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T O P S EC R ET - 1 - T I O b M / I - 1 4 1REPORTONTHErnTERROOATIONFFIVE LEADING

G ER NlA .N S .a T N UR EM BU RG ON27THSEPTEMBER!1945.J..ttaahed are the reports of the interrogation of :-

~I. General JODL.B. Grand Admiral D O E N I T Z .C. Field Marshal K E I T E L .D. Herr von RIBBENTROP.E. Field I'![a"t',sha.1OERING,

carrie d Gut on 27th September, 1911c5,in Room164 inthe Court-Housea t Nu.reffiburgby:-

Commandax Dudley~Smith, R.N.,Major SEPJI'II' .N, U.S. Army.Lt. Oo=der MANSON , U.S.N.R. ~Major O\v.EN, I.C., (Interpreter).

Lt. Colonel T.S. H I N . K : E i L , UIS. Army, of the Interrogation Division,Office of U~S. Chief of Oounsel (Nurnberg). War Crimes Commission, W8J3also present. The detai.led art'angements for the interrogation weremade by Colonel Jam K. Amel'l," U.S" Army, Ohief of the InterrogationDivision, N~rnberg.

All the priseners, viith the exception of R I B B E N T R O P , appearedwilling to answer to the best of their abill ty the Clllestions put tothem. It was clear to the interrogators that the ]lrisoners foundthe sllbjeot of Signals Intelligenoe a welcome ,reiief in contrast tothat of responsibility for war orimes.

It must be borne il'L mind that these interrogations reCluired asomewhat a.d..fferent handling from the p!revious norm of such TlGOYprooeedures. Because of the potential seolJ.ri,ty danger inherent inthe fortheoming wa x guilt trials, when these 'meil.will be publiolyprosecuted and will speak from the box, it wasimpoa:oible to eXploitthem to the full. Many significant "Leada" had thus to be negleotedby the interrogatoL's.TlCOM15 October 1945D I S T R I B U T I O N .

No. of pages: 16

BritishD.D.3H.C.G.'~:~:~:~JD.D. (A.S.)C.G.R.Major BennetGdr. TandyMajor Morgan

y.S.,Op-20-C (2) (vie Lt. Cdr. Manson)G-2 (via Lt. Col. Rilles)J S.A. (3) (via l;1ajor Seaman)Direotor, S.I.D. U S F E T. (Via Lt. Col. Johnson)Col. Le.1is powell, USSTAF

i~aaitiomuDirector for Direotor-GeneralCdr. I.C., 1,dmiraltyD.D. (Y), V{5.rOfficeD.D.I.4., hir Ministrys.i ..C. for Section V.S,]".O. for D . S . D . 1 0 , ~.dmiralty 1 .S.l C. for Signals 6, War Offioe . : . . . t J f ? i / OS.h..C. for Signals 5, Air Minist1'ls . h . . b . (2 extra)Lt. Vance.

TICOMChairmanS.A.C. (3)Cdr, BaoonLt.Ool. JohnsonMajor SeemanLt.Cdr. MansonMajor CowanLt. Fehl.TicomFiles (4)

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The following standard q~estionnaire was used as generalbasis for all the interrogations.

A. Howvaluable was Sigint to you?In what years best? - poorest ?What countries and types best ?

B. To what extent did you control the work programme of th ecypher breaking bureau under your orders ?What was the high level channel of responsibility, fromthe ohief cryptanalyst to yourself ?Whoon your immedinte personal staff handled thedetail ?Selected your reading ?

c . Wsre there any special series of deoodes which receiveda very restricted distribution?

D. Who were the most outstanding oryptanalysts in yourbur-eau ?

E. What is your opinion of the other crypto bureaux ?F. To what extent did a Dingle co-ordinated overall policy

for all crypto bureaux exist ?G. To what extent did yOQ attempt to bring about closer

collaboration?H. 'fIhat mistakes were made? In retrospect - what chnngea

would y'ou have instituted to rectify "these ?

I. i1ifat do you know of successes in capturing .Alliedcyphers and cypher machines ?

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GEB_ERALOBERST ALFEED J -ODL 11,10 a.m

- t' ortant1. JODLstated that Sigint certainly proVided the mos ampintelligenoe available to the German Army. One of the mostoutstanding examples had 'been very valuable reports on the warsituat.bn in North .Afrioa which were sent to ~lashington in 1942 byan American military official (who signed!. himself as consul butwho must hcve been a staff Officer) in the Cairo or' Suez area.These reports continued!. for several months during the time of thefighting at Tobruk and at the El Faiza and Halfya passes. .Eventually the key was changed and no further success was obt8J.ned.The traffic was taken by a GermamArmy Interoept Unit stati:med inItaly. .Another example, but of much less importance was thetelegrams of the American Ihnister at Berne,. which were read bythe ForscFlungsamt. These contained a considerable amount ofintelligence Fegarding Agents and similar matters but weredifficult to interpret.

