CRYPTOGRAPHY

David Kahn

A - G

Kahn, David. "The Annotated The American Black Chamber." Cryptologia 9, no. 1 (Jan. 1985): 1-37.

Lowenthal views this article as an "[i]mportant corrective to Yardley..., based on notations by ... William F. Friedman."

Kahn, David. "Charles J. Mendelsohn and Why I Envy Him." Cryptologia 28, no. 1 (Jan. 2004): 1-17.

Kahn refers to Mendelsohn (1880-1939) as "the first real scholar of the history of cryptology.... Still, the activity with which Mendelsohn's name will be forever associated is ... his collection of antiquarian books on cryptology."

Kahn, David. "Churchill Pleads for the Intercepts." Cryptologia 6, no. 1 (Jan. 1982): 47-49.

According to Sexton, this article reprints "letters from Winston Churchill to Austen Chamberlain in which the former pressed for access to intercepts in the 1920s." [UK/Interwar]

Kahn, David. The Codebreakers: The Story of Secret Writing. New York: Macmillan, 1967. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1967. Abridged ed. [pb] New York: Signet, 1973. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1974. The Codebreakers: The Comprehensive History of Secret Communication from Ancient Times to the Internet. Rev. ed. New York: Scribner, 1996.

Clark comment: The 1996 edition of this classic work covers the history of cryptology from ancient times to the present. It remains the best available work on the broad subject of cryptology. Unfortunately, as Cohen, FA 76.3, aptly notes, this version is "barely revised." The original work was written before the 1974 revelations about the breaking of German codes in World War II. This great event in cryptologic history and "other major stories that have come out in the last three decades" are covered in "an inadequate additional chapter just 14 pages long." Nonetheless, Cohen concludes that "readers may still consult it with profit and interest."

While Bennett, I&NS 13.4, remains impressed by the original edition, he, too, is bothered by the effort to wrap-up new material in a single, brief chapter; in essence, too "much has had to be crammed into a space too small to contain it." With regard to the original edition, Bernard, AIJ 15.1, comments that while several more recent books "expand and complement the material available to Kahn,... The Codebreakers still contain[s] the core of the most significant SIGINT events of WWII.... It is interesting and entertaining.... The writing style is easy to read.... The book [remains] a marvelous compilation of material suitable for the cryptologic student, generalist, or scholar."

Constantinides calls Kahn's scholarship and his knowledge of the subject "prodigious," and sees this work as a "major landmark and contribution to cryptologic and intelligence history." Similarly, Pineau, Studies 12.3 (Summer 1968), calls Kahn's work "massive, richly informative, and eminently readable." This is "a monumental work." Nevertheless, the author displays "a careless and somewhat cavalier attitude toward factual detail in matters not strictly cryptologic." Peake, AIJ 15.1/89, says that The Codebreakers "should be the starting point for anyone interested in the subject." According to Pforzheimer, "[t]he paperback edition ... comprises about the last third of the original text."

Kahn, David. "Codebreaking in World War I and II: The Major Successes and Failures, Their Causes and Their Effects." Historical Journal 23, no. 3 (Sep. 1980): 617-639. In The Missing Dimension: Governments and Intelligence Communities in the Twentieth Century, eds. Christopher Andrew and David C. Dilks, 138-158. Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1984. London: Macmillan, 1984.

Sexton identifies this article as a "scholarly assessment of the role of Signals Intelligence in the two world wars and the reasons for Anglo-American superiority."

Kahn, David. "Cryptology Goes Public." Foreign Affairs 58, no. 1 (Fall 1979): 141-159.

The author reports on an international conference on World War II cryptology, held in Germany in November 1978.

Kahn, David. "Edward Bell and His Zimmermann Telegram Memorandum." Intelligence and National Security 14, no. 3 (Autumn 1999): 143-159.

Kahn provides biographic details on the U.S. diplomat who liaised with British intelligence in London with regard to the Zimmermann Telegram. Included are two memoranda by Bell and one by Nigel de Grey, the Room 40 solver of the telegram. [WWI/Zimmermann]

Kahn, David. "Finland's Codebreaking in World War II." In In the Name of Intelligence: Essays in Honor of Walter Pforzheimer, eds. Hayden B. Peake and Samuel Halpern, 329-347. Washington, DC: NIBC Press, 1994.

Rislakki, IJI&C 21.3 (Fall 2008), p. 485/fn. 52, calls this a "well-informed article." [WWII/Eur/Finland]

Kahn, David. "The Fonds de Moscou, TICOM, and the Nerve of a Spy." Intelligence and National Security 24, no. 6 (Dec. 2009): 865-875.

The author reviews French pre-war documents (the Fonds de Moscou), returned to France after being held in the Soviet Union; German pre-war documents (TICOM) previously held in the United Kingdom and returned to the Federal Republic; and a 1930 document concerning the activities of Hans-Thilo Schmidt. [France/Interwar; Germany/Interwar]

Kahn, David.

1. "The Forschungsamt: Nazi Germany's Most Secret Communications Intelligence Agency." Cryptologia 2, no. 1 (Jan. 1978): 12-19.

The Forschungsamt (Research Office) was the German organization that monitored telecommunications traffic in Germany. Sexton says that this is a "well-researched account."

2. "German Military Eavesdroppers." Cryptologia 1, no. 4 (Oct. 1977): 378-380. [WWII/Eur/Ger]

Kahn, David. "Friedman's Life." Cryptologia 2, no. 2 (Apr. 1978): 122-123.

This is a critical book review of Ronald Clark's The Man Who Broke Purple (Boston: Little, Brown, 1977).

Kahn, David, ed. "From the Archives: Britain Reveals Its Bombe to America." Cryptologia 26, no. 2 (Apr. 2002): 124-128.

Memoranda from "C" (Admiral Sinclair) and Alastair Dennison make it clear that the early 1941 U.S. delegation was told of the existence of the bombes. [UK/Ultra; WWII/Magic/Coop]

Kahn, David, ed. "From the Archives: Codetalkers Not Wanted." Cryptologia 29, no. 1 (Jan. 2005): 76-87.

Kahn introduces and presents some documents pertaining to the use (or non-use) of Native Americans as codetalkers for secrecy in radiotelephonic communications by the military in World War II. [WWII/FEPac/Codetalkers & Gen]

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