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Comment by tlb | Hacker News Reader

60 years earlier, at the outbreak of WWI, Britain cut all of Germany's undersea cables [0], except one that went through Britain. So the Germans had to use radio or route through Britain, which could be intercepted and decrypted [1, 2]. Less subtle than tapping, but effective.

[0] http://blogs.mhs.ox.ac.uk/innovatingincombat/files/2013/03/I...

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Room_40

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Submarine_communications_cable...

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One thing I've wondered about history: There are dozens of stories of the brilliance of allied decryption efforts, but very few about the German or Japanese. Were they that far behind us?

We assumed they read a bunch of our lower tier codes, and the Germans (specifically Deutsche Afrika Korps) completely dominated in radio direction finding and traffic analysis, which was in many ways more important than decrypts (and largely considered more sensitive from an ongoing security perspective after the war, so not as publicized.)

Nachrichten-Fern-Aufkl-Kp 621 and Hauptmann Alfred Seebohm were pivotal for DAK actions. There were some similar units on other fronts, but this one was particularly well documented.

The US used "code talkers" in both world wars. Code talkers were Native Americans recruited to pass messages in their ancestral languages. The Germans became aware of code talkers during WWI and afterwards sent people to the US to learn the native languages. This proved to be difficult as there too many dialects to learn them all. During WWII, code talkers were used much more against the Japanese and less in Europe.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Code_talker

Do you speak German? There are stories, but they may not be in your native tongue.

See also the story about the Zimmermann Telegram for more cable tapping shenanigans. ( https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zimmermann_Telegram )

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