by ptype on 10/20/20, 7:19 AM with 103 comments
by simonh on 10/20/20, 8:55 AM
I think it's best thinking about it in the same terms as air and sea power. It's another domain of conflict that supports the action on the ground, and in fact in all the other domains of conflict. It can make a huge, even essential contribution, but none of them is decisive on it's own.
The point about GCHQ is interesting and I'd not thought about their importance to the UK in quite those terms but it does make sense. Our armed forces punch well above their weight, but our primary asset is actually our relationship with the USA, and our value to the USA may well be primarily in the Intelligence arena.
by GekkePrutser on 10/20/20, 8:56 AM
So they always had to do things like fake a 'random spotting plane' etc and sometimes even letting attacks happen. So there's always a limit to what you can do with this kind of information to protect its existence in the future.
In WW2 there actually were times where German analysts were getting suspicious as to why the allies were so lucky. But their concerns were trumped by the leadership's enormous confidence in the Enigma.
By the way, the Germans were reading lots of the allies' cyphers too.
by rich_sasha on 10/20/20, 9:22 AM
The British took over, and achieved huge things on their own too (while also excluding the Polish cryptographers, now UK-based, from the project), very possibly doing a lot more than the Poles ever did. But I see that even when saying Bletchley Park was 'over-rated', even then they can't give credit where it's due.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cryptanalysis_of_the_Enigma#Po...
by LatteLazy on 10/20/20, 9:18 AM
by bArray on 10/20/20, 9:14 AM
> "Intelligence never wins a war on its own," says Prof
> Ferris.
Then says:
> "I don't think Britain could have won the Falklands
> conflict without GCHQ," Prof Ferris told the BBC.
So intelligence gathering is not winning a war single-handed, but it's pretty important? I thought that must British people knew this... Of course the War effort was much larger than a few buildings down in Bletchley.
I think this is just to sell his new book - say something controversial and barely featured in the book, then ride the press:
> The new book - Behind the Enigma - is released on Tuesday
> and is based on access to top secret GCHQ files.
by WalterBright on 10/20/20, 9:38 AM
For the U-Boots, there were few enough that one-time pads would be practical, and unbreakable.
There are also ways to set traps to see if your code was broken.
by gampleman on 10/20/20, 8:36 AM
This sounds like some A+ BS. Since when do national intelligence agencies have globally recognised brands?
by secondcoming on 10/20/20, 8:34 AM
GCHQ were only able to break the Argentine encryption because the Dutch gave them very strong hints on how to break it.
by MichaelMoser123 on 10/20/20, 8:59 AM
Johny Carincross was a spy who passed over raw intercepts decrypted with Tunny to the Soviet Union; so they got the German order of battle and other information in advance of the battle of Kursk; that sounds like a major contribution to winning the war (the spy was confirming information that the British passed on via official channels, however they seem to have put more trust in the reports of their spy). The outcome of the battle of Kursk did make a big difference.
> "Intelligence never wins a war on its own," says Prof Ferris.
Another event where spies/code breakers made a major difference is the battle of Moscow;
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Sorge#Wartime_intellig...
"Various writers have speculated that the information allowed the release of Siberian divisions for the Battle of Moscow, where the German Army suffered its first strategic defeat in the war. To that end, Sorge's information might have been the most important military intelligence work in World War II. However, Sorge was not the only source of Soviet intelligence about Japan, as Soviet codebreakers had broken the Japanese diplomatic codes and so Moscow knew from signals intelligence that there would be no Japanese attack on the Soviet Union in 1941.[46] "
by xLaszlo on 10/20/20, 9:08 AM
by LargoLasskhyfv on 10/20/20, 11:52 PM
https://www.politico.eu/article/sweden-ann-linde-and-switzer...
edit: much earlier but connected https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7992651/US-spies-ga...
by lqet on 10/20/20, 8:23 AM
> "Bletchley is not the war winner that a lot of Brits think it is".
> But he said Bletchley still played an important role.
> "Intelligence never wins a war on its own," says Prof Ferris.
The latter seems to be a trivial statement. Of course: if you know the enemy will launch a 100-megaton bomb at your capital in 2 hours, and all you have at your disposal is light cavalry, you will most likely still not win the war.
by ncmncm on 10/20/20, 9:25 PM
Yes, Stalin was also given access to some decrypts. Yes, Stalin murdered or imprisoned ~15 million Soviet "citizens" (a majority citizens of invaded neighbors, but plenty of Russians, too, including his own senior officer corps) before the war. Yes, Russia provided a huge share of the resources to build up Germany's armory before the war. Yes, Russia invited Germany to split Poland with it. Yes, in the final two years the Soviets depended on the US for food, fuel, steel, and trucks. Yes, Stalin had been poised to invade Germany when he was surprised and lost the bulk of his own armory at the outset. Yes, a majority of the Soviet troops killed were not Russian. Yes, the naval war was mostly conducted by the US and British Fleets. Yes, the US was busy in the Pacific theater.
Still, the war was mainly a battle to the death between two totalitarian regimes, with the US and Britain harrying at the edges. The Allied bombing, while it killed many, many civilians, utterly failed to stop massive growth of production of tanks and aircraft, right up to the end; that declined only in the final half-year as original German territory was overrun. (Production of pilots failed to keep pace, limiting the aircrafts' value.) It took only a small fraction of German forces to keep the US and Britain fully occupied in Africa, then Italy, and even after D-day. At the end, Stalin had to park and wait months for the Allies to catch up, and spent the time chasing Nazis out of the south.
"No Simple Victory", by Norman Davies using material exposed after the Soviet collapse, is an eye-opening resource.
by goatinaboat on 10/20/20, 8:42 AM