Why was German intelligence so inefficient?

[paspartoo]

As noted before, the "organized chaos of the Third Reich" severely hampered intelligence efforts; David Kahn, Hitler's Spies, has many examples.

For instance, the Forschungsamt, part of Göring's personal empire, intercepted and decoded diplomatic cables, and so did "Pers Z" of the Foreign Office. Needless to say, there was no coordination or communication between the two.

According to Kahn (p. 193), "in view of the extreme rarity of good cryptanalysts, this duplication of the work of Pers Z and the Forschungsamt stands out as the most wasteful operation of the entire German intelligence effort."

Whatever you say sport.
Dr Adolf Paschke, head of the Pers Z linguistic cryptanalysis group, said in TICOM report DF-111 ‘Comments on various cryptologic matters’, p25

I may loyally affirm that the workers of the FA collaborated with us openly and honorably, withheld nothing from me and this furthered our work.

I could talk more about Kahn and his ‘research’ but I think it is unfair to criticize authors decades after they’ve written their books. ‘Hitler’s spies’ came out in the 1970’s. It cannot be judged by the standards of 2015…

[ljadw]

Another factor in favour of the Allies was that they could count on the cooperation of large numbers of people - in occupied countries and elsewhere - who really wanted to bring about the downfall of Nazi Germany, and often were willing to risk their lives in that cause.

In contrast, people spying for the Germans did so out of mercenary motives, by and large, and were often quite willing to cheat and mislead their spymasters, or to change sides if that seemed to their advantage. Towards the end of the war, many refused German money, which they suspected would soon be worthless, and demanded payment in gold, diamonds or drugs.

The importance of humint is as usual much exaggerated

[Knouterer]

As noted before, the "organized chaos of the Third Reich" severely hampered intelligence efforts; David Kahn, Hitler's Spies, has many examples.

For instance, the Forschungsamt, part of Göring's personal empire, intercepted and decoded diplomatic cables, and so did "Pers Z" of the Foreign Office. Needless to say, there was no coordination or communication between the two.

According to Kahn (p. 193), "in view of the extreme rarity of good cryptanalysts, this duplication of the work of Pers Z and the Forschungsamt stands out as the most wasteful operation of the entire German intelligence effort."

Whatever you say sport.
Dr Adolf Paschke, head of the Pers Z linguistic cryptanalysis group, said in TICOM report DF-111 ‘Comments on various cryptologic matters’, p25

I may loyally affirm that the workers of the FA collaborated with us openly and honorably, withheld nothing from me and this furthered our work.

I could talk more about Kahn and his ‘research’ but I think it is unfair to criticize authors decades after they’ve written their books. ‘Hitler’s spies’ came out in the 1970’s. It cannot be judged by the standards of 2015…

My name isn't "sport", and whatever Herr Dr. Paschke "loyally affirmed" to his interrogators in 1945 hardly counts as evidence, unless it can be corroborated in some way, which doesn't seem to be the case.

This may come as a shock to you, but people who work for intelligence services do not necessarily always tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth when they're questioned.

If you want something more recent than Kahn, try Joachim Beckh: http://www.amazon.de/Blitz-Anker-Inform ... _14_text_y

I would be a tiny bit careful with this work, it looks as if the author bit off more than he could chew, it seems to be written in a great hurry and the grammar is a bit shaky here and there; nevertheless he describes in some detail (Vol. 2, page 186 and following) how after a certain degree of cooperation and exchange early in the war, the various encryption/decryption services all went their own way and developed their own procedures and systems, interservice rivalry and secrecy gained the upper hand, and cooperation was formally forbidden in a number of cases, and that applied notably to the Auswärtige Amt.

Since you're such an expert that you can afford to belittle Kahn, I suppose you can read German.

[paspartoo]

My name isn't "sport", and whatever Herr Dr. Paschke "loyally affirmed" to his interrogators in 1945 hardly counts as evidence, unless it can be corroborated in some way, which doesn't seem to be the case.

This may come as a shock to you, but people who work for intelligence services do not necessarily always tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth when they're questioned.

Yeah the material from the FA found in the files of the Pers Z was planted there after the war by Herr Dr. Paschke in order to embarass mr Kahn and Knouterer the intel expert...

