"Breitman's Discovery of Allied Decodes about the Holoc

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Mostowka
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"Breitman's Discovery of Allied Decodes about the Holoc

#1

Post by Mostowka » 02 May 2004, 18:54

Very interesting article about nazi signal coding and the British cracking it and thus revealing early info (1941) on the genocide that had started in the wake of operation Barbarossa:

http://130.149.134.79/journal/kkwiet001.htm
The German Police decodes were assigned the highest degree of secrecy. They were stamped: "Most Secret" and specially marked: "To Be Kept Under Lock And Key: Never To Be Removed From Office!" No wonder. They revealed, among other things, details of some of the early German murders of Jews committed in the newly conquered territories of the Soviet Union.
The question which I am trying to raise is: If the British were aware of the holocaust at such an early stage why was this not revealed and why were not any action taken to at least try to help the victims ?

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#2

Post by David Thompson » 03 May 2004, 17:14

Mostowka -- You asked:
The question which I am trying to raise is: If the British were aware of the holocaust at such an early stage why was this not revealed and why were not any action taken to at least try to help the victims ?
As for the first part of your question:
why was this [awareness of the holocaust] not revealed
It is my understanding that (1) if the subject were raised with any specificity the Germans would realize their radio codes had been deciphered and change them, eliminating all signals intelligence for the western allies; (2) because no covering order to "murder all Jews" was forwarded to the police units, the intercepted communications just reported results and it took the allies a while to see the broader scheme or pattern; and (3) by 1942 the western allies were warning the Germans that they would face war crimes trials for these atrocities. As for the second part of your question:
why were not any action taken to at least try to help the victims ?
It's difficult to think of an action which the western allies could have taken, other than warning the Nazis that they would face postwar punishment, which would have helped the victims of the police/Einsatzgruppen massacres. These were carried out on location in the occupied eastern territories, outside the range of alled air power in 1941-1943.


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Mostowka
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#3

Post by Mostowka » 03 May 2004, 20:42

been deciphered and change them
I presume that they changed them anyway from time to time so the gain the Allieds could get by exploiting nazi war crimes (troop morale/hatred, neutral country cooperation) would be far greater if they exposed the information. As I am not sure of how often the Germans changed their signalling systems this is just a theory, but if they did change the systems regardless of known exposure then it is an interesting question why the British did not reveale the nazi crimes.
It's difficult to think of an action which the western allies could have taken, other than warning the Nazis that they would face postwar punishment
The British had bases on Cyprus, Iran, Palestine who did in fact have accsess to the Balkan and even southeastern Europe (Rumania, Bulgaria, Moldavia, Southern Ukraine), there was even a shortlived project in the end of the war when the British funded and trained small units of Jewish soldiers from Palestine to make parachute drops into Hungary to arm and assist Jewish resistance fighters.

The support could not have been substansial as there were few options and the logistical possibilities were big. But I sincerily believe that some form of atempts could have been made.

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#4

Post by Hurricane » 03 May 2004, 21:59

I think the author gives some of the answers himself in the text. I think these are the main points:

* The signal intercepts were mostly from the period 41/42 and only of the shootings in Soviet by the Einsatsgruppen. Later, sensitive information was sent by courier instead of over the radiowaves, meaning the full extent of the genocide was probably not understood.

* The British were extremely secretive about ULTRA, and information gathered from it was only used in very special circumstances (it took qiote a while before they even let the US in on their secret) . Ultra decrypts were mostly used in the Atlantic war, were it was possible to deceive the Germans that information was gotten some other way (ordinary recon, spies in harbors, radar etc). Publishing detailed information about the killings of Jews deep inside German-occupied territory would almost certainly have blown the Ultra secret.

