Enigma was not cracked?

[David1819]

What if Enigma was not cracked? The British intelligence could not solve how to decipher the Enigma machine? Other allied efforts against Engima prove fruitless also?

[stg 44]

Well things would certainly be a lot more difficult for the Allies, but engima wasn't the only source of information; the German resistance provided all sorts of data, as did various other resistance movements. The Soviets had a fair few spies in Germany too. Huffduff and lower level intelligence provided all sorts of data. The end result is the same, but its a more costly victory and the war probably lasts a bit longer.

[Rob Stuart]

It's worth noting that the Allies lost their ability to read the Enigma traffic to and from the U-boats in the Atlantic from 1 February 1942 until almost the end of the year. Losses went up and U-boat sinkings went down, but the Allies did not lose the Battle of the Atlantic during that blackout. Furthermore, when the Battle of the Atlantic was won in the spring of 1943 it was due to Ultra and radar, HF/DF, escort carriers, support groups, VLR aircraft, the Admiralty's introduction of ciphers the Germans could not read, etc, etc, etc. If Enigma had never been broken, then the Battle of the Atlantic would certainly have been costlier for the Allies, and winning it might have entailed making some different strategic choices (e. g., perhaps no WATCHTOWER, so that more USN forces could transfer to the Atlantic), but it would still have been won. This would probably be true of the war as a whole - harder, maybe longer, but still successful.

Incidentally, the defeat of Enigma was not due solely to cryptanalysis. There were also a few "pinches", fortuitous and planned, of Enigma material. More such seizures would have been attempted if there had been no success through cryptanalysis, so some access to some Enigma traffic, mostly naval, might still have been possible.

[Carl Schwamberger]

More emphasis on all the other intel sources. Air recon, tactical recon, stratigic recon, PoW interrogation, analysis of battlefield debris, spies, agents...

Specifically with radio transmissions HufDuf has been mentioned in relation to the submarines. Directional finding is one part of the full menu of signals analysis. A large amount of information can be gleaned from signal strength, transmitter characteristics, frequency used, duration, pattern of the transmission, response traffic from other transmitters, traffic patterns from multiple transmitters. The Japanese never broke any USN codes or encryption, but they did anticipate several US naval operations through skilled traffic analysis.

Conversely the US Army, & British, were at times over dependent on ULTRA. ie: The Axis 'Operation Morning Air' was planned in February 1943 & intiated without significant use of radio messages. ULTRA gave zero warning leading to the suprise of the US 1st Armored Div by two Axis corps.

ie: The suprise of the US 1st Army & nearly everyone else up to SHAEF by the 'Watch on the Rhine' operation in December 1944 was due to the complete avoidance of radio for sending preparatory orders for the attack. In retrospect there were sufficient indicators from tactical intelligence sources, which were not observed by the Army G2.

[pintere]

As others have said, Ultra did not win the war on its own. But it sure did help.

[paspartoo]

What if Enigma was not cracked? The British intelligence could not solve how to decipher the Enigma machine? Other allied efforts against Engima prove fruitless also?

Even if they could not decipher messages on their own they would still have read traffic when keylists were captured in the field. Also apart from Enigma the Germans used hand ciphers at division level (double playfair, field codes, rasterschlussel). Simply by solving hand systems and by using traffic analysis and direction finding they would have gotten useful results.
The historical effects of codebreaking are exaggerated for the Allies.

[Niklas68]

The historical effects of codebreaking are exaggerated for the Allies.

I second this notion. As others further up have said the breaking of the code sure helped. For U boat hunting the allies knew more or less in which quadrant of the Sea a certain u boat was being active, while the exact whereabouts had to be found out by radar and/or air reconnaissance. The codes were read with a certain time lag, even if it was only by a day or so, still the message wasnt 100% accurate for on site detection.

Max hastings in his book Overlord disputed that Ultra had a decisive affect on the battle, the german code messages were known - as he said - in the upper echolon of the allied hierarchy but often not transported down to regiment or battalion level. It was Massive air support, Artillery, Naval gunfire, and Supplies to no end, all of these things were the keys to winning battle of Normandy for the allies, not the code breaking.

[stg 44]

The historical effects of codebreaking are exaggerated for the Allies.

How much of the exaggeration do you think was to sell books when code breakers could finally write about their exploits in the 1970s?

[paspartoo]

How much of the exaggeration do you think was to sell books when code breakers could finally write about their exploits in the 1970s?

I think the main problem is that people use as sources books written in the 1970's (which were mostly bullshit) while the best sources are the official histories 'British intelligence in the second world war' (released in the period 1979-1990) plus the recently released reports by the NSA and GCHQ (Ticom reports, history of hut 6 etc).

Just by looking at the 'British intelligence in the second world war' you can see that they are very careful with what they say happened.

Max hastings in his book Overlord disputed that Ultra had a decisive affect on the battle, the german code messages were known

Max Hastings needs to read the 'History of Hut 6' (for the Enigma traffic). The radioteletype Tunny link was also not read during that period,

[SpicyJuan]

It probably would not have affected the outcome of the war, but saying that ULTRA was not important to the Allied war effort is a large exaggeration.