Christos Military and Intelligence Corner

Christos military and intelligence corner

There are not too many websites or blogs about Signals Intelligence during the Second World War, especially not the kind that focuses on specific parts of the war over radio waves. Last July, Christos started a new blog that mainly covers the German intelligence efforts. He already provided some most interesting information about the German interception and cryptanalysis of enemy codes and ciphers.

There's little known about  the German work on SIGINT (Signals Intelligence) because much of this information, and many of the German military who worked in that field, were picked up at the end of the war. The British-American TICOM project  (Target Intelligence Committee) was especially focused on gathering important cryptologic information, and to prevent it from falling into the hands of the Soviets. Unfortunately for historians, they did a good job in hiding that information from the public, but more and more information is gradually released into the public.

Christos' weblog articles fill up a gap in the blogosphere and I hope he keeps on writing and providing valuable links to documents and web pages on German cryptologic work during WW2. It is important that the story of the war is based on information of both sides, and the German intelligence work and cryptologic successes should receive their place in that history. We now know that, although the implementation of German cryptologic systems was often weak, they did develop magnificent crypto equipment, had some fine cryptologists and excelled in the field of radio technology and interception.

Do visit Christos's Military and Intelligence Corner to discover that other view on WW2 Signals Intelligence.

If you're interested in German SIGINT, you might start off by reading European Axis Signal Intelligence in World War II, published last year by NSA on their Declassification and Transparency project. These documents give an excellent view on the organisational structure and results of Germany's wartime intelligence.

German signals intelligence has always been underestimated or portrayed as inferior. This was not only the case during WW2 but also during the Cold War. The misconception that East German intelligence relied mostly on Human Intelligence was an expensive one, as you can read on my blog about Stasi SIGINT operations.