Summary Report of the State of the Soviet Military Sigint in November 1942 Noticing “ENIGMA”

Abstract

The problem of when the Russians started to read the German cipher machine ENIGMA still remains unsolved. A Russian document presented recently in a history of the GRU in the time of the Great patriotic War offers a new light on the problem. In November 1942 the Russians were able to begin reading ENIGMA on a daily basis and were thinking about automating the process. We do not know if incorporating the GRU cryptanalysts in the parallel section of the NKVD helped in the brilliant defeat of the Germans during the “Uran” and “Saturn” operations at Stalingrad, but we suppose so. The Russian solution of the ENIGMA ciphers could be linked with the traitors working at Station X (Bletchley Park) and in Military Intelligence.

Keywords:

• Antony Blunt
• Beria
• Bletchley Park
• “Dolly”
• German ciphers
• GRU
• Ivan Ivanovich Il'ichev
• Ivan Markovich Kozlov
• John Cairncross
• Leo Long
• NKVD
• Operation Barbarossa
• Russian ciphers
• Stalin
• Stavka

Notes

¹Published in: Vladimir Lota, Sekretnyj front General'nogo Shtaba [Secret Front of the General Staff] (Moskva: Molodaya Gvardiya, 2005) 514–515 and 532–533 (reproduction). My translation from Russian into English.

²Even David Kahn, on his visit to Moscow in 1996, did not receive from Gen. Nicolai Nicolayevich Andreyev any new historical documents to confirm that the Russians were reading the Enigma during the war. All he got was oral confirmation of his ideas. Cf. David Kahn, “Soviet Comint in the Cold War,” Cryptologia 22 (January 1998): 13–14.

³This discussion started with an article of Geoff Jukes, “The Soviets and Ultra”, Intelligence and National Security 3 (April 1988), 233–247. Cf. especially Ralph Erskine, “The Soviets and Naval Enigma”, Intelligence and National Security 4 (July 1989), 503–511.

⁴Cf. Timothy P. Mulligan, “Spies, Ciphers, and Zitadelle: Intelligence and the Battle of Kursk, 1943”, Journal of Contemporary History 22 (April 1987), 241; Bradley F. Smith, Sharing Secrets with Stalin. How the Allies Traded Intelligence 1941–1945 (Lawrence, Kansas: University Press of Kansas 1996), passim, cf. index s.v. Ultra, 306.

⁵Cf. David Kahn, The Codebreakers. The Story of Secret Writing (New York: Macmillan, 1967), 649 and note, 1083.

⁶Cf. M. M. Kozlov, ed., Velikaya Otechestvennaya Voyna 1941–1945. Entsiklopediya [The Great Patriotic War 1941–1945. Encyclopedia] (Moskva: Sovetskaya Entsklopediya 1985), 604. Nothing can be found on radio intelligence in the historical synthesis on Russian signals: A. I. Belov, ed., Voennye svyazisty v boyakh za rodinu (Communication Troops Fighting for the Fatherland) (Moskva: Voennoe Izdatelstvo, 1984).

⁷As above, and the entry “Svyaz’ voennaya” [War (Radio) Communication], 637.

⁸Consult Ludwik Sadowski, Oddział II Sztabu Głównego (Rezultaty pracy pokojowej i udział w przygotowaniach do wojny) [The Second Bureau of the General Staff (Results of Peacetime Work and Contribution to the War Preparations)]. Manuscript preserved at the Polish Institute and Sikorski Museum, London. I have used a typed copy kept at the library of the Wojskowe Biuro Badań Historycznych, Warsaw, No. I/3/60. It was regrettable that Marian Rejewski approached the Russian ciphers only in 1944 (cf. Zdzisław J. Kapera, Marian Rejewski pogromca ENIGMY (Kraków – Mogilany: The Enigma Press, 2005, 64, 66 [An English version of the book: Marian Rejewski Conqueror of the ENIGMA, is to be published at the end of 2011, by the same publisher]).

⁹Cf. entries ‘Radiolokacionnye stancii'’ [Radiolocation Units] and “Radiosvyaz'” [Radiocommunication] in M. M. Kozlov, op. cit., 603–604; I. T. Peresypkin, Svyaz' v Velikoy Otechestvennoy voine [Radiocommunication in the Great Patriotc War] (Moskva 1973; non vidi); V. Bystrov, “Ivan Peresypkin” in: A. N. Kislev, ed., Polkovodcy i voenachal'niki Velikoy otechestvennoy. Sbornik [Generals and Military Leaders in the Great Patriotic (War). Collective essays] (Moskva: Molodaya Gvardiya, 1985), 167–168.

¹⁰Cf. I. A. Paliy, Radio-elektronnaya bor'ba [Radio-electronic War], 2nd ed. (Moskva: Voennoe Izdatel'stvo, 1989), 331.

