When the Russians Visited the Enigma Firm

I mentioned in my previous post that I wanted to tell you about when the Russians visited the Enigma manufacturer Chiffriermaschinengesellschaft Heimsoeth und Rinke. I thought I didn't have copies of the documents with me but I was wrong; so I can tell you the story after all.

On 17 September 1945 Major M.F. Heller G.S.I. (General Staff Intelligence) of the 21 Army Group BAOR (British Army of the Rhine) had five TICOM targets on his Berlin list. They were Heimsoeth und Rinke, Siemens Werner Werke, AEG, Lorenz, and Telefunken. When he arrived he found that he was too late; the Russians had already visited all the targets. He explains:

All targets had been previously visited by Russian Intelligence and technical experts who had removed virtually all documents and subsequently removed all machinery, plant and equipment. Despite this fact it was possible to collect a certain amount of information and equipment.

What interests us is the visit to Heimsoeth und Rinke (H&R). Here Major Heller had at his disposal an intelligence document, PROC 5802, which gave the  address of H&R as Steglitzerstrasse 2, Berlin-Tiergarten. This was the old address that H&R, and previously Chiffriermachinen Aktiengesellschaft (ChiMaAG), had used since 1923. In March 1936 the street changed name and the address became Ludendorffstrasse 6; this was changed yet again to Pohlstrasse in 1947. It is not known why, but in December 1938 H&R moved to Uhlandstrasse 136 in Berlin-Wilmersdorf. When finally Major Heller managed to find the correct address he discovered that the Russians had paid a visit already.

H&R and ChiMaAG were only engineering firms that did the design and development of the various Enigma machines. Originally they had a small mechanical workshop for prototype developments. That was when ChiMaAG was known as Gewerkschaft Securitas and they were at the address Bahnstrasse 21, Berlin-Schöneberg, but subsequently they did all their production and prototype works at firms specialised in such work. Since 1929 their main fabrication firm was Konski & Krüger (K&K) at Chausseestrasse 117, Berlin-Charlottenburg. Major Heller says H&R were the sole manufacturer of Enigma machines for all of Germany. This is entirely correct; all the other firms that are known to have made Enigma machines, such as Ertel-Werk für Feinmechanik or Olympia Büromaschinenwerke AG, were doing so under license from H&R.

Major Heller mentions three people that were working at the offices of H&R in Uhlandstrasse 136, Ob. Ing. Korn, Ing. Schröder and Ing. Schiele. Oberingenieur or Senior Engineer Korn is of course Willi Korn that I spoke about last time. The two other engineers are Willi Schröder and Reinhold Schiele who both were employed as designers in Spring 1933 when H&R had to expand to fulfil the new orders arriving from the German military and other authorities. I have not done any research on these two gentlemen, but I suspect they were both mechanical engineers. They were employed as Teilekonstrukteure — part designers.

Even if the Russians had already been there it was still many items left for Major Heller's team to remove. They mention the Zählwerksmaschine type CA15 (sic, it should be Ch 15) — this is Enigma G. The team seems not to know that this machine was used by the Abwehr. They only mention that the machine was sold to the Dutch for military use and that subsequent to declaration of war two machines were delivered to OKW at Stahnsdorf; unless they knew that Stahnsdorf was the Abwehr station (Abwehrstelle) in Berlin.

Next they collected and removed the design documents and a prototype for a new  Enigma wheel, Lückenfüllerwalze, the programmable notch rotor. Major Heller's report errs when he claims that the Lückenfüllerwalze had not yet reached production stage. On 24 July 1944 Ertel-Werk für Feinmechanik received an order for the production of 8000 of these wheels; this number was subsequently increased to 12000. However, due to the increasingly difficult situation with respect to materials etc. Ertel-Werk only made a small number of these wheels and none had been accepted and delivered at the cessation of hostilities. What the situation was at K&K and Olympia is not yet known.

They also removed an Umkehrwalze D (UKW D), the pluggable reflector. Major Heller tries to explain the curious history of the Umkehrwalzen. He writes: 

The history of the Umkehrwalzen is a little odd. Type [C] was  requested by OKW and duly delivered but for unknown reasons, was withdrawn from service almost immediately. Orders were then given to design a new type having improved security characteristics. Type D was the result. This was approved and put into production, but never reached full distribution. It was withdrawn, no reasons being given, and the production of type B was recommenced. 

