Is Alan Turing's effort code-breaking effort to the war exaggerated?

Back to the subject.

High level information was never send by radio, sometimes by wired connection but as a rule – by envoys or at meetings with the Führer at the headquarters. For example: during the travel from Berthesgarten to the Wolfschanze on 22-23 November 1942 Hitler has not used Enigma he had on disposal in his train. Instead, he used wired connection by stopping the train at each sizable station. All he said to Zeitzler was: “I have solution. We will talk tomorrow”.

What the Station X intercepted was low level information which was cleverly used in western theater, against the submarines and Rommel.
But, German major plans over the radio? Science fiction. Not a single detail was send over the radio.

The only instance I know when important information was send over radio was the last transmission between Paulus and Manstein over secure radio connection.
This indicates what kind of information was deciphered by the Ultra.

 

That particular subset of nit-pick, has already been dealt with.

The intercepts were across the bredth of Europe, except for Leningrad and the Arctic North, due to atmospheric limitations. In Particular, AGS was easily and frequently intercepted.

Non-morse wireless Messages were sent on the Army Group level, to Königsberg. These were sent encrypted by Lorentz SZ40/42 cypher (and not Enigma), which was indeed cracked by Bletchley Park. These messages were anything but trivial, as previously detailed.

Why do you assume that messages between OKH and AGS-AGC-AGN would be trivial and unimportant?

 

Uhhh...This information is worthless! The OSS was formed on June 13, 1942. There was no OSS in 1941.

Perhaps, you are thinking of it's predecessor, the Office of the Coordinator of Information, which was formed in Jun 11, 1941.

Or else, you are confused, the most likely possibility, and are thinking about the Peruvian Ambassador to Japan getting advance notice of Pearl Harbor from his Japanese cook in January, 1941, and passing that information along to US Ambassador Joseph Grew.

 

That's an extremely limited view of "important information". Indeed since Midway has already been brought up look at the importance of the Japanese transmission concerning the water supply at Midway. In and of itself one would hardly consider it "important" yet tied in with other intercepts it allowed the intel community to forecast IJN operations with considerable accuracy. No one is suggesting complete plans were transmitted over the radio that doesn't however mean that important and useful information was not.

 

That is entirely true but breaking of Japanese code is irrelevant for the subject of this conversation.

 

That suggest that you completely missed the point of what I was saying. Again no one has suggested that entire high level plans were transmitted and decoded. That by no means suggest that important information wasn't. In intel work even little tidbits of information can be important and they don't have to be unique either. Getting the same information from multiple independent sources means that it is more trustworthy and it also suggest that those sources may be more reliable which is also quite useful.

 

There were till the last week before the attack NO indications for a nearing German attack (this means that all what Sorge -and other spies- were transmitting before the last week,was irrelevant and not reliable ) : only the presence on the border of the 30 German mobile divisions would be such an indicaton .These divisions were going east (= eastern Germany,but not the border ) only during the last week .The same for the heavy railway artillery,the same for the LW : the LW squadrons were moving to the border only at the evening of 21 june .

The Stavka was totally surprised by the attack,because they thought that the German build up would last several weeks (as would a Soviet one) ,which would give the Soviets sufficient time to react . Later they blamed Stalin for their own mistakes ,as would do their German colleagues for Hitler .

There were on 23 april 1941 only 56 German divisions in eastern Germany,who constituted no danger .On 1 may : 60, on 14 may :72 on 5 june 93. Most of the mobile divisions were arriving after 14 june .At the beginning of june there were only 7 mobile divisions in eastern Germany . All this made the informations from Enigma and Sorge irrelevant .

 

Tamino, the problem for France was not that the attack was unexpected, the French did have troops assigned to that sector, its just the speed of the German attack was too much for the French. The key part was French and German doctrine said tanks could not cross a river like the Meuse with out infantry support. Since by French calculations it would take about two weeks for the infantry to catch up, there would be plenty of time to reinforce the troops along the sector. There were also troops sent to reinforce the line, but they were sent in piecemeal and were not concentrated as needed.