¹¹Cf. Anatoliy Dienko, ed., Razvedka i kontrrazvedka v litsakh [Intelligence and Counterintelligence in Persons] (Moskva: Russiky Mir', 2002), 207; V. M. Lur'e and V. Ya. Kochik, eds., GRU. Dela i lyudi [GRU. Deeds and People] (Sankt-Peterburg/Moskva: Neva/Olma-Press, 2002), 110; A. I. Kolpakidi, ed., Entsiklopediya sekretnykh sluzhb Rossii [Encyclopedia of Russian Secret Services], (Moskva: Izdatel'stvo AST/Astrel'/Tranzitkniga, 2003), 556; A. I. Kolpakidi, ed., Entsiklopediya voennoy razvedki Rossi [Encyclopedia of the Russian War Intelligence] (Moskva: Izdatel'stvo AST/Astrel' 2004), 85; Heinz Hoehne, Der Krieg im Dunkeln. Macht und Einfluss des deutschen und russischen Geheimdienstes (Muenchen: Bertelsmann, 1985), 402.

¹²The only known obituary, cf. Izvestiya Sep. 5, 1983 (cf. Lur'e and Kochik, 110).

¹³Cf. Lota, op. cit., 448.

¹⁴Exactly as the Germans suspected and Kahn (l. cit.) and his followers suggested.

¹⁵Paliy, l. cit. What is more, the Germans lost files of a radiointelligence unit at Stalingrad. Cf. Gen. Albert Praun, “German Radio Intelligence” in: J. Mendelsohn, ed., Covert Warfare. 6. German Radio Intelligence and Soldatensender (New Yorkand London: Garland, 1989), 108.

¹⁶Bystrov, op. cit., 173.

¹⁷Lota, op. cit., 449.

¹⁸Lota, op. cit., 450.

¹⁹Lota, op. cit., 450–451.

²⁰According to the analysis of Mulligan (op. cit., 249 and notes, 259): “By January 1943, OKH's Signals Division knew ‘with certainty’ that in specific cases the Russians had decrypted Enigma messages, and consequently introduced changes in equipment and procedures to improve cipher security. Whether these changes accomplished their purpose is not yet known.”

²¹D. P. Prokhorov, Razvedka ot Stalina do Putina [Intelligence from Stalin to Putin] (Sankt-Peterburg: Neva, 2004), 263.

²²Prokhorov, l. cit.

²³Kolpakidi, Entsiklopediya voennoy razvedki, 85.

²⁴Mulligan, op. cit., 249.

²⁵It may be interesting to know that B. Anin and A. Petrovich (Radioshpionazh [Radiointelligence], Moskva: Mezhdunarodnye otnosheniya, 1996, 281–282) are convinced that despite the results achieved in the Stalingrad Operation, in spring 1943, the main effort of the Russian cryptographers was directed at the solution of low grade ciphers, more practically useful in current battles, especially as the quality of German work, i. e., discipline of the German radiotelegraphers, was relatively low. The authors reminded us that at the end of 1942 special radio-batallions were introduced into the Red Army, each equipped not only with 18 to 20 jamming stations but also with 4 direction finders. Why did the Russians gave up their efforts against the Enigma? Because they did not have their own “bombs” and the “Colossuses.” If we accept this analysis that may mean that the Russians gave up their struggle with Enigma, because what they knew of it already enabled them to read and use it when they got new monthly keys. Was low-grade traffic really the basis of their subsequent successes?

²⁶John Cairncross, The Enigma Spy. The Story of the Man Who Changed the Course of World War Two (London: Century, 1997), 95–111.

²⁷Nigel West and Oleg Tsarev, Klejnoty koronne [Polish translation of: The Crown Jewels] (Warszawa: Magnum, 2000), 200.

²⁸John Costello, Mask of Treachery (New York: Warner Books, 1990), 371–373; Peter Wright, Spycatcher (New York: Dell), 277.

²⁹West and Tsarev, 147.

³⁰David E. Murphy, What Stalin Knew. The Enigma of Barbarossa (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2005).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Zdzisław J. Kapera

Zdzislaw J. Kapera is a retired librarian of the Jagiellonian University. He is a member of the Committee of Wars and Military History of the Polish Academy of Arts and Sciences in Cracow and the International Intelligence History Association. As a historian he is deeply engaged in reconstruction of the history of the Polish breaking of Enigma since 1974. He searched in London and Polish archives and wrote numerous biographical entries of the Polish cryptanalysts and their superiors. He created in 1990 a series “The Enigma Bulletin” (vol. 7 in press). Author of the first Polish scholarly brief biography of Marian Rejewski (cf. ‘Marian Rejewski pogromca Enigmy,’ Kraków–Mogilany 2005 and 2006) and the book ‘Before ULTRA There Was GALE’ (Kraków–Mogilany 2002). He prepared for publication a small monograph ‘In the Shadow of Pont du Gard. The “Polish Enigma” in Vichy France’ (Kraków–Mogilany 2011, in press). He is working on a biography of Henryk Zygalski.