MISTY Mystery Tour

German communication
cable is disconnected

On the year that marked the beginning of World War 1, England advanced ahead of Germany when the British cable ship Teleconia hauled up Germany's underwater cables used for overseas communications. That left the Germans with no choice but communication through international cables and radio transmission. In order to protect themselves from their enemies, Germany encrypted all of their communication. In response, England established a specialized organization that was dedicated to deciphering these messages.

Secret Agent H21
Mata Hari executed

The exotic dancer, Mata Hari, achieved great success in the cities of Berlin and Paris. In accordance with her rise in fame and success, she began to participate in social gatherings among the upper class and the French Intelligence Office commissioned her as a spy to Germany. At a certain point, however, it is said that Mata Hari turned her back on France to become a double agent for Germany, but there is still no concrete evidence to prove this theory.

The key to capturing this female spy, regarded as the "spy of the century" by the French, lay in the deciphering of an encryption. In a message between German military personnel in Madrid and Berlin, the cryptographers in the British Admiralty (a.k.a. Room 40) discovered instructions for Secret Agent H21. The French army received word from the English and tracked down Secret Agent H21, who turned out to be Mata Hari. She was captured and executed as a German spy in 1917.

Zimmerman Telegram

There are times when history takes a sudden turn as a result of codes being broken, as in the case of German Foreign Secretary Arthur Zimmerman. In 1917, Germany made the final decision to enter into war with its allies, while Zimmerman planned a scheme to prevent the United States from participating in the European conflict. His plan was to offer German support for a Mexican and Japanese invasion of the United States. Zimmerman's plans were foiled when the British Admiralty intercepted and deciphered an encrypted telegram sent to the German embassy in Mexico.

To keep mum about English involvement in deciphering the message, they sent a plain-text message to the United States with the understanding that the deciphering was carried out by Americans.

This incident led to the U.S. declaration of war on Germany.

ADFGX Cipher


In 1918, a communications unit in the French army intercepted German radio communications that suddenly transformed to a combination of only 5 letters. This was the ADFGX cipher invented by Colonel Fritz Nebel. The ADFGX cipher is compiled by a 5 x 5 checkerboard in which 1 original letter is represented by 2 letters. The letters ADFGX index the rows and columns, and then random letters of the alphabet are placed in the grid (i and j occupy the same square). In Morse code the sounds produced for the letters ADFGX are very distinctive from each other, so they were chosen to reduce the likelihood of transmission errors. "MISTY" encrypted into ADFGX would read, "FDDGGFGGXG".