General der Nachrichtenaufklärung Training Referat
General der Nachrichtenaufklärung Training Referat (Nachrichten Dolmetscher Ersatz und Ausbildings Abteiling) was the training organization within the General der Nachrichtenaufklärung (GDNA), the military signals intelligence agency of the Wehrmacht during World War II.
[1][2] During World War II, the Oberkommando der Wehrmacht suffered from an acute shortage of cryptanalyst personnel, and it was found that the practice of pushing forward groups of cryptanalysts to key areas behind the front, did not of itself provide adequate signals intelligence, particularly as the front lines were getting further away from Berlin.
Two difficulties were encountered in this connection; firstly, a lack of technical knowledge, and secondly the entry into the cryptographic service of personal who were untrustworthy from the security point of view.
It was agreed to allot the NAZ units investigation of forward lines of communication traffic which could be solved in the field.
For matters of administration, the battalion was divided into the following 5 platoons:[7] A rough estimate of the personnel shows that in 1944, there were about 350 to 400 men attending the various languages classes.
For persons of category S, a special course in monitoring Allied radio communication was organised at Leipzig for English speaking personnel only.
Major Mettig, the commander in charge of cryptanalysis unit, stated while in interrogation after the war, that when the KONA regiments moved into the field in 1939, no cryptanalysts were available to decipher enemy codes and ciphers.
[13] Colonel Kunibert Randewig, the commander at that time of all traffic intercept, or listening stations in the west, however, was able to procure a number of cryptanalysts from the Feste around Berlin, and to this force he added a few mathematicians and linguists.
[13] As a result, when the German offensive began in April 1940, the KONA units had a moderate supply of cryptographic personnel.
A Training Section in In 7/Vi was established under the leadership of Kuehn, but Mettig stated that the work in the unit was not fully exploited until 1942.
[1] The Training Section was located at Matthäikirchplatz 4 in Berlin until November 1943, when it was moved with the rest of the Agency to Jüterbog because of the Allied bombings.
One prisoner of war, Gerd Coeler, stated that during the afternoons, he studied English military terms and abbreviations, including the history and organisation of the British Empire and the geography of England.
Participants were selected from the personnel of the Signal Interpreter Replacement and Training Battalion, that understood the Russian language.
[19] After methods of solution were demonstrated on the blackboard, each student was given practice problems, based on clear English text, to solve for themself.
3-F codes were cryptanalysed by the German cipher agencies, General der Nachrichtenaufklärung (GDNA), OKW/Chi and the Luftnachrichten Abteilung 350.
In the case of the British War Office Code, it took the form of a practically unending, un-periodical figure recipher.
Throughout the TICOM documentation, attention is drawn to the acute shortages in the Field Army of personnel who were well trained in signal intelligence operations.
The central agencies recognized this weakness and attempted to remedy it by publishing field manuals on security and having lectures given at the Army Signals School in Halle (German: Heeres-Nachrichten-Schule II) by members of In 7/VI.
Conditions were aggravated at the end of the war by the necessity for sending all able-bodied men into the front line and by the general confusion of the Army.
