The British Army And Signals Intelligence During The First World War

"Historians have paid little attention to the British Army's experience with signals intelligence during the First World War. However, this was one of the Army's most important sources of information about crucial matters such as the order of battle and intentions of the German and Turkish Armies. Britain's successes and failures in signals intelligence profoundly affected battles ranging from the race for the Channel Ports, first Somme, third Gaza and Amiens, among many others." "While efforts to weed the records on these topics have created major gaps in the sources, surviving evidence throws an entirely new light on the British Army in the Great War. It allows one to trace the evolution of the Army's signals intelligence organisations, to determine many of their successes and failures, to show how this intelligence affected various operations and, indeed, to demonstrate that signals intelligence influenced the operations of the British Army as much as those of the Royal Navy." "The material reproduced in this volume includes excerpts from reports by Army Headquarters in France, Italy and Mesopotamia and the Military Intelligence Directorate. It includes the memorandum "Enemy Codes and their Solution" by the G.H.Q. codebreaking section in January 1918, which is one of the two best sources known to exist about the techniques of "codebreaking"; surviving reports on the enemy radio networks in the Balkans and Anatolian Turkey, which are the most illuminating evidence from any theatre on the approach toward "traffic analysis" and a report on the breaking of German and Turkish Army ciphers in Mesopotamia during 1917, which is the best source known about the techniques of "cryptanalysis" used by an Army in the Great War."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved

This collection of essays discusses various aspects of the First World War and aims to summarize the latest literature on Britain's participation in that war and also to open up new lines of investigation. These include the role of intelligence in land and air battles; Anglo-American financial relations; Anglo-Russian and Anglo-Irish relations; the British Labour movement in the war; and the final campaigns of 1918, which led to the Allied victory. These essays are written not only for the specialist but also to be accessible to students and to the general reader.

SIGNALS INTELLIGENCE, or SIGINT, is the interception and evaluation of coded enemy messages. From Enigma to Ultra, Purple to Lorenz, Room 40 to Bletchley, SIGINT has been instrumental in both victory and defeat during the First and Second World War.In the First World War, a vast network of signals rapidly expanded across the globe, spawning a new breed of spies and intelligence operatives to code, de-code and analyse thousands of messages. As a result, signallers and cryptographers in the Admiralty’s famous Room 40 paved the way for the code breakers of Bletchley Park in the Second World War. In the ensuing war years the world battled against a web of signals intelligence that gave birth to Enigma and Ultra, and saw agents from Britain, France, Germany, Russia, America and Japan race to outwit each other through infinitely complex codes. For the first time, Peter Matthews reveals the secret history of global signals intelligence during the world wars through original interviews with German interceptors, British code breakers, and US and Russian cryptographers."SIGINT is a fascinating account of what Allied investigators learned postwar about the Nazi equivalent of Bletchley Park. Turns out, 60,000 crptographers, analysts and linguists achieved considerable success in solving intercepted traffic, and even broke the Swiss Enigma! Based on recently declassifed NSA document, this is a great contribution to the literature." THE ST ERMIN'S HOTEL INTELLIGENCE BOOK OF THE YEAR AWARD 2014.

John Ferris is a major figure in the intelligence studies field, both through his pioneering work in British intelligence and in his studies of British strategic history. This superb volume selects his best essays of the past fifteen years.

The importance of codebreaking and signals intelligence in the diplomacy and military operations of World War II is reflected in this study of the cryptanalysts, not only of the US and Britain, but all the Allies. The codebreaking war was a global conflict in which many countries were active. The contributions reveal that, for the Axis as well as the Allies, success in the signals war often depended upon close collaboration among alliance partners.

Why did the British government declare war on Germany in August 1914? Was it because Germany posed a threat to British national security? Today many prominent historians would argue that this was not the case and that a million British citizens died needlessly for a misguided cause. This book counters such revisionist arguments. Matthew Seligmann disputes the suggestion that the British government either got its facts wrong about the German threat or even, as some have claimed, deliberately 'invented' it in order to justify an otherwise unnecessary alignment with France and Russia. By examining the military and naval intelligence assessments forwarded from Germany to London by Britain's service attachés in Berlin, its 'men on the spot', Spies in Uniform clearly demonstrates that the British authorities had every reason to be alarmed. From these crucial intelligence documents, previously thought to have been lost, Dr Seligmann shows that in the decade before the First World War, the British government was kept well informed about military and naval developments in the Reich. In particular, the attachés consistently warned that German ambitions to challenge Britain posed a real and imminent danger to national security. As a result, the book concludes that the British government's perception of a German threat before 1914, far from being mistaken or invented, was rooted in hard and credible intelligence.

This book is part of the Army historical community's commemoration of the fiftieth anniversary of World War II. American victory in that conflict was brought about not only by the valor of our fighting men and the immensity of our productive capacity, but also by the availability of superb military intelligence. Much of this intelligence came from the ability of our armed forces to intercept and decipher the most secret communications of their adversaries. For many years security considerations prevented any public mention of these successes in the official histories. Now much of the story can be told. To preserve the memory of the Army's role in this intelligence war, the U. S. Army Center of Military History has joined with the History Office, U. S. Army Intelligence and Security Command (INSCOM), to publish this collection of documents on Army signals intelligence in World War II. INSCOM carries on the heritage of the Army's World War II Signal Security Agency, which by breaking the Japanese diplomatic ciphers and military codes helped speed the way of our forces to victory. The book is intended both for an Army audience and for the general public - including those World War II veterans who participated in the signals intelligence war and who for so many years were constrained to keep their contributions secret. The security barriers have now been lifted, and the Army is proud to acknowledge those contributions. Harold W. NelsonCharles F. Scanlon Brigadier General, US ArmyMajor General, US Army Chief of Military HistoryCommanding General, US Army Intelligence and Security Command