2. .\s far as military traffic proper was concerned, the mostimpD..tan~ item was the working out of Order of Battle. This waspartioularly important in Eng'l.and before "D. Day!!, but was muinl.y obtained,not from deciphered messages, but' by Traffic AnalysiS; similarlY, AlliedMilitary police Networks in France were a very profitable sourceof order of Battle information. The inteliigenoe was obtained bothfrom messages in oLear- and from those which hr.d been broken anddecoded, in addition to straightfor'Vrard ~~raffic Ana1,ysis~ Veryoften messages whose contents in themselves were harmlss were of greatvalue.

3. Signals Intelligence, however, provided very little definiteinformation regarding the invasion before tiD. Dayll. They had notmuch idea wnere the Schwerpunkt was going to be but thought itwould probably be at Cherbourg, with a second attaok in thepas de Calais.

4. From the military point of view their best effort in theeDrly days of the war had been the exploitation of Russian traf'fic'~'/T disc~pline had. been very bad but was later tightened up to 'the consl.derable loss of the Germans. British AI'II\Yf/ T discipline was muchbetter and not much had been given a\vay. To begin with the .Americanposition was similar to the Russian but greatly improVedas the Vlar we_nt O ? , . 'rhe WiT discipline of operational troops wasgenerally good and 1t was the "hanger-a-on" and rear organisationswhich provided good results.

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. ~ d the intentions of5. Not much else was obta~ned reg"r ang .. . trafficthe British High Command in North Africa; Agents and F.F.l. d anybetween England and France etc. had been valuable and a go~ mconclusions had thence bee~ draw~ about our intentions, la~d~ng~,etc. This i.nformati::m was not obteined by cJ.1".ptanalytic Dr~akl.ng. but by D/F'ing the Agent's wireless, rounding-up the man, an d"capturing his cipher keys. These Agents were often "turned roun

6. In 8.flSW8rto the question whether any other long-term.Ulied intentions were ever given away) he again mentioned Agentsand Maquis traffic, bet! ' ore "D . Day" but said that no high leveloperational traf'fiG wae ever obtained. They were sometimes given a generalindieation bu.t never knew the exact day. Advance ini'ormati:m on theSalerno landings (but not the Sicilian ones) was obtained fromshipping movements; nothing about the landings in the South ofFrance came to them in advance from Sigint and it was true th~t none ofthe major operations of the English and Amerioan forces were knownto them bef C)iI:'ehandrom this source.

" 7 . JODLstated that he did not control the \'lark programmeof the cryptanalysts anQ was only concerned with the resultsproduced "Jy the chief of the bureau. Be did lay downcertain intelligence req_uirements, but the methods employed, ,,[hetherAgents, erypto, etc. ~ were not his concern. The intelligencepr-oduced by the Abvlehr was the worst to deal with owing to itsambiguity: th.ey often ."lredicted everything, right and wrong, andreported separately each and every possible development. H e , . .thought that the Allies originated a lot of deceptive traffic tomislead the Germa~ High Command. When the same report camein from several different Agent sources he vms alwtly& .~J}lt iculorlysuspicious" til,t r t W\"" I l1 uplo.nted" by the BritlishIntelligence Sc).:vioe. Sigint on the other hand wasalwQys reliable.

8. The intelligenee offices Foreign il.rmies East andForeign Armies west each combined all sources of availableintelligence and sent in their summarised reports every two days.These reports reached him through his. Eo (Intelligence staff'QffiGer), who Quring the last year and a half had. been oberstKRlThIJJ,',ACHERhad been at school in England); this officerconsolidated thE reports with any other available sources, e.g.those from the Navy. when they had. anything of particularinterest. The Navy and G.A.F. were inclined to send theirreports direct to }ITTLER,but JODL had a full compositesummar,ymade for him which provided the complete overall picture.

9. If' a very special messageoame in then he reoeived itstreight away withou.t waiting for the 48 h:'lurly report; thisd.id not happea very often however, but even so suchreports were often wrong; for example, on one occasiona report was sent direot to HITLERby Hno1!'l..ERo the effect thatthere had been a landing of strong English forces on the Dalmation coast.HITLER rang up JODL and there wa~ general consternation. It eventuallyturned out to be a bud report wf>..J.chad oome from an Agent via Vienna andactual~ related to a small Commando raid on an island which had alre ~taken place some dnys before and which had been wiped. out ai~ediately: He took steps to prevent su~h alarmist reports beingc~rculatec1 a.n future bef'or-e they had r-ece Ived proper correlationby IG.

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10. He knew of no speoial series of decod~s w~ichreceived very restricted d:::'stributi:m; all distr~bllt10J;1 wassame, i.e. to the General Staffs of the A rtI lY , G .A .F . andNavy; only if they were of economic interest did they haveadditional cir0ulation.

the

11. He did not know the names of arzy cryptanalystsJ butstated that the Chi Stelle of the ArlI\Ywas to s cme e)l;tenttechnioal~ under the Abwehr.

