Record date:
Gerhard Weinberg and John Prados program transcript.pdf
Gerhard Weinberg and John Prados, Codebreaking and Espionage in WWII
Weinberg and Prados discuss the important role of codebreaking and espionage in the Second World War in this session from the 2018 ON WAR Military History Symposium.
Cryptography was used extensively during World War II, with a plethora of code and cipher systems fielded by the nations involved. Probably the most important code breaking event of the war was the successful decryption by the Allies of the German "Enigma" Cipher.
During World War II, Germany believed that its secret codes for radio messages were indecipherable to the Allies. However, the meticulous work of code breakers based at Britain's Bletchley Park cracked the secrets of German wartime communication, and played a crucial role in the final defeat of Germany.
In this discussion, Weinberg and Prados will explore the use of espionage and code breaking for both axis and allies.
Dr. Gerhard L. Weinberg is Professor Emeritus of History at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, where he has served on the faculty since 1974. A German expatriate and veteran of the U.S. Army during the post-WWII occupation of Japan, Dr. Weinberg is an internationally recognized authority on the origins and course of World War II, earning the 2009 Pritzker Military Museum & Library Literature Award for Lifetime Achievement in Military Writing for his writings on the subject.
John Prados is an author and analyst of national security based in Washington, DC. He is the author of about thirty books and many articles on topics of current importance, presidential studies, international security; and diplomatic, intelligence, or military history.
Prados holds a Ph.D. from Columbia University in Political Science and focuses on presidential power, international relations, intelligence and military affairs. He is a senior fellow and project director with the National Security Archive at George Washington University. Prados also heads the Archive’s documentation projects for Vietnam and for the CIA, he is co-director of the Iraq project, and assists with the Archive’s Afghanistan project.