The author also claims that the west was afraid of a wave of Jewish refugees. This in a way makes sense since the west didn't wan't the Jews before the war, but I don't see how the Germans just would ship over all of them even if the atrocities had been made public. This is what he wrote:
From the start efforts were made to suppress or to play down any public debate surrounding the "Jewish catastrophe" which, unprecedented in history, defied human imagination. Apart from antisemitic resentiments or bureaucratic petty-mindedness prevailing in some allied quarters, the view also prevailed that attention to the "Jewish cause" would jeopardise the allied war effort. Allied soldiers, so the argument went, could barely be mobilised to repel the Nazi war against the Jews, let alone to give their lives to the rescue of Jews. Part and parcels of this attitude was the concern that if the Allies offered to take some Jews in negotiations, the Nazis might release a flood of them to cause problems. It was feared, if the remnants of European Jewry were permitted to seek refuge in other countries, these would be flooded by undesirable aliens.
Any thoughts on this would be appreciated. :)

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#5

Post by Hurricane » 03 May 2004, 22:14

I think it also is worth mentioning that Churchill already on August 24 1941 took to the airwaves with a speech:
"We are in the precense of a crime without a name," Churchill declared. As Hitler's armies advance, "whole districts are being exterminated. Scores of thousands - literally scores of thousands - of executions in cold blood are being perpetrated by the German police-troops upon the Russian patriots who defend their native soil. Since the Mongol invasion of Europe ... there has never been methodical, merciless butchery on such a scale, or approaching such a scale."
Three weeks later, instructions went out to the Higher SS and police leaders in Russia: "The danger of decipherment by the enemy of wireless messages is great". After that, information about "state secrets", including "exact figures of executions", were to be sent by courier.

The quotes are taken from Stephen Budiansky's book "Battle of Wits" (2000), ISBN 0-14-028105-3

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#6

Post by Hurricane » 03 May 2004, 22:19

Mostowka wrote:I presume that they changed them anyway from time to time so the gain the Allieds could get by exploiting nazi war crimes (troop morale/hatred, neutral country cooperation) would be far greater if they exposed the information. As I am not sure of how often the Germans changed their signalling systems this is just a theory, but if they did change the systems regardless of known exposure then it is an interesting question why the British did not reveale the nazi crimes.
They did make cosmetic changes to Enigma throughout the war, but none of the changes corrected the fact that Enigma was a flawed design from the beginning. Had the Germans actually understood that the allies could intercept Enigma messages even without any captured machines, code lists or anything, they would most certainly have developed a better encyption machine in no time.

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#7

Post by michael mills » 04 May 2004, 07:46

The Allied Governments had adopted a policy of not providing any aid to the civilian populations of German-occupied Europe, eg food aid.

The reason for that was that any aid provided to the civilian populations would relieve the German Government of the burden of feeding and clothing them and providing shelter, and thus allow it to devote more resources to its war effort.

Accepting civilian refugees in large numbers would also have had the effect of relieving the burden on the German Government, and for that reason the Allied Governments always refused to enter into any negotiations on the organised departure of large numbers of civilian refugees from German-occupied territory. The most that Allied Governments would agree to was exchanges of civilians, where the number of civilians leaving German-controlled territory would be balanced by German civilians returning to it.

The reluctance of the Allied Governments to accept Jewish refugees from German-occupied Europe was simply part of their reluctance to accept any civilian refugees.

The decision not to undertaken action to aid civilian populations extended to a refusal to mount military operations designed only to provide such aid, eg to facilitate the escape of prisoners, and having no actual relationship to the prosecution of the war. That is why the Allies did not risk their aircraft for such purposes as bombing concentration camps or railways leading to them.

There were a few exceptions, eg the raid on the Gestapo building in Aarhus, Denmark, for the purpose of enabling imprisoned Danish resistance fighters to escape.

There was also one exception to the policy of not providing food aid to the civilian population under German occupation. That was the agreement between Britain and Germany to allow Allied merchant ships to bring food to starving Greece.

The reason why Allied Government were so concerned about a flood of Jewish civilian refugees, as opposed to those of any other ethnicity, was that such a flood was the most likely outcome of any relaxation of their policy of not accepting civilian refugees, given Germany's known desire to make all of Europe free of Jews.

