Timeline for Why were the Allies so much better cryptanalysts?
Current License: CC BY-SA 4.0
36 events
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| Nov 25, 2020 at 6:48 | comment | added | DevSolar | @RedwolfPrograms: That argument works just as well the other way around. ;-) | |
| Nov 25, 2020 at 0:36 | comment | added | Ángel | Having good cryptographers on board breaking your enemy codes help designing good codes for yourself. | |
| Nov 24, 2020 at 23:56 | comment | added | rydwolf | @DevSolar There is of course a bit of survivorship bias in those messages; if I read the page correctly, they are recently cracked ones, so they are less likely to have repetitive patterns that would have allowed them to be cracked earlier on. | |
| S Nov 24, 2020 at 17:07 | history | suggested | TylerH | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
Changed 'Indian' -> 'Native American' ; they were never Indians and the term nowadays carries prejudicial/sensitive tones and thus are preferentially avoided by Native American indigenous peoples.
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| Nov 24, 2020 at 16:46 | review | Suggested edits | |||
| S Nov 24, 2020 at 17:07 | |||||
| Nov 24, 2020 at 11:53 | comment | added | Paul_Pedant | Regarding weather reporting, the RAF carried out a process called "Gardening". A plane would buzz a known Axis weather station, for a given number of times from a specified direction, and lob a few bombs. That would ensure a coded report in a standardised format containing some known words, known as a "crib", which could simplify finding the day's Enigma key settings. | |
| Nov 24, 2020 at 11:10 | comment | added | Lars Bosteen | @rs.29 It's not so much my conclusion as that of the sources I read (not all of which are referenced here). Certainly, many sources underplay the successes of the Germans, and I take your point that 'they all had their successes and failures', but (on balance) the Allies seem to have shaded it, not least because their job was easier. That said, I think there's room for a difference of opinion given the difficulty in weighing up the evidence. | |
| Nov 24, 2020 at 11:05 | history | edited | Lars Bosteen | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
typo
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| Nov 24, 2020 at 8:03 | comment | added | rs.29 | Answer is good, but I think your conclusion is bad : there is really no evidence that Allied code-breaking was better then German. They all had their successes and failures. Japanese and Italians are different matter, they were simply not that advanced . | |
| Nov 24, 2020 at 7:30 | history | edited | Lars Bosteen | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
added text, added sources
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| Nov 24, 2020 at 6:55 | comment | added | Lars Bosteen | @gktscrk Good point, interservice rivalry was a major issue. | |
| Nov 24, 2020 at 6:01 | comment | added | gktscrk | It is probably noteworthy that the cooperation you highlight between Allied forces here would have been impossible in Japan where the Army and Navy competed in everything. Sharing intelligence between the two would have been unthinkable—hence also the very weak naval intelligence codes compared to the Army ones. | |
| Nov 24, 2020 at 4:44 | comment | added | chrylis -cautiouslyoptimistic- | Network effects: Is there anything they can't do? | |
| Nov 24, 2020 at 2:56 | history | edited | Lars Bosteen | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
added text, added sources
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| Nov 23, 2020 at 17:34 | comment | added | Jon Custer | The 'industrialization' of code breaking, both at Bletchley Park and in the US, was a distinct feature of the Allies. While helped by the close cooperation of the Allies and the various services, the ability to design, manufacture, and run hundreds of machines was only evidenced on the Allies side. | |
| Nov 23, 2020 at 17:18 | comment | added | jamesqf | @Schwern: Another aspect of this is that books don't help all that much in understanding spoken language. I can read & write fairly well in several languages, but don't understand the spoken language at all. And then there's Gaelic spelling :-) | |
| Nov 23, 2020 at 15:40 | comment | added | llama | Also about code talkers, even if you captured a native speaker (which the Japanese did: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joe_Kieyoomia#Prisoner_of_war), the military jargon they used was so opaque that they couldn't really figure it out, adding another layer of pseudo-encryption (and unfortunately more misery for Joe Kieyoomia) | |
| Nov 23, 2020 at 10:07 | comment | added | RedSonja | @DevSolar Indeed. I have in the past worked on messaging systems for the armed forces, and weather makes up a good part of it. It changes frequently and it's a lot of data. And that data is repetitive. Another big part is "move there" / "we moved there". | |