12. JODLsaid he was unable to discriminate between th eeffioiency of the different German cryptanalytic b~reaux,all of them were good and he was very satisfied with tpe wholeoutput. The Armywere probab~ best but the OKWere very good.He did !'lot receive the products of the Foreign office bureau(located at GRt1 'NEV lELD) whioh went straight to th e Foreign~"'inister. He knew that they broke some politioa~ tro$.fficsLnce he he~rd of it ill.dil?otly at military lectures, etc; heremembered references to Greek, yugoslav and other Balkan states';emer~ !Governments in London communicating with their owncountries and oftet'.l revealing considerable .differences ofpoli tical opinion; the Turkish Ambassador in L:mdon; and acertain amount of Polish. He knew of .no Dutcll or Belgianmaterial.

13. He knew little about the RLM/Forschungsamt; it was alarge office and efficiently orgc.nised, but since it wasGOERING'sspecd.aL affair he only knew about it from conversationand indirect hearsay. There seemed to him to be a great dealof duplication going on. The. r8UltS were sont to KEITEL Whopassed on to JODL.in a s]>eoiecl folder such items as he thoughtwould interest himj JODLreturned these when he had read them.

14.. As regards ()KW/Chi, partiqularly valuable repor-cs camestraight to him, but the deoodes normally went first to Foreign Armies ~lestand East. JODLwas greatly in favour of the concept of oneint~lligence offioe receiving everything, although this was in faotonly partly realised. .After 1942 however, when the Fuehrer tookover the commandof the Eastern .;rmies, JODLhad nothingfurther to do with Foreign .Armies East; both offices wer-e alwaysadjacent, at BEHLINand at ZQSSEN,and there was close collaborationbetween "the two, The head of ~oreign A=mies East, Oberstltn.SCHEIBE, had been capt u.:ed by the British at FLENSBUR9-.

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- 8 -OP SECRET28. DOENITZtated that there had been no successes in c~pturingAllied sye b em s , They would very much have liked to have. had them, tespe:::inlly in 19~3 when things were getting stioky, bub an U?tual flloalthoUgh 0. oonaiderable effort was made, none were ever obtmned.He stated that no Allied oipher machines had ever been oaptured so

far as he knew.29. This prisoner W(Ul not in any sense, unoooperative" but ofall the five interviewed ho wa~ the most crisp - thut is, he seldomdilated Upona question put to him os though oontinually on guardlest questions seemingly of a tec~ico.l nature might in faot be e.trap and oommit him to disoussion of strategic or political subjeots.In this gU(lrd.ednesshe wa s the anti thesis of GOERINGnd lCEITEL.

GENERALFELDMARSOHALLIL H ELM KEIT EL . 14-.10 p.m.(Chief of the Wehrmacht)30~ KEITELstated that German Signals Intelligenoe auooeaaes ha.d

only been intermi.ttent. AS far as the Armywere concerned their bestintelligence had been f~m this sQurce, even though at times it WDAonly deri:ved from Traffic Analysis and not from cipher breckang, For"7.!lIl1p~e, when keys were changed and breaking was no longer possiblefor tl].e time and di.r

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- 9 -34. }Ie him.'!",]:"ad not oontrolled the work pI'ogr'runma of OKW/g~~'or at leo.st he had only done so to a. very small extent. He and Jformulated general intelligence req_u.ircments, but Genero.l THIELE(o.ndlater GTMBOR7'f)ad pansed more detailed instructions to PRl.UNend

FELLGIEBEL.THIELEhad been an outst.:mcling man, he wo.sveryefficient end had carried out these duties better tho.n anycne e~se.OleW/Chialso ho.dvarious momto ring comnri.ments for GeI'IJlUlerv:LoeoommUnications, both from the point of view of.cipher seou~ty and forkeeping 0. ('heck on W/Tdiscipline.

3.5. KEI:TEI.,' sigint reading matter was selected for him by theHead of the Chi Ste LLe of OX\ i { who sent him a daily package of reportswhioh oontained about half an hour's reading matter. He picked out allthe more importru;.t ones and marked them with a cross for JODLto see,JODLreturned them to h im in due course. These OKW/Chireports were'all marked "VNn in red; he did not know the meaning of the initials.VNt s had an extremely res trioted distribution and a review of theirdistribution list waGmade every six months in order to keep. it ossmall as possible. He did not knowwhat the w.stribution was, butit certainly included the heads of the services. In addition to theVN's there were various other more general reports baaed on Signal.sIntelligenoe, for examp'l,eAbwehr l-lllttAusland (Abwehr Intelligenoe H.Q.,~erlin~ acted as a collecting point and evaluation oentre for~ntell~gence from all sources and issued routine reports. A markeddistinotion was always made in Germonybetween the teohnical side ofintelligenoe produoti.on (e.g. interception and cryptanalysis,npero.ting of agents, etc.) andfue collation and evaluation of .theIntelligenoe thereby obtained.

36. He woo unable to name any outstanding aryptanllysts and couldnot even remember the name of the head of QI{w/Chi. At the time whenthe shortage of manpowerbecame acute and the o.uthorities were oallingfor drastic reductions in the number of personnel, he had insisted thntthis should not apply to the staff of OKW/Chi,as this type ofspeoialists was very hard to repla.ce. Experience had shown that womenand girls were particularly good lit t this work, espeoially girls whohad reoeived University tl'aini.ng and had speoialised in mo.thernatios.