The possibility of such a mass emigration of Jews was well known to the Allied Governments, since the German Government on a number of occasions had made noises about organising such an emigration, and secret talks on such a possibility had taken place between German representatives and Allied secret agents in Switzerland and Sweden.

One such possibility was the so-called "Europa Plan" of 1942, negotiated between Eichmann's subordinate Wisliceny and agents in Switzerland using the leaders of Slovakian Jewry as intermediaries (Wisliceny was posted to Slovakia at that time). The plan was that Jews would be allowed to emigrate from Europe on payment to the German Government of a fixed sum per emigrant.

The plan was refused by Allied Governments for the obvious reasons that the burden on the German Government of accommodating the Jews would be relieved, and that the sum paid for the release of the Jews would aid Germany's war effort.

A better-known proposal was the "Jews for trucks" exchange made in 1944. That was refused by the Allies for the same reasons.

Over all, the imperative of winning the war, which necessitated giving Germany as many problems as possible, vastly outweighed any concern for the suffering civilian populations of German-occupied Europe, including Jewish civilians. The Allied Governments could not guess that the German Government would relieve itself of the burden of providing for the civilian population under its control by simply killing off a part of it.

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#8

Post by Oleg Grigoryev » 04 May 2004, 08:38

The reason for that was that any aid provided to the civilian populations would relieve the German Government of the burden of feeding and clothing them and providing shelter, and thus allow it to devote more resources to its war effort.
It seems to me that prior to WW II most of what later became occupied territories were very much self-sustainable and was doing ok without any German aid.

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#9

Post by michael mills » 04 May 2004, 09:47

Oleg Grigoryev wrote:
It seems to me that prior to WW II most of what later became occupied territories were very much self-sustainable and was doing ok without any German aid.
You are mistaken.

Apart from the Soviet Union, German-occupied Europe produced only some 90% of its food requirements. It relied on imports to cover the 10% gap, and those imports were cut off by the british blockade once the war started.

German-occupied Europe was very much like a city under siege. The rulers of the city have to provide the means of life for the inhabitants, which creates great problems for them. If part of the population leaves the city, particularly the part that is least useful for defence and production, then the rulers will be relieved of a great burden, and will be able to devote more of their resources to resisting the siege.

But of course the besiegers will not let any of the people of the city leave, because that would strengthen the resistance of the besieged.

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Holocaust in "German Police Decodes"

#10

Post by steve248 » 04 May 2004, 12:48

Apart from Richard Breitman's "Official Secrets" which gave a broad brush approach to information contained in the decodes, a more specific article about the implications behind just one decoded message regarding Holocaust victims in deported to Poland can be found in

"Holocaust and Genocide Studies", Vol. 15, No. 3, Winter 2001, pp 468-486:
"A New Document on the Deportation and Murder of Jews during 'Einsatz Reinhardt' 1942" by Peter Witte and Stephen Tyas.

Incidentally, the "German Police Decodes" available at the Public Record Office (The National Archives), Kew/UK are dated 1939 to May 1945 and cover over 100,000 police messages. This represents less than 10% of all the German messages decoded by the British - military traffic had much more priority.

There are no "German Police Decodes" from the Einsatzgruppen forces (EKs or SKs) regarding executions in the former Soviet Union. Those messages that mention executions, emanate mainly from Police battalions.

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#11

Post by Jacky Kingsley » 06 May 2004, 19:53

Hi

Walter Laqueur asked the same question in his book The Terrible Secret.

Jacky

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#12

Post by steve248 » 15 May 2004, 11:45

Been away for a week.

Walter Lacquer mentioned the possibility that the British had decoded SD (i.e. RSHA) radio communications in "The Terrible Secret" but he was unable to quote any messages or their content.

Fred Hinsley in his volumes on Bletchley Park again only mentions such decodes in passing. When he was writing the "German Police Decodes" had not been declassified and therefore could only allude to their content.