If you want something more recent than Kahn, try Joachim Beckh: http://www.amazon.de/Blitz-Anker-Inform ... _14_text_y

I would be a tiny bit careful with this work, it looks as if the author bit off more than he could chew, it seems to be written in a great hurry and the grammar is a bit shaky here and there; nevertheless he describes in some detail (Vol. 2, page 186 and following) how after a certain degree of cooperation and exchange early in the war, the various encryption/decryption services all went their own way and developed their own procedures and systems, interservice rivalry and secrecy gained the upper hand, and cooperation was formally forbidden in a number of cases, and that applied notably to the Auswärtige Amt.

Since you're such an expert that you can afford to belittle Kahn, I suppose you can read German.

Actually i can't read German, which is why i've had to ask for help from friends who can read it. I've also used google translate. I can't say i've translated all the material i have (just the Inspectorate 7/VI war diary is about 1.400 pages) but i do have an understanding of all the entries.

This material plus the TICOM reports (interrogations of German personnel and translations of captured files) have been released in the last decade. If you haven't read this material then you don't have a clue about what happened during the war. Generalizations of the type 'the various encryption/decryption services all went their own way and developed their own procedures and systems' are not even wrong.

I've uploaded most of the reports plus you can get the rest from my friend Randy Rezabek : http://www.ticomarchive.com/

[ljadw]

I wonder why 75 years after the war,people still continue to claim that the Germans were no good at intelligence,maybe (under the influence of BP) they think that the Germans had a congenital defect that made them incapable to be good in intelligence ?

Sigh,sigh .

[Carl Schwamberger]

I wonder why 75 years after the war,people still continue to claim that the Germans were no good at intelligence,maybe (under the influence of BP) they think that the Germans had a congenital defect that made them incapable to be good in intelligence ?

Sigh,sigh .

They take their history from the television, or Youtube & similar sources.

[Knouterer]

. Generalizations of the type 'the various encryption/decryption services all went their own way and developed their own procedures and systems' are not even wrong.

No? Strange. The synopsis of those TICOM reports confirms EXACTLY that (p. 24 and following)

"With the Navy and the Air Force the picture was somewhat different. They were permitted to continue their cryptographice development work and retained the right to say which of their systems was to be used in what place ..."

"With regard to the ciphers used by the Waffen SS, the Signal Intelligence Agency of the Supreme Command Armed Forces (OKW/Chi) had consultative powers only ..."

"Goering's "Research" Bureau (FA) developed its own codes and ciphers, although the Bureau did use cipher teleprinters adopted by the military
services."

"The Signal Intelligence Agency of the Supreme Command Armed Forces (OKW/Chi) was never allowed to know the details of' the ciphers used by the
Foreign Office."

"The Signal Intelligence Agency of the Naval High Command (OKM/4 SKL/III) maintained a traditional navy reserve in dealing with other agencies. There was no high level signal intelligence coordination, and there was frequent overlapping and duplication of effort between the agencies dealing with diplomatic cryptanalysis."

(about the FA and OKW/Chi:) "There are no known examples of direct cryptanalytic exchanges between the two agencies, nor were there subsequent exchanges of personnel. Goering's "Research" Bureau (FA) was not given access to the special cryptanalytic machinery developed by the Signal Intelligence Agency of the Supreme Armed Forces HQ ..."

And so on and so forth.

Apart from that, the fact that German prisoners claimed that they had done a great job, that they had been 100% efficient, and that cooperation had been excellent, is typical but doesn't prove anything.

Very many German officers wrote books after the war to explain how absolutely great they had been and that but for some unfortunate decisions from Hitler they would have won the war. Guderian comes to mind.

[paspartoo]

. Generalizations of the type 'the various encryption/decryption services all went their own way and developed their own procedures and systems' are not even wrong.

No? Strange. The synopsis of those TICOM reports confirms EXACTLY that (p. 24 and following)

"With the Navy and the Air Force the picture was somewhat different. They were permitted to continue their cryptographice development work and retained the right to say which of their systems was to be used in what place ..."

"With regard to the ciphers used by the Waffen SS, the Signal Intelligence Agency of the Supreme Command Armed Forces (OKW/Chi) had consultative powers only ..."