37. KEITELknewnothing of Pers ZS, the Foreign Office Bur-eau,other than that he himself had put a fow people at the disposal ofRIBBONTROPor this purpose at the outbreak of the war. The GennanForeign Office were extremely sec;retive and jealous about anythingtheir bureau produced; RIBEElNTROPlways wanted to keep it striotlyto himself. If, by any chance, KEITELproduced cUrBot to HITLERonOKW/Chidiplomatic deoode, and did not pass it via the Foreign Officethey beoame extremely ~~n0yed. Aotually this only happened very rarely,in general if it was known that a message deooded by m e W / C h i wo.snot also in the hands of ~~e Foreign Office, then a oopy of the VNwas passed to them. It was only in very exoeptional oiroumstances thatKEITELhanded anything of a poli tioo.l nature direot to HITLER. At thetwice-daily meetings whenmilitary affo.irs wer-e discussed All theimportant new items were mentioned, JODLbringing up the rnili tll.ryones end so on. In actual fact HITLERgenerally knew of themalre~dy through his ownpersonal intelligence liaison offioers, andinfo~ation staff.38. KEITELdesoribed the RL!vVForsohungsamtas the "third. competitor"He used to receive some of their so-oalled "BrownReports" but W O J : I never able to fathom the special and ruther mysterious seleotion whiohhad been made speoially for him; it appeo.red to him to be on anerratio and irrational basis.

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40. When Qaestioned about the Chi Stelle of the Luftwaffe hedisclaimed any detailed knowledge but sai.d that PB1.UNwould know.He thGught the organisation was an effioient one aa General M:..RTINI,an old Army man whomhe knew to be good, was in charge. IviJ...RTINIeptin very close oontact with Chef WNW.A healthy spirit of competitionexisted between the three servioes; there was a full exchange ofappropriate interoepted traffic which was effected via Chef WNWwhopassed the material to mITT/Chiwho were the clearing-house. TheForeign Offioe and ForschuiJ.gs8!llt remained outside and independentbut otherwise a fair measure of cooperation existed.

TOPSECRET - 10 - TICOiVVI-143.39. Of the three bureaux who worked on diplomatic systems! the

thought that 010N/Chiwas probably the best, he could not be qU:L ~oertain since he did not see many of the products of the other In peace-time each had had its S'Pecial field to cover, the ,Forsohungsamt dom8stic politioal matters, and the Foreign Off~aediplomatic affairs' but once the war started they all g~abbed at,everything and the~e was a grea~ deal of duplication. KEITEL8~dthat before the war he had tried. to insi;itute an arrangement to .prevent this, but the war had begun before he had achieved anythingand aotion was then almost impossible. Before the war he hadendeavoured to arrange that all this type of work sho~d beoonoentrated in One single offioe and under one author~ty. BO~GOERINGand RINEN'lrn.OPwere oompletely against My such sugge~tJ.onand wt?uld not hear of its implementation. KEITEL added .that an anycase he h:im.self would not willingly have given up his own bureaUif a proposal had been made to ooncentrate all cryptanalytio workunder the auspioes. of the Foreign Office. Nevertheless, under ~conditions some sort of mutual assistance on technical and praot1oaJ.levels had existed and there was also a limited exohnnge ofintelligenoe. KEITELsaid that he had never opposed in any way thisexohange and mutual assistanoe, there was no ~uestion of prestigeso far as he was concerned.

41. The only infonnation KEITELcould give on 4 - SKLIII, theNaval Bureau, was tha.t they were excellent at their job end had afirst alass staff. The Navy had possessed a very good SignalsIntelligenoe Organisation in peaoe-time and they had the advantageof having a larger number of experienced persormel than did the krmy.During the oourae of the various oampaigns of the war the Army hadlost in action many o:!!'its senior and more valuable signoJ.s personnel;this was because the Anny had a greater req,uirement for keeping anumber of Sigint units. well. forward. The Luftwaffe enjoyed similaroonditions to the Navy in this respeot.42. As regards tile capture of J.l1ied ciphers KEITELsaid that aR . ,large number ofuss~an systems had fallen into their hands, a fewAmerioan ones, and a certain amount of English material in North

Afrioa and in Greece during ROMMEL'scompaign in 1942. He thoughtthat the la.tter must have been forward llnit material and unimportantbut he oould make no oonclusive statement and PRAUNwould know more 'aCG~rately. He ha d heard that cipher maohines had been aaptured butpointed out that a captured machine, as SUch, w as no use at allwithout the keys. He thought that British oipher machines mustundoubtedly have been token a.t the time of DUNKIRKnd probably inAfrioa and in Crete, but oould give no details. In any case theynever 'Provided any sensationo.l results.

