatic mission in Ankarareported an Arab claim that over 100,000 Jews hadentered Palestine between 1939 and 1943.64

As early as 1942, the Japanese reported addi-tional Arab concerns caused by the formation of theJewish Brigade in the British 8th Army, the estab-lishment of a Jewish police force of some 36,000personnel, and agitation by the communist Jewishlabor organizations in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv.65

Later Japanese reports dated in early 1944 from theJapanese embassy in Ankara stated that an agentwho had recently returned from Palestine notedthat the Jewish underground had been building uparms caches that included machine guns. Thesehad been smuggled in from Egypt or purchasedfrom British or Polish soldiers garrisoned inPalestine. The Jewish underground also had set upsecret factories for manufacturing more arms andammunition. Because of these Jewish efforts, theagent suggested that the British probably would �belenient� when looking into Arab acquisition of armsin order to placate the latter. The report ended withthe observation that there would be large scale �dis-turbances� in the future.66 In February 1944 theSaudi Arabian consul in Jerusalem described agunfight between British police and Jewish terror-ists in Haifa in which twelve policemen were killed.The terrorists also entered a church and murdered

a well-known British scholar. The same consulreported that there were other �incidents� in TelAviv. The Saudi diplomat added that the cause ofthe recent attacks stemmed from a Jewish agencydemands for the abrogation of the White Paper, dueto take effect in May.67

Early in 1944, members of both houses of theUnited States Congress drafted resolutions thatcalled for the establishment of a Jewish state inPalestine and the abrogation of the British WhitePaper. The Arab nations of Egypt, Iraq, and SaudiArabia were opposed to these proposals since theywould open Palestine to virtually unlimited Jewishemigration. Arab diplomats in Washington espe-cially were upset over the attacks on the Arab peo-ple and the American lawmakers� casual dismissalof their rights to the same land. In Februarythe Iraqi minister in Washington reported that heand his Egyptian counterpart had met withUndersecretary of State Edward Stettinius toprotest the proposed resolutions in the House andSenate. Stettinius assured the Arab diplomats thatPresident Roosevelt and Secretary of State CordellHull were committed to leaving the solution of theproblem of Palestine until after the war. Despitethis assurance, the Arab ministers informed theircapitals that they intended to monitor the situa-tion.68

On the other side of the Palestine question, acable from the French ambassador, Henri Bonnet,to Paris in early April 1945, recounted a meetingbetween embassy staff and a Mr. Akzin [sic], a rep-resentative from the Jewish Agency for Palestine.Mr. Akzin was sounding out the position of theFrench regarding Zionist representation at theupcoming San Francisco United NationsConference. He was hoping that the issues of immi-gration and the formation of a Jewish State inPalestine could be settled. The French remindedAkzin that these problems were not included in thepurpose of the conference. Akzin told the Frenchthat the various sponsors of the conference, except

for Great Britain, seemed either not opposed to orin favor of such a representation.69

C. The Vichy Regime and the Jews

The historical experience of the Jews in Francediffered from that of the rest of modern Europe.This difference stemmed from the changes broughtabout by the French Revolution of 1789, whichmade French Jews the first national Jewish popula-tion emancipated from the medieval legal andadministrative strictures of ghetto life. Prior to1789, Jews living in Paris were considered foreign-ers. Elsewhere in France, their status varied: therewere legal restrictions in the east, while some Jewsin some communities in southwest France couldvote in the Estates General. Statutes passed in 1790and 1791 by the Revolutionary government grantedJews full civil rights throughout France.

During the 19th century, Judaism in Franceidentified with the values of the revolution andRepublican France. Many Jews adopted a secular-ized identity � officially members of a distinctreligion, but living with a French cultural and eth-nic identity. However, in the last quarter of thenineteenth century, Jews came under attack froman increasingly polemical conservative wing ofFrench politics, which included the Jews as a targetof their general attacks against the liberal tenden-cies of the Third Republic. The French right, whichcombined a strong nationalism with a radicalsocialism, made anti-Semitism a major part of itsplatform.70 The Dreyfus affair (1894-1906), inwhich a Jewish French Army officer was accusedfalsely of treason and then exonerated, seemed tobe the lightning rod for the forces of anti-Semitismin France. The most powerful of these voices,Charles Maurras and his Action Francaise,emerged in the midst of the drama, and would con-tinue to make anti-Semitism a part of extreme con-servative opinion for many more decades. In theend, though, the supporters of Dreyfus won. Theanti-Semitic storm abated, and soon the worst

aspects of it were forgotten temporarily with thespirit of the union sacree� of the First World War.71

However, by the 1930s the situation in Francehad become again difficult for Jews. A combativeFrench nationalism had emerged in reaction toFrance�s postwar economic and political decline. Ithad, as one of its foundations, a widespread xeno-phobia. Caught in this backlash against foreignerswere Jews of foreign ancestry living in France.Many French Jews could trace their ancestry forgenerations. But another sizable segment of theJewish population, perhaps as many as 75,000 orso, had arrived in France as part of the flood of300,000 immigrants and refugees that lasted dur-ing the postwar period from 1919 until the very eveof the Second World War. Some 55,000 of thesearrived after 1933 as a result of the Nazis takingpower in Germany.72 With a France weakened byits war losses and the Depression, and rent by inter-nal political strife between extremes on the left andright, Jews, especially foreign Jews, would be dou-bly vulnerable if a reactionary, nationalist regimeever came to power. Unfortunately for the Jews inFrance, this occurred after France surrendered inJune 1940. The Third Republic collapsed andMarshal Philippe Petain became chief of state. Theseat of the French government moved to Vichy inthe unoccupied southern part of the country.

Since the beginning of the Second World War,Allied code-breaking agencies had been attackingsuccessfully a number of French codes and ciphers.The new Vichy regime continued to use the fallenThird Republic�s prewar diplomatic and colonialoffice cryptographic systems for its overseas com-munications. Some of the most lucrative sources ofFrench communications were those to Washington,D.C., and capitals in Latin America. These mes-sages were sent via the transatlantic cable that hadterminals in the United States. The retransmissionof these cables required that a copy be turned overto the U.S. cable censors. With so much traffic inhand, French codes were exploited relatively earlyafter the formation of the Vichy regime.73 Americancodebreakers soon found references to the anti-

Jewish laws in Vichy diplomatic and colonial cableand radio traffic.

By the fall of 1940, the first Statutes des Juifswere promulgated by Marshal Philippe Petain�sregime. These laws were designed to remove Jewsfrom public service and various skilled professionssuch as architecture, law, and medicine. Jews alsowere excluded from the press and other media. Therestrictions carried in these statutes would be con-tinuously refined, expanded, and then reissuedover the next two years.

In October 1940 Vichy informed colonialadministrators throughout the French empire tostart registering government employees of Jewishdescent for a later determination whether theywould be retained past a 19 December deadline pre-viously set in the statutes.74 Vichy regulations pro-vided some exemptions to the groups targeted forremoval, mainly for military veterans, among oth-ers. However, Vichy�s requirements for identifyingJews actually were more rigorous than even thoseof their German overseers. As one intercept went,Vichy told its colonial administrators that if certainJews claimed they were not practicing their reli-gion, then the civil servants were to consult birthcertificates or even to scour Jewish cemeteries forproof of ancestry.75

From COMINT sources it is not certain howmany Jews were discharged from various govern-mental positions within France and its overseascolonies. In late October 1942, a messge from theJapanese naval attaché in Vichy reported that,according to SS sources, Laval�s policies were beingresisted by the eighty or so Jews left in the variousgovernment departments. In August 1942 inIndochina, the governor-general, Admiral JeanDecoux, reported that nearly 700 military person-nel stationed throughout the colony had beenreleased from duty under the Vichy exclusion laws.However, this number, besides including Jews, alsocounted members of �secret� societies, such as theMasons, and German members of the French

Foreign Legion.76 However, it does not appear thatany Jews from France�s colonies were returned toFrance.

Free French propaganda targeted the Vichyregime over its treatment of Jews. In early 1942 theVichy French minister in Havana, Cuba, recom-mended to Vichy that it press Havana to deny visasto refugee French Jews arriving in that city. Hereported that a number of these refugee Jews hadbeen contributing to the spread of propaganda hos-tile to the Vichy regime. He noted that Free Frenchrepresentatives in the city were pressuring Jewishrefugees to make critical statements about Vichy.Visas to the United States were so scarce that theFree French officials had insinuated to the refugeesthat the only way to get a visa was to agree to makesuch statements. The Vichy diplomat noted that thecampaign was subtle and referred to the possibleinfluence on the refugees by fellow Jews who had�important financial means.�77 Later, in August1942, the same minister queried Vichy for a currentstatement that contained the whole body of legisla-tion relating the Jews.78

In the summer of 1942, France, under pressurefrom the German occupation authorities, began toround up Jews for shipment to the so-called �reset-tlement sites� in the east. In reality, this was thestart of the dispatch of Jews in France to the deathand labor camps to the east. Vichy�s role in thisevent was notable for its cooperation with theGerman occupation authorities: as German officialswould report, French officials were exemplary intheir roundup. On one occasion, Vichy administra-tors even offered SS General Heydrich to include, inthe roundup, Jews from the unoccupied part ofFrance over which the Germans had little control!79

The Vichy leadership always could find amplerationale for its actions. In late September 1942, theVichy representative to Washington, Henry Haye,received a long cable from Vichy, under the signa-ture of Pierre Laval, who held both offices of theVichy prime minister and foreign minister, whichexplained the government�s actions regarding the

Jews. The message revealed much about the long-standing nationalist French attitude towards for-eign Jews and the supposed influence of them onthe social and political life of France. In it, Lavalclaimed that the war had created an �excessive�percentage of Jews in a �region� of France thatalready had contained a high number of them.These �people without a country� (apatrides) werean element that was �manifestly dangerous� toFrance. Faced with a variety of tribulations, Lavalclaimed that the foreign Jews were especially sus-ceptible to outside propaganda and would be asource of disturbances. The only solution, accord-ing to Laval, was repatriation to Eastern Europe,the �land of their origin.� Laval claimed that this�operation� was not a persecution. He lambastedother countries that dared to criticize France,notably the United States, which had �close[d] theirdoors to Jewish immigration.� 80 [See attachment 6for the translation of the full text of Laval�s state-ment.]

Laval�s September statement added new ration-alizations for Vichy policy that he previously sent to

his ambassadors in Latin America on how torespond to the criticism from that region. In oneearlier message for the Vichy mission to Brazil, hesaid that France could not �permit the prolongationof the stay on its soil of [alien?] Jews whose princi-ple [sic] occupations are black marketing andCommunistic propaganda.� He would go on, �Noneof them works, but each consumes and diminishesby so much the [supplies?], which are indispensa-ble to the French.�81

The Allied codebreakers recorded the inter-national reactions to Vichy�s policy and perform-ance in regard to the Jews. As a result of theroundup, the cable lines and airwaves betweenVichy and foreign capitals, especially Washington,

Roundup of Jews on the boulevard Voltaire in theeleventh arrondissement (district) of Paris.

(Courtesy: Bilbiotheque Historique de la Ville deParis via the USHMM)

Translation of message from Vichy mission inW ashington to Vichy inquiring after status of

visas for foreign Jews living in France(Source: RG 457, HCC, Box 332)

were filled with desperate appeals by Jews in theU.S. and Latin America seeking information aboutrelatives who awaited a decision on their fate whileinterned in French concentration camps at Drancy,Rivesaltes, Casemeuil, Gurs, and other sites. Pleasfor exit visas for the interned Jews came throughthe Vichy mission in Washington, DC, whichrelayed the requests from the consulates in otherAmerican cities, such as New York, Chicago, andSan Francisco.82 In other cases, important individ-ual Americans, such as Congressman SamuelDickstein (D-NY), chairman of the HouseImmigration and Naturalization Committee, per-sonally interceded in appeals for exit visas. Also,influential Jewish organizations, such as the WorldJewish Congress and the Jewish Relief Societyintervened on behalf of Jews stranded in Marseillesand in North Africa.83

Allied COMINT also recorded the internationaltide of protest heaped on France as a result of theroundup of the Jews. The sharpest rebukes werecontained in the reports from French diplomats inLatin America. They itemized for Vichy the manyprotests against the deportation of Jews from themostly Catholic populations of the region. As oneFrench diplomat in Argentina noted, the mostinfluential paper in that country had editorializedthat France, once the fatherland to Saint Louisand Joan of Arc, was now �an anti-Christian coun-try.�84 In a message intercepted by the CanadianExamination Unit, the French ambassador in Brazilasked Vichy for a clarification of charges in theBritish and American press that the French clergyand press have attacked the deportations. �Becauseof the repercussions these two [last] allegations canhave in strongly Catholic countries, I should like tobe sent the true facts of the matter.�85 Other diplo-mats reported how the Western press servicesreported on the arrests and deportations of Jews,and �incidents,� such as the arrest of a school head-master in Lyons who refused to turn over a list ofJewish children of whom he had taken charge.86

In Washington, Ambassador Haye reported on31 October that the Polish ambassador stationed

there had passed along the complaint of the Polishgovernment-in-exile in London about the deporta-tion of Polish Jews and veterans who had fought inthe French army in 1940. The Pole also protested toVichy the recent obligatory mobilization of Polishworkers for work in Germany.87 In a response toHaye�s cables, Vichy dismissed the protests andclaimed that, since there were no diplomatic rela-tions between Vichy and the Polish government-in-exile, there was no need to answer the ambas-sador�s complaints. Vichy did allow Haye to verbal-ly assure the Poles that no Polish workers from theunoccupied zone would be mobilized. The situationof the Polish Jews was not even mentioned in thedispatch.88

Other countries complained to Vichy regardingthe treatment of their nationals by the Vichyauthorities. In one case, the Mexican governmentstrongly objected to the seizure of the property of aJewish Mexican national living in Nice. TheMexican diplomats also objected to the harassmentof this person by French police. The French offeredto appoint a Mexican administrator to oversee theliquidation of the individual�s property. TheMexican ambassador reported that Vichy hadignored earlier protests regarding the treatment ofits citizen. He urged the foreign ministry in MexicoCity to make the strongest statement possible andconsider commercial reprisals against Vichy. TheMexican ambassador also informed his superiorsthat Vichy was seizing the property of Jewish citi-zens of the United States and Turkey, as well asrestricting their activities.89

The Vichy regime would continue to beunmoved by foreign criticism. Marshal Petainappeared to believe that he was acting in the bestinterest of the French state. But he would be chas-tised by no less an authority than the Pope�s repre-sentative. At a late July luncheon at a hotel inVichy, Petain commented to the Apostolic Nuncio,Cardinal Valerio Valeri that he was consoled by thefact that the Pope understood and approved hispolicy on the Jews. Valeri had to correct Petain.According to a report by the Ecuadorian minister to

Vichy that was intercepted by the British, theNuncio told Petain at the luncheon that he was mis-taken about the Pope. The �Holy Father does notapprove of it.�90 Valeri later asked for anothermeeting in which he delivered the Pope�s plea tostop the persecutions. Even the personal protest ofthe Pope to Marshal Philippe Petain, the chief ofstate, stirred �Le Marechal� only to limit the on-going deportations to foreign Jews living in theoccupied zone of France.91 Vichy�s attituderemained fixed. Another intercepted cable of 13September carried the revealing statement that, �Itis a matter of purifying France of the foreign Jews.�The same cable carried another remark attributedto a Vichy official that �nothing would divert theFrench Government from the policy it is followingabout the Jewish question.�92

An emotionally charged case that arose duringthe deportations concerned the fate of about 5,000(maybe as many as 8,000) children of foreign Jewsleft in France as orphans after their parents hadbeen �sent east.� The governments of both theUnited States and Vichy France took up the issue.In late August 1942 the U.S. charge d�affaires,Pinkney Tuck, had approached Laval about theorphaned children. Laval played a cynical gamewith the Americans. His administration leaked anoffer it claimed to have made to the United States:that France would send all of its Jews to America ifWashington would grant them exit visas. This leakwas probably a ploy to embarrass the U.S., for itappears that Laval never intended to allow the chil-dren to leave. He already had turned down an offerby the Dominican Republic to take in many of thechildren.93 He soon released a statement thatFrance would solve this problem in a �humane�manner and not separate the children from theirparents. But France would not stop deporting theforeign Jews. Privately, though, Laval continued toplay with the Americans. He insisted that no fan-fare would accompany the children�s arrival in theU.S. The situation became more confused whenstories were published that claimed that children of

French workers sent to Germany as forced laborwere to go to the United States.94

On 30 October the Vichy ambassador inWashington, Henry Haye, met with Undersecretaryof State Sumner Welles, who assured Haye that theU.S. would not �make one believe� that the childrenbelonged to French workers. Welles added that theState Department publicly would explain that notall of the orphans were Jewish so as to calm thefears of unidentified �groups of Americans� that�too many Jews� were coming into the country.�95

Despite a public statement by Secretary of StateCordell Hull that �negotiations were going alongsatisfactorily,� the French had backed off fromreleasing the children. Ultimately, Quaker reliefworkers managed to get about 350 of the childrenout, but the rest remained in France. Many reasonshave been put forward for Vichy�s clumsy and cyni-cal handling of the issue � the foreign Jewish chil-dren helped meet the German quotas for Jews andprotected French Jews; it made administrativesense not to separate families; or Laval�s desire toavoid further tension with German occupationauthorities.96

With the Allied invasion of French North Africain November 1942, the communications intelli-gence window to the roundup and incarceration offoreign Jews in mainland France closed. Axis covertintelligence agents, located in Spanish-controlledTangier, reported that the Jews, along with com-munists, and Allied national internees in the newlyliberated regions of French North Africa, had beenfreed from the numerous concentration and laborcamps established by Vichy.97 The number of Jewsheld in French detention camps in North Africanumbered about 15,000 out of a population ofaround 295,000.98 The Axis agents also reportedthat the prohibitions against the Jews in govern-mental service and the schools had been lifted.Interestingly, though, the removal of these sanc-tions only occurred months after the Allies had lib-erated French North Africa. The new regime inNorth Africa under Admiral Jean Darlan andGeneral Henri Giraud had refused to abrogate the

Statutes des Juifs immediately after liberation. Oneof their claims was that to remove the laws wouldincite the Arab population. However, Moslems as agroup steadfastly and consistently had refused toparticipate in Vichy�s anti-Jewish program. In factmany of the Moslem elite openly had supported theJews.99

After the Allied invasion of North Africa, Vichy�spropaganda organs continued to crank out a rangeof pieces that emphasized the claim that there wereJewish connections with communist front groupsthat, in turn, were working for the eventualBolshevik takeover of France�s former colonies.Vichy�s propagandists in their effort to discover anyJewish connection with the Free French, also point-ed out the fact that the wife of General GeorgesCatroux, one of General De Gaulle�s principal sub-ordinates, was Jewish.100

An interesting sidelight to the liberation camefrom the intercepts of the messages from theFrench Committee for National Liberation to itsHigh Commissioner in Algiers that indicated thatmany Jews in North Africa had resisted the rein-statement of the provisions of the Cremieux Decree,an 1870 law that conferred French citizenshipspecifically on Jews in Algeria. Many Algerian Jewsfelt that the decree created animosity between themand the Arab population, and �preferred to recovertheir citizenship as did every other group.�101

For the rest of the war, the only hints fromVichy communications as to the fate of Jews in itsterritories came out of Indochina. There, inJanuary 1945, Governor-General Decoux haddecided to drop the various repressive statutesinstituted under the Vichy regime. Among others,the bans against secret societies and the anti-Jewish statutes were repealed. The French admin-istration in Hanoi had claimed that it had institut-ed the laws only because of pressure from Vichy.Now that Vichy had vanished, the colonial adminis-tration saw no need for the strictures. The gover-nor-general�s administration in Hanoi restored for-mer university and lycee professors, employees,

and officials to the positions they held prior to thedecrees. As the colony�s chief political officer notedto a Japanese official, all of this only came �after ithad become obvious that Vichy was virtuallyextinct.�102

As for the Holocaust in France, ultimately90,000 Jews from that country were sent to thecamps in the east. Fewer than 3,000 returned.While Allied COMINT revealed their roundup andtransport to holding camps in France, it did notrecord their ultimate fate in the East.

D. The Destruction of Hungary�s Jews, 1944

If one were to look at a map of Europe in early1944 to see what havoc had been wreaked on itsJewish population, there would have been muchdevastation. One of the few exceptions in this land-scape of death was the Jewish community ofHungary with its approximate 800,000 members.Hungary�s Jewish community could hardly havebeen unaware of what had happened elsewhere inEurope. Information on the fate of Jews elsewherein occupied Europe had been flowing to Budapestfor some time, but had been largely ignored or dis-counted as not being relevant to the situation inHungary.103 Ultimately, Hungarian Jewry sufferedenormous losses after the Nazi exterminationmachinery was turned on them. This happened inthe last year of the war in Europe when the powerof the Nazi regime was falling before Allied militaryassaults from east, south, and west. The reductionof Hungary�s Jews is also remarkable because ithappened in full view of the outside world, mainlybefore Budapest�s community of foreign diplomaticmissions and nongovernmental organizations, suchas the Red Cross, which reported on the initialroundups in the countryside and the finalonslaught in Budapest itself.

That the fury of the Holocaust was visited lateon Hungary�s Jewish population was the resultlargely of that country�s role in the war as a limitedally of Germany. Hungary had aligned itself withNazi Germany for opportunistic reasons. This

alliance allowed Hungary to annex land fromneighboring Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, andRomania. Hungary had long-standing territorialclaims and historic concerns over sizable ethnicMagyar populations against all three countries.Hungary also picked up a sizable ethnic Romanianpopulation when it received Transylvania. Theprice for this cooperation was that Hungary gotinvolved in the battle between Nazi Germany andthe Soviet Union. Within the context of the giganticcampaign on the eastern front, Hungary�s limitedterritorial aims were meaningless; hopelesslyentangled with Berlin�s fate, Budapest had to goalong with the war against Moscow and, ultimately,the Nazi plan for the liquidation of its Jews.

Hungary�s prewar Jewish population was a littleover 400,000. The government had implemented anumber of restrictive measures against its Jewsthrough a series of decrees from 1938 to 1941. Theearly laws applied only to Jews defined by their reli-gion. In August 1941 Hungary�s first law thatdefined Jews in racial terms was adopted. This def-inition applied even to Jews who had been baptizedinto Hungary�s Christian churches, though the lawwas not ironclad. This ruling increased Hungary�sJewish population by about another 100,000.By 1941 Hungary�s Jewish population totaled about800,000. This was nearly double its prewar num-ber. Much of the increase was due to Hungary�s ter-ritorial expansion; lands annexed from its neigh-bors contained many Jews. Other Jews had fled toHungary with the illusion that it would remain ahaven. Still, the full effect of the implementation ofthese anti-Semitic measures was mitigated foralmost three years until early 1944. Much of thisrestraint was due to the critical position that manyJews held in Hungary. To a large extent they con-stituted a large segment of Hungary�s professionaland middle class and were considered indispensa-ble to its economy.104

The Nazi leadership was never pleased withHungary�s unenthusiastic prosecution of the warand of the �Jewish Question.� Even as early asOctober 1943, Japanese diplomats reported that

Hungary might �follow in Italy�s footsteps.�Germany, they reported, was unhappy withHungary and convinced that Premier Milkos Kallaywas backed by a �Jewish financial clique.�105 Thistolerance appeared to Berlin as just another exam-ple of Budapest�s overall lukewarm participation inthe war and implementation of German racial poli-cies.106 So, in mid-March 1944 Hitler personallypresented the Hungarian regent and dictator,Admiral Miklos Horthy, with the choice of Germanmilitary occupation or the formation of a German-approved government dominated by Hungariansfriendly to Germany. The new prime minister (andforeign minister) was Dome Sztojay, the formerHungarian minister to Berlin. A number of Germanofficials moved into Hungary and directed thatcountry�s military, economic, and security activi-ties. Horthy agreed to form a new government on22 March.

