World War II Communications:
European Decoding of Nazi Messages
ENIGMA'S EFFECT ON THE WAR
European decoding of Nazi's messages lead to insightful discoveries in German
tactics and communications giving the Allied Powers information that lead to the
end of the war. Communications that were decrypted, thanks to the capture of
Enigma, were very useful to the war effort for the Allies. Winston
Churchill, Prime Minister of England during the war, was forewarned on many
occasions, allowing the Allied Powers to have the upper hand. One of these
occasions is the Battle of the North Atlantic in which the British used ULTRA to
figure out where the German milchcows were and then they were able to sink those
ships. "The Germans tried to improve their scores by sending out milchcows,
which were supply ships that met U-boats at sea and resupplied them with fuel
and other necessities." [Rogers]
The only time Winston Churchill used his knowledge from the
decrypted German messages was when he had other sources of information.
Churchill did this in order to keep the Germans from figuring out that their
code had been broken by the opposing forces. Because of this, Churchill
had to make certain sacrifices to win the overall war. An example of his
hard decision and resulting sacrifice would be when the British decoded a German
plan code-named 'Moonlight Sonata' which would be an attack on the city of
Coventry. "The argument is that the Churchill government had time to take
defensive measures or warn the people of Coventry, but that Churchill refused to
do so because of the danger of revealing the ULTRA secret." [Rogers] Coventry
suffered a major defeat, but still Churchill refused to reveal his secret.
"Churchill said simply: 'It was thanks to Ultra that we won
the war.'"[Rogers]
"Messages in plaintext from Logbook No. 6 of the captured U-505."[Kahn]
[Lycett]