"Goering's "Research" Bureau (FA) developed its own codes and ciphers, although the Bureau did use cipher teleprinters adopted by the military
services."

"The Signal Intelligence Agency of the Supreme Command Armed Forces (OKW/Chi) was never allowed to know the details of' the ciphers used by the
Foreign Office."

"The Signal Intelligence Agency of the Naval High Command (OKM/4 SKL/III) maintained a traditional navy reserve in dealing with other agencies. There was no high level signal intelligence coordination, and there was frequent overlapping and duplication of effort between the agencies dealing with diplomatic cryptanalysis."

(about the FA and OKW/Chi:) "There are no known examples of direct cryptanalytic exchanges between the two agencies, nor were there subsequent exchanges of personnel. Goering's "Research" Bureau (FA) was not given access to the special cryptanalytic machinery developed by the Signal Intelligence Agency of the Supreme Armed Forces HQ ..."

And so on and so forth.

Apart from that, the fact that German prisoners claimed that they had done a great job, that they had been 100% efficient, and that cooperation had been excellent, is typical but doesn't prove anything.

Very many German officers wrote books after the war to explain how absolutely great they had been and that but for some unfortunate decisions from Hitler they would have won the war. Guderian comes to mind.

You mean the EASI volumes? The ones written in 1946 without processing the captured German archives? The ones written without interviewing important German codebreakers?
Don't worry i've got you covered : http://chris-intel-corner.blogspot.gr/2 ... ports.html
Also check here to see how reliable they are: http://chris-intel-corner.blogspot.gr/2 ... ments.html
If you want to go nuclear i'll list the meetings the In 7/VI personnel had EACH MONTH with codebreakers of the other agencies.
So to recap i'll repeat you are not even wrong.
Once you read up on the subject and you realize how little you know we can continue the lessons. I'll be here

[Knouterer]

If those EASI reports are so worthless then why did you provide the link?

I'll just limit myself to the observation that you're clearly trying to create a smokescreen to hide the fact that you're unable to disprove any of my (or Kahn's) statements so far.

Of course there were some successes, but the intelligence gathering system as a whole was inefficient, not to say dysfunctional, for all the reasons mentioned: a multiplication of agencies, interservice rivalry, jealousy and mistrust; "organized chaos", in a word. And I'm not interested in going over the whole history of cryptography in WWII, I just mentioned that as an example. Perhaps some cryptographers from different services cooperated now and then - or at least had "meetings" - and perhaps the Forschungsamt provided some raw material to the Foreign Office, but that doesn't change the overall picture.

At least I hope you're not going to claim that, for example, the Abwehr and the SS/SD cooperated harmoniously

And the German attempts to infiltrate agents in Britain and the USA were all amateuristic in the extreme. Read the Gimpel & Colepaugh story again.

[paspartoo]

If those EASI reports are so worthless then why did you provide the link?

The link is to a site that has the original ticom reports not the EASI volumes. I've also uploaded many of them because the information they contain is not summarized correctly in the EASI volumes (for the reasons i've explained in my essay).

I'll just limit myself to the observation that you're clearly trying to create a smokescreen to hide the fact that you're unable to disprove any of my (or Kahn's) statements so far.

I'll just repeat that according to the war diary of Inspectorate 7/VI there were meetings every month with the codebreakers of the other agencies. You and Kahn are free to believe that this was done so they could drink beer and eat sausages. From the war diary its clear that the reason was to discuss all new developments (enemy codes and ciphers, own systems, security of the Enigma etc). Same thing happened with the other agencies. They exchanged intercepted traffic, information on codes and ciphers and personnel.

Of course there were some successes, but the intelligence gathering system as a whole was inefficient, not to say dysfunctional, for all the reasons mentioned: a multiplication of agencies, interservice rivalry, jealousy and mistrust; "organized chaos", in a word. And I'm not interested in going over the whole history of cryptography in WWII, I just mentioned that as an example. Perhaps some cryptographers from different services cooperated now and then - or at least had "meetings" - and perhaps the Forschungsamt provided some raw material to the Foreign Office, but that doesn't change the overall picture.

At least I hope you're not going to claim that, for example, the Abwehr and the SS/SD cooperated harmoniously

And the German attempts to infiltrate agents in Britain and the USA were all amateuristic in the extreme. Read the Gimpel & Colepaugh story again.