A German SondereinsatzKommando (a specialtask force) was formed in Germany under AdolphEichmann to organize the roundup and destructionof the Hungarian Jews. Among the first efforts bythe Germans and their Hungarian allies was theenforcement of more stringent economic measuresagainst Jewish businesses and investments. Inearly April, Japanese diplomats in Budapest noti-fied Tokyo of these new measures.107 Three monthslater they noted that by June all of the stock held byJews in Hungary�s mining and heavy industrialfirms had been transferred to the HermannGoering Werke. The Japanese also reported thatthe massive deportations had been efficient andestimated that some 200,000 Jews were on theirway to Poland. Already, they noted, this action wasbeing �praised� as reducing Jewish influencein Hungary.108 Regarding the deportation, aHungarian diplomatic dispatch to Ankara, Turkey,from 12 June contained the curious statement thatHungarian Jews were being sent to Germany towork, and that, because �Jews are willing to go to astrange place to work if not cut off from their fami-lies, the members of families are sent with them.�The Hungarian officials in Turkey were assuredthat the conditions for the Jews in Germany were

�satisfactory.�109 Between the middle of May to themiddle of July, the first massive deportation ofJews by the SS task force was completed.

Not all Hungarians approved of the new gov-ernment or the deportations. In April someHungarian diplomats in Finland, Switzerland,Portugal, Spain, and Sweden refused to recognizethe newly installed, German-supported govern-ment. As a result of this opposition, some of thesediplomats were removed from their positions orstripped of Hungarian citizenship. In another case,during the roundup of Jews in June, the Hungarianminister to Switzerland sent a message to BaronApor, the Hungarian representative to the Vatican,begging him to publicize the danger to the Jews.110

Presumably, Baron Apor was to alert some elementwithin the Papacy to the crisis in Hungary.

An ancillary issue that arose during the firstoperations by the SS was the status of foreign Jewsliving in Hungary. During the summer deporta-tions, the diplomatic missions of Vichy France,Romania, and Switzerland were ordered by theHungarian government to facilitate the departureof their nations� Jews from the country.111 In thefall, more countries would intervene on the behalfof their Jewish nationals trapped in Hungary andthreatened by the Nazi dragnets.

In late July there was a lull in the deportations.After the failed attempt on Hitler�s life, theGermans backed off from pressing Horthy�s regimeto continue further, large-scale deportations.Smaller groups continued to be deported by train.At least one German police message decodedby GC&CS revealed that one trainload of 1,296Jews from the town of Sarvar in western Hungary

Hungarian Jews being rounded up in Budapest (Courtesy: USHMM)

had departed for Auschwitz on August 4.112 Inlate August Horthy refused Eichmann�s request torestart the deportations. Himmler orderedEichmann to leave Budapest. During this time,some foreign missions and nongovernment organi-zations began modest rescue efforts of the remain-ing Hungarian Jews. For example, theInternational Red Cross (IRC) was working on anagreement with so-called �competent� Germans toreroute 600 Hungarian Jews originally destined tobe transferred to Bergen-Belsen on 30 June. TheIRC was planning to move these Jews intoSwitzerland. From there they would travel throughFrance to arrive in Spain.113 This latter messageprobably referred to a train with 1,684 Jews aboardwho had paid a ransom to flee Hungary. A memberof the Budapest Jewish Refugee Committee, RezsoKastner, had arranged with local SS officials for thistrain to be part of a trade of a �Jews for trucks� deal.On 30 June, Eichmann, angry over the proposedplan, ordered the train diverted to Bergen-Belsen.

Later that month, Swiss diplomats were arrang-ing a transfer of Jewish children to hospitals inSwitzerland and Sweden. In late September, Swissdiplomats in Budapest reported that the Germanshad layered on various conditions for the rescue ofthese Jewish children. These included the stipula-tion that the first train out of Budapest containedonly �Aryan� children (possibly a reference to bap-tized Jews). The Jewish children were to be addedto a group of refugees slated for Palestine. (It ispossible that the Swiss originally intended tosend these children to Tangier, but that the planswere changed. Instead, they were to go toSwitzerland.114) However, the Nazis and Hungarianauthorities stipulated that the children could notleave until a general deportation of Jews fromBudapest to the Hungarian provinces had begun.The Swiss diplomats said they could not agree tothis last condition. However, on 12 October, despitethe holdup of the train with the Jewish children, theSwiss recommended to Bern that the train with theChristian children, of whom 40 percent were con-verts, be sent. �We recommend saving as manychildren as possible,� the diplomats informed

Bern.115 However, from the limited COMINT it isunknown if this particular rescue initiative was suc-cessful.

In September Hungarian authorities relaxedsome restrictions on the Jews living in Budapest. Atthe same time, some Hungarian politicians anddiplomats began secret surrender negotiations withthe Allies. German intelligence knew about thesemaneuvers both from sympathizers within theHorthy regime and their own intercepts ofHungarian diplomatic messages that containedsurrender overtures to the Allies.116 In easternHungary, the military situation for the Axis hadturned critical. In early October the Red Army hadcrashed into southern Hungary and was only a hun-dred miles from the city. The Germans movedswiftly to retrieve the situation, and on 15 October asudden coup spearheaded by a commando teamcommanded by the SS Sonderkommando�s OberstUrbannfuhrer Otto Skorzeny toppled Horthy�sregency. The OSS reported that German officialsplanned to remove all Hungarian national gold,estimated at some 30 million Reichmarks, to theReichsbank branch in Dresden.117

Meanwhile, the Red Army�s advance intoPoland forced the SS to close the camp complex atAuschwitz. The Germans were in need of slavelabor for the underground plants producing jet air-craft and the various V-missiles. A decision wasmade to use Hungary�s remaining Jews in theseand other assembly plants.118 Eichmann returnedto Budapest on 17 October to oversee the newdeportations. With rail transport unreliable andscarce because of Allied air attacks and military pri-orities, the only way to get these Jews to Germanywas by forced march across central Europe�sautumn and winter landscape. The Hungarian min-ister of interior announced that Jews would be�mercilessly� treated. The Portuguese reported thatall Jewish homes had been closed and thatBudapest was �still in a state of siege.�119 The situa-tion ameliorated by the 21st when exemptions tothe deportation decrees were allowed to Jews who

had married Aryans or had received the protectionof foreign legations.120

There were few illusions among outsideobservers as to what would happen to these Jews.On 24 October the Portuguese minister to Budapestreported to Lisbon that 60,000 Jews, men andwomen, were going to be deported. He added that14,000 had already left for Vienna, Austria, in aforced march of twenty kilometers a day with �min-imum� rations. �It is evident,� he reported, �that thegreat majority will die even before crossing thefrontier.�121 In the days to come, the Portugueselegation�s messages would be one of the principalsources of communications intelligence about theHungarian Holocaust.

In October the foreign delegations bandedtogether to try to save as many Jews as possible.They had already done this once before in the sum-mer, but the forced exodus of the remaining Jewsunder impossible conditions, and a new inhos-pitable Hungarian regime, was a spur to furtheraction. Other countries, such as Mexico, consideredgranting visas for Jews to escape.122 One of themajor problems for the diplomats was the questionof recognition of the puppet regime under FerencSzalasi. Szalasi, a cashiered army officer, who pre-viously had led the Arrow Cross, had replacedHorthy after the German coup. As the Portugueseminister reported, it was known that Horthy hadbeen forced to sign a decree renouncing plans foran armistice with the Allies. Most of the foreigndelegations were uncertain what to do. TheSwedish diplomatic mission was reluctant toaccommodate Szalasi. For some time it had beenhanding out numerous �protective passports� toHungarian Jews. Raoul Wallenberg, the third sec-retary of the Swedish delegation and son of theSwedish banking family, was the central figurehanding out the passports, arranging for food sup-plies, and interceding on behalf of detainees.123 ThePapal Nuncio to Budapest decided, on his own, torecognize Szalasi, because of �the great interests ofthe Catholic Church� in Hungary. He also was con-cerned about his Jewish �protégés�who would be

the first victims of the eventual rupture in rela-tions.�124 According to Portuguese diplomats in theVatican, that country had not recognized the Szalasiregime, though papal representatives were hopingthat �events will take it upon themselves to resolvethis contradictory situation before it becomes nec-essary to make its [Vatican] attitude clearer andmore coherent.�125 The other delegations, however,were awaiting instructions from their capitals.126

The actions by Raoul Wallenberg have earnedhim a justly deserved high regard in the annals ofthe rescue of victims of the Holocaust. The Alliescould not exploit high-level Swedish diplomaticmessages that would have contained informationabout conditions in Budapest and informationabout Wallenberg�s rescue efforts.127 The only refer-ence to Wallenberg in Allied SIGINT translationsappears in an intercepted Spanish diplomatic mes-sage from Washington to Madrid that referred tohis appointment to Budapest.128 Diplomatic mes-sages from other delegations in Budapest refer to

Raoul Wallenberg(Courtesy: USHMM)

unnamed Swedish representatives attending meet-ings by the neutral diplomats as the latter tried tocoordinate a rescue policy. It is likely that someor all the reported comments at these meetingsmade by the unnamed Swedish delegates(s) can beattributed to Wallenberg.129

However, the foreign delegations saw much oftheir work defeated when the German andHungarian security forces arrested Jews who heldthese protective passports. As the Portuguesereported, the Germans did not respect the pass-ports because, in their view, the Jews had not sur-rendered Hungarian citizenship when they receivedthe papers. The Portuguese ambassador somberlyinformed Lisbon that he and the Swedish ministerwere �equally incapable at this moment of avertingthe impending tragedy.�130 Furthermore, by mid-November 1944, the Hungarian governmentplanned to abolish the extraterritoriality of the for-eign legations in Budapest. It claimed that it couldno longer protect the diplomats� premises. In prac-tical terms, any effort by a third country to try tosave Jews would have to be conducted betweenBerlin and its foreign ministry.131

Still, some diplomats continued to press reliefefforts. In Berlin, the Portuguese ambassador, act-ing under instructions from Premier AntonioSalazar, took the matter to the German ForeignOffice State Secretary Adolf von Steengracht.Steengracht told the ambassador that Germany orHungary would not admit that any Jews holdingforeign passports or protection cards would receiveprotection from the deportations. The Germanwent on to state that the situation for Hungary�sJews was similar to that experienced earlier byGermany�s Jews. Either they leave the country orthey remain subject to the laws set for the Jews.Steengracht went on that Germany would notassume responsibility for Hungarian actions. Hedenied the ambassador�s claim that German con-trolled Hungary. He ended the meeting by statingthat Germany would not intervene in the matter.132

By late November, the Szalasi regime, in orderto organize and facilitate the final deportation,established five categories of Jews: (1) Jews withprotective passes were to be concentrated in certainhouses and they would be approved to leave pend-ing permission from Berlin to transit Germany;(2) so-called �borrowed Jews� (Leih Juden); whowere to be handed over to Germany for labor serv-ice; (3) remaining Jews � children, elderly, preg-nant women � were to be put in a ghetto; (4) clergyand persons with special military or other honorswere to be separated, but not in a ghetto; and(5) Jews from neutral nations who were to leave by1 December.133

The conditions for the Jews who remained inBudapest remained hard and dangerous. Left to thedepredations of the Germans and the Arrow Cross,another 10,000 would die. Some of those whoreceived protective passports would reach safety inSwitzerland and other neutral countries. But bywar�s end, Hungarian Jewry had been largelydestroyed. A German diplomatic message of 30December from Edmund Veesenmayer, the mainNazi official in Hungary, reviewed the results ofEichmann�s special task force. A total of 493,000Jews had been deported from Hungary. Of these,some 440,000 had been shipped out. Another42,000 had been sent to build fortifications or workin munitions plants. In the Ghetto in Budapest,about another 100,000 remained, mostly �old men,women as well as Jewish children.�134

E. Japan and the Jews in the Far East

During the war years, the Jewish communitiesin the Far East living under the Japanese occupa-tion - principally the 30,000 in Shanghai, but alsosmall communities in other Chinese cities andthroughout the Netherlands East Indies andPhilippines � lived under an administrative policythat was noteworthy for its generally neutral atti-tude. (Another group lived in French Indo-China,but they were subject to Vichy�s anti-Jewish lawsand suffered removal from government positionsand had prohibitions placed on their activities. See

Section D.) Although a small number of Jews suf-fered maltreatment at the hands of individualJapanese officials, few were imprisoned or restrict-ed because of their identity. In these latter cases,the Jews were singled out because they were state-less persons, having been stripped of their Polish orGerman citizenship by Nazi policy, and necessarilybecause they were Jews. Overall Japanese policyand actions towards Jews as a group was one thatcould be characterized as studied even-handedness.The Japanese did not single out the Jews for specialattention or restrictions because of their �ethnic� orreligious uniqueness. On the other hand, the Jewsshared equally in the suspicion that the Japaneseheld for all neutral and non-Japanese nationals liv-ing within the Greater East Asian Co-ProsperitySphere.

The Japanese view of the Jews probably grewout of the complicated mixture of racism, national-ism, and fear of foreign conspiracy and secret con-trol of international events that dominatedJapanese national attitudes towards all foreigners,especially those living in western countries.135

Significant anti-Semitism first appeared in Japanafter World War I and was probably part of theextremist, anticommunist reaction against theBolshevik Revolution that strongly emphasized theJewish �nature� of the revolution, its ideology, andits leaders. With the signing of the German-Japanese Anti-COMINTERN Pact in 1936 and theTripartite Treaty of September 1940, anti-Semitismgained a more formal footing in some of Tokyo�sruling circles. Meanwhile, the Japanese public wasexposed to a campaign of defamation that created apopular image known as the Yudayaka, or the�Jewish peril.�136

Still, attitudes among individual Japanesediplomats and politicians varied greatly towardsthe Jews and the attendant myths about them likethat of Jewish worldwide political and economicinfluence. For example, in October and November1937, Japanese diplomats in Paris reported toTokyo that part of the West�s opposition to Japan�sinvasion of China came from �English, American,

and French Jewish plutocrats.� These bankers wereintent on supplying China with arms, and were will-ing to sustain this support �in a long struggle.�137

An earlier Japanese diplomatic message from Parishad reported that the Jews were also making use oflocal newspapers to stir up opposition to Japan.This message also mentioned that a Japanesenational in Paris had deplored the change that hadoccurred since the �days of the Russo-JapaneseWar when the Jewish financial clique was trying tohelp Japan in retaliation against Russia.�138

On the other hand, in 1939 the Japaneseambassador to Berlin, Baron Oshima Hiroshi,reminded Tokyo of Japan�s debt to certain Jewswho had helped it during the war with Russia in1905. On 16 January 1939, he cabled Tokyo aboutone Jew, unnamed, who had fled Nazi Germany forBritain and was in dire personal straits. Oshimaadmitted that there was little that Tokyo could dofor this man. However, Oshima noted that the per-son performed valuable intelligence work for Japanduring the 1905 war by notifying it of the sailing ofthe Czar�s Baltic Fleet, and that his steamships(presumably this individual owned a shipping line)had been used to gather intelligence from Russianports. Oshima suggested that this individual shouldbe given some sort of token of Tokyo�s gratitude.139

In another similar case that same month, Tokyo�sambassador to Washington, Kensuku Horinouchi,went out of his way to assure an American acquain-tance that a German Jew, Kurb Singer, a professorof economics teaching at a university in Tokyo, hadnot been removed from his position because he wasa Jew. The ambassador insisted that Jews were notdiscriminated against in Japan. Horinouchi sus-pected that the professor had been let go for someother reason and that he was cabling Tokyo to findout what had happened.140

These few examples illustrate the difficult prob-lem of attempting to generalize the variety of opin-ions held by Japanese diplomats and other officialstowards the Jews. The majority of the Japanesepolitical, diplomatic, and military leadership prob-ably did not embrace the philosophical, theological,

racial, or pseudo-scientific bases that underpinnedthe Western, and primarily European, versions ofanti-Semitism. On the other hand, many Japaneseofficials appear to have been impressed enough bythe claims of Jewish worldwide political and eco-nomic influence to try to use it to Japan�s advan-tage. Based on Western signals intelligence sources,in this case almost exclusively Tokyo�s diplomaticmessage traffic, the Japanese attitude towardsworld Jewry was revealed in further detail as a sub-tle, complex, and contradictory structure that com-bined a suspicion of everything foreign with a prag-matic, opportunistic effort to exploit a �Jewishcard� in relations with Western countries, especial-ly the United States.

In the late 1930s, the Japanese were examiningvarious political and economic tactics by which toexert some leverage on American leaders regardingproblems such as Pacific-wide security arrange-ments, trade relations, and the ongoing war withChina. In late 1939, for example, Japanese diplo-mats in Washington had urged Tokyo to establishguidelines for the Imperial Army that would avoidor minimize damage to American economic inter-ests in China.141 Tokyo�s politicians suggestedanother approach to take with Washington. Theplan was to organize a liaison effort with AmericanChristian missionaries in China so as to removethat source of friction with Washington.142

Along the economic front, Japanese officials inoccupied China and the puppet regime inManchukuo had tried various measures to lure for-eign investment capital from the U.S. so as to easerelations between Tokyo and Washington. Onetack, revealed by intercepted messages, was to tiethe investments to a policy of eased immigration forEuropean Jews to Shanghai.143 In late 1939 to early1940, a series of intercepted Japanese diplomaticmessages revealed that a private Japanese citizenwith quasi-official connections to Tokyo and aprominent Jewish manufacturer from New Yorkhad developed a similar plan that included a sub-sidy for Jewish immigrants to Shanghai. However,both plans went nowhere as they ran aground on

the reefs of heightened mutual suspicion betweenTokyo and Washington.144

The Japanese also were interested in exploitingthe possibilities offered by individual Jews withwhom they believed held a certain influence ininternational affairs. One such person was SirVictor Sassoon, an investment banker and leadingcitizen of the long-standing Sephardic Jewish com-munity in Shanghai. (Jews from the IberianPeninsula originally were referred to as SephardicJews. Later, the term included all Jews from NorthAfrica or the Middle East. In the late 19th century,a large number of Sephardic Jews from Iraq hadimmigrated to Shanghai and established the com-munity there.) In 1939 Sassoon traveled to theUnited States on a business trip. Translations ofintercepted Japanese diplomatic messages revealedthat Tokyo had alerted its diplomats to watchSassoon at his every stop, record what he said, andwith whom he met. In fact, in New York City, anindividual, termed a �secret agent,� made a covertcontact with Sassoon�s private secretary to deter-mine the businessman�s purpose for the trip. Itturns out this �agent� was a United Press corre-spondent who told the Japanese that Sassoon wasstaying at the Ritz Towers for about a month.Apparently the banker was looking into building amanufacturing facility in New Jersey.145 On hisreturn trip to Shanghai, Japanese diplomats inHonolulu reported Sassoon�s comments at a pressconference there regarding the situation in China.

After the start of the war in the Pacific and withthe resulting closer workings with the other Axispowers, the Japanese were pressured by theGermans to do something about the Jewishcommunities under their control � principallyShanghai. The Japanese were aware that Berlin�scancellation of German citizenship of all Jews whohad left Germany that affected several thousandJews in Shanghai. And in May 1942, an intercept ofa message from the Japanese embassy in Berlinrevealed that Alfred Rosenberg, Nazism�s �philoso-pher� and Minister to the Occupied EasternTerritories, had urged the Japanese to do some-

thing about the Jews living in their territoriesbefore they became a �problem.� He was particular-ly anxious to limit their free travel through the restof southern Asia.146

Yet, the Japanese refused to go along with theGerman demands. In late January 1942, even as theGerman authorities met at Wannsee to finalize themechanisms for the Holocaust, Tokyo�s policy was,as some of their diplomats said, �to go easy in ourpolicy towards the Jews.�147 In mid-March 1942,the Japanese policy towards the Jews was set out ina message broadcast from Tokyo to all diplomaticstations in the Far East. The message declared thatthe fundamental policy towards Jews, as set out ina Japanese Diet declaration in 1938, would be onlypartly modified to account for the Axis alliance.Jews would still be considered as any other group offoreigners, although the distinction of �Jewishness�would be based on race and culture. But this dis-tinction applied only to stateless refugees � which

meant German and Polish Jews. Any expulsion ofJews from Japanese-controlled territory was con-sidered contrary to the stated Japanese nationalpolicy of the Common Brotherhood of Mankind(Hakko Ichiu � literally �8 roofs, 1 house�).Therefore, Tokyo�s official policy was this: Jewsholding citizenship of any country would be accord-ed treatment comparable to citizens of that country.Jews without citizenship would be consideredstateless, in the same category as White Russianémigrés. This group of Jews would be under sur-veillance because of their �racial characteristics.�Another category of Jews, those who could be con-sidered �useful� to Japan because of their politicalor economic influence, would receive the sametreatment that they received prior to the war.148

For the duration of the war, the Japanese heldto this policy in the lands that they occupied. Asidefrom some isolated incidents of harassment byindividual Japanese occupation functionaries and a

A row of shops owned by Jewish refugees on Seward Road in Shanghai(Courtesy: USHMM from YIVO Institute for Jewish Research)

small number of Jews who were interned in deten-tion camps in Malaysia and the Netherlands EastIndies, the Japanese treated the Jews no different-ly than other neutral or national groups.149 In thePhilippines, the Japanese military occupationadministration issued a general warning to Jewsbelieved to have been involved in black marketoperations, price manipulation, and espionage. AGerman report from its embassy in Tokyo notedthat the Japanese threatened drastic actionsagainst anyone involved in these activities, �irre-spective of the nationality of the persons con-cerned.�150

True, Jews in Shanghai were legally circum-scribed in their daily activities. Yet these restric-tions were the same the Japanese had ordered forall neutral nationals.151 In French Indochina, theJapanese requested that the French institute simi-lar restrictions of Jews and citizens of neutral coun-tries who held anti-Axis opinions. They also askedFrench authorities to keep Jews and neutrals undersurveillance and that the Vichy colonial regimelimit any influx of �such people� into Indochina.152

Japanese concerns about Jewish attitudes towardsthem (and the Axis in general) grew more anxious,especially as the course of the war turned againstTokyo.153 Overall, though, the Japanese remainedscrupulously correct in their treatment of the Jews.