 

LJAD, since Stalin was the only one who thought Hitler was not attacking, your argument is irrelevant. The information was sound, its the interpretation that was faulty. Zhukov was so concerned about the intelligence that he proposed a preemptive attack.

 

That's true Steve. France had multiple problems; outdated view on warfare, reluctance to fight and exaggerated trust in the Maginot line. They invented a recipe for the Sitzkrieg (Phoney war) for the era of Blitzkrieg. For them the intelligence was of no relevance because they lacked the capability to understand their own situation.

 

No : that is not correct : Zhukow did not use the Sorge informations . He used other, also totally wrong guesses .
He said that Germany had 286 divisions : it was 208

He said that 120 divisions (of which 19 Pz) were ready at the border,it was 80 (3 Pz)

He was talking about a total Barbarossa strength (Germany and allies) of 8 million men, 13900 aircraft and 9000/10000 tanks

He was talking about 17 Hungarian divisions with 300 tanks and 600 aircraft .

Total nonsense: if he believed what he said,he disqualified himself as a serious soldier; the truth is that he was crying wolf to increase the Red Army and to safe his ass IF there was a German attack,for which on 15 may (the date of the proposal) there were no proofs .

He was parotting what a year before Timochenko and Chapochnikov had proposed .

 

regardless of your numbers which have no bearing what so ever, Zhukov still believed an attack was coming. ONce again your logic is atrocious

 

I have to ask, could people stop blaming everyone for having poor logic? I am sorry I have no good information on the intelligence of the war besides the basics of ultra, but could people cite their sources with their pages and paragraphs and maybe read any books that take different views on theirs and compare which is better? I know I have been guilty of this before but I haven't been posting lately as I really want to rack up some information before posting again, as I don't believe I have enough to contribute yet. Go on, I'm done for now.

 

Which ,again, is not the topic .

What Zhukov believed is irrelevant : a proposal to start a war (which is what Zhukov did ) should not be founded on what someone believes, but on facts :Zhukov had no informations that the Germans would attack the SU, thus what he said can be put onder the bus .

What he proposed was not needed ,and could not be done :his proposal was suicidal and was rightly ignored .

 

At first, France had nothing to win in a war against Germany. They had colonies, Alsace, Lorraine and Germany still had to pay for the Great War. There was no need to develop offensive strategies or weapons. And France was still exhausted from the former war, which took place in their territory all the time and they had comparable victims but a smaller poulation.

Wasn't Alan Turings success based on his simple observation, that many german radio messages started with the same words? So he could reduce the possible solutions to an operable number.
Most german officers knew, that there was something wrong with their enigma messages, the first to name are Dönitz and Rommel. But the german code specialists were idiots who assured them all the time, that there is no possibility to decode an enigma message in a decent time even with calculating machines. And they blamed traitors for all the coincidences that occured regularly in favour of the allies: ships and aircrafts at the right place at the right time...

 

Most enigma messages were not decoded .

Most of those that were decoded were not decoded in a decent time.

Most of those that were decoded in a decent time were useless .

 

Well, the allies sunk the complete chain of supply ships for the surface raiders in a short period of time, they sunk all the supply submarines in a short time and the merchant raiders when they met with supply ships.
Besides radar, Bletchley Park ended the naval warfare very quickly.

And they reduced the italian convoys for North Africa to a minimum. They even had to carry fuel on the decks of cruisers and destroyers.

 

They did not reduce the Italian convoys to NA to a minimum : 80/ 85 % of what was sent to NA arrived .

 

Britain also used warships to supply Malta .

 

Compared to 99 % (or more?) of what the allied convoys carried.
80 % means, a freighter usually survives what? 3 voyages?
And the Mediterranian was the italian "mare nostrum".