NSA Secrets Declassified: Eavesdropping on Hell: Historical Guide to Western Communications Intelligence and the Holocaust 1939-1945 - Enigma, Codebreakers, World War II, Jewish Refugees, Nazi Gold

Professionally converted for accurate flowing-text e-book format reproduction, this important NSA publication provides a historical guide to western communications intelligence and the Holocaust from 1939 to 1945.

Contents: Chapter 1: Background * The Context of European and Nazi Anti-Semitism * Previous Histories and Articles * Chapter 2: Overview of the Western Communications Intelligence System during World War II * Step 1: Setting the Requirements, Priorities, and Division of Effort * Step 2: Intercepting the Messages * Step 3: Processing the Intercept * Step 4: Disseminating the COMINT * From Intercept to Decryption - the Processing of a German Police Message * Chapter 3: Sources of Cryptologic Records Relating to the Holocaust * The National Archives and Records Administration * The Public Record Office * Miscellaneous Collections * Chapter 4: Selected Topics from the Holocaust * A. The General Course of the Holocaust and Allied COMINT * B. Jewish Refugees, the Holocaust, and the Growing Strife in Palestine * C. The Vichy Regime and the Jews * D. The Destruction of Hungary's Jews, 1944 * E. Japan and the Jews in the Far East * F. Nazi Gold: National and Personal Assets Looted by Nazis and Placed in Swiss Banks, 1943 -1945 * Chapter 5: Some Observations about Western Communications Intelligence and the Holocaust * What was Known from COMINT * When the COMINT Agencies Knew * Some Further Observations Regarding the Available Archival Records * There are limited COMINT agency records about the Holocaust * There are significant differences between the archival records holdings of the cryptologic agencies of the United States and Great Britain * The Western communications intelligence agencies collected many more intercepts than they finally processed during the War * There are pertinent uses for the available records from the COMINT agencies related to the Holocaust.

The background chapter to this guide offers brief summaries of the history of anti-Semitism in the West and the early Nazi policies in Germany, as well as a short review of the limited body of historical and memoir literature prior to 1997 that pertains to both cryptology and the Holocaust. Chapter 2 will describe the general system by which communications intelligence was produced by the Allies during World War II. This description will encompass the system from the establishment of collection priorities, through the intercept of targeted Axis and neutral communications, next to the processing or analysis of the intercept for intelligence, and finally to the dissemination of the produced intelligence. Just as importantly, this section includes observations on how the nature of the communications intelligence process affected the collection of information concerning the Holocaust. Chapter 3 will list the various locations for relevant records of the American and British cryptologic agencies held by the National Archives and Records Administration and the Public Record Office. This chapter will also include a description and some examples of other smaller relevant records holdings. Chapter 4 will briefly review the available COMINT material that is part of the historical narrative of the Holocaust. This chapter includes a brief overview of the course of the Holocaust and somewhat more detailed descriptions of specific topics that include the refugee problem and Palestine, Vichy and the Jews, the roundup of the Hungarian Jews, the situation of the Jews in the Far East under the Japanese, and German-Swiss trade and financial transactions during the war. Finally, Chapter 5 considers some important general observations about cryptology and the Holocaust. In a way, these observations are a summation of the material presented in the guide.