Interestingly, the Japanese official attitude wastested in mid-1944. In May, Baron Hirose Oshima,the Japanese ambassador to Berlin, reported toTokyo that he had been invited by the GermanForeign Office to participate in a forum sponsoredby the international anti-Jewish front to be held inJune or July in Krakow, Poland. The theme of theforum was �The Role of the Jew in ContemporaryWorld Politics.� Participants would include schol-ars of the �Jewish question� such as ethnologists,historians, economists, and others. The Germanswere anxious to secure the attendance of represen-tatives from neutral countries in order to �under-score the international character of the meeting.�154

Oshima reported that a number of high-rankingindividuals from occupied Europe were going toparticipate in the forum. These included PremierTuka of Slovakia, a General Bonnard from France,the interior minister of Hungary, and the GrandMufti of Jerusalem.155 The Baron cautioned Tokyoabout participating in this forum. He mentionedthat Japan�s current racial policy precluded it. �TheGermans do not consider the Jewish question asone related to the human race, but the proposi-tion�is not held generally.� The ambassador addedthat the Allies would make much propaganda fromJapan�s participation. Yet he mentioned that the�Jewish question� was going to play a greater role inEuropean politics. Also, for purposes of solidaritywith the Axis, Japan should attend as an observ-er.156 Tokyo agreed with Oshima�s reasoning andtold him to do as he had suggested. However,because of the Allied invasion in Normandy, theconference was postponed until the fall of 1944.This conference never convened.157

During the war, the biggest problem facing theJewish communities in the Far East was the con-stant shortage of supplies and money for the reliefof the tides of refugees that had arrived at the vari-ous cities since 1939. Throughout the war, Japaneseofficials in Chinese cities were reminded to allowJewish relief organizations to operate and thatTokyo�s officials were to cooperate with the agen-cies in their efforts. They were to cooperate even ifsuspicious of their �direction and leaderships.�158

Interestingly, in September 1944 Swiss diplomatsin Shanghai reported that the Japanese were reluc-tant to allow the International Red Cross to inter-vene and help the Jews in the city. The Swiss addedthat the Japanese claimed that Jewish organiza-tions were adequately helping the refugees. TheSwiss representative finally noted that he hadrefrained from passing along individual complaintsfrom the refugees about mistreatment by certain[Japanese] officials since it might jeopardize hiswork with prisoners of war and interned civil-ians.159

This relief work was especially difficult inShanghai because of the nearly 20,000 refugeeJews who had arrived at the city during the previ-ous few years. Allied intercept of Swiss, VichyFrench, and Japanese diplomatic messages fromthat city offered glimpses into the various efforts toget funding from donations and remittances fromJewish relief agencies, primarily those in theUnited States.160 For example, from late 1943 tolate 1944, the stateless Polish population in thatcity, including many Jews, was in dire straits. Boththe Polish government-in-exile and Vichy France �many Poles were living in the French Concession �provided relief funds for various aid groups andindividuals in Shanghai.161

A number of Jews, maybe as many as 15,000,and made up probably of a large number of state-less persons, were living in a restricted area inShanghai already heavily damaged by the fightingbetween Japanese and Chinese forces in 1937. Inlate July 1945, during several American 14th AirForce bombing attacks on the city, stray bombs hadhit this section killing some 30 inhabitants andinjuring another 300. Because of the damage, theJapanese allowed many of these Jews to relocate toother sections of the city. They also allowed theAmerican Joint Relief Committee to extend warrelief funds to those affected by the bombing. 162

By the end of the war, the Japanese attemptedto press a propaganda theme that pointedly con-trasted their treatment of the Jews in Asia to that ofthe Nazis in Europe. Some of Tokyo�s diplomatsand other government officials seemed to believethat this distinction would gain them influenceamong Jews around the world. Following this lineof reasoning, then, these Japanese officials believedthat Jews in the United States and Great Britainwould influence government policy favorablytowards Japan.163 However, the Japanese consul-general in Harbin informed Tokyo on 6 March 1945that the Jews in his region looked upon theimpending defeat of the Germans as �divine pun-ishment,� and believed that the Japanese had no

hope of victory.164 The idea that the Japanese couldpersuade Jews from around the world, based ontheir fair treatment of the latter, to influence Alliedpolicy, comes full circle to the prewar belief of theJapanese about Jewish influence, which was asmistaken in 1945 as it had been in 1939.

For whatever reasons, it was true that theJapanese had treated the Jews in their territoriesequitably, but Tokyo had an entire hemisphere ofatrocities and war crimes for which it had toanswer.

F. Nazi Gold: National and Personal AssetsLooted by Nazis and Placed in Swiss Banks,1943 - 1945

The expression �Nazi Gold� has become a popu-lar, shorthand reference that covers a number ofillicit wartime economic activities carried out byNazi Germany in collusion with neutral countrieslike Sweden, Portugal, Spain, and, most important-ly, Switzerland. These activities included the expro-priation of personal wealth from Jews by theNazis; the seizure of national gold holdings bythe Germans; its processing and shipment toSwitzerland as payment for purchases of war mate-rial from other neutrals; and the exchange ofGerman Reichmarks into more acceptable curren-cies such as Swedish kroner or Swiss francs. It alsorefers to the wartime activities by private and pub-lic Swiss banks, notably the Swiss National Bank inBern, which purchased the German gold, as well asthe postwar expropriation of the assets from dor-mant accounts of Holocaust victims by these banksand other financial institutions.

In the fifty years after the end of World War II,a number of separate efforts in Europe and theUnited States coalesced and refocused attention onthe issue of settling the claims of Holocaust victimswhose private assets were stolen by the Nazis orexpropriated by Swiss financial corporations. Whilethis aspect of the issue was prominent in the dailynews during the mid to late 1990s, the related prob-lem of national gold looted by the Nazis and trans-

ferred to Swiss banks resurfaced, as well. In 1997the National Security Agency released to theNational Archives over 300 Swiss diplomatic trans-lations dealing with the Allied-Swiss negotiationsover this issue that produced the WashingtonAccord of May 1946. These translations were usedin the U.S. government�s report U.S. and AlliedEfforts to Recover and Restore Gold and OtherAssets Stolen or Hidden by Germany DuringWorld War II � Preliminary Study.165 However,there also was some wartime cryptologic intelli-gence that related to the Nazi looting. This sectionwill discuss briefly that wartime information. Thoseinterested in the postwar negotiations between theAllied Committee and Switzerland should refer tothe U.S. government study cited above, pages 63-88.

From the beginning of the war, Great Britainwas aware of the importance of the economic,industrial, and financial underpinnings of the Naziwar machine. Germany could benefit from trade instrategic raw materials such as chrome fromTurkey, wolfram (tungsten) from Spain, and ironore from Sweden. Germany also purchased indus-trial products from Sweden and Switzerland. It wasthe potential industrial and financial support thatSwitzerland could provide to Germany that mostconcerned Great Britain and, later, the UnitedStates. Switzerland�s industries could produce warmaterial from finished steel to actual militaryequipment such as optics, ammunition, and guns.In the financial sphere, the Swiss banking structurecould facilitate currency exchanges, gold transac-tions, international fund transfers, asset liquida-tion, and the formation of front corporations toacquire restricted raw material and other contra-band.

To manage the war on the economic front, theBritish formed the Ministry of Economic Warfarein 1939. The United States established the Board ofEconomic Warfare in December 1941 that replacedthe Economic Defense Board. The Allies also madea number of administrative actions and declara-tions that expanded the boundaries of economic

restrictions against the Axis. Beginning in April1940, President Roosevelt issued Executive Order8389 that froze Norwegian and Danish assets in theUnited States. Many European country�s assets,except for those of the United Kingdom, wereincluded in this order. This was followed by decla-rations against trade by hostile firms and individu-als, and transfers of property in occupied countries.On 22 February 1944, the United States declaredthat it would not recognize the transfer of gold bythe Axis. Project Safehaven, established in the latesummer of 1944, was the Allies� major effort to cur-tail all Axis economic, financial, commercial activi-ty outside occupied territories during the war. Italso was charged with ensuring that German assetswould be available for reparations, and that lootedproperties would be returned to its rightful owners.Safehaven also was meant to prevent the Nazisfrom accumulating funds to finance any postwarresurgence. Included in these many aims weremore detailed instructions to restrict the flow ofcapital and gold from Germany for the purchase ofwar material.166 Despite this and similar efforts byGreat Britain, it is estimated that Nazi Germanystill confiscated some 579 million dollars in goldfrom eleven countries and that about 300 milliondollars� worth had gone to Swiss banks (figures in1945 dollars).167

It should be noted that Allied concern with neu-tral trade in war-related material with the Axis wasnot restricted solely to Switzerland. Other neutrals,such as Spain, Portugal, Turkey, and Sweden alsowere pressured during the war to cease favorablecurrency trading and the export of raw materialsand manufactured items that the German warmachine could use.168 In the case of Sweden,Japanese diplomats reported in late March 1945that Stockholm had protested to Washington aboutthe February announcement of an American so-called �blacklist� that included about 550 Swedishfirms accused of trading with the Axis. The UnitedStates government declared that it would prohibitany trade with any of these firms, or any other firmsthat traded with those on the list. According to theJapanese diplomats, the Swedish minister of

Commerce had detailed the discovery and crack-down on Swedish firms that were involved in thetransfer of German capital. By mid-March, theJapanese reported that the Americans had softenedtheir stance on Swedish trade.169

Most of the communications supporting sub-stantive trade and financial negotiations and agree-ments between Berlin and Bern, and otherEuropean neutral capitals, were done in ways thatwere generally inaccessible to Allied communica-tions monitoring: cables, telephones, couriers, ordirect talks. What signals intelligence had beenobtained about German-Swiss economic activitycame from Allied intercept of Axis and neutraldiplomatic and commercial radio traffic. Oneprominent source about these talks and transac-tions was the communications of the ubiquitousJapanese diplomats, in this case, the Japanese min-ister in Bern, Kase Shunichi. The Japanese had avested interest in the commercial and economictalks between the Germans and Swiss because they,too, were affected directly by Allied efforts to curtailAxis economic activity. The Japanese purchasedwar material in neutral and Axis-dominatedEurope. Japan often paid for its purchases in goldor used Swiss francs.170 So when the German andSwiss representatives met to discuss trading activi-ty, payment, and Nazi accounts, the Japanese tookan interest in the outcome and reported what theylearned to Tokyo.

Another SIGINT source was the intercept of themessages of the German Reichsbank�s foreigntransactions by the monitoring stations of theGC&CS and RSS. Their take was turned over to asmall effort within GC&CS mounted against com-mercial traffic that had been started in 1938. Withthe beginning of the war, this section significantlyexpanded and subsequently settled in workingspaces near the GC&CS diplomatic effort inLondon. Surprisingly, most of the effort was aimedat commercial message traffic either sent in theclear or that used publicly available commercialcodes such as the Bentley system. In the case of theReichsbank, the messages were transmitted in the

Peterson Code, another popular and publicly avail-able commercial code.171

A third source of information was the transla-tions of the diplomatic and commercial dispatchesprovided to the OSS in Bern � the previously men-tioned Boston Series from source George Wood(a.k.a., Fritz Kolbe). Some of the messages thatKolbe turned over to Allen Dulles were cables fromGerman diplomats in Switzerland who reported onfinancial and trade negotiations, and messagesfrom Emil Puhl, the vice president of theReichsbank, who often journeyed to Switzerlandand conducted meetings with Swiss bank represen-tatives regarding economic and financial activitysuch as gold and currency exchange transactions.

Interestingly, the Germans also had a COMINTsource that allowed them, in turn, the limitedability to monitor Allied efforts to curtail Germantrade and financial activities within Switzerland.Three German cryptanalytic bureaus � theForschungamt (Directorate of Research) con-trolled by Herman Goering; the codebreaking office(Chiffrierabteilung) of the German Armed ForcesCommand (Oberkommando der Wehrmacht),or OKW/Chi; and the German Foreign Ministry�sPers Z � were able to exploit a number of U.S.Department of State cryptographic systems duringthe war. This ability came through a combination ofphysical compromise of some State Departmentcryptographic systems and pure cryptanalysis ofsome other codes and ciphers. Specifically, theGermans were able to read cables secured in theDepartment�s Black and Brown Codes, and the O-2Strip Cipher System, though mostly from the lat-ter.172

Beginning in early 1943, and continuingthrough December 1944, the OKW/Chi exploitedcables from over fifty overseas U.S. diplomaticfacilities. The intercept was done by two Germanmonitoring stations at Treuenbrietzen near Berlinand Lauf-an-der-Pebnitz near Nuremberg. TheGermans had a limited ability to read the Americanminister�s messages, and it sometimes took time for

the intercept to be turned into a reportable form.These intercepts were decrypted and translatedinto German. The resulting translation, knownas a �VN� (for Verlaessliche Nachrichten or�Trustworthy Reports�) was circulated among themembership of the Nazi hierarchy. According toNazi officials, useful intelligence was retrieved fromthe messages. One official recalled that as many asthree or four of the dispatches from the U.S. ambas-sador to Switzerland, Leland Harrison, wereincluded in the daily summaries known informallyas the �Brown Sheets,� or they were included inthe German High Command�s (OKW) daily brief-ing.173

The traffic between the overseas diplomaticmissions and Washington covered a number of top-ics of interest to Berlin: Allied proposals to restrictGerman trade with Switzerland, limits to bankaccounts opened by German nationals, the status ofefforts on behalf of Jewish refugees, postwar asy-lum to war criminals, assignments of OSS person-nel, and intelligence gathered by the Allies inSwitzerland.174 Among the many messages wereState Department reports on the plight of Jews inHungary, Bulgaria, and Romania.175 Also intercept-ed were several U.S. intelligence reports sent byHarrison to Washington about the German finan-cial and economic situation, such as the effect of theAllied bombing offensive on Reichsbank note circu-lation and gold reserves, and the smuggling ofGerman, French, and Italian currency intoSwitzerland.176

It is not known what, if any, specific use wasmade of these decrypts by the Germans.Considering the time frame, especially during late1944, of negotiations between Emil Puhl, the vice-director of the German Reichsbank, and variousSwiss banking and trade officials, it is possible that,because of the VNs, the German bankers wereaware of some of the concurrent talks between theAllies and the Swiss to limit Berlin�s trade andfinancial activity.

The Bretton Woods Conference of July 1944,known as the United Nations Monetary andFinancial Conference, approved a resolution thatcalled on neutral countries to take measures to pre-vent movement or the disposition of stolen assetsfrom occupied countries within their jurisdic-tions.177 On 11 October 1944, the Japanese reportedthat, because of the pressure from the Allies toenforce the Bretton Woods Agreement, the Swiss,as well as the Bank for International Settlements,were instituting several restrictions on the openingof new accounts and were establishing limits onthe functions of current accounts. Furthermore, theSwiss Banking Association had sent a notice toits members to take action that would block themovement of capital from Axis to neutral countries.The Japanese believed that there was �some room�in interpreting the limits of the new rules, butthey held out little hope since the �Swiss wereexceedingly weak-kneed towards the British andAmericans.�178 In a cable from the previous day,which the Americans had intercepted and decrypt-ed, Kase had noted in its final paragraphs that �ofcourse the Germans have a good deal of moneytucked away in secret, in various types of currency,and of course, in gold and so on. I understand thatthere is already an (? enormous amount?) of moneyhidden around under Swiss names.�179AnotherJapanese official, Kojiro Kitamura, the YokohamaSpecie Bank representative in Berlin, who was inSwitzerland at the time, added that while the Swissbanks were refusing to make remittances of Axisfunds to Spain and Portugal, the Germans had setup Swiss �straw men� in whose names the remit-tance could be made. 180

In December 1944 Kase sent two messages toTokyo describing a series of meeting he had withPuhl who, at the time, was in Switzerland for nego-tiations with the Swiss National Bank on a varietyof economic and financial issues. One of the pointsof discussion, in which the Japanese had an inter-est, was a Swiss proposal to restrict foreign curren-cy transactions. Kase reported several further com-ments that Puhl had made to him. Among otherthings, Puhl had told Kase that the acquisition of

viable currencies, such as Swiss francs and Swedishkroner, was almost impossible. The German alsomentioned that the Bank for InternationalSettlements was insisting more strongly that creditto Germany be withdrawn.181 In a message sent toTokyo a week later, Kase revealed more commentsfrom Puhl and the president of the Swiss NationalBank, Ernst Weber. Kase was told that, due to theproblem of currency payments to Germany, theSwiss were going to pay for German commoditieswith gold purchases to a �proportionate degree,�but not with �looted gold.� (This latter expressionwas included in the Japanese message in English.)Puhl also mentioned that a Swiss seizure of theassets of German firms in Switzerland would be a�last resort� to settle back payments. Puhl addedthat such remaining German assets in late 1944amounted to no more than 100 million Swissfrancs. Puhl mentioned to Kase that there must bea good deal of money in funds related to the �Party,�presumably Nazi, and other �obscure funds,� butthat every bit is held under Swiss names.182

Interestingly, a Boston translation provided aslightly different aspect to the December 1944Puhl-Weber meetings. In a message from theGerman mission in Bern to Berlin, it was pointedout that the Swiss bankers were still in favor of afree currency exchange and purchase of foreigncurrency balances. The bankers �would not give upthe advantages of a free currency�unless they wereforced to by the [Swiss] Federal Council for politicalreasons.� The German message also added in thenext paragraph:

The negotiations with Mr. Weber andthe directorate of the Swiss NationalBank were conducted in the sameatmosphere of confidence that hasalways prevailed. The National Bankrecognized that since July of this yearthe Reichsbank has exercised therestraint in payment of gold whichthe National Bank recommended ear-lier. The National bank is now agreedto take over in December and in

January a considerable sum from theReichsbank�s gold deposit in Bern. Itis also agreed to replenish the golddeposit in Bern in which connectionthe National Bank will itself under-take to move the gold over theFrontier in the interest of camouflag-ing operations.[my italics]183

In late January 1945, the United States, UnitedKingdom, and eventually, France, put together adelegation to go to Switzerland to negotiate thecessation of all trade between Germany andSwitzerland, and gain agreement from the Swiss toadhere to Safehaven objectives.184 The delegationwas headed by Lauchlin Currie, a special assistantto President Roosevelt. Currie had served in sever-al positions in the Roosevelt administration goingback to the early days of the New Deal. Amongthese was as a monetary expert in the Departmentof the Treasury and the Federal Reserve Board.Another major figure in these negotiations, fromthe Washington end of the negotiations, wasAssistant Secretary of the Treasury Harry DexterWhite, who was prepared to push for severe meas-ures against the Swiss.185

Japanese diplomats in Bern reported thatalthough the Swiss population generally seemed tobe enthusiastic about the arrival of the AlliedEconomic Delegation, many government and bank-ing officials privately were upset with theAmericans. Kase reported that Bern had receivedno official communications from Washingtonabout the delegation and its purpose and only hadlearned about it from a U.S. State Department pressrelease. Bern feared the pressure this delegationwould cause by raising expectations of a completerupture of all economic activity with Germany.Some Swiss bankers also suspected that the Allieswere trying to eliminate the possibility that someNazi groups might use their funds in Switzerland tocontinue the fight even after Germany fell.186

In particular, the head of the Swiss NationalBank, Ernst Weber, saw two more issues above and

beyond that of Swiss trade with Germany: stolengold and the privacy of personal accounts. Weberdismissed the idea of a flight of German funds outof Switzerland. He was not concerned about anylarge purchase of Swiss francs, since that was limit-ed to payments for living expenses of Germansresiding in Switzerland. However, Weber insistedthat the �Jewish plutocracy,� composed of thosewho had escaped to the U.S., was pressuring theAmerican government to recover all stolen Jewishproperty. Weber further believed that not all of thestolen wealth was still in Switzerland. He opinedthat there was proof that �great quantities� of it hadgone to Spain, Portugal, and Argentina, and thatthe Allies should investigate this possibility beforeall others.187

The other major issue for Weber was that of pri-vacy of Swiss bank accounts, a legal arrangementthat went back to 1934. Weber conceded that therewould be great pressure from external sources,principally the United States, and internal groupssuch as Swiss socialists, to reveal the identities ofaccount holders. Weber told Japanese ministerKase that the Swiss were prepared to be stubborn;if a reversal of policy would be unavoidable, thenmaybe a deal involving some sort of distinction intypes of funds and accounts could be made with theAllies.188

On 16 February 1945, the Swiss Federal Councilagreed, under certain conditions, to block Germanassets in Switzerland. This agreement was notunlike similar Swiss decrees promulgated in 1940that blocked assets of combatants such as France,Belgium, Italy, etc.191 On 8 March 1945,Switzerland and the United States reached anagreement that stipulated general controls onGerman monetary activity, hidden enemy assets,and an accounting of German assets in Switzerland.Although Currie considered his efforts a success,revelations from various intelligence sources,including intercepts, of continued Swiss purchasesof German gold and new meetings in April between

Swiss banking officials with Emil Puhl cast a pall onlater U.S.-Swiss relations.192

In late February 1945, a German diplomaticofficial in Bern provided a different version of thesame meeting�s substance. After meeting withWalter Stucki, a high-ranking member of the SwissForeign Office and former representative to Vichy,the German filed a report on the effects on Germantrade and financial activity caused by the Swissagreement to Allied demands. Stucki had told theGerman that the Allies had �showed their fists.�Currie had demanded that is was time forSwitzerland to �take its stand on the side of theAllies.� The Americans demanded some �spectacu-lar� display of Swiss compliance. The Swiss werethreatened with the loss of navicerts (certificatesissued by the Allies that allowed the transport ofSwiss goods on the Rhine River) and transportationthrough Allied territory unless they made a com-plete break in economic relations with Germany.Stucki reported that the Swiss Federal Council haddecided not to attack Germany �from behind� bybanning exports or transit of goods from Italythrough Switzerland to Germany. Switzerlandwould not follow the Swedish example.189

The German reported that the Federal Councilalso had received a demand from the president ofthe Italian Republic, Ivanhoe Bonomi, to cease alltransit of Italian coal through Switzerland toGermany. Bonomi claimed that the source of thecoal, the northern Italian Fascist rump state, wasnot a country but German-occupied territory, andthat the Gotthard Agreement of 1909 guaranteeingtransit through Switzerland therefore did not apply.Stucki reported that the Federal Council was closeto stopping all such traffic from Italy. Stucki alsotold the German that the Federal Council was pre-pared to block all German funds or balances inaccounts to insure that the assets would not be usedfor a new war. Since late 1944, the Allies consideredthis demand to be sine qua non in any arrangementwith Switzerland. The German considered the neteffect of Switzerland�s agreements would end any

further basis for economic activity between the twocountries.190

In early April 1945, Puhl returned to Bern fornew negotiations. He reported to Berlin that he had�practically� broken the blockade on German-Swisscommercial and monetary transactions concludedby Currie�s delegation in the previous month. Laterthat month, Puhl also persuaded the Swiss NationalBank to purchase some gold for German paymentsto Switzerland. How much total gold the Swiss pur-chased was not clear. Ministry of EconomicWarfare intercepts indicate that Puhl, during thisperiod, had transferred about 1.5 tons of gold to theSwiss National Bank, Bern, and the Bank forInternational Settlements, Basel, Switzerland.193

However, Puhl was not certain if the Bank forInternational Settlements would take it owing tosome �unspecified objections from Basel.�194

Almost two weeks later, Kitamura reportedanother conversation he had with Puhl regardingthe Allied discovery of the hidden cache of gold, art,and stolen art and personal possessions in theMerkers salt mines in Thuringia in southwestGermany. Puhl complained that the early pressclaims of 100 tons of gold were exaggerated.Kitamura went to report to Tokyo that he was givento understand from Puhl that the Reichsbank haddeposited gold in various other hidden places insouthern Germany along the Swiss border.195

After the war, Puhl�s activities with the Swiss,which constituted a major circumvention of theagreements achieved by the Currie mission toSwitzerland, became a significant issue between theUnited States and Switzerland. During the Swiss-Allied negotiations in the spring of 1946 inWashington, the Swiss Legation informed Bernthat, as long as the issue of German assets in Swissbanks remained unresolved, American suspicionsabout control of them would remain. There waseven a concern that these assets could be used tofund a fifth column of Nazi sympathizers or secretatomic research.196

In the summer of 1946, the Allied-Swiss Accordwas finalized. The Swiss promised to liquidateGerman assets and distribute them on a 50-50basis with the Allies. Switzerland also was to makeavailable to the Allied Gold Pool some $58.1 millionon demand in gold. The United States promised tounblock Swiss assets and discontinue the �blacklists� of Swiss firms and individuals. However, theissue continued to percolate and the Nazi Goldproblem would return fifty years later to haunt theSwiss.