I'll repeat what i said before, you need to read more on the subject and especially material that has been released recently not books written 40 years ago.

[paspartoo]

Some random examples from the war diary of OKH/In 7/VI period 1941-43 (the entries for 1944-45 are very short at 4-5 pages per month and do not include visits of personnel):

April 1941: Meetings with Fenner (head of OKW/Chi cipher department), Luftwaffe Chi Stelle personnel (in Wildpark), Pers Z personnel.
November 1941: Meetings with OKW/Chi, B-Dienst personnel

February 1942: meetings with police officials, Italian crypto personnel, Luftwaffe Chi Stelle personnel.
June 1942: meetings with Luftwaffe Chi Stelle personnel, Weather Service personnel, Pers Z personnel, OKW/Chi personnel.

March 1943: meetings with Pers Z personnel, OKW/Chi, B-Dienst personnel, Army Ordnance office (Waffenamt)
September 1943: Meetings with OKW/Chi, meetings with Forschungsamt personnel, meetings with Army Ordnance office (Waffenamt), meeting with Abwehr and B-Dienst personnel

Their punch card installation was also used for the B-Dienst, Forschungsamt and Pers Z as shown in the monthly reports of group 9.

All the talk of the German signals intelligence services not cooperating is based on outdated sources. The archival material is clear.

[paspartoo]

As noted before, the "organized chaos of the Third Reich" severely hampered intelligence efforts; David Kahn, Hitler's Spies, has many examples.

For instance, the Forschungsamt, part of Göring's personal empire, intercepted and decoded diplomatic cables, and so did "Pers Z" of the Foreign Office. Needless to say, there was no coordination or communication between the two.

According to Kahn (p. 193), "in view of the extreme rarity of good cryptanalysts, this duplication of the work of Pers Z and the Forschungsamt stands out as the most wasteful operation of the entire German intelligence effort."

Even the source you used previously proved this wrong!

From European Axis Signal Intelligence in World War II ‘Volume 6: The Foreign Office Cryptanalytic Section’, p36

[ljadw]

And the German attempts to infiltrate agents in Britain and the USA were all amateuristic in the extreme. Read the Gimpel & Colepaugh story again.

And how many British and US agents were infiltrated in Germany ?

[Carl Schwamberger]

...

And how many British and US agents were infiltrated in Germany ?

'Piercing the Reich' by J Perisco covers some of that. Mostly OSS operations in 1944-45. He claims the Brits were opposed to sending agents into Germany. He does not made perfectly clear why. Preisco also very briefly touches on the contacts the US embassy in Switzerland developed.

France developed at least one agent, a German traitor in the 1930s through that channel the Poles obtained a operators instruction book for the Enigma encryption machine. I think it is Budinskis history of the Allied attacks on the Engima system mentions the name of the German traitor & some other details.

There are a number of stories in circulation about one Soviet agent network in Germany being broken up in 1941 & a replacement being set up. Afraid I have no sources worth recommending for this.

[stg 44]

...

And how many British and US agents were infiltrated in Germany ?

'Piercing the Reich' by J Perisco covers some of that. Mostly OSS operations in 1944-45. He claims the Brits were opposed to sending agents into Germany. He does not made perfectly clear why. Preisco also very briefly touches on the contacts the US embassy in Switzerland developed.

France developed at least one agent, a German traitor in the 1930s through that channel the Poles obtained a operators instruction book for the Enigma encryption machine. I think it is Budinskis history of the Allied attacks on the Engima system mentions the name of the German traitor & some other details.

There are a number of stories in circulation about one Soviet agent network in Germany being broken up in 1941 & a replacement being set up. Afraid I have no sources worth recommending for this.

The Soviet ring was Rote Kapelle:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Orche ... pionage%29

Any infiltration of Germany came at the end of the war as the Allies were poised to enter the country; all the sources otherwise were from anti-Nazis that approached the Allies or in the case of the French finding a guy willing to sell out for money:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hans-Thilo_Schmidt

Really it was only possible once the Reich was discredited and obviously had lost, so the agents turned were PoWs that wanted to bring the war to an end faster.
https://www.cia.gov/library/center-for- ... cle03.html
Even late in the war many didn't go well.
http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jso ... ssops.html