| Nov 23, 2020 at 7:36 | comment | added | DevSolar | @T.E.D.: Partially correct. There were several phrases that frequently occurred at known places, but "Heil Hitler" at the end wasn't it AFAIK. "Oberkommando" / "OKW" or "Wetter" was much more frequent, and even that was far from a "given". You can have a look at historic messages to see how little of a pattern there actually was. The Real WTF that made the Enigma breakable in the first place was the reflector. It doubled the key space, but introduced the one crucial weakness -- that a character could not be encoded into itself. | |
| Nov 23, 2020 at 5:11 | comment | added | supercat | @Schwern: Tactical messages could also be things like [if I recall from an audio book] "Enemy machine gunner at [coordinates]. Destroy." If one sent such a message in the clear, the enemy could hear it and immediately move. If one used a coding machine that took five minutes to send a coded message, and the machine gunner never stayed put for more than four, the messages would be useless by the time they were received. The ability to relay messages in less than a minute without the enemy knowing about them was a game changer. | |
| Nov 23, 2020 at 3:18 | history | edited | Lars Bosteen | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
added text, added sources
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| Nov 23, 2020 at 2:37 | comment | added | T.E.D.♦ | One of my favorite little stories about WWII allied codebreaking was the advantage they had on cracking codes based on their knowledge that at the end of most messages would be the phrase "Heil Hitler" | |
| Nov 23, 2020 at 1:08 | comment | added | Schwern | @DKNguyen That's much more than can fit into a comment. How about asking a question and linking it here? | |
| S Nov 23, 2020 at 1:04 | history | suggested | Kuba hasn't forgotten Monica | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
Fixed a typo
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| Nov 23, 2020 at 1:03 | comment | added | Lars Bosteen | @Schwern Nice observation. Kahn does mention this (but I left it out as the answer is already long): "There was some co-operation in Germany, of course. But it did not overcome the lethal effects of dispersion, which stemmed ultimately from Hitler's assigning duplicate responsibilities to his underlings so that he could retain ultimate control. The charismatic nature of his leadership enabled him to do this in many areas of government. It facilitated his rule - but it devastated his war effort, including codebreaking." | |
| Nov 23, 2020 at 0:59 | comment | added | DKNguyen | @Schwern The grand irony. | |
| Nov 23, 2020 at 0:52 | comment | added | Schwern | @DKNguyen There's plenty of material about code talkers. Which part are you referring to? Dictatorships vs democracies? | |
| Nov 23, 2020 at 0:44 | comment | added | DKNguyen | @Schwern Do you have any reference materials to read up on about this theory? | |
| Nov 23, 2020 at 0:43 | review | Suggested edits | |||
| S Nov 23, 2020 at 1:04 | |||||
| Nov 22, 2020 at 23:28 | comment | added | Schwern | @jamesqf Yes, there were many different languages used, not for security, but it made more code talkers available. Code talkers were a tactical encryption method. "The tank assault will begin at 0630". Even if Japan "cracked" the language, books were freely available, it is extremely unlikely there would be someone who spoke the language available to decode the message in time for it to be relevant. Any obscure language would do. Even Pig Latin and idioms will confuse a non-native listener. See Why were Navajo code talkers used during WW2? | |
| Nov 22, 2020 at 23:18 | comment | added | Schwern | The grand irony is democracies are better organized than the supposedly organized and efficient fascist dictatorships. Dictatorships lack a governing consensus. Dictators must constantly divide people and institutions to keep them weak. They will squabble for power among themselves lest they gather too much power and threaten the dictatorship. Democracies have a governing consensus and can more safely allow concentrations of power and efficiencies without threatening their control. This played out between the Axis powers, they were never allies, they were never coordinated. | |
| Nov 22, 2020 at 17:37 | comment | added | jamesqf | WRT code talkers, it should also be noted that they weren't just Navajo. So if the Japanese did somehow manage to crack the Navajo language, that did nothing to help them with Cherokee, Choctaw, Lakota... | |
| Nov 22, 2020 at 14:58 | vote | accept | José Carlos Santos | ||
| Nov 22, 2020 at 13:01 | history | edited | Lars Bosteen | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
added text, added source, fixed typo
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| Nov 22, 2020 at 12:35 | history | edited | Lars Bosteen | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
added text, added sources
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| Nov 22, 2020 at 12:15 | history | answered | Lars Bosteen | CC BY-SA 4.0 |