Notes1 PRO HW 16/1, GB 221: Police W/T decrypts: 7

November 1939, 18 November 19392 Philips, 163 Quoted from Lena Yahil, The Holocaust: The Fate

of European Jewry (New York: Oxford, 1987), 254-54 MND Translation, Sofia to Tokyo, 1 February 1942,

SIS #29056, RG 457, HCC, Box 303.5 Gerhard Weinberg, A World at Arms, 190 6 Breitman, 44-5 7 There were a number of German police organiza-

tions, among them the Schutzpolizei (Schupo), or civilpolice, the Sicherheitspolizei (Sipo), or security policethat included the Geheime Staatspolizei (Gestapo), orSecret State Police, and the Kriminalpolizei (Kripo), orcriminal investigation police. The most prominent policeorganization was the Ordnungspolizei (Orpo), or uni-formed police. The uniformed police were organized intomilitary style battalions and worked with the SS unitsand the Einsatzgruppen on the Russian front. Thesepolice units performed a number of functions inGermany and occupied Europe. The Sipo worked withother Reich security services against partisan activitybehind German lines and in occupied Europe. The Kripowas concerned with criminal activity and escaped POWs.There was a technical branch of the Orpo that performeddirection-finding operations against Allied agents usingradios. The Sipo was involved in the German program ofcontrolled Allied agents who had been �turned� and werethen forced to send phony radio reports to their handlersin London, a technique known as Funkspiel or radiodeception.

8 For descriptions of the atrocities, see the GCCSHistory, Vol. XIII, The German Police, 83-6, and

Appendix B, 234-6; Hinsley, Vol. II, 671-3. Breitmancarries the most detailed narrative, 54-68.

9 ZIP/G.P.D. 292R/18.7.41, NARA, RG 457, HCC,Box 1386, �German WWII Police and SS Traffic.�

10 ZIP/G.P.D. 309R/2/4.8.41, RG 457, HCC, Box1386, �German WWII Police and SS Traffic.�


12 ZIP/G.P.D. 353/114/9.41, RG 457, HCC, Box1386, �German WWII Police and SS Traffic.�


14 �Magic� Diplomatic Summary, 14 June 1942,Item A.7. NARA, RG 457, Entry 9019, Box 1.

15 MND Translation, Berlin to Tokyo, 21 February1942, SIS #30111, RG 457, HCC, Box 304.

16 German Police Decodes, 17 November 1941, No.35, ZIP/GPD 467/30.11.41, and 20 November 1941,ZIP/GPD 575/25.12.41, PRO HW 16/32

17 MND Translation, Vienna to Tokyo, 20 February1942, SIS #30047, RG 457, HCC, Box 304.

18 RG 226, Entry 210, Box 386, Folder 6, �Q,� orIntercepted Diplomatic Messages

19 ZIP/GPCC66/3.10.42, �F,� 16649 on 1 Septemberand 11310 on 30 September and ZIP/GPCC82/3.12.42,�D,� 8878 on 2 November and 9092 on 30 November.PRO, HW 16/10

20 For a full study of this important radio message,see Peter Witte and Stephen Tyas, �A New Document onthe Deportation and Murder of Jews during �EinsatzReinhardt� 1942.� Holocaust and Genocide Studies (Vol.15, No. 3, Winter 2001), 468-486. One item of interestwas the discrepancy in the spelling of Heydrich�s firstname. Heydrich preferred to have his first name spelled�Reinhard,� but his official SS files and SS Service Listscarry him as �Reinhardt� Heydrich.

21 Ibid.22 Hinsley, Vol. 2, 67323 Losses in the Jewish populations of minor Axis

powers varied. Bulgaria lost about 15%; Romania nearlyhalf; Hungary also almost half of its prewar population;and Italy lost slightly more than a quarter of its Jews.Source: Poliakov and Wulf, 229

24 ZIP/GPDD 259b, transmitted 7 October 1942,PRO HW 16/21

25 ZIP/ISOSICLE 3980, 28 March 1943, Sofia toBerlin, PRO HW 19/238

26 MND Translations, Sofia (Roux) to Vichy, 16March 1943, SIS # 71491, RG 457, HCC, Box 356; andSofia (Yamaji) to Tokyo, 12 May 1943, SIS #83190.NARA RG 457, HCC, Box 364

27 Message 4019, Sofia to Berlin, 29 March 1943,PRO HW 19/236

28 MND Translations, Sofia (Roux) to Vichy, 27March 1943, SIS # 78424, RG 457, HCC, Box 359; andSofia to Vichy, 17 March 1943, SIS #79537. NARA RG457, HCC, Box 366.

29 See MND Translation, Budapest to Bucharest, 15July 1944, SIS #144554. NARA RG 457, HCC, Box 440.

30 MND Translation, Budapest to Tokyo, 8 June1943, SIS # 87928. NARA, RG 457, HCC, Box 370.

31 Service 16 to Moscow, ISCOT # 1078, 4 June 1943(translated on 19 March 1945), National CryptologicMuseum Library.

32 Service 16 to Moscow, ISCOT # 1077, 2 June 1943(translated on 19 March 1945), National CryptologicMuseum Library.

33 The exploitation of this SD key, which was nevergiven a cover name, continued into February 1944.

34 Kappler to Berlin, 24 September 1943, decodeNo. 6728. RG 226, entry 112, Box 1.

35 MND Translation, Rome (Irish Minister) toDublin, 6 October 1943, SIS # 123490. NARA, RG 457,HCC, Box 415. It is not clear what was the nature of theVatican�s aid, or from where in the Vatican hierarchy (iffrom there at all) this offer originated. The role of theVatican during this roundup has been the subject ofmuch controversy. A number of Catholic clergy andinstitutions, as well as many individual Italians, aidedJews by offering sanctuary or the means to escape theNazi dragnet. These actions appear to have happenedspontaneously, or at the least, without any explicitinstructions from the Vatican leadership. There is no evi-dence from the translations that any official policy of res-cue originated in or was coordinated by the Papacy or itsoffice even though it was informed of the impendingGerman actions. See Susan Zuccotti, Under His VeryWindows: The Vatican and the Holocaust in Italy (NewYork: Yale University Press, 2000), 175-201. A morecritical view of the Papacy�s role during the roundup isoffered by John Cornwell in Hitler� Pope: The Secret

History of Pius XII (New York: Penguin Books, 2000),297-318. The archived decrypts and translations containno evidence that conclusively can resolve the controver-sy over the Vatican�s official policy towards the FinalSolution.

36 Kaltenbrunner to Kappler, 11 October 1943,Decode No. 7458. NARA, RG 226, Entry 112, Box 1.

37 Kappler to Berlin, 16 October 1943, Decode No.7668. NARA RG 226, Entry 112, Box 1.

38 Vatican to Dublin, 18 October 1943, Baker Cable# 471, GCCS to Signal Security Agency. NSA RecordsCenter (NCRC) Microfilm, Box 112, Reel 5155.

39 ZIP/ISOSICLE 7754, 21 October 1943, PRO HW19/238.

40 �Magic� Diplomatic Summary, D.S. # 592, 8November 1943. NARA, RG457, �Magic DiplomaticSummaries, Box 8.

41 MND Translation, Vatican (Harada) to Tokyo, 8February 1944, SIS #11352,. NSA RG 457, HCC, Box400.

42 MND Translation, Berlin (Auswaertig) toNanking (Circular), 11 October 1943, SIS # 99145,NARA, RG 457, HCC, Box 382.

43 ZIP/ISOSICLE 7639, Berlin to Crimea Area, 12October 1943 and ZIP/ISOSICLE 7654 (combined with7684), 13 October 1943, PRO HW 19/238.

44 Laqueur, 98-9.45 MND Translation, Bern (Czech Representative)

to London (Czech Government), 26 June 1944, SIS #160126, NARA RG 457, HCC, Box 460.

46 MND translation, Moscow (Garreau) to Algiers(Diplofrance), 17 September 1944, H-145841, NARA, RG457, HCC, Box 441.

47 Vichy to Lisbon, 26 May 1944, Baker Cable 2611(1 July 1944). NCRC Microfilm, Box 112, Reel 5158;MND translation, Vichy to Lisbon, 23 May 1944, SIS #126576, NARA, HCC, Box 419.

48 Budapest to Bucharest, 9 June 1944, Baker Cable2769 (19 June 1944). NCRC Microfilm, Box 112, Reel5158; �Magic Diplomatic Summary, D.S. # 819, 22 June1944, NARA, RG 457, Magic Diplomatic Summaries, Box11.

49 MND Translation, Berlin to Dublin, 5 July 1944,SIS # 133600, RG 457, HCC, Box 427; and Dublin toBerlin, 12 September 1944, SIS # 143682. NARA RG 457,HCC, Box 438.

50 MND Translation, Washington to Madrid, 11October 1944, SIS #145262, NARA RG 457, HCC, Box440. Spain was a nonbelligerent during the war and gen-erally sympathized with the Axis, even sending a divisionof �volunteers� to fight in Russia. In 1944 the Allies pres-sured Spain with a partial blockade of essential materialssuch as gasoline and demanded, among other things, theexpulsion of all Axis espionage agents (the knowledge ofwhich was derived partially from decrypts of Japaneseand German diplomatic and agent communications).After the war, in many European and American coun-tries, there were calls for the overthrow of Franco and hisregime. Cardenas� personal attitude towards Jews wasmixed. In November 1943 he had advised Madrid thathe would not attend a ceremony marking the 30thanniversary of the founding of the Joint DistributionCommittee, an international Jewish relief agency. Hetold Madrid that members of the Committee in Spainhad �made several verbal promises which they repeated-ly refused to keep.� However, he added that aid shouldbe extended to Spanish Jews wishing to go to Algiers orPalestine. �Magic Diplomatic Summary, D.S. # 606, 22November 1943. �Magic Diplomatic Summary, Box 8.

51 MND Translation, Washington to Dublin, 18October 1944, SIS # 127365, NARA RG 457, HCC, Box420.

52 MND Translation, London (Czech Government)to Stockholm (Czech Representative), 27 January 1945,H-169498, NARA RG 457, HCC, Box 470. In late 1944,the numbering system of the multinational diplomatictranslations was changed. The numbering sequenceremained, but all such translations now carried the pre-fix �H.�

Decades after the war, some individuals have specu-lated that the Allies could have bombed the railroadsleading to the Auschwitz complex, thereby saving thou-sands of Jews. A review of this argument can be found inThe Bombing of Auschwitz: Should the Allies HaveAttempted It? Edited by Michael J. Neufeld and MichaelBerenbaum. (New York: St. Martins� Press, 1999).

53 MND Translations, Rio de Janerio (Exteriores)to Lisbon, 12 March 1945, H-171950, RG 457, HCC, Box474; Washington (Bonnet) to Paris, 15 March 1945, H-172526, RG 457, HCC, Box 475; Rome to Berne, 17March 1945, H-173117, RG 457, HCC, Box 477; andAnkara to Berne, 17 March 1945, H-173502, RG 457,

HCC, Box 477. Also, see Hinsley, Vol. 3, 735 fn, whichcites GPD translations 4068/10 and 4085/10 for infor-mation on rumors of movement of Jewish inmates fromconcentration camps.

This �special treatment� of Jewish POWs affectedAmerican soldiers, too. In late 1944, American POWs ofJewish origin from the 106th Infantry Division, whowere captured during the Battle of the Bulge, were sepa-rated from their Gentile comrades and sent to Berga, asatellite camp of Buchenwald, where they were forced toperform slave labor. This incident was the subject of thePublic Broadcasting Corporation�s documentary byCharles Guggenheim, �Berga: Soldiers of Another War.�Also see Mitchell Bard�s, Forgotten Victims: TheAbandonment of Americans in Hitler�s Camps (CO:Westview Press, 1994).

54 MND Translation, Berlin to Circular (all Stations,Kabul recipient), 28 March 1945, H-176446, NARA RG457, HCC, Box 481.

55 MND Translation, Vatican City (Secretary ofState) to Washington (Apostolic Delegate), 27 March1945, T-2325, and Lausanne (Zapelli) to Vatican City(Secretary of State), 17 April 1945, T-2574. NARA, RG457, HCC, Box 520.

56 Lausanne (Zappelli) to Vatican (Secretary ofState), 17 April 1945, T-2574, Ibid.

57 Berlin to Dublin, 16 February 1945, H-168493,NARA RG 457, HCC, Box 1032, �Collection ofMultinational Diplomatic Translation of White HouseInterest.� Shortly after this message was translated anddisseminated, officials in the United States wantedrelease its contents to the Soviet Union. However,Churchill, Menzies, and the Foreign office disagreed withthe suggestion. See PRO �Signals Intelligence passed toPrime Minister Churchill,� PRO HW 1, Box 145, Folder3562, 2 March 1945.

58 MND Translation, Washington (Horinouchi) toTokyo, 17 January 1939, SIS #3494, NARA, RG 457,HCC, Box 286. The text of the German response, signedby Ernst von Weizsaecker, State Secretary in the GermanForeign Office, is contained in the telegram of 3 January1939, from the U.S. Charge, Germany, to the StateDepartment. The line in the German response referredto by the Japanese is �To date the American Embassy hasnot informed the [German] Foreign Office of a singlecase in which, in its opinion, such treaty rights had been

violated by German measures. If such cases should bebrought to its attention by the American Embassy, theGerman Government for its part is prepared to examineand settle them on the basis of prevailing treaty provi-sions.� Foreign Relations of the United States, 1939. Vol.II, General, the British Commonwealth, 574-6.

Prior to the war, FDR had made some limited effortsto facilitate Jewish immigration from Germany andAustria, such as combining German and Austrian quo-tas. But President Roosevelt never pressed for a policy toaccept a much larger number of refugees. Most likely hewas constrained by public opinion and a Congress thatwas overwhelmingly against easing immigration quotas.See Robert Dallek, Franklin Roosevelt and AmericanForeign Policy, 1932-1945 (Oxford: Oxford UniversityPress, 1981), 166-168.

59 MND Translation, Lisbon to Tokyo, 13 February1940, SSA #6191, NARA, RG 457, HCC, Box 288, andTokyo to Berlin, 23 July 1940, SS #9395, Box 290.

60 MND Translation, Lisbon (Yonezawa) to Tokyo,13 February 1940, SIS #6191, Ibid.

61 MND Translation, Shanghai to Tokyo, 16 May1942, SSA #37068, NARA, RG 457, HCC, Box 310. Thismessage estimated that there were 20,000 German-Jewish refugees in the city in early 1942.

62 See MND Translation Kaunas to Tokyo, 24August 1940, SSA #10179. NARA, RG 457, HCC, Box383. This case involved a Polish Jew who had applied foran American visa through a relative in New York.

63 Sugihara was more than just sympathetic withthe plight of Polish Jews. According to an OSS/SSUreport from 1946, Sugihara was providing intelligence tocovert agents of the Polish Intelligence Service. He hadtwo Polish assistants in Kaunas. Sugihara forwarded theintelligence to a Polish contact in Riga, Latvia, who, inturn passed the information to London. An OSS reportquoted a Sipo assessment of Sugihara as �a friend ofEngland and Poland.� Strategic Services Unit,Washington, D.C., X-8989, �Japanese WartimeCollaboration with the Polish Intelligence Service.� RG226, Entry 212, Box 6.

64 MND Translation, Ankara to Tokyo, 18 June1943, SSA #86854, NARA, RG 457, HCC, Box 369.

65 �Magic� Diplomatic Summary, 14 September1942, Section A.1. NARA, RG 457, �Magic DiplomaticSummaries, Box 2.

66 MND Translation, Ankara to Tokyo, 3 March1944, SIS #112744, NARA, RG 457, HCC, Box 399.

67 Jerusalem to Riyadh, 23 February 1944. BakerCable 1691, GCCS to SSA, 4 March 1944. NCRCMicrofilm. Box 112, reel 5157.

68 Washington to Baghdad, 11 February 1944.Baker Cable 1450, GCCS (Randolph) to SSD (G-2), 14February 1944. NCRC Microfilm, Box 112, reel 5157.

69 MND Translation, Washington (Bonnet) to Paris(Diplomatie), 6 April 1945, H-176818, NARA, RG 457,HCC, Box 481. During the San Francisco Conference thatcreated the United Nations, the Signal Security Agencylaid on additional intercept coverage of communicationssupporting the various national delegations. For moreon this, see Stephen Schlesinger, �Cryptanalysis forPeacetime: Codebreaking and the Birth and Structure ofthe United Nations.� Cryptologia Vol. 19, No. 3 (July1995), 217-234.

70 Michael R. Marrus and Robert O. Paxton. VichyFrance and the Jews (New York: Basic Books, 1981), 29.

71 Ibid., 30-32; Eugen Weber. The Hollow Years:France in the 1930s (New York: W.W. Norton &Company, 1994), 101-110.

72 Marrus and Paxton, 3673 For example, see �Vichy Codes,� 13 July 1944,

NARA, RG 457, HCC, Box 59, Folder 1490 and �ArmyTranslations of Decodes of French (Vichy) CipherMessages, 1941-43,� 4 June 1941, RG 457, HCC, Box830, Folder 2415.

74 MND Translation, Vichy to Brassaterre(Circular), 27 November 1940, SSIS #24673, NARA, RG457, HCC, Box 300.

75 Ibid.76 Vichy to Tokyo, 20 October 1942, Japanese Naval

Attaché msg (SRNA) Nr-295-6 RG457, E8013 Box 1.MND Translation, Saigon to Vichy, 1 August 1942, SIS#54807, NARA, RG 457, HCC, Box 332.

77 MND Translation, Havana to Vichy, 26 March1942, SIS # 32962, RG 457, HCC, Box 306, and MagicDiplomatic Summary, 11 April 1942, RG 457, Entry9006, Box 1.

78 �Magic� Diplomatic Summary, 15 August 1942,D.4. NARA, RG 457, Magic Diplomatic Summaries,Box 1.

79 Marrus and Paxton, 232

80 MND Translation, Vichy to Washington, 30September 1942, SIS #51208, NARA, RG 457, HCC, Box328.

81 MND Translation, Vichy to Washington, 9 June1942, SIS #48570, NARA, RG 457, HCC, Box 324.

82 MND Translations, Washington to Vichy, 12October 1942, SIS #53265, NARA, RG 457, HCC, Box330; and Vichy to Washington, 30 October 1942, SIS#54269, NARA, RG 457, HCC, Box 332.

83 MND Translations: Washington (Henry Haye) toVichy, 3 July 1942, SSA #40795, NARA, RG 457, HCC,Box 314; Washington (Henry Haye) to Vichy, 24 March1942, SSA 32801, NARA, RG 457, HCC, Box 306; andWashington (Henry Haye) to Vichy, 30 October 1942,SSA #54317 NARA, RG 457, HCC, Box 332.

84 MND Translation, Buenos Aires (Latournelle) toVichy, 12 September 1942, SSA #49376, NARA, RG 457,HCC, Box 325.

85 MND Translation, Rio de Janerio (St. Quentin) toVichy, 5 September 1942, SIS #53628, NARA, RG 457,HCC, Box 331.

86 MND Translation, Vichy to Ottawa, 15 September1942, SIS #49790, NARA, RG 457, HCC, Box 326.

87 MND Translation, Washington to Vichy, 31October 1942, SIS #54154, NARA, RG 457, HCC, Box331.

88 MND Translation, Vichy to Washington, 6November 1942, SIS #54845, NARA, RG 457, HCC, Box332.

89 MND Translations, Vichy (Reyes) to Mexico City,12 August 1942, SIS #44826, RG 457, HCC, Box 320, andVichy (Bosques) to Mexico City (Office of ForeignRelations), 23 September 1942, SIS #51152, RG 457,HCC, Box 328.

90 Q Translation, 12 October 1942, NARA, RG 226,Entry 210, Box 402, File 11734, �Intercepts of ForeignDiplomatic Messages.�

91 Ibid., also Washington (Henri Haye) to Vichy, 5August 1942, SIS #44111, NARA, RG 457, HCC, Box 319.

92 MND Translation, Washington (Henry Haye) toVichy, 13 September 1942, SIS #48810, NARA, RG 457,HCC, Box 325.

93 MND Translation, Vichy to Ciudad Trujillo, 6September 1942, SIS #49158, NARA, RG 457, HCC, Box325.

94 MND Translation, Washington (Henry Haye) toVichy, 16 October 1942, SIS #53004, NARA, RG 457,HCC, Box 330. Also see Marrus and Paxton, 266-68.

95 MND Translation, Washington (Henry Haye-Picot) to Vichy, 30 October 1942, SIS #54170, NARA, RG457, HCC, Box 331.

96 Marrus and Paxton, 268.97 German Clandestine Message ( SRI), Tangier to

Berlin, 10 February 1943, CG3-2008. NARA, RG 457,Entry 9022, German Intelligence/Clandestine AgentsMessages. It is estimated that some 14-15,000 Jews wereinterned in 6 camps in Morocco and Algiers.

98 Marrus and Paxton, 191-2.99 Ibid., 194-5100 MND Translation, Vichy to Tokyo, 1 July 1943,

SIS #89663, NARA, RG 457, HCC, Box 372; and DNBPropaganda Broadcast to Vichy, 4 January 1943, SIS#63664. NARA, RG 457, HCC, Box 344.

101 MND Translations: Mission Francaise(Hoppenot) to High Commissioner, Algiers, 21 March1943, SIS #75893, NARA, RG 457, HCC, Box 356; and 23March 1943, SIS #76229, NARA, RG 457, HCC, Box 356.

102 MND Translation, Hanoi (Matsumoto) toTokyo, 30 January 1945, H-165861, NARA, RG 457,HCC, Box 466.

103 Laqueur, 138-142; Hilberg, 823-4104 Raul Hilberg, 803.105 �Magic� Diplomatic Summary, D.S. #560, 7

October 1943. NARA, RG 457, Magic DiplomaticSummaries, Box 7.

106 In October 1942, Japanese diplomats inBudapest reported that Hungarian prime ministerMiklos Kallay had spoken twice on the need for Hungaryto concentrate on the war and intensifying its anti-Jewish policy. However, the Japanese noted that manyHungarians considered Romania as Hungary�s primaryenemy. See MND Translation, Budapest to Tokyo, 30October 1942, NARA, RG 457, HCC, Box 332.

107 MND Translation, Budapest (Taraoka) to Tokyo,1 April 1944, H-131364, NARA, RG 457, HCC, Box 425.

108 MND Translation, Budapest to Tokyo, viaBerlin (Oshima), 7 July 1944, H-127152, NARA, RG 457,HCC, Box 420.

109 MND Translation, Budapest to Ankara, 26June 1944, H-157807, NARA, RG 457, HCC, Box 456.

110 MND Translations: Budapest to Tokyo, 1 April1944, H-131363, Geneva to Vatican City, 15 July 1944, H-131282. NARA, RG457, HCC, Box 425.

111 MND Translations: Budapest to Berne, 12 July1944, H-133584, NARA, RG 457, HCC, Box 427; andBudapest to Bucharest, 15 July 1944, H-144554, NARA,RG 457, HCC, Box 440.

112 PEARL/ZIP/AT 1194/ 14 August 1944, PRO, HW16/70.

113 Multinational Diplomatic Message Summaries(SMM), Budapest to Bern, 11 August 1944, 8218. NARA,RG 457, HCC, Boxes 882-891.

