This is a hand-typed report, with corrections, for volume 1 of the 9-volume TICOM series, subtitled “EUROPEAN AXIS SIGNAL INTELLIGENCE IN WORLD WAR II AS REVEALED BY “TICOM” INVESTIGATIONS AND BY OTHER PRISONER OF WAR INTERROGATIONS AND CAPTURED MATERIAL, PRINCIPALLY GERMAN”. I’m not really sure where I got it from, and I’m not finding a link through google searches. There’s a page on TICOM on wikipedia, but the external link to the TICOM archive is broken. There’s a similar document on archive.org, but it’s not actually connected to the volume 1 I’ve got.
“EUROPEAN AXIS SIGNAL INTELLIGENCE IN WORLD WAR II AS REVEALED BY “TICOM” INVESTIGATIONS”, prepared under the direction of the Chief, Army Security Agency (May 1, 1946)
Volume 1 Synopsis
Volume 2 Notes on German High Level Cryptography and Cryptanalysis
Volume 3 Signal Intelligence Agency of the Supreme Command, Armed Forces
Volume 4 Signal Intelligence Service of the Army High Command
Volume 5 The German Air Force Signal Intelligence Service
Volume 6 The Foreign Office Cryptanalytic Section
Volume 7 Goering’s “Research” Bureau
Volume 8 Miscellaneous
Volume 9 German Traffic Analysis of Russian Communications
The Volume 1 PDF is 147 pages, and the sections are numbered by paragraph, rather than by page. This makes it a little more difficult to find specific sections, especially since the scanned copy isn’t great, and the OCR text is pretty garbled. The paragraphs are:
1 – Origin of “TICOM”
2 – The European Axis cryptanalytic effort against U.S. communications
3 – Organization of German Signal Intelligence Agencies
4 – The Signal Intelligence Agency of the Army High Command
5 – The Signal Intelligence Agency of the Air Force High Command
6 – The Signal Intelligence Agency of the Navy High Command
7 – The Signal Intelligence Agency of the Supreme Command Armed Forces
8 – The German Foreign Office Cryptanalytic Section
9 – Goering’s “Research” Bureau
10 – Collaboration between German Signal Intelligence Agencies in Cryptographic Matters
11 – Collaboration between German Signal Intelligence Agencies in Cryptanalytic Matters
a. – Relationships between Foreign Office Cryptanalytic Section, Goering’s “Research” Bureau, and the Signal Intelligence Agency of the Supreme Command Armed Forces
b. – Military Agency Relationships – exchanges of cryptanalytic information
c. – Military Agency Relationships – exchanges of personnel
d. – Military Agency Relationships – cooperation with regard to IBM and Rapid Analytic Machinery
e. – Military Agency Relationships – cooperation with regard to interception
f. – Cooperation between Military and Civilian Agencies on solution of Agents’ systems
12 – Other Axis (European) Cryptanalytic Agencies
a. – Italian Cryptanalytic Agency
b. – The Hungarian Cryptanalytic Agency
c. – The Austrian Cryptanalytic Agency
d. – The Finnish Cryptanalytic Agency
e. – The Bulgarian Cryptanalytic Agency
13 – Liaison between German Signal Intelligence Agencies and other Axis Cryptanalytic Agencies
a. – Liaison with Japan
b. – Liaison with Italy
c. – Liaison with Hungary
d. – Liaison with Finland
e. – Liaison with Spain and Bulgaria
14 – Chart summarizing the results of European Axis Cryptanalysis
Paragraph 1 – Origin of “TICOM”
TICOM was the cover name of the project, as well as for the organization – the Target Intelligence Committee. “It was originally conceived by Colonel George A. Bicher, Director of the Signal Intelligence Division, ETOUSA, in the summer of 1944, aimed at the investigation and possible exploitation of German cryptologic organizations, operations, installations, and personnel, as soon as possible after the impending collapse of the German Armed Forces. Colonel Bicher elicited and secured the support of the U.S. Navy and of the British, and accordingly a joint and combined “Target Intelligence Committee” was established in England in October 1944, by the authority of the Chief of Staff, United States Army; the Commander-in-Chief, United States Fleet; and the Chairman, London Sigint Board.”
The idea was to set up operations to grab German Sigint targets that were identified through decrypted ULTRA intercepts and prisoner interrogations, with four objectives:
– Learn the extent of German cryptanalytic efforts against the U.S. and the UK
– Prevent the results of these efforts from getting into the hands of other Axis members
– Exploit German techniques and inventions before they could be destroyed
– Find anything of Sigint value that could be used against Japan
Six target exploitation teams were established, the first sent from England in April 1945 to Neumuenster-Flensburg, the others soon after as German resistance collapsed and units began quickly dispersing. While attempts were made to connect the German labeling of systems to their official Ally machine or systems names, in many cases there were ambiguities, so the finished chart probably has a lot of duplications and holes.
(Chains of command chart)
There’s a section on Germany’s interactions with friendly countries, with the best results coming from Hungary and Finland. On the other hand, the German crypto agencies fully mistrusted the security of the Italian systems.
Most of the descriptions of the German SIGINT services have already been given in David Kahn’s The Codebreakers, and other books, so I won’t repeat them here. To me, the most interesting information regards the German successes, or lack thereof, against the U.S. codes and ciphers. The full chart is pretty long, at a little under 90 pages, or about 2/3’s of the full document. The contrasts are interesting, with countries like Afghanistan having one entry (10-20% recovered), and France at about 210 entries of various levels of readability. For France though, everything becomes readable when the Vichy government takes over.
We have Italy at about 35 entries, the Vatican at 4, Russia at about 100, the UK at 82, and the U.S. at 38.
For the U.S., the Hagelin M-209 shows up for “Army,” “Navy,” and “Army-Air-Navy,” with 10-20% of intercept being read from each service. There’s a Slidex cipher for the Army-Air that could be read within 1-3 hours, but it’s a digraphic code chart with changeable coordinates, and doesn’t seem to be the radiotelephone code mentioned in Signal Corps History, vol. 3 (The Outcome). Although, Outcome states that Slidex was soon read after it came out in 1944, and TICOM indicates that some “Slidex” was read from an unknown date to 1945. They could be the same thing, I guess.
The Army and Navy “Big Machine” (AM-29) was not read, and a “Combined Cipher Machine” (Joint Combined U.S.-British forces) was not read. One or the other of these (maybe both) could be a reference to SIGABA.
Conversely, maybe half of the 15 entries labeled “Diplomatic” were fully read, either through a “compromise”, theft of plaintext, or cryptanalytic methods. The four Military Attache entries were either “read”, “100% compromised,” or “codebook photocopied from Hungary.”
It’s an interesting document, if you can find it.
The Black Chamber 