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H E R R J OAC HI M V ON R IBBEN TR OP(l\fliniste r of Foreign Affairs)

43. RIBBENTROPtated that when he took over the Ministry ofForeign Affairs in 1938 he discovered that practioolly nothingexisted in the way of a politicL':" intelligenoe organisation, therewere various unsubstantiol oonnections in various oountries abroadbut they did not amount to much and only about 30 or 40 peoplewere employed on intelligence within the Ministry. Nearly everythingwas in the hends of' the 8.S. and the Wehrmacht; this was unfortWl8.tebecause everything went direct to HITLERand there WM no centralclearing house. The Intelligenoe Section of the SO, whioh had perhapshandled the bUlk of politioal intelligerloe, had been successivelyundez- the control of HEIDRICH,HIM11iIT..ERnd KALTENBl1UNNER.

1515 p.m.

44. The Foreign Office Crytpanalyt:i.c :Bureau Pel's. ZS., was underHerr 8ELCHOWho had been engaged on th$s work during the firstWorld War. Exaotly howPel's. ZS was organised RIBBENTRCIPid notknow, unfortunately he had been pre-occupied with a multitude ofaffairs and had been unable to devote as much time to this side of thework 80 S perhaps he should. have done. SELCHOW,e knew, liaisedolosely wi.th the RUV'Forschllngsront. thf'l organisation vmchprorluced the "Brown Re-ports".

4 5 . He knew that Pers Z8 were able to decipher diplomatio trafficoontinually. They only read the easier English codes and never hadany Succes s with the high grade ones: he was unoez-bed.n whether theyhad M.y aucceas with Russian (at first he said they did and latercontradicted himself); they sometimes read U.S.A. telegrams but thissucoeas was only occasional. They exp'Lodbed the Italian traffio allthe time, and Turkish to a very considerable extent; he thought,but was not certain, that the telegrams o r some of the South AmericanRepublics were also decoded. He pointed out that when a cypher waschanged it often took quite a long time, 3 or 6 or 12 months, beforethey managed to read the telegrams again.

46. On bei~g asked howvaluable Signals Intelligence was to himand which oountries provic.ed the best material he hesitated for avery long time; the value 0f this intelligence did not amount tovery much - HITLERhad a queer, rather particular, view about it -he did not like this type of intelligence very much and. said. itwas unreliable and often misleading, it wa s Ibetter to use one's owncommon-sense. RIBBENTROPaid that ocoasionally a really importantpiece of intelligenoe was produced, but even when pressed he saidhe could not reoollect a single specific example.

4 7 . The selection of deoodes for his own personal reading was madeby Inspektor SCHMIDT;he only saw between one and four items a day~perhaps it was even less.

48 . His instruotions to PERSZS were that they should deoiphereverything they oould; very ocoasionally. a speoific request mightbe made, but for the most part they we.re only given this gene-raldireotive - they had to use their ow n jUdgement. Some of thedeoodes were passed to the servioes; v:ny that were really importantto other departments were distributed to them a. t once; hieprincipal assist~t, ~an ~TEENGRACHT,r an Under-Secretary of State,determined what distrJ_but~on ahould be made outside the Ministry ofForeign Affairs; van STEENGRACHTlso drew RIBBENTRoP'sattention tooertain iterns.

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49. He stated that the RLIvVForsohungsamt covered preOi::lelYtthesame field a s PERS ZS and the~e was uni.'0rtunately almost oornple~duplioation. The Forsohungsamt produced th~ir deoodes more qui Ythan the Foreign Office but their texts were far less ole~:t:' and a d .tended to be iaaccuraiJeo ::,:':'iginslly work on diplomatic c).phers hbeen oentralised in the M.i .n . i stry I)f Ft:'reign Affairs, but th eForschungsamt had taken on). lj)'J~ of this work for themselves a.number of years before RIBBENTROP.'simB.50. SELCH0Wad ma:i.l1:~a:Ln.edliaison on teohnioal matters with

OKW/Ohi and probably compared notes with them; there was also sanesort of teohnioal exchange be'tiween mCW/Ch i and the Forsohungsamt.5 1 . There was, he was sure; no overall ooord:ination of polioy for

the various Gennan Cryptan.alytio Bureaux (he did not know how manythere were in all); he was afraid that in this respeot the higherpo;J.icy was not well directed. He hims.::lf had had oooasional talks withthose conoerned with a v:Lewto preventing all tJ.1..isdouble work, butnothing had resulted.52. He was unable to. .give a n opinion of the effioienoy of OIew/Chi;he did not even reoeive their reports and he only saw between one ....three of the "Brown Report" decodes every day. Whenasked whetherhe considered the existenoe of so many bureaux tG be desirable, hestated that it would have been very much more advisable to oonoentratethe effort under one. head, but tftings had gone a w x y . In oonsequenceof the existing situatio.l, he himself did not reoeive certain itemswhich were available and which would have been of value to him. Hesaid "I think it possible that Imade an effort once to have intelligeIlDe

as a whole oo-ordi.nated", but that as the system in force was for everyone to. go pri'ITately and direot to HITLER, it was scaroely worth t~ng.He thought it possible tnat at one time he might have made a oertainamount ot: effort to bring about closer cooperation with the servioesin this sphere, but was not sure whether in faot he had actually doneso.

