Other Factors
During World War II, the Japanese embassy in Nazi Germany was kept well-informed on German military affairs. This information was reported to Tokyo in Purple-enciphered radio messages. These reports included, for example, details of the Atlantic Wall fortifications along the coasts of France and Belgium. Since these messages were being read by the Allies, this provided valuable intelligence about German military preparations against the forthcoming invasion of Western Europe.
The decrypted Purple traffic, and Japanese messages generally, was the subject of acrimonious hearings in Congress post-World War II in connection with an attempt to decide who, if anyone, had allowed the attack at Pearl Harbor to happen and who therefore should be blamed. It was during those hearings that the Japanese learned, for the first time, that the Purple cipher machine had indeed been broken.
Read more about this topic: Purple (cipher Machine)
Famous quotes containing the word factors:
“The goal of every culture is to decay through over-civilization; the factors of decadence,—luxury, scepticism, weariness and superstition,—are constant. The civilization of one epoch becomes the manure of the next.”
—Cyril Connolly (1903–1974)
“The economic dependence of woman and her apparently indestructible illusion that marriage will release her from loneliness and work and worry are potent factors in immunizing her from common sense in dealing with men at work.”
—Mary Barnett Gilson (1877–?)