Here are the continuing thoughts from JUDE STACKPOLE PhD (1334-1990) and his theory that the U-Boat codes were NOT broken by Bletcheley Park but were in fact sold to the British code-breakers by some as-yet unnamed high ranking Kriegsmarine or Abwehr officer. In KTB #104, JUDE explained that, with the rotors & combinations available in the U-Boat codes, there were 11,881,376 possible ciphers and they changed the key codes daily, making it virtually impossible with the technology of the time, to break this code. JUDE continues:

"All things being equal if, given sufficient time to decode various intercepts, by the time they were decoded, the information would be of little value - all ancient history.

In possession of the code key, the decoding is a simple academic exercise - one intercepts and one decodes.

Whoever said 'The greater the lie, the more frequently repeated, the more easy it is to believe.' probably said it all. The 'story' of how the codes were broken is now an accepted article of faith and we all 'know' those hard working people at Bletcheley Park did it that way. The British Official Secrets Act has 'made it so. over the years.

It is only now that the questions regarding the capture of U-110 and the death of Fritz-Julius Lemp and some other matters are coming to light that questions are being raised. As the questions are raised, various 'official sources' are adding detail in bits & pieces. Perhaps I'm simply a dedicated cynic, but the addition of detail raises as many questions as it answers.

ULTRA AT SEA by John Winton Williams is an excellent book, and it makes the interesting point that not all the German codes were broken, only some of them, in particular where the Kriegsmarine was concerned, the code used in 'home waters' HEIMISCH was penetrated; that used in 'foreign waters' was not.

It is interesting that the seemingly effective methods used by Bletcheley Park would work on one set of cypers and not on another when both were encrypted on the same machine using identical techniques but different keys. That's another one to think about, unless of course one had the key in the one instance but lacked it in the other.

No one seems certain to this day just who the top Soviet agent within the structure of the OKW was or more likely who the agents were. At last one school of thought alleges that Heinrich Muller, the Chief of the Gestapo, was a Soviet agent. He disappeared at the end of the war and there are rumors that he went directly to Moscow where he was awarded high rank in the Soviet military and was allowed to live in luxury. Others maintain that the major security leaks in OKW were in the Luftwaffe. Von Manstein in LOST VICTORIES complains prior to the Battle of Kursk that the Soviets were far better informed and in far more detail prior than the German units, down to the regimental level, actually involved in the operations.

Security-wise, all was not well, and various German commanders, Donitz included it would appear, were well aware of this fact. It may well be that the security of the ENIGMA codes was taken for granted simply because there was no reason to believe they could be penetrated without access to the keys; and they believed the keys to be totally secure."

More Jude and Ultra

Jude and Ultra [KTB 104]
Jude and Ultra [KTB 105]
Jude and Ultra [KTB 106]
Jude and Ultra [KTB 107]
Jude and Ultra [KTB 108]
Jude and Ultra (End) [KTB 109]