The introduction of UKW D into active service was badly handled by the Germans. It is true  the operators complained about how difficult the UKWD was to use but it was never withdrawn from service. It continued to be used until the end of the war. Furthermore, the production of UKW B was never stopped but it continued in parallel with the production of UKW D. The reason was of course that UKW B was the standard Enigma reflector and every machine produced would have one. This is yet an example of what I talked about last time that the TICOM reports have to be used with care. Concerning UKW C I hope to perhaps find an answer to this puzzle some time in the near future.

Major Heller's team also visited the Enigma factory K&K at Chausseestrasse 117. The team located or found other items at this factory which was in the Russian sector of Berlin, but it is not clear if they removed any of these items. What they discovered was a strip printer adapter for the Service Enigma, more correctly called the Heeres Enigma, and a Naval page printer model. The strip printer is described as follows: 

This adapter fitted over the lamp sockets and consisted of a straightforward teleprinter which was actuated via relays by the current that would normally light the bulbs. 

This sounds like the strip printer adapter MZSE, also known as Schreibmax, that was designed for the Naval Enigma models M3 and M4. The Naval page printer has this description:

Based on the Springschreiber [start-stop teleprinter], this model consisted of a straightforward naval type Enigma, which was operated electro-magnetically, the enciphered or clear text being printed directly on to a paper page. Only a limited number of these machines were delivered to the Navy.

Both of these descriptions only partially fit with our present knowledge of Enigma machines with printing attachments. I will try to come back to this problem in a future article because the existing evidence is very confusing.

Furthermore the team discovered a number of 4-wheel commercial Enigma machines at the factory of K&K. They don't say which models they are but they must have been Enigma K or Enigma G or both. Major Heller does not say much about the Russians that visited H&R and K&K but what he does say is nevertheless interesting: 

Russian Investigation. Both factory and offices were visited by Capt. Polin and Lt. Medwedjew. Both officers appeared to be fully conversant with the Army model and demonstrated obvious familiarity with the mechanics of the Army model. Ing. Schröder gained the impression that both were cryptographers. These officers removed a complete set of drawings for the Lückenfüllerwalze and a Naval type Enigma machine, which they stated they had never before encountered. They did not enquire regarding the Umkehrwalzen nor did they obtain a complete model of the Lückenfüllerwalze.

This is a solid proof that the Russians knew the 3-wheel Heeres Enigma, which they most likely had captured one or more examples of on the Eastern Front. It is also likely that they captured German Army Enigma key sheets and that they therefore were able to exploit the Enigma traffic from time to time. If they managed to break the Enigma on a larger scale such as was done at Bletchley Park is still not known. That they did not know about the Naval Enigma is less astonishing. The Soviet Union was not a seagoing naval power in those days and in the Baltic and coastal waters the German used the Home Waters Enigma keys based on the Naval 3-wheel model. However, it is very unlikely any of these fell in Russian hands.

Major Heller rounds off his report with the following words:

The offices contain large number of files relating to commercial sale of Enigma machines and current production correspondence. Schiele stated that all SECRET files had been burned before the Russians entered the town. The files were not examined in detail.

Exactly two months later, on 17 November 1945, Major Heller was back at the offices of Heimsoeth und Rinke in Uhlandstrasse 136. The target this time was the documents they had left behind last time, but that is a story I will leave for later.

Sources. The main source for this article is the TICOM report I-104 that I obtained in part through a FOIA request to NSA in 2004. The report appeared as an appendix in the NSA document I requested but only the part covering the visit to H&R and K&K was used in this appendix. The rest of the report has to my knowledge not yet been made publicly available, though it might now be at NARA. You can download the partial copy of TICOM/I-104 here.

Some Reflection on History and TICOM

I am generally interested in history and especially the history of cryptology. I have, as you can see on my CryptoCellar Web page, already published several articles with historical content, but I am no historian at least not in the sense of having an academic degree in the field. I therefore often use the title researcher instead of historian such that I don't pretend to be something I am not. A degree in history would probably be a valuable thing to posess, but often I find that my electrical and electronic engineering background is more useful when writing about cryptology. If there is something I really miss, then it is the mind of a lawyer. They usually have a good memory, they are good at separating the wheat from the chaff and they are trained to get to the truth, or at least that is what they are supposed to do.

The lack of a good memory is something that bothers me the most. The kind of research I normally do requires handling many small bits of information to try to make a complete picture. It is very much like laying a puzzle, only that often you don't have a good idea what the picture will be and you have no idea how many puzzle pieces there are. You therefore never really know when to stop; is it complete now or should I dig some more? I suppose many of you have been confronted with this dilemma.

