Norway and Ultra

[phylo_roadking]

"Traditional" WWII history still says that after nearly six months of vaccilation on Churchill's original idea of occupying Narvik (pressed forward as First Sea Lord) in order to stop the wintertime export of Swedish iron ore from there and down the coast of Norway into the Baltic - the Baltic being iced up for nearly five months of the year - The British and French finally arrived off Norway....and found the Germans in the process of doing the same.

For those that have studied it, those six months are a riotous comedy of plans, counter-plans, cancellations, ideas, withdrawal of ideas, not everyone being told ideas HAD been withdrawn, France and Britain identifying differnet locations and objectives for occupation etc. .....at any one time the occupation of any one of twelve various location in Norway was discussed, together with mining or NOT mining Norwegian waters etc. .....

However - as we all now know, the Government Code and Cypher School was located at Bletchley Park in 1939, and work on decryption of German coded traffic began on 15th August 1939, both starting from scratch on wartime traffic and using the work previously done through the 1930s by the Poles M.Rejewski, J.Rozycki, and H.Zygalski. They and the Polish Government had shared the work they'd done with both France and Britain in the early summer of 1939, though their work was rapidly becoming obsolete as the Germans were introducing a long series of improvments and changes to Enigma in the run-up to war, and after the start of the war there was the usual problem of changing daybooks and cypherbooks before major offensives etc.

By August, 1940, however, "Ultra" intelligence digests of decrypted German traffic were being supplied to the British government and General Staff, and starting then in increasing amounts to be of considerable use in the Battle of britain and preparations for Sealion....and the many uses Ultra provided during the rest of the war are increasingly wellknown.

However - and this is my query - a certain very limited (if increasing) amount of "Ultra" intelligence would have been available through the early part of the year; and an operation like the planning and mounting of the German Invasion (planned as a "peaceful" occupation too) of Norway required a HUGE amount of signals traffic circulating around. Yet unlike what's coming out now about almost every OTHER Allied operation in WWII there is NO hint as yet of Ultra intelligence giving any warning of the Norway Invasion.

IS this....

1/ really the case? Was it missed as it lay in the early days of decryption of Engima-encoded traffic at Bletchley Park?

2/ Just not been written-in yet? There aren't anywhere as many books on the Norway fiasco as other battles and campaigns, and certainly not many since 1974 when the role of "Ultra" began to be revealed and acknowledged;

3/ Just not revealed yet? Experts trying to write the history of Ultra, Bletchely Park and "Station X" have all acknowledged that a LOT of Ultra material was "lost" in the government filing system for many years, and huge sections that SHOULD be available are STILL lost in there! for whatever reasons - and given that it DIRECTLY led to the fall of the Chamberlain government, I'm tempted to guess that anything that even HINTED of the Germans' prior intentions was wrapped in a brick and dropped out of the Prime Minister's office window into the Thames!

But does anyone KNOW if Ultra played ANY role in the run-up to, or the planning of, the Norway campaign?

[Carl Schwamberger]

The short answer is no. ULTRA was not well developed, Much of the German plans & orders were sent in large volumes by courier. The radio traffic was mostly final orders and brief questions or coordinating instructions. Only a tiny percentage of this was being decrypted in 1940 & analysis was not yet very effcient. After the campaigns of 1940 & 1941 the Brits were able to their bitter leassons to bring ULTRA up to a really usefull level.

One of the lesser understood problems of 1940 was a sort of divsion of labor between the British & French. The Brits were naturally concerned with naval matters & focused their signals intel on German naval traffic. The French took a large portion of responsibility for the Wehrmacht and Luftwaffe. While the French collection effort was very good their analysis method was a bit defective.

So between a realatively new technical capabilty & a fragmented & wrongly focused analysis the Allies missed many of the clues.

[bdennis]

The Luftwaffe ‘Red Key’ was first read by Alan Turings team of cryptanalysts in January of 1940 using the first Bombe decryption device. This was the slow beginning of the process that lead to reading the Ultra intercepts on a regular basis. By March they were intermittently reading three different keys and, eventually, the key introduced for the invasion of Norway. The output was far from complete: it was not enough for the Allied intelligence services to confidently piece together the intentions of the German forces and was nowhere near the extensive level of decryption achieved a year later.

As you have rightly guessed, the most believable indicators of German intentions were those gleaned from traffic analysis. This was despite the Wehrmacht maintaining excellent radio discipline throughout the build-up. The man at Bletchley Park responsible for interpreting traffic from the Baltic warned the OIC (Operational Intelligence Centre) of exceptional activity and likely major operations in that area some days before the German invasion, but it was not believed. This same man, Harry Hinsley, later warned of the danger facing the carrier HMS Glorious based on TA and was again disregarded. After these two episodes, he was taken more seriously.

Hope this helps.

Bruce Dennis