Speaker: Charlie Shoup
World War II was the first major conflict where electronic communications played an important role in executing military strategies. The Axis and Allied powers went to great lengths to encode electronic messages to hide their contents from their enemies.
This talk will focus on the ways that the Allies in particular were able to break these codes and the importance of this to the outcome of the war.
Charlie Shoup is an emeritus member and past president of the Scientech Club. He has degrees from Princeton Univesity and the University of Tennessee where he recieved his MS and PhD. He is retired after working for the Cabot Corporation for many years.
Program: Code Breaking before, during and after WW II
Speaker: Charley Shoup, PhD, Cabot Corp. (retired), Scientech past president and emeritus member
Introduced By: Bill Halsema
Attendance: NESC: 99 , Zoom: 25
Guest(s): Jim Rosensteeve, Joyce Kleinman, Kathleen Solotkin, Virden Bryan, Marjorie Sharples, Stephanie Queisser
Scribe: Judy Weisman
Editor: Bill Elliott
Talk’s Zoom recording found at: https://www.scientechclubvideos.org/zoom/06082026.mp4
Charlie Shoup is a member of the Scientech Club and has a deep interest in code breaking, particularly that done during World War II.
It was not until 1854 when telegraphic transmission became possible; there was little need for coding. Private messages were carried by individuals, and interception of the delivery agent was all that was needed. With the use of electronic transmissions and messages available to the public, those in need of secrecy began developing coding systems.
A critical role of code breaking happened in 1917 when the British intercepted and decoded a message from Germany to Mexico offering to gift Mexico with Arizona, Texas, and New Mexico if Mexico allied with Germany during World War I. This is known as the Zimmerman telegram and directly led to the US entering World War I. US codebreaking efforts rapidly expanded with William and Elizebeth Friedman who trained officers and led codebreaking efforts.
By the end of WWI, the Germans had created a device called Enigma. The device resembled a typewriter and provided a highly effective method for the Nazis to send encrypted messages during World War II. Before the war started, England had transformed a large estate north of London into a top-secret site to do code breaking. It was there that the Enigma Code was broken with critical input from Alan Turing who was working there. Being able to decode Nazi communications provided the Allies with many strategic advantages. One code breaking incident related to D-Day is said to have shortened the War by 2 years.
There were also facilities in the US dedicated to code breaking. One of the first of these institutions dedicated to cryptography was Riverbank Laboratories in Geneva, Illinois. Elizebeth Smith was hired there in 1916 to use cryptography to help prove that Sir Francis Bacon had written Shakespeare’s plays. (That was never proven.) While there, Elizebeth met William Friedman who was also there to work on the Bacon/Shakespeare study. They eventually married and together contributed significant work in the brand-new field of modern cryptography.
Another facility in the US was Arlington Hall, a former girls’ school in Arlington, Virginia. It was transformed into the Army’s main codebreaking center during WWII and was staffed exclusively by young women. A segregated unit monitored Axis-related business communications.
MAGIC was the US codename for intelligence derived from decrypting Japanese encrypted communications. Those encryptions were known as the “purple cipher.” Cracking that code gave the US a strategic advantage for the Battle of Midway in 1942, creating a turning point in the Pacific War.
Since WWII, codebreakers have played a key role in our world. Juanita Moody, an Arlington Hall recruit, played a crucial role during the Cuban missile crisis. Arlington Hall engaged in decoding and uncovered various Soviet spies.
A lot more can be learned about the history and impact of code breaking in a notable book: “The Ultra Secret” by F.W. Winterbotham, or the film “The Imitation Game.”
Charlie Shoup