5 3 . Without interpolation~ it is almost impossible to give theflavour of the above interragatian~ The prisoner appeured grosslyignorant of the material undar discussion; this difficulty w asfUrther complicated by a grandiose ana. world-weary manner super-imposed an a natural slyness, and by an anxiety neurosis presumablyresul ting from his present cirou:rru:!tances. By way of general interestit should be added that this we.s the ol'_ly interrogation oarried out 'in Engli'sh; but even this advantage failed to :i.'ea..ee.mhe proceedings.

1600 p.m.(COlIIIIl8l1dernCbief of the Air Foroe, Minister for Air, e to.)54. GOERINGaid that Signals Intelligenoe had been of very greatvalue, and partioula:o:ly so as regards the produots of the R L M /Forsohungsemt. He had personally founded the Forsohungsamt in 1933.it had never inactual. faot been part of the Luftwaffe or of the : r o : . Mbut as scme sort of oamouflage wa s desirable for an organisation 'of this nature it had been nominally attached to the German Air.Ministry for purposes of IIcover" In 1933 he had diaoovered to hisastonishment that no organisatian existed within the Reich to deal.

wi th oryptanalysis on anything approaching a broad and general. basis.

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TICOWI-143- 13 ..In 't d. 11 fl.'e1ds of traffio -l. S early days the Forschungsrunt had oovere aeoonomic, politioal, diplomatio, private, military, etc.55. Thework of the ForsohlU1.gsamtcomprised two almost completely

separate activities firstly that of telephone monitoring, and.secondly that of interoeptj.on , , : 1 . : 1 . oryptonalysis. As re~ard.s, thefirst oommi,ment, this haa. oric;i::J..';l.llybeen limited to ll.stenl.ngto te1epnone oonversations to and from Foreign Embassies o.nd. thoseof important visi ting foreigners _ in order to obtain political andeconomic intelligence. At a later date HITLERlaid down that alltelephone monitoring 'was to be GOERING t s responsibility, as far ashe remembered this was at the end of' 1933; hitherto internaltelephone monitoring had been handled by the police. Inevitablythe Reiohspost were also concerned for a while, since their co-operation and assistanoe were neoessary for working out the technioalside and for arranging special oonnections; the Forsohungsamtdispensed with as muohof this liaison as possible as soon as theyfound their feet. It was laid down that the Post Office had toobtain a specifio pe:rmrl.from the ForsohlU'lgsamt if for any reasonthey wished to carry o~t monitoring themselves; 'later on, however,the Gestapo intruded themselves into the business and workedindependently and without authorisation from GOERING~hey workedolandestinely for their ow n purposes; he thought it extremelyprobable that latterly all his ownpersonal telephone oonversationshad been monitored by them. The faot r9Ill8.inoo.,however, that, by andLange, the Forschungsarnt lv>.A rlone pre.otica11y all the telephonemo.nitoring i,n Germany.56. The study of the Transatlantio (London/Washington) scrambledtelephone was not a commitment of the Forsohungsamt, it was done bythe Post Offioe. He knew nothing of the "apecnal, secret prooeaa''employed or howit was broken down. He had heard that a conversation. between Mr. CHURCHILLnd.President ROOSEVELTad been obtained andalso important oonversations regarding the oapitulation of Italy. Hedid not knowwhetfuer these oonversations passed by Wireless or by oahla.57. Whenasked what he knew of Gennan suooesses in tappingsubmarine cables he stated that, of course, various under-sea oableshad been tapped; he &Ldnot knowwhere , when, or hO'Whis had been done,but reiterated that the work had definitely been carried out. Hepointed out that one does not actually have to "tap" a cable inorder to get results, it was only neoessary to get near to it, but hehad no teohnical 101ow1edgeof the subject. He thought; that the workhad been done by the Reichspost aLthough it was not impossible thatthe Forschungsamt itself might have been direotly conoerned.58. He was very sati:lfied with the FOl"sehungsamt, whioh was afirst-class organisation employing the very best cryptanalytio staff'and with intercept arrangements for tald.ng all available traffio.He thought that they were able to deal with 32 different languages.

The virtue of the organisation lay in the :I1act that they did notconfine themselves to any partioular field of intelligenoe and had nopolitioal axe to grind, nor ideology to follow; they were just giventhe teohnioal reqllirements to interoept and break traffio, and todisseminate intelligence. Whenthey made an intelligenoe resume ofsome partioular 8ubject,for example, that of aircraft production inthe U.S.A. J or the YM...TAnd TEHERANonferences, they produoed anaocurate factual account with no politioal bias. Reports such asthese, often oovering quite con.siderable periods, were frequentlyproduced.

