Ultra's Role in WW2 Allied Victory?

[CptGlub]

Was Allied intelligence the deciding factor in WW2? Without Ultra would the Allies still have won? The reason I ask is because things went so poorly for the Allies at the start of the war that it seems it could have gone either way. Was wondering if code breaking made the difference or if the industrial might of the west would have won out either way.

Also, Did the Axis break Allied codes?

[Kptlt. Neuerburg]

The breaking of the Enigma codes which where referred to as "Ultra" or the "Most Secret Sources" by the Brits made a massive difference in the outcome of WW2. Mainly through the Double Cross system of "turning" captured German spies and using them to supply a mixture of information that was accurate but arrived too late to be of use and false information to misled the OKW as to what the Allies where doing. This would ultimately lead to Operation Fortitude, the allied deception plan to fool the OKW into thinking the invasion of France would take place in the Pas-De-Calais as well as Fortitude North which was a faked plan to invade Norway which Hitler considered his "sphere of destiny" and would protect at all costs. Fortitude South was another faked invasion on the southern coast of France both of which were put into action to keep as many divisions as possible away from Normandy. Without Ultra and the Double Cross team it the D-Day landings would of most likely have failed and would of taken far longer for the war to have ended.

If you're interested take a look at the books "Double Cross The True Story of the D-DAY Spies", and "Agent Zigzag A True Story of Nazi Espionage, Love and Betrayal." by Ben Macintyre. They both offer amazing incite into the Secret War of WW2.

[Von Due]

There is little doubt that the success of Ultra contributed to shortening the war. This is from war and cipher historians alike. To say it was the one factor, as some fans of cipher breaking would have it, is inaccurate but it was absolutely a factor. The British breaking of Enigma and Lorentz, the US breaking of Japanese codes was of immense importance on tactical and strategic levels.

Some allied codes were broken but others were not broken. If you are interested in one such code the axis never broke, read up on the Navajo code talkers, one of the more exciting stories about ciphers in war.

[CptGlub]

Gentlemen!

Excellent info and thank you for the recommendations!

[Von Due]

Worth a visit if you are interested in ciphers, broken or unbroken
http://www.cryptomuseum.com/index.htm

One German WW2 cipher that was not broken, to public knowledge
http://www.cryptomuseum.com/crypto/s.../t43/index.htm

[vienna]

Originally Posted by Von Due

...

Some allied codes were broken but others were not broken. If you are interested in one such code the axis never broke, read up on the Navajo code talkers, one of the more exciting stories about ciphers in war.

There was also a little known impromptu bit of code-speaking employed by US units in Europe after the initial D-Day landings and by the US troops who came up through Italy, if they had the good fortune to have Japanese-American Nisei troops attached to units; many Nisei could speak Japanese and the Nisei from Hawai'i spoke a sort of pidgin Japanese, mixing Japanese and elements of the Hawai'ian language with bits of other slang derived from other Asian languages used in the Islands. When there was a suspicion the spoken Allied radio transmissions were being intercepted by German forces, the Nisei were put on the radios to relay battle information in their own language as a means of masking the content; the US doubted few, if any, Germans could understand Japanese and they were even less likely to get a grasp of the Pidgin Hawai'ian. The Nisei even went so far as to set up a sort of ad hoc code system where certain Japanese or Pidgin words were actually substitutes for particular types of units, weapons, or situations, etc. ...





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