114 MND Translation, Bern (Politisches) toBudapest, 11 September 1944, H-144451, NARA, RG 457,HCC, Box 440. See Hilberg, 859. The Papal Nuncio toBudapest handed out 20,000 passports, but these wentto �baptized� Jews. Eventually, between 15,000 to16,000 exit permits to Palestine were granted by theReich and the Hungarian regime.

115 MND Translations: Budapest to Berne,23 September 1944, H-145264 and Budapest(Schweizerische Gesandtschaft) to Bern, 12 October1944, H-146293. NARA, RG 457, HCC, Box 440.

116 Wilhelm Flicke, War Secrets of the Ether. (FortGeorge G. Meade, MD: Office of Training, 1959), 224-5.Flicke claims that the Germans had been exploitingHungarian diplomatic messages since 1943.

117 �Disposition of Hungarian Gold,� Circle Report,RG 226, Entry 210, Box 144, �Classified Sources andMethods.�

118 Hilberg, 856119 �Magic Diplomatic Summary, D.S. #943, 24

October 1944, NARA, RG 457, Magic DiplomaticSummary, Box 13.

120 �Magic Diplomatic Summary, D.S. #952, 2November 1944. NARA, RG 457, magic DiplomaticSummaries, Box 14.

121 MND Translation, Budapest to Lisbon(Branquinho), 24 October 1944, H-147668, NARA, RG457, HCC, Box 444.

122 MND Translation, Mexico City to London, 2October 1944, H-146223, NARA, RG 457, HCC, Box 440.

123 Scattered pieces of signals intelligence duringthe war indicate that the Wallenberg family was involvedin some efforts to broker separate peace initiativesamong the combatants. A Venona translation from 13

April 1942 (the final version of the translation issued inMay 1976) states that either Jacob or his brother Marcushad met with a British correspondent who had suggest-ed that the Swede �get into touch with English financierson the question of concluding an Anglo-German peacebased on a return to the position up to 1939.� Accordingto the Soviet agent, Wallenberg declined the offer andasked it be made directly to the British diplomatic mis-sion in Stockholm. Venona Translation 3/MBF/T2201,6/5/76. In March 1944, Japanese diplomats inStockholm reported that the �persons most instrumentalin arranging the contacts between the Finns andRussians were the Wallenbergs.� MND Translation,Stockholm to Tokyo, SSA #115968, 10 March 1944.NARA, RG 457, HCC, box 402.

124 MND Translation, Budapest to Lisbon, 23October 1944, H-147752. NARA, RG 457, HCC, Box 444

125 MND Translation, Vatican (Portuguese Charged�Affaires) to Lisbon, 1 December 1944, H-158058.NARA, RG 457, HCC, Box 456.

126 MND Translation, Budapest to Lisbon, 23October 1944, H-147752. NARA, RG 457, HCC, Box 444.

127 �Cryptanalytic Short Titles.� 19440201. NARA,RG 457, HCC, box 941, File 2740; Alvarez, 176; �List ofCryptanalytic Short Titles,� 1 February 1946. ArmySecurity Agency. NARA, RG 457, HCC, Box 935, Folder�Short Titles.�

128 MND Translation, Washington to Madrid, 20October 1944, H-146824. NARA, RG 457, HCC, Box 442.

129 MND Translations: Budapest to Lisbon, 23October 1944, H-147752, NARA, RG 457, HCDC, Box444; Bern (Politique) to Budapest, 7 November 1944, H-153452, NARA, RG 457, HCC, Box 451; and Budapest toMadrid, 14 November 1944, H-154424, NARA, RG 457,HCC, Box 452.

130 MND Translation, Budapest to Lisbon, 17October 1944, H-146360. NARA, RG 457, HCC, Box 442.

131 MND Translations: Budapest to Madrid, 15November 1944, H-154425, NARA, RG 457, HCC, Box452; and Budapest to Madrid, 16 November 1944, H-153555. NARA, RG 457, HCC, Box 451.

132 �Magic Diplomatic Summary,� D.S. 970, 20November 1944. NARA, RG 457, Magic DiplomaticSummaries, Box 14.

133 MND Translation, Budapest (SchweizerischeGesandtschaft) to Bern, 23 November 1944, H-153272.NARA, RG 457, HCC, Box 451.

134 MND Translation (Boston), Unknown(Veesenmayer) to Berlin, 30 December 1944, T-1810.NARA, RG 457, HCC, Box 519.

135 For an overview of the origins of Japanese atti-tudes and many beliefs about Jews, see David Kranzler,Jews, Nazis, and the Japanese: The Jewish RefugeeCommunity of Shanghai, 1938-1945 (Hoboken, NJ:KTAV Publishing House, 1988, second edition), 177-209.

136 Herbert P. Bix, Hirohito and the Making ofModern Japan (New York: Perennial Books, 2001),280-1.

137 Japanese Diplomatic Translations, Paris(Sugimura) to Tokyo, 2 November 1937, SIS # 813.NARA, RG 457, Red Machine Translations, Box 1.

138 Japanese Diplomatic Translations, Paris(Sugimura) to Tokyo, 5 October 1937, SIS #80, NARA,RG 457, Red Machine Translations, Box 1.

139 MND Translation, Berlin (Oshima) to Tokyo, 16January 1939, SIS #3504, NARA, RG 457, HCC, Box286.

140 MND Translation, Washington (Horinouchi) toTokyo, 17 January 1939, SIS #3608, NARA, RG 457,HCC, Box 286.

141 MND Translation, Tokyo (Nomura) toWashington, 20 October 1939, SIS #5099, NARA, RG457, HCC, Box 287.

142 MND Translation, Tokyo (Nomura) toWashington, 18 October 1939, SIS #5064, NARA, RG457, HCC, Box 287.

143 MND Translation, Tokyo (Nomura) toWashington, 16 November 1939, SIS #5294, NARA, RG457, HCC, Box 287.

144 MND Translations: Washington (Horinouchi) toTokyo, 24 November 1939, SIS #5330, NARA, RG 457,HCC, Box 287; and Tokyo (Nomura) to Washington, 10January 1940, SIS #5801. NARA. RG 457, HCC, Box287.

145 MND Translation, New York to Tokyo, 18February 1939, SIS #3710 and New York (Wakasugi) toTokyo, 10 February 1939, SIS #3644. NARA, RG 457,HCC, Box 286.

146 MND Translation, Tokyo to Berlin, 12 December1941, SIS #26279, RG 457, HCC, Box 301; and Magic

Diplomatic Summary, 11 May 1942, RG 457, Entry 9006,Box 1.

147 MND Translation, Sofia to Tokyo, 28 January1942, SIS #29056, NARA, RG 457, HCC, Box 303.

148 MND Translations: Tokyo to Hanoi (Circular toall stations), 13 March 1942, SIS #31162 and 31209.NARA, RG 457, HCC, Box 305.

149 For incidents against Jews in Shanghai, seeKranzler, 493-501. For the listings of internment camppopulations by nationality, see Japanese ArmyTranslations, Singapore to Saigon, J-102875F-J, 3September 1945 and Sapong to Saigon, J-1043875A-G, 2September 1945, RG 457, Entry 9005, Boxes 1 to 168.

150 MND Translation, Tokyo (Vollhardt) to Berlin,29 January 1943, SIS #63844, RG 457, HCC, Box 344.

151 MND Translations: Tokyo to Saigon, 17December 1942, SIS #62124 NARA, RG 457, HCC, Box342; and Tokyo to Nanking (Circular), 7 January 1943,SIS #61872, NARA, RG 457, HCC, Box 342 .

152 MND Translation, Tokyo to Saigon, 17December 1942, SIS #62124 NARA, RG 457, HCC, Box342.

153 MND Translation, Shanghai to Peking, 24 May1943, SIS #83737 NARA, RG 457, HCC, Box 365.

154 �Magic� Diplomatic Summary, D.S. 768, 2 May1944. NARA, RG 457, Magic Diplomatic Summaries, Box11.

155 Tuka was Slovak Premier Volpetch Tuka.General Bonnard probably was Abel Bonnard, the Vichyminister of education. The interior minister of Hungarywas Andor Jaross, who was executed as a war criminal in1946. The Grand Mufti (jurist) of Jerusalem was Aminal-Husayni, who had fled to Germany in 1939 and madeanti-Semitic and anti-British speeches for the Nazis dur-ing the war. Al-Husayni also was involved in severalprojects by the SS to raise Moslem units in Bosnia.

156 MND Translation, Berlin to Tokyo, 22 June1944, SIS #129788, NARA, RG 457, HCC, Box 424.

157 MND Translations, Tokyo to Berlin, 1 July 1944,SIS #129535, NARA, RG 457, HCC, Box 424; and Tokyoto Berlin, 5 July 1944, SIS #129925. NARA, RG 457,HCC, Box 424.

158 MND Translations, Shanghai to Hsinking andHarbin, 24 November 1943, SIS #106323, NARA, RG457, HCC, Box 39; and Shanghai to Hsinking, 12 October1943, SIS #98986. NARA, RG 457, HCC, Box 382.

159 MND Translation, Shanghai (Fontanel) to Bern(Politique), 30 September 1944, SIS 146354, NARA, RG457, HCC, Box 442.

160 MND Translation, Bern to Shanghai, 2 October1944, SIS #143831, NARA, RG 457, HCC, Box 439. Seealso New York Times, �U.S. Lets Jewish Unit RepayShanghai Loan,� 4 October 1943.

161 MND Translations Shanghai to Berne, 3December 1943, SIS #104073, NARA, RG 457, HCC, Box391; Berne (Jardin) to Shanghai (French Consul), 18 July1944, SIS #132299, NARA, RG 457, HCC, Box 426; andBerne (Verge) to Shanghai (French Consulate), 1December 1944, H-154218, NARA, RG 457, HCC, Box451.

162 MND Translation, Shanghai to Tokyo, 1 August1945, H-199657, NARA, RG 457, HCC, Boxes 514.Japanese Army translation, J88496A-D, G-J (Alsonotated SRR 117407-9), 27 July 1945, NARA, RG 457,Entry 9005.

163 MND Translation, Harbin to Tokyo, 21 October1944, H-150832, NARA, RG 457, HCC, Box 448;Japanese Naval Attaché (SRNA), Bern to Tokyo, 31 July1945, #50801, RG 457, Entry 9013, Box 7.

164 MND Translation, Harbin to Tokyo, 6 March1945, H-175408, NARA, RG 457, HCC, Box 481.

165 U.S. and Allied Efforts to Recover and RestoreGold and Other Assets Stolen or Hidden by GermanyDuring World War II, A Preliminary Study. Preparedby William Slany, May 1997. Also, the Appendix to U.S.and Allied Efforts to Recover and Restore Gold andOther Assets Stolen or Hidden by Germany DuringWorld War II. Finding Aid to Records at the NationalArchives at College Park. Prepared by Dr. Greg Bradsher,NARA, College Park, MD. May 1997. And theSupplement to the Preliminary Study: U.S. and AlliedWartime and Postwar Relations and Negotiations WithArgentina, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, and Turkey onLooted Gold and German External Assets and U.S.Concerns About the Fate of the Wartime UstashaTreasury. Prepared by William Slany. June 1998.

166 For more on Project Safehaven, see DonaldSteury, �The OSS and Project SAFEHAVEN,� Studies inIntelligence (Unclassified Edition, Summer 2000, No.9),35-50.

167 Preliminary Study, 66. Figures are given in 1945values. Current values are determined at a factor of

approximately 9.74: 5.6 billion dollars and 3.9 billiondollars, respectively.

168 As an example, in late November 1944, the sec-retary general of the Bank of Portugal allowed for thesale of Swiss francs for escudos by the GermanReichsbank. MND Translation, Lisbon (Dietmar) toBerlin, 22 November 1944, T-1625, NARA, RG 457,HCC, Box 519.

169 MND Translation, Stockholm (via Berlin/Oshima) to Tokyo, 21 March 1945, H-175763, NARA, RG457, HCC, Box 481.

170 MND Translations, Lisbon (Morishima) toTokyo, 6 January 1943, SIS #62000, NARA, RG 457,HCC, Box 342; and Berlin (Yamamoto) to Tokyo(Totsukami), 1 September 1944, SIS #142491. NARA,RG 457, HCC, Box 437. An interesting but relativelyunknown factor in determining the amount of gold inSwiss banks may have been the Japanese penchant forpaying for purchases in Europe in gold. How much goldthey transported to Europe is unknown. However, aJapanese diplomatic message from Tokyo to Berlinrefers to an informal decision to send two tons of gold toEurope for purchases of war material. MND Translation,Tokyo to Berlin, 28 February 1944, SIS #112177, NARA,RG 457, HCC, Box 399.

171 The Peterson Code used by the Reichsbank prob-ably was the 3rd edition published in 1929. The 4th edi-tion was published after World War II. See PetersonInternational Code � Signal PETCO (New York:Peterson Cipher Code Company, 1929). A copy is avail-able in the library of the National Cryptologic Museum,Fort George G. Meade, MD.

172 European Axis Signal Intelligence in World WarII as Revealed by �TICOM� Investigations and by OtherPrisoner of War Interrogations and Captured Material,Principally German. WDGAS-14, Chief Army SecurityAgency, 1 May 1946. Volume 7 � Goering�s ResearchBureau. 59, 74-5, Volume 6 � The Foreign OfficeCryptanalytic Section. 33

173 Blue Intelligence Summary No. 45, 19 June 1945,page 3, RG 457, HCC, Box 192;

174 For an idea of the spectrum of topics in thecables that the Germans might have seen, refer toForeign Relations of the United States (FRUS),Diplomatic Papers, 1943. Vol. I, General (Washington:United States Government Printing Office, 1963), 824-

908 and Foreign Relations of the United States,Diplomatic Papers, Vol. IV, Europe (Washington:United States Government Printing Office, 1966), 706-800.

175 For example, see VN 1831/7.44, issued 27 July1944 about Jews in Romania; VN 372/8.44, 4 August1944 about Hungarian Jews; and VN 1837/4.44, 28 April1944, about the arrival in Istanbul of a Bulgarian shipwith Jewish refuges for Palestine. All from RG 457, EntryHCC, Box 205 �German Decrypts of U.S. DiplomaticMessages.�

176 See VN 1888/3.1944, 24 April 1944,�Wirkungen des Luftbombardments auf denReichsbank-Notenumlauf,� (�Effects of the AerialBombing on the Circulation of the Reichsbank�s BankNotes.�) RG 457, HCC, Box 206; and VN 615/10.44, 15October 1944, RG 457, HCC, Box 208.

177 Preliminary Report, 18.178 MND Translation, Bern (Kase) to Tokyo, H-

145035, 11 October 1944, NARA, RG 457, HCC, Box 440.179 MND Translation, Bern (Kase) to Tokyo, H-

144958, 10 October 1944. NARA, RG 457, HCC, Box 440.The substance of this statement appeared in a cable fromthe Yokohama Specie Bank representative in Berlin,Kojiro Kitamura. The Yokohama Specie Bank wasJapan�s official overseas government bank.

180 �Magic� Diplomatic Summary, D.S. # 940, 20October 1944. NARA, RG 457, Magic DiplomaticSummaries, Box 13.

181 MND Translation, Bern (Kase) to Tokyo, H-158281, 16 December 1944. NARA, RG 457, HCC, Box457.

182 MND Translation, Bern (Kase) to Tokyo, H-158409, 22 December 1944. NARA, RG 457, HCC, Box457. The 100 million Swiss francs were equivalent toabout $24 million in 1945.

183 MND translation, Boston, Bern (Koecher) toBerlin, 13 December 1944, T-1626, NARA, RG 457, HCC,Box 519.

184 Preliminary Report, 31.185 Preliminary Report, 71. The involvement of

Currie and White in the negotiations is significant foranother reason: both men were longtime agents for theSoviet secret police organization, the NKVD. In the U.S.Army translations of the NKVD messages from 1943 to1946, known as Venona and issued by the Army Security

Agency, both men figure prominently. Currie, known asPAZh (Page) and White, whose cover names wereYuRIST (Jurist) and changed later to LAJER (Lawyer),had been Soviet agents since the 1930s. They had beenidentified as Soviet agents in Venona translations and byother agents turned witnesses or informants for the FBIand Justice Department. From the Venona translations,both were known to pass intelligence to their handlers,notably the Silvermaster network. White also was knownto exert substantial influence on Treasury SecretaryHenry Morgenthau. Another Soviet agent was V. FrankCoe, cover name PIK (Pick), a Treasury official who hadbeen involved in the Safehaven program. It is not certainif the actions by Currie, White, or Coe during the negoti-ations with the Swiss were in any way affected by theirrole as Soviet agents. Nor is it known if they reported toMoscow about the U.S. government�s efforts to restrictSwiss-German financial activity. For further informationon the roles of these three men, see Allan Weinstein andAlexander Vassiliev, The Haunted Wood (New York:Random House, 1999), 157-169.

The Soviets had other sources reporting about theGerman assets in Switzerland. Venona translation No.205 from 21 June 1945, Washington to Moscow, con-tained the contents of an Office of Strategic Servicesreport to a U.S. Treasury representative in England. Thereport listed a number of Germans who were involved inassisting the transfer of Nazi funds to unspecified foreignbanks.

Soviet goals probably did not differ much from thoseof the other Allies when it came to limiting Nazi eco-nomic activity in Switzerland. Moscow would have beeninterested in seeing Swiss trade with the Germans endthereby reducing the effectiveness of the German mili-tary facing them in Eastern Europe. Preliminary Report,33.

186 MND Translation, Bern (Kase) to Tokyo, 29January 1945, H-164327, NARA RG 457, HCC, Box 465;and Bern (Politique) to Washington, 27 January 1945,H-165648. NARA, RG 457, HCC, Box 466.

187 MND Translation, Bern via Berlin (Kase) toTokyo, 6 February 1945, H-166117, NARA, RG 457, HCC,Box 466. In the postwar period, the Allied GoldCommission met with a number of nations that had beenneutral during the war, but had traded with Germany. Asummary of these meetings can be found in U.S. and

Allied Wartime and Postwar Relations andNegotiations With Argentina, Portugal, Spain, Sweden,and Turkey on Looted Gold and German ExternalAssets and U.S. Concerns About the Fate of the WartimeUstasha Treasury. Supplement to Preliminary Study onU.S. and Allied Efforts to recover and Restore Gold andOther Assets Stolen or Hidden by Germany DuringWorld War II. Coordinated by Stuart Eizenstat, UnderSecretary of State for Economic, Business, andAgricultural Affairs. Prepared by William Slany,Historian, Department of State. June 1998.

188 Ibid.189 Translation, Bern (Schnurre) to Berlin, February

1945, Boston Series, T-2624. NARA, RG 457, HCC, Box521

190 Ibid.191 MND Translation, Berlin to Tokyo, 19 February

1945, H-168142, NARA, RG 457, HCC, Box 469.192 Preliminary Study, 35.193 Ministry of Economic Warfare Translations, CS

58695, Parts I and II, and CS 58638, Part II, NARA, RG226, Entry 19, Box 143, XL 10464.

194 MND Translation, Bern to Berlin (Auswaertig),6 April 1945, H-215456. Mandatory DeclassificationReview #42560 (National Security Agency), 12 March2003.

195 �Magic Diplomatic Summary, D.S. #1120, 19April 1945. NARA, RG 457, Magic DiplomaticSummaries, Box 16.

196 The Allies were convinced that the Germans hadhidden stolen assets in places other than Merkers. AnOperation Sparkler was a plan to locate and seize thesecahes. In September 1946, a series of raids were con-ducted, but the results were meager. Thanks to MiriamKleiman at NARA for this source. RG-319, Records of theArmy Staff, Vols 1- 7. MND Translation, Washingtonto Bern, H-215680, 27 November 1945 and Washingtonto Bern, 26 November 1945, H-218258. NARA, RG 457,�Swiss Gold,� Box 1.

In the preface to this Guide, we asked two majorquestions: What did the Allied communicationsintelligence agencies learn about the Holocaust andwhen was this intelligence known? In the precedingchapters, we have described briefly the operationsof the communications intelligence system of theGC&CS and the SIS. We have described the avail-able archival collections at NARA, the PRO, andother places. Finally, we surveyed some of the hun-dreds of reports produced by the cryptologic agen-cies that bear on the history of the Holocaust. Usingthis information, we should be able to answer bothquestions. At the same time, we can add someobservations about other aspects of the archivalrecords, specifically their limitations, how theycame to be organized as they did, and their poten-tial uses for today�s scholars and researchers.

There are two points that need to be understoodthat relate to these two questions before we consid-er them. First, because the United States came intothe European war only after December 1941, muchof the following discussion applies to the activitiesand personnel of the GC&CS. The SIS did not estab-lish a COMINT mission for the European Theaterthat was fully separate from the British. The SIScollaborated with the British on many EuropeanAxis military cryptologic efforts, but in generallysubsidiary or complementary roles. After the agree-ments of 1943, the Americans relied on the Britishfor much COMINT about Europe.1The SIS did notreceive any German Police decrypts or SS messagesuntil after the BRUSA exchange. At that point in thewar, the intelligence about the Holocaust gleanedfrom those sources was meager because of specificGerman security measures implemented gradually(but never completely effective) from late 1941 into1943. The SIS developed some information aboutthe Holocaust from its own intercept, mostly

derived from the messages of the diplomatic mis-sions of several countries. But this intelligence gen-erally consisted of eyewitness reporting of events bydiplomats on the scene or information they gath-ered from interviews or other sources.

Secondly, it is important also to remember thatthe GC&CS developed only one source of intelli-gence � communications intelligence � during thewar. What the GC&CS gathered from its interceptsand the subsequent decrypts was forwarded up andacross the echelons of the British intelligence,defense, and security establishments. The British(and the Americans) utilized many other sources ofintelligence besides what they pulled from Axis sig-nals. These included classic espionage agentsources, aerial photography, collection of intelli-gence by technical means such as radar, capturedequipments and papers, reports from diplomaticmissions, debriefs of prisoners, defectors, andrefugees, and monitoring of foreign radio broad-casts. During the war, the Western Allies used intel-ligence from all these sources to formulate cam-paign and battle plans, political and diplomaticstrategies, and to follow the course of the war inother theaters such as the Russian front. In somemilitary campaigns, such as in North Africa, Ultrawas the more decisive source of intelligence. Yetin others it was less critical to outcomes of theBattle for Britain in 1940 and the U-boat campaign.We need to keep in mind this mix of intelligencesources and the contribution of each to the WesternAllied knowledge of the Holocaust. There wereother sources of intelligence about what the Naziswere doing and some of these proved to be superi-or to COMINT.

Chapter 5

Some Observations about Western Communications Intelligenceand the Holocaust

What Was Known from Western COMINT

The archived wartime records of the British andAmerican cryptologic agencies hold a number oftranslations and decryptions that bear on the histo-ry of the Holocaust. Due to limited research, onlyan approximate estimate can be made, and thatranges from 700 to 900 individual translations anddecrypts. The information in them covers the entireperiod and scope of the Nazi effort to eliminateEurope of its Jews and other �undesirable� groups.Yet, while numerous and diverse, when takentogether these records do not constitute a completenarrative about the event. For many of the individ-ual dramas of the Holocaust, such as the roundupof Jews in the Netherlands, the escape of theDanish Jews, and the deportation of foreign Jewsfrom France, the information from COMINTrecords is fragmentary or episodic at best.

