GR context: "Eavesdropping on Hell"

[pynchonoid]

[...] I determined that a historical guide would be
useful for researchers, scholars, and the general
public. Such a guide could help Holocaust researchers
gain a better understanding of how Allied
communications intelligence reported intelligence on
the Holocaust. It would explain the variety of
material that would be encountered in the records of
the wartime cryptologic agencies.

This guide, then, will concentrate on three topics
that would be of interest and utility to scholars and
the general public. First, it explains how the Western
communications intelligence system operated during the
war. It will consider how well the system operated and
what were its limitations. This latter point is
important when considering how Western COMINT handled
intelligence about the Holocaust. Second, the guide
describes how the wartime records of the SIS and GC&CS
currently are organized in the national archives of
Great Britain and the United States, where these
records can be found, and the various formats they
come in. Third, the guide summarizes what information
is available from SIGINT records about the Holocaust.
This summary consists of both a general chronology of
the Holocaust and selected incidents for which
significant communications intelligence records are
available.

Despite the scope and detail of some of the material
contained in this guide, it is not intended as a
narrative history of the Holocaust based on the
records of Western communications intelligence
agencies. The major reason is that the archived COMINT
records cannot sustain such a history. There are too
many important parts of the history of the Holocaust
for which no communications intelligence was
collected. As will be demonstrated later in this work,
communications intelligence could not reveal
high-level Nazi policy deliberations regarding the
Jews and other groups. On occasion, communications
intelligence could “tip off’ an impending action by
Nazi security forces, as in Italy in the fall of 1943.
But this advantage was rare. More often, COMINT was
best as a chronicle of some campaigns that already
were under way such as the massacres carried out by
the German Police units in the western USSR in 1941
and the roundup of the Hungarian Jews in mid-1944.

Although something of a historical narrative of the
Holocaust is presented in the last chapter of this
guide, it is meant to be a selected summary of the
available information from COMINT records. It is
beyond the scope and means for historians of
cryptology to rewrite the story of the dreadful events
of the Holocaust. Their mission is to discover the
relevant records and write the history of cryptology
and place that story within the context of larger
events of the Second World War. It remains for
historians of the Holocaust to utilize completely
within their narratives the historical information
provided by the records of the Allied code-breaking
agencies.

This guide will limit its focus to the two major
Western COMINT agencies that produced intelligence
about the Holocaust during the war: the British GC&CS
and the U.S. Army’s SIS. Early in the war, the U.S.
Navy’s cryptologic element, OP-20-G, contributed some
intercept of diplomatic communications, but by
mid-1942, it ceded this work completely to the SIS and
concentrated almost exclusively on Axis naval
communications. A number of smaller Allies contributed
to the overall Western radio intelligence work. These
included Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and others.
However, the American and British security concern to
protect Ultra sometimes circumscribed the contribution
of these smaller allies. Among these, refugee Polish
cryptologists contributed major intercept and
code-breaking efforts against German Police
communications. Their work will be discussed later in
the guide.[...]

...enjoy:  Eavesdropping on Hell
http://www.nsa.gov/publications/publi00044.cfm


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