When Walter Lacquer and Richard Breitman wrote "Breaking the Silence" in 1986 (Bodley Head, London is my copy) neither mention the "German Police Decodes". They do mention "Ultra" decoded messages but in the context used, refer to military operations.

Therefore the actual messages were not declassified until Richard Breitman saw a hundred or so copies under FOIA in the USA - copies provided to the OSI by the British in the 1980s as evidential material for the prosecution of suspected Nazi war criminals in the US. This material was never used for this purpose. It was at the end of the John Major government when declassification in Britain was permitted - but held over for agreement by the first Tony Blair government to release them in 1997. At this point several thousand messages were released and continue to be released. When Breitman wrote "Official Secrets" he was indeed the first to use original primary sources.

So what we have now is the "primary source" and not the secondary sources previously mentioned. What the "primary sources" show is the decodes do not mention executions reported by SD or SIPO-Kommandos in the East. All such messages reporting executions emanated via the Orpo (Ordnungspolizei) radio net from Orpo leaders in the East reporting to Orpo HQ Berlin using Orpo cyphers. These messages are about activities by the various Police Battalions in the East. There are relatively few SD radio messages from the East and those available are on mundane matters such as personnel transfers and movements.

I also add that the Orpo leaders in the East were the HSSPF who reported directly to Himmler and copies were also addressed to him. But these cannot be regarded as SD or RSHA signals.

If, rather than when, British intelligence ever release decoded RSHA messages by the thousands, that will indeed be a day to savour. So far they deny being able to break the codes used.

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#13

Post by michael mills » 15 May 2004, 14:31

If, rather than when, British intelligence ever release decoded RSHA messages by the thousands, that will indeed be a day to savour. So far they deny being able to break the codes used.
Will that really add all that much to our knowledge? Over and above what we already know from German documents, which are still being analysed and yielding up new information.

In my opinion, Breitman was acting as a political activist rather than as an historian in his book. He was peddling the thesis that the British Government knew all about the slaughter of the Jews on the Russian Front through decrypts of German radio messages, and chose to hush it up for nefarious reasons.

In fact, the British Government did refer to German anti-Jewish actions in its propaganda, as did the Soviet Government.

Furthermore, it was British Government policy to devote its entire efforts to the military purpose of winning the war, and not allow its attention to be diverted to attempts to aid civilian populations suffering persecution at German hands.

As to the police decrypts, it comes as no surprise that they were the main source of information on the slaughter, since it was Orpo battalions acting on their own that initiated the slaughter of Jews on the Russian Front (eg Bialystok, Brest), rather than the Einsatzgruppen, which in the first few weeks were concentrating on security-related tasks, which did include summary executions of specified categories of persons, but not Jews as such.

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#14

Post by walterkaschner » 16 May 2004, 00:59

Michael Mills wrote:
Over all, the imperative of winning the war, which necessitated giving Germany as many problems as possible, vastly outweighed any concern for the suffering civilian populations of German-occupied Europe, including Jewish civilians. The Allied Governments could not guess that the German Government would relieve itself of the burden of providing for the civilian population under its control by simply killing off a part of it.
That is the most succinct and perceptive answer to the question that I have ever run across!

Regards, Kaschner

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German Police Decodes

#15

Post by steve248 » 16 May 2004, 11:38

The whole question of the decodes is they provide documentation previously unknown - where the originals were destroyed - and therefore
cast new light on existing German documents.

The German Police Decodes were as much "need to know" as the military decoded information. Restricted copies in some cases down to two names and a file copy. Hardly "nefarious" more "low priority". The British Government priority was the military war - there was nothing they could do about Germans killing Jews.

The German anti-Jewish activities broadcast by British and Soviet governments mainly came from other sources as an examination of British Foreign Office records indicate. When a Churchill speech did make a reference to the massacres in Russia, the decoders and their superiors were terrified the Germans would change their cyphers. As a result of the speech within a short time Orpo-Chef Daluege ordered all the executions in Russia be sent by hard copy and no longer sent by radio message.
This was widely adopted but not 100%.

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