With a name like mine you would think I was a born historian. The Frode men, that were the descendants of Ari Frode the first Icelandic history teller, were the Icelandic historians who carried the island's history in their heads. But alas, I am not related to them. Early on I found history boring; long lists of names of 'silly' kings, place names and dates. Why should I have to learn all that stuff? Then in junior high school I got a history teacher who had a completely different approach to teaching history. He would give us the all the names, the dates and the places, but he would also weave in exiting stories about people and events such that we got a feeling for the time we were studying. To me it was an eyeopener; he made history come alive. Thank you, Andreas Hjelm.

Andreas Hjelm was fond of details and so am I. He put people in the centre of history and he tried to explain their actions by trying to understand their personalities. I too feel people is an important part of history and I therefore try to dig a bit deeper into the personal histories of the persons I happen to discover during my cryptological research. This is not always easy and it is generally quite time consuming. It is more genealogical than historical research, but it can be very rewarding. In a few cases I have discovered relationships that have completely changed the historical canvas. I will expose some of these stories in due time.

It is easier to do both historical and genealogical research today than it was say 10-15 years ago. The Internet has changed all that. Thank you CERN for the World Wide Web. However, there are still many challenges such as trying to positively identify people and make sure you have not got the wrong person. Those of you who have some experience with the military know that they are fond of numbers and surnames. The use of first names are rare and in the German military it seems to have been taboo. This is generally true also in German society where a title and a surname is the most common construct. This is fine when the person is a well known personality or she carries a rare or uncommon name, but when this is not the case then identification can be very hard indeed.

An example of this is the name of Ing. Willi Korn, the engineer who worked with Arthur Scherbius on the development of the Enigma and whose name is on most of the Enigma patents. Everybody who has seriously studied the Enigma know about Willi Korn, but I think I am right to say that few know who he really was and what he looked like. I am not 100% sure I know either, but at least I know who was his wife. Her name is relatively rare while the Willi Korns come by the dozen. 

Another example is the case of the Schultz(e)s who worked as German cryptanalysts during the war. Their names pops up almost everywhere in the TICOM documents the British and Americans wrote after the war. To see for yourself I invite you to visit the TICOM Archive of Randy Rezabek and the TICOM Collection of Christos Triantafyllopoulos. These two gentlemen have done more for cryptologic history than most; they both merit a medal. Now back to the Schultz(e)s. The Allied TICOM researchers found it so difficult to keep the right Schultz(e) at the right place that they offered this little Schultz(e) guide. It is not known exactly when the list was made but probably some time in the spring or summer of 1946. In September 1945 the situation was much less clear and at that time they had not yet identified the Schultz(e)s at OKW/Chi, which this Schultz(e) listing shows.

This is just to illustrate some of the difficulties one runs into when doing cryptological research. A more serious problem is the lack of good, verifiable sources. Good scientific and historical research mandates that one try to use multiple sources, but with cryptology one is often happy to have just one single written source. The TICOM documents falls into this category. A single document does not always tell the full story and sometimes the information is incomplete and sometimes even wrong. The TICOM documents should be looked upon more as research notes than final research reports. The case of the Schultz(e)s above illustrate this problem. The 9-volume TICOM study European Axis Signal Intelligence in World War II, EASI for short, is a very useful overview of German signal intelligence during WW II, but it has its shortcomings. The TICOM researchers were trying to piece together a picture of the very confusing layout of German signal intelligence and they were on a very steep learning curve. Even if the Allies had acquired some solid knowledge about German SIGINT through their decoding of the Enigma and Tunny messages, they had little or no knowledge about some of the TICOM targets. Göring's Forschungsamt was one of the organisations they knew virtually nothing about before the end of the war. You would think that they knew everything about the Enigma, its development and production, but it turns out that they even had the wrong address for the Enigma engineering offices of Chiffriermaschinengesellschaft Heimsoeth und Rinke, which had been at Berlin-Wilmersdorf, Uhlandstrasse 136 since December 1938. When they finally arrived at the correct address they found the Russians had arrived there first. I had thought of giving you some details about the Russians who visited Heimsoeth & Rinke and their interest in the Enigma, but unfortunately it seems I don't have these notes with me here. So it will have to wait for another time.

