Center For Cryptologic History Livres

The series as a whole and this volume in particular are unique in many ways but primarily because they represent a closely analyzed, comprehensive examination of the COMINT record juxtaposed with extensive research into the written history of events. Mr. Parker's work also includes research into the Japanese Navy messages which remained untranslated until 1945 and undiscovered until now. These messages revealed the Japanese Navy plans for war with the United States, Great Britain, and the Netherlands and the preliminary exercises that occurred in the months prior to Pearl Harbor. This activity clearly signaled the creation of a massive carrier strike force with the major naval objective somewhere in the Pacific Ocean far distant from either Indochina or the Philippines. This comparison of the COMINT record with the published material covering the same period will benefit not only NSA but also the academic community, which continues to pursue the history of the Second World War. Thus whether or not the results agree with the literature, particularly if they do not, the effort to create an "official" COMINT history is more than justified. Mr. Parker's perseverance, diligent research, and detailed analysis have made this a significant and unique contribution to U.S. COMINT history, U.S. military history, and U.S. history.

This recent government publication investigates an area often overlooked by the impact of the Holocaust on the Western powers' intelligence-gathering community. A guide for researchers rather than a narrative study, it explains the archival organization of wartime records accumulated by the U.S. Army's Signal Intelligence Service and Britain's Government Code and Cypher School. In addition, it summarizes Holocaust-related information intercepted during the war years and deals at length with the fascinating question of how information about the Holocaust first reached the West.The guide begins with brief summaries of the history of anti-Semitism in the West and early Nazi policies in Germany. An overview of the Allies' system of gathering communications intelligence follows, along with a list of American and British sources of cryptologic records. A concise review of communications intelligence notes items of particular relevance to the Holocaust's historical narrative, and the book concludes with observations on cryptology and the Holocaust. Numerous photographs illuminate the text.