A large number of the intercepts were originat-ed by the Nazi organizations that were directlyresponsible for carrying out the Final Solution.These organizations included the various forma-tions and commands of the German Police, the ele-

ments of the SS charged with running the variouscamps and supervising the roundup of Jews inoccupied countries, and the SD, which activelyworked along with the police and SS. The messagessent by these organizations form a contemporarychronicle of their activities. Other intercepts suchas the diplomatic messages of Vichy France and theSztojay and Szalasi regimes in Hungary contain thegrotesque official rationales for the depredationsinflicted on their victims. These particular inter-cepted messages stand as first-person indictmentsof those who committed the war crimes and thosewho aided the criminals.

Still, despite the incriminating informationfrom the SIGINT, the information in the police andSS decrypts does not provide historians with a com-plete picture of the extent and nature of the Naziprogram to eliminate Jews from Europe. For exam-ple, the arithmetic sum of information from thedecrypts, measured in terms of reported deaths andgeneral actions such as �liquidated inhabitants,�although a grim accounting, did not give anythingnear the total deaths that the police units and ein-satzgruppen caused. This was partly due to the

Aerial photograph of gas chambers and prisoner barracks at the Auschwitz I complex taken on 4 April 1944

(Source: Studies in Intelligence. Special Unclassified Edition, Fall 2000. Page 93)

Western inability to intercept and decrypt everymessage sent by the police or SS units. As such,much of the intercept came from the police and SSunits operating with the German Army GroupsCenter and South. Very little was intercepted anddecrypted from the police units operating in theBaltic area of operations.2 Also, the security mea-sure slowly implemented by the Police commandeventually closed this pipeline of information.

The decrypts from the concentration and deathcamps that the British analysts reviewed havesimilar problems. These particular reports wereperiodic accounts, usually in the form of a monthlysummary, of the day-to-day available slave laborpopulation at a particular camp. Often, a camp�spopulation report was broken down further bynationality or ethnic group. In some cases, thereport was further refined with a statement of thetotals from the beginning and end of each day.Absent from these reports was information aboutthose groups who arrived at the camps and imme-diately were sent to the gas chambers. Why this lat-ter information about the gassings was withheldfrom the camp reports is not clear. Quite possibly,the SS hierarchy wanted to maintain as much secre-cy as possible about the extent of the Final Solution.Later German security precautions only added tothe silence. The result was that analysts at GC&CS,using only SS and police decrypts, could not pro-vide explicit intelligence about the mass extermina-tion activities at Auschwitz/Birkenau and othersuch camps.3

Another large collection of intercepts consists ofmultinational diplomatic messages. Most of theintercepts were of messages from European diplo-mats stationed in various capitals who reportedoccasionally about the plight of the Jews. As men-tioned earlier, the priority to collect these types ofmessages was never high, except for those fromJapanese diplomats in Berlin and Rome. Reportsby diplomats occasionally carried informationabout the roundup of Jews in a particular country.Only during the roundups and deportations inVichy France in the summer and fall of 1942 and in

Hungary during the late spring and fall of 1944 didthe diplomatic traffic report in any depth aboutwhat was happening. In the latter case of Hungary,Allied and neutral interest in events there initiallymay have been related to the secret maneuvers byBudapest to abandon the Axis and sue for peace.

Still, the records of the diplomatic eyewitnessesor those who reported what had been discoveredfrom their own inquiries, such as many of the inter-cepted diplomatic reports in essence were, provid-ed a dramatic element to the narrative of the grimevents that happened throughout Europe.Diplomats from neutral countries filed most ofthese reports. In many cables, their objectivity asobservers often was challenged by the tragic andhorrible nature of the events they reported. This ispoignantly illustrated in the traffic sent by thePortuguese ambassador in Budapest. Other mes-sages are a chronology of failed or futile efforts byneutral diplomats to organize or effect the rescue ofsome of the victims.

When the COMINT Agencies Knew about theHolocaust

For decades, an important issue for historiansof the Holocaust has been to establish the point intime during the war when sufficient informationfrom all sources reached the Allies that disclosedthe full nature and extent of the German plans toeliminate the Jews. The critical time period encom-passes the beginning of the massacres in the west-ern Soviet Union, that is mid-1941, and runs to themiddle or end of 1942 when complex of deathcamps reached nearly full operation. But it is diffi-cult to provide a simple answer to the second ques-tion of when the COMINT agencies knew about theHolocaust during this period. This is because anyanswer anticipates that, from such a date when sig-nals intelligence was known about the massacres inRussia or the operations of the death camps, theWestern cryptologic agencies could have discernedthe full intent of the Nazi policy of extermination,the full extent of which became known as the FinalSolution.

On the surface, the timeliness of communica-tions intelligence � especially the German Policemessages that were intercepted and decryptedshortly after the invasion of the Soviet Union began,and the SS concentration camp radio reports fromas early as mid-1942 � suggests that this intelli-gence source could have warned of what wouldeventually befall Europe�s Jews. However, therewere two major obstacles that prevented communi-cations intelligence from being the single �warning�factor.

The first obstacle was that the usefulness of theintercepted police and SS messages was undercutby two fundamental shortcomings in the nature ofthe intelligence itself. The most important of thesewas that these messages were intercepted after theprograms of massacres and death camps hadbegun. The police actions in the western USSR hadbegun prior the intercept of the earliest police radiotraffic about the massacres in the Soviet Union. Thefirst intercept that mentioned any of the massacresprobably was the 18 July 1941 radio message fromthe Police Regiment Center that reported the exe-cution of 1,153 Jewish �plunderers� near the townof Slonim in Belorussia.4 This was nearly a monthafter Nazi Germany invaded the Soviet Union. Evenmore importantly, Nazi policy for the elimination ofall undesired racial types during the invasion of theSoviet Union had been established back in March1941. At that time, Hitler, in a meeting with militaryleaders, had established that the invasion would bea war of extermination. The arrangements to imple-ment this policy were made in the next two monthsbetween the army and the SS.5 But nothing of thisplanning appeared in the intercept.

The SS messages about the concentrationcamps suffered from the same time lag. The mes-sages sent by the concentration camp SS com-manders and encrypted in the SS Enigma machine,were not intercepted and decrypted until early June1942. This date was well after the death campat Chelmo, Poland, had started operation inDecember 1941. It also was months after the begin-ning of operations of the Birkenau complex at

Auschwitz in March 1942.6 The intercepts about theconcentration and death camps also came well afterthe important conference at Wannsee in January1942, which considered extending the FinalSolution to all of occupied Europe.

The second shortcoming of the intercepts wasthat they contained fragmentary or unclear infor-mation that could be ambiguous to analysts whoreviewed it. Therefore, the COMINT could be sub-ject to differing interpretations regarding the fullintent of the Nazi activities reported in the inter-cepted messages. The analysts that studied thecommunications intelligence could and did miss ormisinterpret the significance of the information inthem. Axis decrypts were filled with abbreviations,acronyms, and terms that the Allied intelligenceanalysts first had to understand. We can add to thismix of problems the Nazi policy of disguising refer-ences to various phases and activities of the FinalSolution. Sometimes this program effectivelyobscured the information in the intercepts to thepoint where its importance went unrecognized. Agood example of this was the German Police mes-sage of 11 January 1943 that listed the number ofJews and others gassed at four death camps in theprevious year. The decrypted message referred toan �Einsatz Reinhardt� followed by a set of num-bers for the last two weeks of 1942 and for the entireyear. British codebreakers appear to have neverunderstood the reference and that the message was,in fact, a report on the number of victims gassedin the four death camps located in the GeneralGovernment (southeastern Occupied Poland).

The second obstacle to effective use of WesternCOMINT was how the intelligence was receivedand assimilated by the analysts and officers atBletchley Park and the rest of British intelligencestructure who were familiar with the reports aboutthe massacres, deportations, and concentrationcamps. Although historians are wary of makinggeneralizations about the inner thoughts and atti-tudes of a population in any period, some observa-tions about the historical context of European anti-Semitism could be useful if we are to understand, in

any small way, how intelligence about the mas-sacres and camps was received at the GC&CS.

The first thing to consider is that what the Naziswere doing was outside of the historical experienceand imagination of most Europeans. Certainly thehistorical landscape of European anti-Semitismhad been one marked with almost nineteen hun-dred years of unremitting ugliness � the pogroms,massacres, deportations, banishments, ghettoiza-tion, extortion, blood-laws, and auto-da-fes. Buteven this common heritage of brutality could hard-ly prepare people for what the Nazis planned andwere working to fulfill: an effort to eliminateEurope (and later, the world) of all vestiges ofJewry. Not only were Jews targets, but also manyother segments of the European population wereto be eliminated � mentally and physically handi-capped persons, Slavs, Poles, Romany, etc. Thislarger aim, too, was beyond the historical experi-ence of Europe. And for the Nazis to carry out thisplan meant that the old techniques of murder andstarvation were not adequate. Hence the Nazis,employed mass industrial techniques of slaughterto achieve what they wanted. Realizing that whatthe Nazis did was so horribly unique, could it beexpected realistically that the analysts at BletchleyPark and elsewhere could have determined thetotality of the Nazi plan, and the means to achieveit, based on the fragmentary evidence at hand fromthe intercepts? And could they have grasped theimplications that the massacres in Russia and thecamps were some of the means to achieve a Europethat was Judenfrei?

A second consideration is that, while many peo-ple may have received the news of the massacresand camps with horror, the truth is that much of theworld�s population, including many in the majorAllied powers of the United States and GreatBritain, held, to some degree, anti-Semitic senti-ments. This observation may be unsavory to mod-ern ears; it is, unfortunately, a historical fact. Wehave seen some allusions to it in the precedingpages of this guide. Most notably, there was the dif-ficulty experienced by the United States when it

came to saving some 5,000 Jewish orphans inFrance (Chapter 4, section B, page 92). This was, inpart, caused by the refusal by some in Congress toaccept more Jews. Both President Roosevelt andPrime Minister Churchill were often hampered intheir limited efforts to alleviate some of the suffer-ing by the general anti-Semitic sentiment in bothnations.7 Just how much British signals intelligenceanalysts, either individually or as a group, held thisattitude is unknown.8 And how much it affectedtheir reactions to the intelligence is likewiseunknown. But it must be considered in any discus-sion about how the COMINT was received.

Whatever their beliefs or intentions, many peo-ple in the West, and some of them were in a posi-tion to know otherwise, simply could not compre-hend or refused to believe the evidence of what wasoccurring in Nazi-occupied Europe.9 For example,the famous American historian, Arthur SchlesingerJr., then an analyst in the Research and AnalysisBranch of the OSS, remarked that, in the summer of1944, even with the flood of reports about concen-tration camps, what was happening was interpret-ed as an �incremental increase in persecutionrather than�extermination.� 10 And in December of1944, John McCloy, the assistant secretary of warand a regular recipient of Ultra intelligence, askedLeon Kubotinski of the World Jewish Congress,�We are alone. Tell me the truth. Do you reallybelieve all those horrible things happened?�11

The little evidence that historians of cryptologyhave to work with suggests that within the ranksand leadership of the GC&CS, there was a divisionof opinion about what the police decrypts auguredregarding the extent and nature of what was hap-pening to the Jews and other groups throughoutEurope. Two examples illustrate this split. InSeptember 1941, an intelligence analyst fromBletchley Park had attached this grim comment toa Police decrypt about massacres in Russia: �Thetone of this message suggests that the word hasgone out that a decrease in the population of Russiawould be welcomed in high quarters and that theleaders of the three sectors [The commanders of the

police units assigned to the three German ArmyGroups invading the Soviet Union] stand somewhatin competition with each other as to their �score�.�This comment reportedly caused the War Office torespond with a sharp retort that this interpretationwas based on a minimum of evidence.12

On the other hand, on 11 September 1941 Nigelde Grey, the deputy director of the GC&CS, notedon a series of early decrypts of German radioreports of massacres by many police battalions andthe SS Cavalry Regiment that, �The fact that thePolice are killing all Jews that fall into their handsshould now be sufficiently well appreciated. It is nottherefore proposed to continue reporting thesebutcheries unless so requested.�13 De Grey�s com-ment could represent either his inability to appreci-ate the implications of the massacres, or his will-ingness to ignore what the Nazis were doing.Whatever his reason, even someone as highlyplaced in British intelligence as de Grey, exposed ashe was to the daily decrypts detailing the manymassacres and other atrocities occurring in thewestern USSR, would not draw attention to thecontinuing slaughter in the western USSR.

In either case of the Police massacres in Russiaand the operations of the death camps, COMINTcould not provide a timely warning of the totality ofthe tragedies that eventually were to fall onEurope�s Jews, Slavs, Poles, and others. This is notto say that the intercepts were useless. In the case ofthe police massacres, at the very least, the decryptsdid alert the British to what was happening in theoccupied Soviet Union. As for the concentrationand death camps, information about them fromintercepts was available only some time after thecamps had begun operation. In this case, informa-tion from other sources, such as the revelations ofJan Karski, and that gathered by the Americandiplomats in Switzerland may have proved moreuseful in alerting the West to the extent of the hor-rors occurring in the camps.14

Despite what was known, Allied communica-tions intelligence, by itself, could not have provided

an early warning to Allied leaders regarding thenature and scope of the Holocaust.

Some Further Observations Regardingthe Available Archival Records

There are limited COMINT agency recordsabout the Holocaust.

Early in this Guide, we referred to a popularmisconception that the Allies intercepted all, ornearly all, Axis communications during the SecondWorld War. This notion probably arose and gainedpopular credence because of a number of presenta-tions by journalists, television reporters, and popu-lar writers about the cryptanalytic successes againstvarious Axis cipher machines, such as Purple andEnigma, and numerous manual codes and cipherssuch as Japanese naval operational code JN-25.Whatever the authors of these presentations aboutAllied code-breaking successes intended, and what-ever was inferred by their audiences, what subse-quently developed was a lively image of �sweeping�or �vacuuming� the radio airwaves of all Axis mes-sages. To continue the image, the Allies would thendecrypt all of these intercepted messages.

The reality, as has been presented in this Guide,was much different. The COMINT system, fromintercept to dissemination of the intelligence, moreclosely resembled a process that, in most cases,intercepted varying portions of Axis and neutralcommunications, and then slowly winnowed outthe chaff of unusable or unimportant messages.Against the many thousands of Axis radio transmit-ters, or terminals, that operated on a daily basis, theAllies had a much smaller number of intercept posi-tions at monitoring stations located around theworld. They could copy only a limited number ofmessages. What terminals they covered, in turn,were determined by priorities that were meant tomeet the strategic, theater, or operational require-ments of the various allied commands. Of thosemessages sent by the Axis terminals that werecopied, a number might have contained too manyerrors in the transmission by the Axis radioman, or

in the transcription by the Allied monitor, whichwould have rendered them useless for decryptionor translation. Of the copy that was usable, a por-tion may have contained messages encrypted insystems that could not be exploited by Allied crypt-analysts. Many messages that were successfullydecrypted did not contain information that wasimmediately important or useful for Allied intelli-gence analysts. Only that information that met thepriorities set by the command structure would beprocessed and disseminated to the appropriaterecipients. Although no general set of statisticsexists, as we have seen, some accounting of transla-tions as a percent of the total intercept range fromabout five to fifteen percent, though targets of high-er priority, such as U-boat communications, had amuch higher success rate.

Of course, this explanation applies only to theradio and cable communications that the Allieswere able to intercept. A large portion of Germaninternal communications, and those sent to nearbyneutrals and conquered nations or regions, wasconducted on landline or submarine cable tele-phone and telegraph systems, which Allied moni-tors were unable to access. Collecting messagessent over cable required physical access to a termi-nal or cable through which the messages traveled.The actual acquisition of the messages requiredeither the placement of a tap on the wire in a secretor secure overseas location, or the subversion,bribery, or the blackmail of employees of neutral orenemy national post, telephone and telegraphagencies. However, while Axis cables sent withinoccupied and neutral Europe were accessible bymeans of covert operations, protecting the tap fromdiscovery and getting the information from them ina timely manner would have been extremely diffi-cult and dangerous.

Another constraining factor was the prioritizedrequirements system established by intelligencecommands. It hardly would be a surprise to say thatCOMINT priorities weighed most heavily towardspurely military communications. Military commu-nications, especially those by Axis air force and

naval forces, most likely would not contain muchinformation on the Holocaust. Wehrmacht com-munications from the Russian front might havecontained some items on massacres, but probablynot consistent. German Police and SS communica-tions, which proved to be the major source on theworst depredations of the Holocaust, originallywere collected as a supplement to intelligence onthe military and civilian domestic situation inGermany.15 Yet, even these communications termi-nals were not the highest Allied priority.

Nonmilitary communications, principallydiplomatic and commercial, which might carrysome information about the roundups, concentra-tion camps, or looting were assigned to a secondarypriority. Then, not all diplomatic terminals were ofequal importance. The American ability to exploitfully Japan�s high-level diplomatic communica-tions encrypted with Purple perforce made thatcountry�s messages a priority object of Allied inter-cept. Japan�s terminals in the major Axis and neu-tral capitals were preeminent targets. Japanesecommunications to other countries rated muchlower in importance. While the diplomatic traffic ofneutrals generally rated lower in the priority forintercept.

Axis military and diplomatic terminals wereemphasized when it came to tasking the COMINTsystem. This was because of the paramount impor-tance of intelligence from these sources to the suc-cessful prosecution of the war. Information aboutthe Holocaust came mostly from lower priority ter-minals: German Police and neutral diplomatic ter-minals. To raise the priority for these would havedetracted from the primary Allied strategic effort todefeat the Axis, especially Germany. Intelligenceelements, including communications intelligence,were tasked to acquire that information necessaryto achieve this aim.

A final delimiter to information about theHolocaust was the policy adopted by the Nazis tocontrol the spread of information about the plansand operations carried out to meet the goal of elim-

inating all Jews and other undesirables fromEurope. While the SS and other Nazis would touttheir successes in eliminating Jews and others, theydid not always record them. This attitude can beillustrated by the remark by Reichsfuehrer SSHeinrich Himmler�s comment at a speech to SSnotables in which he stated that the Final Solutionwas �a glorious page in our history, never written(niemals geschriebenes), and perhaps never to bewritten.�16 Aside from some intercept of police, SS,and SD radio messages, and occasional referencesto Allied publicity about the massacres, deporta-tions, and the concentration camps, there is littleother official German radio communications relat-ing to killing operations or other activities relatingto the Holocaust. This is partly attributable to theNazi hierarchy�s relatively effective policy limitingofficial references the actual operations to extermi-nate the Jews. This policy precluded detailed publicdiscussion or announcements.

Nazi officials also developed a vocabulary ofevasion, utilizing obscure bureaucratic languageand euphemisms when referring to the Nazi objec-tives and actual techniques employed by the police,SS, SD, and others. In one directive from MartinBorman, even the expression �final solution�(Endloesung) was disallowed from correspon-dence. Of course the premier example of this policyof official obscurity was the January 1943 messageabout the results of Operation Reinhard. Itappeared to be an innocuous message with num-bers, dates and an unclear context. Analysts at thetime missed its significance.

If the official policy was not always followed,and it was hardly a �masterpiece of deception� asclaimed by German general Alfred Jodl, it did havethe effect of restricting discussion and correspon-dence about the Holocaust.17 It should also bepointed out that the radio reports by the Germanpolice about the massacres in Russia and the SS sta-tus reports from the concentration, labor, anddeath camps eventually were discontinued becauseof doubts by the German Police and SS high com-mands about the security of these communications.

In light of the above factors � technical limita-tions, German deception, and Allied military prior-ities � it is unlikely that Western communicationsintelligence could have produced more intelligenceduring the war than it ultimately did.

There are significant differences between theArchival record holdings of the cryptologicagencies of the United States and GreatBritain.

Although the differences in the size and contentof the records of the American and British crypto-logic agencies should not be a surprise, it was onlyrecently that historians understood why. There aretwo reasons for this gap. The first is the simple factthat the United States entered the war some twen-ty-six months after it had begun in Europe. Duringthat period, the British had developed an extensivecryptologic effort that encompassed the EuropeanTheater. American expertise and capability stillwere sparse when it came to Axis communicationsin Europe, even after some staff technicalexchanges with British cryptologists in 1940 and1941. Instead, American cryptologists, because ofthen current military situation and a decade of pre-war expertise, had taken responsibility for commu-nications intelligence in the Pacific Theater of oper-ations. This dominance became more pronouncedwhen the sole British code-breaking site inSingapore redeployed to Ceylon and then furtherwest to British East Africa in 1942. Eventually,American cryptologists arrived in Britain and wereintegrated as individuals or as units into the GC&CSoperations, but they remained subordinate to theBritish.

The second reason for the difference probablystems from a misunderstanding of the nature andtiming of the official British-American exchangeprogram known as the BRUSA Agreement ofJune/July 1943. Prior to the agreement, there wereseparate and limited, reciprocal interchangesbetween the GC&CS and the SIS and OP-20-G.18

The June 1943 agreement covered exchange oftechnical communications intelligence and opera-

tional intelligence information between GC&CSand the U.S. War Department, as represented bySpecial Branch and Signal Security Service. (TheU.S. Navy would sign a separate, more limited,agreement. It was known as the ExtensionAgreement and applied to a 1942 exchangearrangement known as the Holden Agreement.)The BRUSA applied to the military sphere only;diplomatic affairs were not included and werearranged in a separate agreement between theAmericans at Arlington Hall Station (AHS) and theGC&CS diplomatic section at Berkeley Street,London.19

Also, it needs to be recalled that the U.S. Officeof Strategic Services had its own exchange agree-ment with British intelligence, specifically with itscounterintelligence and counterespionage units,M.I. 5 and Section V. of M.I. 6. These exchangesincluded communications intelligence materialthat was not given to the American cryptologic ele-ments. These arrangements account for the signifi-cant but limited numbers of British decrypts andtranslations that can be found in OSS records.

Also, and more importantly in regards toarchival records holdings, the trade in intelligencethat followed the agreements was not retroactive.Only current technical and operational intelligencewas passed between London and Washington;though there may have been some limited transferof dated technical cryptographic and cryptanalyticmaterial used for training purposes. This explains,for example, why there were no copies of GermanPolice decrypts (except for a few training samplessent to Arlington Hall later in the war) in thewartime files of the Signals Intelligence Service.Before the agreements in 1943, this source largelyhad dried up when the police and SS stopped usingradio for transmitting reports about massacres inRussia and the situation in various concentrationcamps and, instead, passed this information bycourier or cable.

The intelligence that was exchanged betweenthe COMINT agencies did not include all of the

actual Axis or neutral decrypts or translations. Thelogistics of such a transfer of information wouldhave been too daunting. The amount of paper traf-fic would have swamped communications linesbetween the two capitals. Transmission rates, evenof teletypewriters (50-100 words a minute), wouldhave been inadequate. Physically transporting thematerial across the Atlantic was not a solution: theamount of intelligence generated would have mili-tated against a reasonable or timely review. Thedigests, summaries, and relatively limited numberof translations of the significant intelligence thatwere transmitted back and forth between the twocapitals were considered sufficient.20 This solutionprobably suited the needs of the leadership inWashington, DC. The most important Americancustomers of British Ultra information were themilitary commands located in England, such asthe Supreme Headquarters Allied ExpeditionaryForces (SHAEF) under General Eisenhower, theAllied naval and air authorities, and those in theNorth African and Italian fronts.