59 GOERDlG ' s main principle had always been to keep theForsohungsamt free from outside influenoes; AdmlraJ. GANARIS,the

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~esta:po, and the Foreign Offioe had. continually tried to interfereut he had managed to head them off At one time the head of theF~rschungsamt had formed the idea that they should. also d.eal with:ge~ts' traffic _ GOERING had found this out in about 1934 and hadtl'l.otly forbidden ony Sl,C~ action' such matters should. be theconoern of the Secret Ser:.ice, Dnd'in f L J . " ' \ . " case the intelligenoe w asgenerally Unreliable.

60. GOERIlIG said that the recipients of the daily bulletins,the "Brown Sheets" (Braun'Jlatter) always emphasised the quaJ.it;rand. reliability of the service. in 19~.Oand 1941 the seleated : f ' :Ueof reports which was passed to hill! daily contained as muchas twohours reading. This file inoluded intelligenoe from both types ~-AForsohungsamt source I he was unable to say what proportLon oons.is-of deoodes.

61. He was unable, to give examples of any partioularly out.1~1.fJl11iterns of intelligenoe obtained from deoodes i he remembered tb&.tAmerican Minister in BERNEas very garrulous and sent extreme~long messages. On being asked whioh oountries provided the mos'bvaluabl"l int.::.]B.genr..le,he said, England., Franoe, Russia, U.S.A."Poland., and. so on, it varied wi th the si tuation - they readeverything - they covc~ed all oountries _ their aohievomants we~global (sic); the Far East was no exception- Chinn, the Japanesq~t asaador in BERL1Neporting home, and so on. He pointed out ~~ often happened that when SOIt'.P.r.hi n2: rC'..J.U nl11arly important wa simpending, special cipher keys or a change of the exi.eting keys, weNintroduced.

62. The intelligence res ul,ting from decoded telegrams w as notalways useful, they often consisted of absolute rubbish; the extentto which the membersof the Diplomatic Corps spread and retailed.fantastic rumours was surprising. He himself had often made arrangElJ l l len tsto have rumours planted end within a few days he observed them beingpassed on and s;preading. Another oommi.ment of the Forsohllngsemtwas the interoeption of the Broadcasting Servioes of foreign oountries.in order to obtain inforwation from political speeohes, ~ropaganda broadcasts, etc. This 't'I:::>rkas al.sc done by other organisations, buthere again the Forsohungsrunt was by far the best; in fe.ot, they took:and exploited everything that was going on the air on every wave-laogtQ.63. The Forschungsamt did not deal with purely militar,y traffio;the bureaux of the Army, Navyand Air Foroe were independent butmaintained contact with the Forsohungsamt through liaison offioers;this w as necessary, inter alia, becauae "therew as an exchange ofintercepted traffio and the Forschungsamt had to knowwhat theothers were picking up. He stated that in the case of systems whichwere being worked on by several different bureaux, it sometimeshappened that one of the servioes might get in more quickly than therest but that in general the Forsohungsamt had by far the greatestability of the lot. In suoh oases results were exohanged; there w as

a spirit of healthy oompetitioni64. He did not control the wont progro.mmeof the oryptanalJ18ts;they had a general direotive to tDke everything and to rea.d everyth1ng;further detailed direction was left to the head of the Forsohungsemt.It' it w as f). question of needing additional staff they a.pplied tostate Secreta.r.v KOERNER,ho also dealt with all their higheradministrative matters. The first head of the Forsah~a.mt had beenKapitiinleutnant SmIDtl?F. he had been sUooeeded by Prinoe OhristQph vonHllSSEN,who had . eventually retumed to the Luftwaffe; the post hadthen been teken over by Herr SCH.A.P.E'ERWhoOO alwo.ysbelonged to tho

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TOP BEaREr - 1 . 5 - TICO!!VI-143.organisation and whowas probably the best teohnical man of thewhole lot. GOERING used to viai t them only once every yearbecause the organisation WOl'kedso well on its cwn, The high levelohannel of responsibility was from SCHAPPERo KOERNER and from himto the Reiohsmarscho.ll himscJ\.f.

65. Oertain reports existotl . wh.i.ch were only sent to GOERING andt? HITLER; it depended on tne .su~ject and the existingC1rctUmst8l1.0sa;omecf' themmight be subsequently passed by .H ITL ERto the Minister for Forei.6n Affa:Lrs. Typical examples were theBERLIN-ROMEelephone conversations be tween l\I[[Jl3S0LINInd oIANO.. 66. HITLER'sview of the products of the Forsohungsamt was thatthey were very reliable"" the material had to be presented factuallyto HITLERwith no argume~t nor I'lPpreciation, only the verbatimOOnVer,sationor .actUbJ. deeiphered text. Editors were given verydefinite orders not 'to makeguesses wheze there were gaps; if anyportion Was missing Sir' was not clear, Il row ,of dots had to be .inserted and the app~eiation; if any, inserted within p'arentheses.There was a special courier aerva ee va th particUlar despatcH boxes