My intension is not to wear you out with details about TICOM but to show that we have to use these documents with some care and to weigh the evidence several times before we decide to use the information they contain. Much of the information is very fragmented and even if the bits we have are correct, the picture they  suggest might very well be wrong. Caveat Emptor. Having said this, I should like to stress that the documents are a real gold mine with respect to information about German signal intelligence. They give a good picture of the German capabilities in this field during the Second World War, and in a few cases also what the Germans did during the inter-war years and in the First World War. However, the TICOM reports, the interrogation reports and other evaluation reports, are only the tip of the iceberg. The real interesting stuff is in the TICOM files, the files with the raw, original German source documents. 

TICOM reports were written on subjects that had real intelligence value, such as German cryptanalytical capabilities, information about German success or failure against Allied cryptographic systems, and information about Russian cryptology. A lot of the raw TICOM material does not fall into any of these categories and hence no TICOM reports were produced. However, the material still is of interest to cryptologic history. Quite a number of the files contain documents that the Germans captured when they invaded the different European countries. There are documents that they captured in Belgium, France, The Netherlands, Norway etc. Many of these documents give details about the cryptological systems and capabilities of these countries, something which I find very interesting. There is only one problem. Very little of this material has been declassified and released. The only collection we know of today is the TICOM files collection at the German Foreign Office, Bestand Rückgabe TICOM, Politisches Archiv des Auswärtigen Amts, Berlin. This collection of original TICOM files is extremely interesting, but it is only a part of what the British and American TICOM teams collected. There are many files that we know existed that are missing from this collection. GCHQ says they have returned to Germany everything they have, but it is curious that some very interesting files about Russian cryptology are missing. This seems to indicated that some files were considered too sensitive to be returned to Germany. And if GCHQ tells the truth that they have released all they have, then what happened to the microfilms that were made of this material and sent to USA? Do they still exist somewhere at NSA? If they do, I hope they soon will be released because the material they contain should keep us busy for many, many years to come and the end result might be a much better picture of European cryptology.

Welcome

Welcome to CryptoCellar Tales. You probably think, YAB — Yet Another Blog, and of course you are right. So why do I add to the Internet noise?  There is no simple answer to this but since a very young age I have been impressed by the gentlemen (and ladies) on their soap boxes at Speaker's Corner at Hyde Park in London. So I guess I too want my soapbox.

Five or six years ago I had the idea of adding a more populist forum to my Web page CryptoCellar where I could muse and rave at policies and ideas close to my heart, but also speak and educate in an informal way about cryptography, intelligence, history and declassification. This corner of my Web page was to have the name Pandora's Box. However, due to lack of time it never materialized.

Another reason for creating Pandora's Box was to be able to post short notes and inform the readers of information or happenings that I found interesting. My Web page, which still is in the same simplistic form it had when I created it back in 1995, did not easily cater for short messages of this type.

So here we are. The idea has finally materialized as a Blog: CryptoCellar Tales. However, I should warn you straight away that this will not be like your daily newspaper. First of all I will not tell you anything about the neighbour's cat or what I think about Paris Hilton. I sense you are already disappointed. Sorry about that. And furthermore, I will not post daily — probably not even weekly. You see I am slow thinker; some even say — just slow. Another problem with me is that I am rarely serious and when I am, you probably will not be able to tell. However, when I do post, serious or not, I hope you will find some of it of interest, thought-provoking or just plain amusing. So watch this space.

This is what I wrote back in 2008 when I initially created this blog. The idea was good but the timing was poor. Due to an ever increasing workload I quickly realised that I would probably never find the time to keep the blog running. If the timing is better now only time will show, but at least I will make a serious try. Five years has passed but not very much has changed, I am still the same chap I was back in 2008 thou with more wrinkles and less hair; so I think the welcome is still valid. Perhaps I am a bit faster now than I was back then, I have realised that to accomplish all the things I want I had better hurry up. I have already wasted five years.

So welcome to this space. What it will bring I have no idea, it will entirely depend on what crazy ideas I get when I wake up in the mornings. Hopefully something interesting will come out of it all.

The first thing to report is that my Web site CryptoCellar is living its own life at the moment. It is still on a Web server at CERN but when I retired last year, after 40 years of service, I was, like all other former employees, stripped of all my access rights. So I can do nothing more than you, use the content and watch some of the links go stale. So this is yet another important goal for this year, let CryptoCellar get a new life, preferably in some new clothing to make it more attractive to readers who would like to access the site on mobile devices. At least that is my aim.