Wilhelm Tranow

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Wilhelm Tranow (* 1891 ) was a German cryptanalyst who successfully deciphered enemy encrypted radio messages , especially those of the British merchant navy , in the B service of the German Navy before and during the Second World War .

Life

Wilhelm Tranow worked as a radio operator and in the observation and deciphering service of the Imperial Navy during the First World War . After the war, this resulted in the so-called B-Dienst, which Tranow joined in the early 1920s as one of the first employees in a civilian capacity. During the Second World War, Kapt.z.See Heinz Bonatz was in charge of the B service subordinate to the OKM (High Command of the Navy) . Tranow was considered one of the most important cryptanalysts of the B service. He is described as "seasoned and energetic". In the 1930s he was promoted to head of the English-speaking unit , where he led the cryptanalytic attacks on codes and encryption methods of the British Royal Navy . In 1935, one of the British methods was deciphered by comparing it with the movements of ships published in the Lloyd's Weekly Shipping Report .

During the Second World War succeeded-B Service Unit is the under Tranows line superencryption the Allied merchant ship radio messages ( Merchant Navy Code strip). This helped the German submarines to better track down and attack Allied convoys in the Atlantic . Even during the height of the vital battle in the Atlantic , the Naval Cipher No. 2 (German code name "Cologne") initially partially, and from February 1941 to 1943 completely deciphered. The break of Naval Cipher No. 3 (German code name "Frankfurt"), which the British used for their Atlantic convoys. This helped the commander of the submarines (BdU) , Admiral Karl Dönitz , to target the German submarines operating in the Atlantic on the Allied convoys .

Based on intelligence from the deciphered German Enigma radio messages, the British finally became suspicious, and the Naval Cipher No. 3 and replaced it on June 10, 1943 by Naval Cipher No. 5 . The Germans recognized this change in the “Frankfurt key”, but could not read the new procedure and were thus as good as cut off from this important source of news.

The American historian David Kahn underlined the importance of these decipherments in war history and quoted an anonymous source: “ If one man in German intelligence ever held the keys to victory in World War II, it was Wilhelm Tranow ” (German: “If a man in If the German Enlightenment ever held the key to victory in World War II, it was Wilhelm Tranow ”).

Shortly after the war, he was interrogated by the allied (British-American) TICOM ( Target Intelligence Committee ) at the Naval Intelligence School in Flensburg-Mürwik about German investigations into the security of the Enigma-M4 in 1944 . During this time, the British journalist and secret service employee Sefton Delmer recruited employees of the naval intelligence service , which was relocated to Mürwik in the last days of the war . With their help, Delmer founded Germany's first news agency in Hamburg in August 1945 , the German News Service , which was later given the German name Deutscher Pressedienst . Tranow was probably among these recruited employees, because when the Deutsche Presse-Dienst GmbH (dpd) was founded as the successor to the GNS on January 1, 1947, the British authorities Wilhelm Tranow, previously head of the dpd finance department, and the business editor Dr. Wilhelm Grotkopp was appointed managing director. Around 1950 he later worked for the German Press Agency (the successor to the German Press Service).

literature

  • David Kahn : Hitler's Spies . Chapter 14, The Codebreaker Who Helped the U-Boats. Cambridge, MA: Da Capo Press, 1978, pages 213-222.
  • Heinz Bonatz : Sea warfare in the ether. The achievements of the naval radio reconnaissance 1939-1945. Mittler: Herford 1981. ISBN 3-8132-0120-1
  • David Kahn: Seizing the Enigma - The Race to Break the German U-Boat Codes, 1939-1943 . Mifflin: Boston 1991; Naval Institute Press: Annapolis, USA, 2012, ISBN 978-1-59114-807-4
  • Friedrich L. Bauer : Deciphered Secrets. Methods and maxims of cryptology. 3rd, revised and expanded edition. Springer, Berlin et al. 2000, ISBN 3-540-67931-6 .
  • Fred B. Wrixon: Codes, Ciphers & Other Secret Languages. From the Egyptian hieroglyphs to computer cryptology. Könemann: Cologne 2000, ISBN 3-8290-3888-7

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Date of birth, interview with David Kahn 1970, Library for Contemporary History Stuttgart.
  2. ↑ a b B-Dienst (Navy) in the TICOM archive (English). Retrieved February 11, 2016.
  3. ↑ Friedrich L. Bauer: Deciphered secrets. Methods and maxims of cryptology. 3rd, revised and expanded edition. Springer, Berlin et al. 2000, p. 221.
  4. ↑ Friedrich L. Bauer: Deciphered secrets. Methods and maxims of cryptology. 3rd, revised and expanded edition. Springer, Berlin et al. 2000, p. 449.
  5. ↑ Friedrich L. Bauer: Deciphered secrets. Methods and maxims of cryptology. 3rd, revised and expanded edition. Springer, Berlin et al. 2000, p. 65.
  6. ↑ Friedrich L. Bauer: Deciphered secrets. Methods and maxims of cryptology. 3rd, revised and expanded edition. Springer, Berlin et al. 2000, p. 450.
  7. ↑ David Kahn, Seizing the Enigma - The Race to Break the German U-Boat Codes, 1939-1943 . Naval Institute Press: Annapolis, USA, 2012, ISBN 978-1-59114-807-4 , p. 246
  8. ↑ Sefton Delmer: The Germans and I . Nannen-Verlag, Hamburg 1962, p. 653–654 (English: Trail Sinister (1961) / Black Boomerang (1962) . Martin Secker & Warburg, London. Translated by Gerda v. Uslar (authorized translation)).
  9. ↑ Andreas Kristionat: From the German News Service (GNS) to the German Press Agency (dpa) . In: Jürgen Wilke (Hrsg.): Telegraph offices and news agencies in Germany . Investigations into their history up to 1949 (=  communication and politics . Volume 24 ). KG Saur Verlag, Munich New York London Paris 1991, ISBN 3-598-20554-6 , pp. 298 .
  10. ↑ New career for the code breakers. In: Spiegel Online . November 26, 2010. Retrieved on: December 4, 2017.
personal data
SURNAME Tranow, Wilhelm
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German cryptanalyst during World War II
DATE OF BIRTH 1891
DATE OF DEATH after 1970