of w hich only GOERING, HITLER, and RIB-Bl!JNTRGP possessed the keys.The couriers had to t:revel in spec.ial motorcars and not in railwaytrains. All the reports had to be 'retUlned, and sometimes therewere difficulties because odd:single sheets had beert extraoted endretained. In such cases a re.minder was sent out asking for themis.sing sheet. 'l'h11li['ie v{erespeoial security' ;regula.tions to preventthe reports being handed on from person to pe.raon,67. GOERING said thfl,t he had no great opinion of the abilityof OKW/Chior of Seotion Pe rs , ZS Of theF'oreign Offioe; the othertwo bureaux who'worked on civil cyphers; the Forschl.U1gslJl1l,tnoalways achieved the most rapid and efficient breaking had a very oloseliaison with Pel's. ZS to syoid ~~ecessary duplioation. He di~notknowwhat the relations with OKW/Chiwere, he was muoh too busy totake muchinte:rest in this, the most junior memberof the family; he'thought they did not concern themselves very muchwith diplomatiotraffic but studied tacti::-al and military problems with which the

FOI'sohungs8lll'tdid no';' bo ther themselves. He only received oopies ofOKW/Chidecodes nowand,again.68. The o$'YPtanalytio bureau of the Luftwaffe, Chi Stelle Ob.d.L.was direotly subordinated to him and had 'been sucoessful; theyconcentrated on all kinds of clireotiGn-finding and route tracking, eto.,in connection Vlith allied air raids. TheG.A.F. Funkhoroh-Regiment-Westin Franpe, commandedby HauptmannRUCKHEIMhowas an exoeptiona1 man,had been espeoially important; this officer passed him situationreports every evening at about 6 p.m. ovel' a direct private line.

A good deal of ini'o:crnation " " U S derive

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70. The chain of commandfrom Chi Stelle Ob.d.L . 7M throughGeneral MbRTINIto the Chief of the Gc::.eral staff; he did not knOW.hWhoWas in charge under MARTINI He also had his direct contact Wl.HaUptmannRUCKHEIM alrea.dy mentioned' even in the middle of th~'ht ' , .. , T r t l l i ' T M d obt8J.nn~g ~f operations were O~, he could ring up R~Cru~ an INGthe very ~atest ini'onna.ticn on the position; thu ?nabled GOER'me' forto break an personally on the conduct of any opera td.on at any tl. .Jexample, when his staff said that the rsiders were going for Berl1n,

he might have more up to date intelligence direct from ~UCKHEIMand oO~d say "No, they are going for Stettintl His AdJ~tants -the offJ.cers a.ppointed to this post were numerous - recel.ved reportsfrom all souroes and passed them on to him, wherever he wa.s, bymeans of a loudspeaker broadcast system.

71. GOERINGsaid he mew nothing about the aotivities of the0I'J'?tanalytio bureau of the Navy, and added the oomment that thenava.es of ell oountries were rather exclusive. If the Navy everpassed them intelligence it was about three months old; the Navykept largely to themBelves and held thingsbaok. Conve~sely,however, the Luftwaffe kept the Navy currently informed and the~was proper liaison on their part. He did not remember ever havangreceived a message of real strategic value from the Navy, althoughTIRPITZ was the first to ask fu.e Air Force for info:rmation and help..nen he was in trouble. On a low level there was better liaisonbetween the two services and tactical information was exchanged.There had been an occasion when they had sunk' one of their owndestroyers by mistake in oonsequenoe of a lack of proper cooperationover signals intelligence.

72. Collabora tion Iwith OKHn 7/VI was batter than that withthe Navy; he had no opinion as to the ability of the Army bureau, andhe never received copies of their decodes as such. There was oloseli.aison between the Lc ' s of 'the Armyand the Air Faroe, but he didnot think that the actual sources of tntelligenoe came into the matter.

II\

\I 73. There VIas, he said. no overall policy whatsoever fo~ ooordinatingthe actj_vi ties of the vard.ous oryptanalytic bureaux; with the exceptionof the Forsc,hungsamt whcse work was magnificent and oompletely global["Ausgezeichnetl Ganz global! ~"), thev &J.1 had i;heir ow n apeoiaJ.i.eed tasks &problems; the reLevanf bureau dealt vv.i..thts ow n special kind of traft'io.and there was the liaison he had already mentd.oned, Whenasked whetherhe had. made any effort to improve the liaison between the N.avyand theLuftwaffe, he said. that sometimes fue liaison VIasvery good, for examplethe Navy had onae tipped them off about the posi"tion of a Murmanskconvoy and the Luftwaffe had wiped it out.

74. Allied cyphers were regularly oaptured, he said; ordinaryoperational keys were being picked up a11 the time, partioUlarly fromcrashed airoraft. The oyphers of the French Foreign Of1ioe at theQuai dtOrsay had been obtained but he did not know the details. Cyphermaohines were, of oourse, also captiured, in -the same way as the alliescaptured German ones, but he had no details, it was not his business.

(

75. GOERING'suse of the phrase "ganz global" in describing thescope of the Forschungsamt is charaoteristio of his bombastio and 'possessive attitude about the organization. Sinoe it was his brain-child, it was, of course, superb. By oontrast with oertain othersof the interrogations, the expenai.veneas of this prisoner was suchthat very little'prompting produced copious results.