There also was a security angle that limited theAmerican and British exchange. Ever since theBritish codebreakers had first contemplated meet-ing their American opposites in 1941, some officialsin the London security establishments had frettedover the history of loose control of security infor-mation in Washington. The British concernsstemmed partly from the poor American controlprocedures, and a genuine fear of a press and soci-ety unhampered by any Official Secrets Act.21 At thesame time, the British concern reveals just howmuch they appreciated the slender nature of theirUltra triumph. For the first few years of the war, thebasis for their mastery over some of the Enigmasrested on cribs (plaintext assumed to be present inan encrypted message), individual German radiooperator insecurities, and captured key and Enigmamachines.22 Only slowly did the British cryptologicestablishment let the Americans in on their crypt-analytic success against Enigma. Although thissharing began in early 1941, it was not until lateragreements in 1942 and 1943 that exchanges of

technical and operational intelligence wasexchanged on a regular basis.

The result is that the current archival records ofthe British and American COMINT organizationsreflect the division and emphasis of efforts betweenboth countries that was established by the July1943 Britain-United States Agreement. The Britishrecords are European-oriented and go back to 1939.American records reflect the emphasis on thePacific campaign and, except for U-boat campaignand worldwide diplomatic intercept, are bereft ofmost German military and other service transla-tions.

The Western communications intelligenceagencies collected many more intercepts thanthey finally processed during the war.

It must be remembered that the primary pur-pose of the Allied intelligence agencies, includingthe COMINT organizations, was the collection, pro-cessing, and dissemination of information support-ing the prosecution of the war against the Axis pow-ers. As such, the processing and retention of infor-mation based on communications intelligence wascontingent upon the strategic exigencies of themoment. As we have seen, intercepted messagesthat were not processed or used, either because oftechnical reasons, or overtaken by events as theoperational situation changed, were rarely (if ever)retained for future processing. As was mentionedabove, as much as 85 to 90 percent of all messagescollected by the Allied COMINT agencies were notprocessed to the point of formal dissemination.This does not exclude the possibility that someintelligence was disseminated in an informal fash-ion. There likely were instances of hurriedly trans-lated intercept during a fast-moving military situa-tion that was passed along verbally or by phone.And some intercept was processed partly, perhapsonly decrypted, but not translated or disseminatedin the form of a serialized formal report or transla-tion. In this latter category there are the policedecrypts produced by GC&CS that remain in theoriginal German language form. But the decrypts

were retained and the information in them was dis-seminated to the British leadership in the form ofbriefings and reports.

After the war, the U.S. Army and Navy crypto-logic agencies destroyed virtually all of theunprocessed intercept. With victory over the Axis,there was no operational rationale for retaining it.Only two types of �raw� traffic, intercepts that hadnot been decrypted or analyzed, were retained afterthe war. The first consisted of a small set of samplesof various wartime targets for training purposes.The second set of retained intercept was that rele-vant to postwar activities. This latter interceptincluded the U.S. Navy�s decryption and translationof Japanese naval messages related to the prewarperiod, especially those directly concerned with theattack on Pearl Harbor; Soviet espionage messagesdecrypted by the Army Security Agency, knownunder the project name of Venona; and Germanmilitary attaché and diplomatic messages betweenBerlin and Tokyo. These latter messages containedinformation about subjects of continuing intelli-gence interest: wartime Axis technical material andequipment exchange and intelligence that Germanyand Japan shared on the Soviet Union. The latterwas important in the context of the growing post-war concerns about Soviet intentions and capabili-ties.

The finished reports that were retained by theCOMINT agencies consisted, in the main, of theserialized intelligence product series produced dur-ing the war: the numerous series of translations,decrypts, summaries, or reports derived from tar-geted Axis and neutral military, naval, commercial,security, diplomatic communications. The othermaterial retained was made up of technical reportsabout cryptologic techniques, equipment, and pro-cedures. It is these collections, stored and availablein the Public Record Office and the NationalArchives, which constitute the records of Alliedcommunications intelligence from the war.

Concurrent with the postwar destruction ofunprocessed intercept was the closure of many

offices that had been responsible for producing theintelligence material. These closures were part ofthe drastic, general postwar reduction in theAmerican and British military and intelligenceestablishments.23 The administrative records andintelligence reports of the various wartime crypto-logic work centers were retained by their successoragencies. The papers would not be transferred totheir respective national archives for public useuntil decades later.

In the postwar period, GC&CS, the ArmySecurity Agency (the postwar successor to SIS), andOP-20-G would write in-house histories of theiractivities during the war. These general works var-ied in size and scope. The GC&CS histories werevery detailed and extended over three dozen vol-umes. The ASA also produced a multivolume histo-ry of the SIS activities, though nowhere as extensiveas the British work. Also, a number of short histo-ries of the cryptologic tactical units were written.Some special problem target studies also were pub-lished in the years after the war. It was not until the1980s that these numerous histories were releasedto the public, but only very slowly, and many ofthem contained redacted text.24

There are pertinent uses for the availablerecords from the COMINT agencies related tothe Holocaust.

Of the perhaps few million translations anddecrypts published by the Allied cryptologic agen-cies during the war, those containing informationpertinent to the Holocaust currently numberbetween 700 and 900.25 Even in the collectionof the thousands of German Police decrypts thatresides in the PRO, only a limited number of themactually carry information about Holocaust-relatedatrocities. Most of the Police messages coveradministrative, order of battle, logistical, or trans-portation subjects or are concerned with the securi-ty situation behind German lines in Russia. In thelarger context of the history of the Holocaust, whenone considers the enormous amount of public andprivate records available from all other sources, the

COMINT contribution is quite small. Aside fromthis paucity of records, the information they con-tain for the most part is not new. Yet, there aresome startling finds such as the German policemessage that contains the number of Jews extermi-nated in the General Government in 1942 duringOperation Reinhard, and details of the operationsin Auschwitz contained in the Vrba-Wetzler reportin mid-1944. Still, the records have two particularuses for today�s researchers and historians.

First of all, in some cases, the COMINT transla-tions are the only extant and contemporary recordof some aspects of the Holocaust. In particular, theGC&CS decrypts of the German police, SS, and SDmessages are the only existing records of the dailyoperations of these organizations, since theGermans destroyed most of the original orders,reports and other correspondence. Even as episod-ic and fragmentary as the police and SS decryptsare, they constitute an important part of the recordof the roundup of Jews in Rome and the massacreson the Russian front, and the operations of the con-centration and death camps. In other cases, such asthe roundup of Jews in Vichy France in 1942 and inHungary in 1944, the communications intelligenceinformation supplements well the already extensivesources. But, just as important as the translationsand decrypts are as a source, like most otherCOMINT, these records constitute a contemporaryrecord of events. These messages were written as anactivity occurred or were composed shortly afterwhile the information was fresh. It is the immedia-cy of these decrypts and translations that is partic-ularly useful to scholars reconstructing events.

Second, many of the COMINT reports andtranslations, especially diplomatic messages, pointto possible new sources of information or to aspectsof the Holocaust that have been overlooked or min-imized in conventional narratives. These transla-tions also suggest new avenues of research that con-sider the attitudes, reactions, or activities of coun-tries not normally associated directly with theHolocaust. In the first instance, in particular, dur-ing the roundup of Hungary�s Jews, the reports

filed by neutral diplomats stationed in Budapestusually not associated with large-scale, internation-al relief work such as Mexico, Portugal, Spain andEire appear to contain much information about thecourse of the SS dragnet and the measures taken torescue Jews. The relative handful of interceptedmessages from these countries indicates that theirdiplomats made significant attempts to help theendangered Jews. If nothing else, these diplomatswere fairly reliable reporters of events during theseveral months of the Hungarian tragedy. Thesediplomatic intercepts suggest that the foreign min-istry archives of those countries may contain morepertinent information than hitherto considered inconventional historical narratives about theHolocaust. Also, other countries with Jewishnationals caught up in Hungary made efforts to res-cue their countrymen. Romania, which lost part ofTransylvania to Hungary, was concerned over Jewsfrom that region seized by Hungarian authorities.26

The COMINT records also indicate that thewaves from the storm of the European Holocausthad reached the shores of Latin America. The reac-tion by Latin American countries to events inEurope varied. For example, a Vichy diplomaticcable of 24 September 1942 reported on a newlypassed Bolivian legislation that further restrictedimmigration by Jews, Asians, and Africans, andlimited the number of Jews allowed to own or workin commercial ventures.27 Other diplomaticreports, whether from neutral Latin Americancountries, or those sympathetic to the Axis likeArgentina and Chile, or minor Allied combatantssuch as Mexico and Brazil, carry references to theHolocaust. Some countries, such as Brazil, wereconcerned for Jewish nationals who were caught upin the Nazi extermination machine.28

Notes1 The Achievements of the Signal Security Agency in

World War II (Washington, D.C: Assistant Chief ofStaff, G-2, 1946), 31.

2 Phillips, 234-6.3 Breitman, 114-5.

4 ZIP/G.P.D. 292R/18.7.41, NARA, RG 457, HCC,Box 1386.

5 Christopher R. Browning. The Origins of TheFinal Solution (Lincoln: The University of NebraskaPress; Jerusalem: Yad Vashem, 2004), 213-224. Also,Weinberg, 190-2. For a somewhat detailed description ofthe military-SS meetings that followed, see Breitman,36-42.

6 As reported in Breitman, 114, German PoliceDecode, 5 June 1942, items 5 and 6, PRO HW 16/19,

7. Browning, 374-388, for a discussion of The FinalSolution from concept to implementation.

8 See Laqueur, 91-93, for a survey of British popularattitudes and Dallek, 166-8, for problems that PresidentRoosevelt faced with American reactions to any effort tohelp Jews. For more on American general attitudestowards Jews and reactions to news of the Holocaust, seeDavid M. Kennedy, Freedom from Fear. The AmericanPeople in Depression and War, 1929-1945 (New York:Oxford University Press, 1999), 410-415, and WilliamO�Neill, Democracy at War: America�s Fight at Homeand Abroad in WWII (Cambridge: Harvard UniversityPress, 1999), 226-229.

9 The question of anti-Semitic attitudes surfacedoccasionally within the confines of GC&CS and SIS per-sonnel. Three of the major leaders of SIS, WilliamFriedman, Abraham Sinkov, and Solomon Kullback,were Jewish. This fact was noted in passing by GC&CSparticipants in early discussions with SIS in 1940-42, butappears not to have made any difference in the closecooperation of the two agencies. PRO, HW 1/2, 10 March1941 �Signals Intelligence passed to Prime MinisterChurchill including Enigma messages.� And HW 14/62,26 December 1942, �GC&CS � Directorate, PolicyPapers.�

10 See Laqueur, 93-100 and 159-170, for examplesof reaction in Washington and among worldwide Jewishgroups.

11 Arthur Schlesinger Jr., �The London Operation:Recollections of a Historian.� George Chalou, Editor,The Secrets War: The Office of Strategic Services inWorld War II (Washington D.C.: Government PrintingOffice, 1992), 66-7.

12 Kai Bird, The Chairman: John J. McCloy and theMaking of the American Establishment (New York:Simon and Schuster, 1992), 206.

13 As reported by Michael Smith, Station X: TheCodebreakers of Bletchley Park (London: Channel 4Books, 1998), 72-4.

14De G[rey] , 11 September 1941, PRO HW 1/62.15 Laqueur, 62-4, 109-11, 119-120 .16 Hinsley, 670-1; Phillips, 5-12.17 NARA, RG 238, Nuremberg International

Military Tribunal records. Document PS 1919,Prosecution Exhibit USA 190, p. 64-66. From NARA,Holocaust, the Documentary Evidence (Washington,DC: NARA, 1993), 35.

18 John Lukacs. The Hitler of History (New York:Vintage Press, 1998), 193.

19 For background to these exchanges, see BradleyF. Smith, The Ultra-Magic Deals, 40-129.

20 Benson, 108-121.21 Bradley F. Smith, The Ultra-Magic Deals, 163-4;

Benson, 111-114; See NARA, RG 457, HCC, Box1026,File 3284, �American Embassy, London, Messages toMilitary Intelligence Division,� May 1943; Box 1119,Folder 2600, �Colonel McCormack�s Trip to London,May-June 1943,� June 1943. This restriction makesmore sense when considering the context of the tide ofintelligence reports from all sources. A January 1945 list-ing of sources of reports by the library section of SpecialBranch runs 42 pages and contains over 850 titles. See�Sources and Titles of Records Received in DocumentSection of the I&L Branch, SPSIR-7.� 19 February 1945.NARA, RG 457, HCC, Box 1432, Folder �Sources of Titlesof Reports.�

22 Bradley F. Smith, 58-63 and 176-180; F. Hinsley,British Intelligence in the Second World War, ItsInfluence on Strategy and Operations (London: HerMajesty�s Stationery office, 1984), Vol. III, Part I, 52.

23 F. H. Hinsley, et alia. British Intelligence in theSecond World War, Its Influence on Strategy andOperations, Volume I (London: Her Majesty�sStationery Office, 1979), 336-7, 391; The matter of the�completeness� of sharing COMINT occurred again fromlate 1942 into early 1943, when the SIS and GC&CSclashed over access to Enigma traffic and Alan Turing�sparticipation in the Bell Laboratory development of avoice scrambler device. See Robert L. Benson, A Historyof Communications Intelligence during World War II:Policy and Administration (Fort George G. Meade, MD:

Center for Cryptologic History, National SecurityAgency, 1997), 97-108.

24 Smith, Ultra-Magic Deals, 221.25 For example, The 37-volume Government Code &

Cypher School Histories of World War II, the Military,Air, and Naval sets are located in Series HW 11 at thePublic Records Office. Available at either U.S. NationalArchives, RG 457, HCC or the library of the NationalCryptologic Museum are such examples of these histo-ries as: SRH-001, Historical Background of the SignalSecurity Agency (3 Vols.), (Washington, DC: ArmySecurity Agency, April 1946); SRH-279, OP-20-G File,Communications Intelligence Organization, 1942-1946(Washington, DC: National Security Agency, 1984);SRH-135, History of the Second Signal ServiceBattalion, 1939-1945 (Fort George G. Meade: NSA/CSS,1981); SRH-042, Signals Intelligence Service Staff, HQ,Third U.S. Army, Third Army Radio IntelligenceHistory in Campaign of Western Europe (Washington,DC: Army Security Agency, October 1945) .

26 Interestingly, scholars of wartime cryptologic his-tory can only estimate the total number of translationsand decrypts produced by the United States and theUnited Kingdom. One of the reasons was the tendency ofAllied cryptologists to combine more than one decryptinto a translation or a summary (or �compilation� as theBritish called it). Another problem was that some trans-lation series were started and then stopped without pub-lication, or were merged into another series. In somecases, decrypts were produced, but not published exceptfor fragments of information, which were put intoreports. Also, in some target problems, such as diplo-matic intercept, there was substantial duplication inrecords because of the wartime exchange system.Finally, the job of tabulating these totals would require,in some cases, a manual count � a daunting project, tosay the least.

In view of the above, the best estimate possible atthis point is that the U.S. and U.K., at a minimum, pro-duced over 4.5 million translations and decrypts. TheU.S. produced about 800,000 (+/- 50,000), while theU.K. put out about 3.7 million translations and decrypts.In arriving at these estimates, I wish to thank RalphErskine for his advice on the British figures.

27 MND Translation, Bern (Anastasiu) to Bucharest,12 December 1944, H-157300, NARA, RG 457 NSA/CSS,HCC, Box 456.

28 MND Translation, La Paz (Mory) to Vichy, 24September 1942, SIS # 50917, NARA, RG 457 NSA/CSS,HCC, Box 328.

29 MND Translation, Rio de Janeiro (Exteriores) toLisbon, 12 March 1945, H-171950, RG 457 NSA/CSS,HCC, Box 474.

Site Designator, �MS� Vint Hill Farms, VA (USA) 1Two Rock Ranch, Pentaluma, CA (USA) 2Miami, FL (USA) 3Asmara, Ethiopia (USA) 4Territory of Hawaii (USA) 5Amchitka, AK (USA) 6Wireless Experimental Center,

New Delhi, India (USA element) 8, also 94Bellmore, NY (USA) 9Santa Rosa, CA (USA) 10Radio Corporation of America 12Fort Sam Houston, TX (USA) 17United Kingdom sources 92 (Includes Beaumanor)Commonwealth sources (Canada - Examination

Unit, National Research Council) 94; also, �E�Cable Censor (United States Navy) 59Federal Communications Commission 81Cheltenham, MD (USN) 56 also �M� Bainbridge Island, WA (USN) 54; also, �S�Chatham, MA (USN) �C�Jupiter, FL (USN) 55; also, �J�Washington, D.C. (USN) �N� (�NEGAT�)Winter Harbor, ME (USN) �W�

USN stations also carry their own designator. The �MS� system was unique to the Signals IntelligenceService and was a way to designate all of the so-called �sources of traffic� that included U.S. civilian agen-cies such as the Federal Communications Commission, commercial sources (Radio Corporation ofAmerica), and British and Commonwealth sites. � See NARA, RG 457, HCC, �Sources and Types of Traffic,�9 November 1943, Box 936, NR 2694.

Appendix 1Selected Allied Monitoring Stations (MS) and Designators

(USA=United States Army, USN= United States Navy)

Appendix 2Annotated Sample of Diplomatic Translation

and German Police Decrypt

Annotated Sample of Diplomatic Translation

Annotated Sample German Police Decrypt

1. Intercepted cable version of report on conditions in Auschwitz by Rudolf Vrba and Alfred Wetzlerreport to Czechoslovak intelligence, June 1944. (6 pages)

2. German Foreign Office message to Buenos Aires stating the status of the pension of the retiredheadmaster Karl Laudien depends upon the �unequivocal separation� from his Jewish wife. (1 page)

3. Intercepted 20 October 1944 Spanish diplomatic cable from the ambassador to Washington,Cardenas de Silva, to Madrid that reports request for Spanish delegation in Budapest to intervene onbehalf of the endangered Jews, as well as the notice of Swedish plans to help, including the dispatch ofRaoul Wallenberg. (1 page)

4. German VN (Verlaessliche Nachrichten � �Trustworthy Report�), which is a translation of anintercepted U.S. State Department cable from Bern, Switzerland, to Washington, D.C., reporting on thestatus of efforts to help Jewish internees by Sweden and the International Red Cross. (2 pages)

5. Boston-series translation of a message from Budapest reporting the results of Adolf Eichmann�sspecial action group in removing Jews from Hungary. (1 page)

6. Vichy Premier Pierre Laval�s statement of September 30, 1942, �With Respect to the Treatmentof the Jews in Unoccupied France.� (3 pages)

Appendix 3Attached Documents

Intercepted cable version of report on conditions in Auschwitz by Rudolf Vrba and Alfred Wetzler reportto Czechoslovak intelligence, June 1944 (1 of 6 pages)

German Foreign Office message to Buenos Aires stating the status of the pension of the retiredHeadmaster Karl Laudien depends upon the unequivocal separation from his Jewish wife. (1 page)

Intercepted 20 October 1944 Spanish diplomatic cable from the Ambassador to Washington, Cardenas de Silva, to Madrid that reports request for Spanish delegation in Budapest to intervene

on behalf of the endangered Jews, as well as the notice of Swedish plans to help, including dispatch of Raoul Wallenberg

German VN (Verlaessliche Nachrichten Trustworthy Report ), which is a translation of an interceptedU.S. State Department cable from Bern, Switzerland, to Washington, D.C., reporting on the status of

efforts to help Jewish internees by Sweden and the International Red Cross (1 of 2 pages)

German VN (Verlaessliche Nachrichten Trustworthy Report ), which is a translation of an interceptedU.S. State Department cable from Bern, Switzerland, to Washington, D.C., reporting on the status of

efforts to help Jewish internees by Sweden and the International Red Cross (2 of 2 pages)

Boston-series translation of a message from Budapest reporting the results of the Adolf Elichmann sspecial action group in removing Jews from Hungary (1 page)

Vichy premier Pierre Laval s statement of September 30, 1942, With Respect to the Treatment of theJews in Unoccupied France (1 of 3 pages)

Vichy premier Pierre Laval s statement of September 30, 1942, With Respect to the Treatment of theJews in Unoccupied France (2 of 3 pages)

Vichy premier Pierre Laval s statement of September 30, 1942, With Respect to the Treatment of theJews in Unoccupied France 3 of 3 pages)

Allied Communications IntelligenceOrganization, Operations, and Knowledge ofthe Holocaust:

Alvarez, David. Secret Messages: Codebreak-ing and American Diplomacy, 1930-1945.Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas, 2000.

Benson, Robert Louis. A History of U.S.Communications Intelligence during World WarII: Policy and Administration. Fort George G.Meade, MD: National Security Agency, Center forCryptologic History, 1997.

Breitman, Richard. Official Secrets: What theNazis Planned. What the British and AmericansKnew. New York: Hill and Wang, 1998.

Brugioni, Dino A., and Robert G. Piorier. �TheHolocaust Revisited: A Retrospective Analysis ofthe Auschwitz-Birkenau Extermination Complex.�Studies in Intelligence. Special 45th AnniversaryIssue, Fall 2000. Center for the Study ofIntelligence, Washington, DC 20505. Originallypublished in Studies in Intelligence, Winter 1978.

Budiansky, Stephen, Battle of Wits: TheComplete Story of Codebreaking in World War II.New York, London: The Free Press, 2000.

Calvocoressi, Peter. Top Secret Ultra. NewYork: Pantheon Books, 1980.

Gilbert, James L., and John P. Finnegan, U.S.Army Signals Intelligence in World War II. ADocumentary History. Washington, DC: Centerfor Military History, 1993.

Hinsley, F. H. et alia. British Intelligence in theSecond World War. Its Influence on Strategy and

Operations. Volume 2 (1981) and 3, Parts I (1984)and II (1988), London: Her Majesty�s StationeryOffice.

Laqueur, Walter. The Terrible Secret:Suppression of the Truth of Hitler�s �FinalSolution.� Boston: Little, Brown, 1980.

Phillips, Lieutenant E.D. G.C.& C.S. Air andMilitary History. Volume XIII. The German Police.

Smith, Bradley F. The ULTRA-MAGIC Dealsand the Most Secret Special Relationship, 1940-1946. Novato, California: Presidio Press, 1993.

Smith, Michael. Station X. The Codebreakers ofBletchley Park. London: Channel 4 Books, 1998.

General History of the Holocaust:

Browning, Christopher R. The Origins of theFinal Solution. Lincoln, Nebraska: University ofNebraska Press; Jerusalem: Yad Vashem, 2004.

Dawidowicz, Lucy. The War Against the Jews1933-1945. New York: Holt Rinehart Winston,1975.

Hilberg, Raul. The Destruction of EuropeanJews, 3 volumes. Revised and definitive edition.New York: Holmes and Meier, 1985.

Yahil, Lena. The Holocaust: The Fate ofEuropean Jewry. New York: Oxford, 1987.

The Refugee Problem:

Breitman, Richard, and Alan M. Kraut.American Refugee Policy and European Jewry1933 - 1945. Bloomington, Ind., 1987.

Bibliography

Levine, Hillel. In Search of Sugihara: TheElusive Japanese Diplomat Who Risked His Life toRescue 10,000 Jews from the Holocaust. NewYork: Free Press, 1996.

Segev, Thomas. The Seventh Million: Israelisand the Holocaust. New York: Hill and Wang,1993.

Wyman, David. Paper Walls: America and theRefugee Crisis 1938-1941. New York: Pantheon,1968.

�� The Abandonment of the Jews:America and the Holocaust 1941-1945 . New York:Pantheon, 1984.

Einsatzgruppen and German PoliceAtrocities:

Browning, Christopher. Ordinary Men:Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solutionin Poland. New York: Harper Perennial, 1993.

