When combined with direction-finding, it can often approximate the where and when of a planned movement. Since military operations are usually accompanied by an increase in communications, traffic analysis can infer the imminence of such operations by watching the volume of traffic.
This kind of work, particularly in the early stages of a difficult cryptanalysis, is perhaps the most excruciating, exasperating, agonizing mental process known to man. For those few moments in time, the codebreakers held history in the palm of their hand. Never before or since has so much turned upon the solution of a secret message. No other single cryptanalysis has had such enormous consequences. Īnd so it came about that Room 40’s solution of an enemy message helped propel the United States into the First World War, enabling the Allies to win, and into world leadership, with all that that has entailed. The Far West blew up like a land mine at the mention of Japan. Texans blinked in astonishment: the Germans meant to give away their state! The Midwest, unmoved because untouched by the submarine issue, imagined a German-officered army crossing the Rio Grande and swung over to the side of the Allies. Suddenly, Americans in the middle of the continent who could not get excited about the distant poppings of a European war jerked awake in the realization that the war was at their border. This realization would both embarrass and anger the United States and would not conduce to pro-Allied feelings. It would not require much wit for the Americans to surmise that England might also be supervising the code telegrams of another neutral: the United States, which, like Sweden, was working as a messenger boy for the Germans and had, in fact, transmitted this very message.
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