Goldhagen, Daniel Jonah (translator and edi-tor). Hitler�s Willing Executioners: OrdinaryGermans and the Holocaust. New York: AlfredKnopf. 1990.

Rhodes, Richard. Masters of Death: The SSEinsatzgruppen and the Invention of theHolocaust. New York: Alfred Knopf, 2002.

Concentration Camps:

Hackett, David A. The Buchenwald Report.Oxford, San Francisco: Westview Press, 1995.

Gutman, Yisrael, and Michael Berebbaum, edi-tors. Anatomy of the Auschwitz Death Camp.Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana UniversityPress in association with the United StatesHolocaust Museum, Washington, D.C., 1998.

Sofsky, Wolfgang. The Order of Terror:The Concentration Camp. Princeton: PrincetonUniversity press, 1993.

Steiner, Jean-Francois. Treblinka. New York:Simon and Schuster, 1967.

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Hallie, Philip. Lest Innocent Blood Be Shed. TheStory of the Village of Le Chambon, and HowGoodness Happened There. New York: Harper &Row, 1979.

Klarsfeld, Serge. Vichy-Auschwitz. La �solutionfinale� de la question juive en France. Paris:Fayard, 2001, 2 vols.

Marrus, Michael R., and Robert O. Paxton.Vichy France and the Jews. New York: BasicBooks, 1981.

Weber, Eugen. The Hollow Years: France inthe 1930s. New York: W.W. Norton & Company,1994.

Roundup of the Hungarian Jews:

Bierman, Hohn. Righteous Gentile: RaoulWallenberg, Missing Hero of the Holocaust. NewYork: Viking Press, 1981.

Braham, Randolf. Eichmann and theDestruction of the Hungarian Jews. New York:World Federation of Hungarian Jews; TwaynePublishers, 1961.

�� The Politics of Genocide: TheHolocaust in Hungary, 2 vols. New York:Columbia University Press, 1981.

Cesarani, David. Genocide and Rescue: TheHolocaust in Hungary. Oxford, New York: Berg,1997.

Jews and Japanese in the Far East:

Heppner, Ernest G. Shanghai Refuge: AMemoir of the World War II Jewish Ghetto.Lincoln & London: The University of NebraskaPress, 1993.

Kranzler, David. Japanese, Nazis, and Jews:The Jewish Refugee Community of Shanghai,1938-1945, Hoboken, New Jersey: KTAVPublishing House, 1988 (c: 1976).

Ross, James R. Escape to Shanghai: A JewishCommunity in China. New York: The Free Press,1994.

Tokayer, Marvin and Mary Scartz. The FuguPlan: The Untold Story of the Japanese and theJews during World War II. New York: PaddingtonPress, 1979.

�Nazi Gold,� Swiss Banks, and Looted Assets:

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Bower, Thomas. Nazi Gold, New York: HarperCollins, 1997.

Lebor, Adam. Hitler�s Secret Bankers: TheMyth of Swiss Neutrality During the Holocaust.New York: Birch Lane Press, 1997.

Ziegler, Jean. The Swiss, the Gold, and theDead. New York: Harcourt Brance and Company,1997.

Abwehr � German military intelligence.

AHS � Arlington Hall Station

�BJ� � �blue jacket� or �Black Jumbo,� termsfor diplomatic translations done by the GC&CS

BPIE � Bletchley Park Intelligence Exchange

BRUSA � Britain/United States of America

C/A � Cryptanalysis

CI � code instruction

Cipher - A method of concealing plaintext bytransposing letters or numbers or by substitutingother letters or numbers according to a key

Code - A method of concealing a message textin which arbitrary groups of letters, numbers, orother symbols replace words, phrases, letters, ornumbers for the purposes of concealment or brevi-ty.

COMINT � communications intelligence

COMINTERN � communist international

CSS � Chief, Secret Service (Director, MI-6)

D/F � direction finding

Einsatzgruppen � �Action groups� consistingof SS, SD, and other security elements that wereestablished to massacre Jews, partisans, and com-munist officials in the wake of the German armiesduring the invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941.

Enigma � German high-level cipher machine

FCC � Federal Communications Commission

GC&CS � Government Code and CypherSchool

GCHQ � Government CommunicationsHeadquarters (Successor organization to GC&CS)

Gestapo � Geheime Staats Polizei (Secret StatePolice)

GPCC � German Police Concentration Camp[communications]

GPD � German Police Decrypts

HCC � Historical Cryptographic Collection, RG457

Hut (3/4/6/8) � Buildings in the BletchleyPark complex in which the various operationalactivities, such as decryption and translation, of theGC&CS were conducted

ISCOT � Intelligence Source Scott

ISK � Intelligence Source [Dewylin] Knox.Abwehr machine ciphers.

ISOCICLE � SD ciphers

ISOS � Intelligence Source Oliver Strachey.Abwehr manual ciphers.

JIC � Joint Intelligence Committee

Kripo - Kriminal polizei (Criminal Police)

MAGIC � Cover name for translations fromJapanese diplomatic messages

MASK � Cover name for translations ofCOMINTERN messages by GC&CS

Glossary of Terms, Abbreviations, and Acronyms

MEW � Ministry of Economic Warfare (GreatBritain)

M.I.5 � British Security Service (or SecurityService)

M.I.6 � British Secret Intelligence Service (SIS,or Secret Service)

MIS � Military Intelligence Service, G-2 of theU.S. War Department

MS � Monitoring Station (usually followed by aone or two digit-designation)

MSS � Most Secret Source, a caveat for intelli-gence derived from high-level cryptanalysis

NARA � National Archives and RecordsAdministration

NGO � nongovernmental organization

NSA/CSS � National Security Agency/CentralSecurity Service

OKW-Chi � Oberkommando der Wehrmacht/Chiffrierungabteilung

OP-20-G � Designator for the U.S. Navy�scryptologic organization. It was an element ofunder the Director for Naval Communications.

Orpo � Ordnungspolizei (Order Police)

OSS � Office of Strategic Services

OTP � one-time pad

OWI � Office of Wartime Information (U.S.)

PRO � Public Record Office/National Archives

Purple � U.S. designator for Japanese diplo-matic cipher machine �B�

�Q� � designator for GC&CS diplomatic trans-lations

RSHA � Reichssicherheitshauptamt (ReichSecurity Main Office)

RSS � Radio Security Service

SB � Special Branch, G-2, War Department

Schupo � Schutz Polizei (Civil Police)

SCU � Special Communications Unit

SD � Sichersheitsdienst (Security Service)

Sipo � Sichersheits Polizei (Security Police)

SIS � U.S. Army Signals Intelligence Service

SIS � Secret Intelligence Service (MI-6, UK)

SLU � Special Liaison Unit (UK)

SS � Schutzstaffel

SSO � Special Security Officer (U.S.)

T/A � Traffic analysis

Ultra � cover name for intelligence derivedfrom high-level cryptanalysis

Venona � The cover name given the project bythe U.S. Army (and continued by the Armed ForcesSecurity Agency and its successor, the NationalSecurity Agency) to exploit the encoded messagesof the various Soviet intelligence services, theNKVD and GRU, that contained information fromthe various intelligence agents and networks oper-ating within the United States.

Y-Service � term used by British to categorizeintercept and related activities.

AAAnti-Semitism

General attitude, history of, Japanese attitude � 4, 11, 89, 100, 101, 124, 125Arlington Hall Station � 27, 36, 84, 129, 159

B-III � 38, 40Army Security Agency � 53, 116, 118, 130, 131, 133ATIS (Allied Translator and Interpreter Section) � 41Auschwitz-Birkenau

Construction, SS reports, Vrba-Wetzler report � 13, 19, 155

BBBank for International Settlements � 107, 108, 110Benson, Robert L. � 7, 16, 19, 74, 133�BJ�s� (blue jackets/Black Jumbos) � 69Black Code � 7Bletchley Park � 5, 15, 23, 27, 29, 34, 36, 38, 39, 40, 44, 46, 48, 49, 50, 52, 53, 57, 69, 124, 125, 133, 155,

159Bertrand, Gustave � 14, 15, 18, 36, 55Bloom, Sol Congressman (D-NY) � 85Bolivia � 132Boston reports (OSS) � 32, 33, 45, 47, 54, 61, 65, 66, 67, 73, 84, 97, 106, 107, 113, 117, 125, 129, 160Brazil � 85, 91, 92, 132Breitman, Richard � 8, 16, 18, 19, 50, 73, 74, 110, 111, 132, 155Bretton Woods � 107British Security Coordination (BSC) � 31, 38, 67BRUSA (Britain-United States COMINT Agreement 1943) � 27, 50Budapest

Roundup of Jews, political climate � 20, 42, 56, 70, 82, 84, 94, 95, 96, 97, 98, 99, 111, 112, 115, 116,123, 132, 139, 147, 150

Buchenwald � 60, 69, 74, 113, 156Bulgaria � 13, 70, 76, 81, 107, 111, 118

CCCable traffic � 11, 30, 31, 65, 68Calvocoressi, Peter � 155Censorship � 30, 31, 54, 67, 68, 73Churchill, Winston

Attitude towards Ultra, speech denouncing Police atrocities � 16, 79Commercial traffic and codes

Bentley Code, Peterson Code � 106, 118

Index

Communications � 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 7, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34,35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40, 43, 44, 45, 46, 51, 52, 53, 55, 56, 61, 62, 63, 65, 66, 68, 69, 70, 71, 73,75, 76, 77, 78, 89, 93, 94, 98, 106, 108, 112, 114, 121, 124, 126, 127, 128, 129, 130, 131, 133, 135, 155, 159

Communications intelligence (COMINT); general description, effectiveness � 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 7, 10, 21, 23, 24, 25, 29, 43, 44, 45, 47, 51, 52, 53, 54, 57, 62, 66, 67, 68, 69, 70, 71, 72, 73, 75, 76, 77, 78,89, 93, 94, 98, 106, 108, 112, 114, 121, 124, 126, 127, 128, 129, 130, 131, 132, 133, 159

Cryptanalysis, Allied, description of � 5, 6, 15, 25, 38, 39, 40, 50, 54, 57, 67, 73, 75, 106, 114, 159, 160Currie, Laughlin � 108, 109, 110, 118, 119

DDDaluege, Kurt � 49, 51, 80De Grey, Nigel � 126De Silva, Cardenas � 85, 139, 147Denmark � 1, 83Deportation of Jews

France, Hungary, Greece, Bulgaria, Italy, Netherlands, Slovakia � 82, 92, 96, 97Dickstein, Samuel Congressman (D-NY) � 92Dissemination of COMINT

British methods, American methods, concern over security � 4, 22, 27, 44, 48, 49, 126, 130Dominican Republic � 93Dulles, Alan � 106

EEEichmann, Adolph

Hungary operation � 12, 19, 95, 97, 99, 139, 156Eire (Republic of Ireland)

Reports on roundup of Jews in Rome � 67, 70, 83, 131Einsatzgruppen

description � 1, 12, 13, 15, 77, 83, 118, 122, 156, 159Enigma

Versions, effectiveness of Allied cryptanalysis � 4, 5, 6, 14, 15, 18, 21, 24, 28, 36, 39, 40, 46, 48, 50,53, 54, 56, 69, 70, 71, 78, 80, 82, 124, 126, 129, 132, 133, 159

Examination Unit (Canada) � 32, 92

FFFederal Communications Commission (FCC) � 32, 67, 73, 135, 159�Final Solution�

decision, deception about � 12, 13, 16, 17, 18, 76, 78, 112, 122, 123, 124, 128, 132, 155, 156FLORADORA � 39, 63Foreign workers

Status in Polish workers in France, Germany at end of war � 14France � 12, 13, 14, 15, 21, 25, 36, 39, 53, 56, 63, 67, 77, 80, 81, 84, 85, 86, 87, 89, 90, 91, 92, 93, 94, 96,

97, 103, 104, 108, 109, 112, 114, 122, 123, 125, 131, 139, 151, 152, 153, 156French Indochina � 103French North Africa � 36, 93

GGGeorge Wood (see Boston Series) � 65, 73, 119, 106German COMINT

intercept and cryptanalysis of U.S. diplomatic communications, Hungariancommunications; code breaking organizations � 2, 4, 6, 9. 11, 12, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 21, 25, 26, 27,

28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 39, 40, 44, 46, 47, 48, 49, 50German Police Decrypts (GPD)

Description, graphic example � 4, 15, 44, 47, 49, 52, 59, 61, 62, 68, 69, 78, 121, 129, 131, 159Germany

Attitude towards Jews, war aims, prewar policy towards Jews; diplomatic messages;policy of deception and denial � 1, 4, 7, 11, 12, 14, 29, 34, 36, 44, 48, 51, 55, 63, 64, 65, 71, 72, 73,

76,78, 81, 82, 83, 84, 85, 86, 89, 92, 93, 94, 95, 97, 99, 100, 101, 105, 108, 109, 110, 113, 117,119, 124, 127, 130, 157

Gestapo � 12, 39, 82, 110, 159Goering, Hermann � 12, 13, 76, 95, 106, 118Government Code and Cypher School (GC&CS) � 1, 2, 57, 159

HHHaye, Henry � 69, 90, 92, 93, 114, 115Havana, Cuba � 90, 114Hermann Goering Werke � 95Heydrich, Reinhard � 12, 13, 76, 80, 90, 111Himmler, Heinrich � 46, 51, 61, 76, 80, 82, 97, 128Hinsley, F.H. � 9, 15, 53, 54, 55, 56, 57, 58, 74, 111, 113, 118, 133, 155Holocaust

general history � 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 7, 8, 9, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 24, 36, 42, 46, 47, 48, 53, 57, 58, 61,63, 66, 69, 70, 71, 72, 73, 74, 75, 76, 77, 79, 83, 86, 87, 94, 98, 102, 104, 110, 111, 121, 122, 123, 126, 127, 128, 131, 132, 133, 155, 156, 157

Holocaust denial � 16Hull, Cordell � 46, 88, 93Hungary

Roundup of Jews � 2, 28, 44, 45, 75, 81, 82, 84, 85, 94, 95, 96, 97, 98, 99, 103, 107, 111, 115, 117,122, 123, 131, 132, 139, 150, 156

IIIckes, Harold � 86Intercept (collection of messages)

Description of system � 2, 4, 5, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 18, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33,34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41, 42, 43, 46, 51, 52, 53, 54, 55, 62, 63, 65, 66, 67, 68, 69, 70, 71,72, 73, 74, 75, 76, 77, 81, 82, 83, 84, 85, 86, 88, 90, 92, 93, 94, 97, 98, 101, 104, 106, 107, 109, 110, 111, 114, 121, 122, 123, 124, 125, 126, 127, 128, 130, 132, 133, 139, 140, 141, 142, 143,144, 145, 147, 148, 149, 160

International Red Cross � 15, 28, 63, 85, 94, 97, 103, 139, 148, 149ISCOT � 71, 72, 74, 111, 159ISK � 69, 70, 159

ItalyRoundup of Jews � 3, 7, 40, 44, 46, 65, 70, 81, 82, 83, 85, 95, 109, 111

JJJapan

Historical attitude towards Jews � 2, 3, 5, 6, 7, 8, 12, 18, 19, 21, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 34, 35, 40,41, 43, 45, 46, 47, 48, 51, 53, 55, 56, 61, 62, 63, 64, 73, 75, 76, 78, 81, 82, 83, 86, 87, 88, 90,94, 95, 99, 100, 101, 102, 103, 104, 105, 106, 107, 108, 109, 112, 113, 114, 121, 122, 123, 124,125, 126, 127, 128, 130, 132, 133, 139, 140, 141, 142, 143, 144, 145, 147, 148, 149, 160

Jewish Agency for Palestine � 62, 85, 88JIC (Joint Intelligence Committee) � 43, 49, 50, 55, 57, 159

KKKallay, Miklos � 95, 115Karski, Jan � 48, 58, 126Kase, Shunichi � 106, 107, 108, 109, 118, 119Kaunas, Lithuania � 76, 78, 87, 113Kitamura, Kojiro � 107, 110Knox, Dillwyn � 47, 70, 159Kolbe, Fritz (see Boston Reports) � 65, 106Kollontay, Alexandra � 85Kozaczuk, Wladyslaw � 14, 15, 18Kubotinski, Leon � 85, 125

LLLaqueur, Walter � 15, 54, 58, 112, 115, 132, 133, 155Latin America, reaction to Holocaust � 25, 26, 27, 38, 87, 89, 91, 92, 132Laval, Pierre � 90, 91, 93, 139, 151, 152, 153

MM�Magic� Diplomatic Summary � 44, 45, 46, 47, 53, 55, 57, 59, 63, 66, 73, 111, 112, 113, 114, 115, 116, 117,

118, 119, 153, 155, 159Majdanek � 84MASK translation � 73Merkers mine � 110Mexico

Concern over Bejar � 92, 98, 114, 115, 132Ministry of Economic Warfare (MEW) � 44, 71, 105, 110, 119, 160Monitoring Station (MS) � 5, 25, 30, 32, 34, 35, 36, 42, 75, 106, 126, 135, 160

NNNational Archives and Records Administration (NARA) � 1, 2, 3, 9, 16, 17, 50, 51, 52, 53, 54, 55, 56, 57,

58, 61, 62, 65, 66. 68, 69, 72, 73, 111, 112, 113, 114, 115, 116, 117, 118, 119, 121, 132, 133, 134, 135, 160

National Cryptologic MuseumLibrary, collections � 61, 71, 111, 133

�Nazi Gold� � 64Netherlands � 21, 30, 53, 81, 82, 99, 103, 122Nippon Yusen Kaisha (NYK) � 86NKVD � 16, 72, 118, 160

OOOffice of Strategic Services (OSS)

X-2; R&A BranchOne time pad (OTP) � 1, 31, 61, 66, 73, 119, 129, 132, 160OP-20-G (U.S. Navy) � 1, 4, 26, 27, 32, 36, 42, 53, 54, 56, 67, 73, 128, 131, 133, 160Oshima, Hirsohi Baron

Attitude to individual Jews, comments on anti-Jewish forum � 29, 53, 55, 100, 103, 115, 118

PPPalestine

Jewish immigration; Jewish forces; Arab reaction; terrorist incidents, U.S. support � 5, 32, 62, 68,70, 75, 85, 86, 87, 88, 97, 112, 115, 118

P.C. Bruno � 36P.C. Cadix � 36, 37Petain, Philippe General � 89, 90, 92, 93Poland

Poles and Polish Jews in France; German policy in occupied � 12, 13, 14, 15, 18, 21, 70, 74, 76, 78,81, 82, 84, 85, 95, 97, 103, 113, 124, 156

PortugalTransit for refugees, concern over workers, reports from Budapest � 25, 96, 104, 105, 107, 109, 118,

119, 132Priority (of Intercept) � 22, 25, 26, 27, 28, 30, 34, 40, 55, 62, 81, 123, 127Prisoners of War,

treatment of Russian, Jewish, Axis � 65, 76, 83, 103Public Record Office (PRO) � 1, 4, 7, 8, 17, 61, 62, 67, 68, 71, 130, 160Puhl, Emil � 106, 107, 108, 110Purple � 6, 18, 21, 24, 25, 26, 29, 36, 39, 45, 46, 53, 56, 126, 127, 160

QQ

RRRadio Security Service (RSS) � 32, 67, 68, 82, 160Reichsbank � 46, 70, 97, 106, 107, 108, 110, 118Ribbentrop, Joachim von � 29, 85, 86Romania � 81, 82, 84, 85, 95, 96, 107, 111, 115, 118, 132Roosevelt, Franklin D. � 46, 47, 48, 57, 58, 66, 86, 87, 88, 102, 105, 108, 113, 125, 132Refugees � 46, 65, 86, 87, 89, 90, 97, 102, 103, 107, 113, 121

SSSassoon, Sir Victor � 101Schutz Staffel (SS) � 12, 26, 110, 160

ShanghaiRefugees; conditions and relief efforts � 87, 99, 101, 102, 103, 104, 113, 116, 117, 157

Sichersheits Dienst (SD) � 12, 26, 29, 62, 67, 70, 74, 77, 82, 83, 111, 122, 128, 131, 159, 160Signal Intelligence Service (SIS) � 2, 22, 25, 32, 47, 53Signal Security Service (SSS) � 25, 53, 54, 129Sobibor � 74, 79Spain � 25, 63, 64, 85, 96, 104, 105, 107, 109, 112, 117, 119, 132Special Liaison Unit (SLU) � 14, 45, 48, 57, 160Special Security Officer (SSO) � 45, 57, 160�Stateless� Jews � 100, 102, 104Statutes des Juifs � 90, 94Steengracht, Adolf von � 99Stephenson, Sir William � 67Stettinius, Edward � 88Stucki, Walter � 109Sugihara, Chione � 87, 113, 156�Summaries� Multinational Diplomatic (SMM) � 64, 115Sweden

Trading with Germany � 1, 25, 83, 85, 96, 97, 104, 105, 117, 119, 139, 149, 149Swiss National Bank � 104, 107, 108, 110Switzerland

Trading with Germany, roles as neutral, diplomatic communications targeted by Western COMINT, reaction to Currie mission � 9, 25, 28, 39, 56, 62, 63, 65, 70, 84, 85, 96, 97, 99,

104, 105, 106, 107, 108, 109, 110, 119, 126, 139, 148, 149Szalasi, Ferenc � 98, 99, 122

TTTangier � 93, 97, 115Translations

Process; training; sources � 2, 9, 15, 17, 18, 19, 24, 27, 28, 40, 41, 42, 43, 44, 45, 46, 47, 54, 55, 56,58, 62, 63, 64, 65, 66, 67, 69, 70, 71, 72, 73, 74, 77, 86, 98, 101, 105, 111, 112, 113, 114, 115,116, 117, 118, 119, 122, 127, 129, 103, 131, 133, 159, 160

Treblinka � 74, 79, 156Turkey � 25, 42, 46, 85, 92, 95, 105, 117, 119

UUUltra � 1, 4, 5, 10, 14, 15, 17, 18, 21, 44, 45, 46, 47, 48, 49, 50, 51, 53, 54, 55, 57, 58, 59, 73, 121, 125, 129,

133, 155, 160Ultra Secret, The � 5, 14, 17, 18, 58United Nations Conference � 88United States Coast Guard (USCG) � 27, 32, 67

VVValeri, Cardinal Valerio � 92, 93Vanden Heuvel, William � 16, 19Vatican

Cryptographyroundup of Rome�s Jewsintervention on behalf of � 9, 25, 26, 39, 56, 65, 70, 73, 82, 85, 96, 98, 111, 112, 113, 115, 116

VENONA � 6, 16, 69, 71, 72, 74, 115, 116, 118, 119, 130, 160Vichy

Policy towards Jews, reaction from Pope, Jewish children � 2, 5, 9, 12, 17, 19, 25, 34, 36, 39, 42, 55,63, 64, 67, 73, 74, 75, 80, 81, 84, 89, 90, 91, 92, 93, 94, 96, 99, 103, 104, 109, 111, 112, 113,114, 122, 123, 131, 132, 134, 139, 151, 152, 156

Vladivostok � 87VN (Verlaessliche nachtrichten) � 107, 139, 165, 148, 149Vrba-Wetzler Report � 83, 84, 131

WWWallenberg family

Role in secret peace initiatives, fn, � 72, 115Wallenberg, Raoul

Efforts at rescue � 98, 99, 115, 116, 139, 147, 156Wannsee Conference � 12, 76, 102, 124, 167Weber, Ernst � 18, 108, 109, 114Welles, Sumner � 93White, Harry Dexter � 108Wise, Stephen � 47World Jewish Congress � 85, 92, 125