Treasure hunt for World War 1 code book
German ship sunk off Estonian island of Osmussaar proved a gold mine for allied intelligence
By Jukka Rislakki
"This is a fulfilment of one of my dreams", sighs Dr. David Kahn, his face dripping with perspiration, as we drop our backpacks in the heather. "I have always wanted to visit Osmussaar".
Why would a 76-year-old historian from New York who walks with a limp want to slog for hours in the heat in terrain full of juniper bushes?
What brought him to Estonia's 14th-largest island is perhaps the most famous code book of military espionage history.
It is significant that we arrived on the island on August the 26th. Russian warships coming from ports in Finland fired on the German cruiser, the Magdeburg, in the early part of the First World War on the 26th of August, 1914 in the waters off Osmussaar.
From the deck of the destroyed ship, the enemy was able to snatch the code book of the Imperial Navy.
The Magdeburg had been built in 1912. She was nearly 140 metres long, and armed with 12 cannons.
The ship had left Memel to lay mines in the mouth of the Gulf of Finland. In the dark and foggy night, the ship ran aground, because the waters of Osmussaar are very rocky. It tried to lighten its load and back off the reef. Another ship also tried to pull it free, but to no avail.
According to an Estonian book on the subject, Russian torpedo boats and cruisers rushed to the scene from the Finnish port of Hanko and Paldiski in Estonia. They accidentally started firing at each other. When visibility improved, they saw the mistake, and the guns were directed at the Magdeburg.
The captain of the ship, Richard Habenicht, ordered that the cruiser be scuttled. The evacuation was a panicky one, and not all papers were destroyed. Some of the Germans were killed, some escaped, and some were taken prisoner and taken all the way to Siberia. This helped keep the events a secret.
On the ship, the Russians found a copy of the main code book of the German Navy.
Admiral Nikolai von Essen, commander of the Russian Baltic Fleet, gave the book to Russia's ally, the British Admiralty - but only after the pages were photographed.Winston Churchill, the First Lord of the Admiralty at the time, wrote in his book The World in Crisis, that the code book had been taken from a low-ranking officer who had died in the water.
"The book was certainly not in the water. It is currently in London at the Public Record Office. I have held it in my hands, and it is in good condition", Kahn says.
"It is big and heavy, bound in metal covers. In fact, it was taken from beneath a pile of shirts in the closet of the captain's cabin, according to an account by prisoners of war, which I have seen."
Kahn is familiar with the book Das Geheimnis der "Magdeburg" ("The Secret of the Magdeburg") by Matti E. Mäkelä, which was written in 1984, but he feels that it contains some inaccuracies, due to missing archive information.
The Magdeburg case saw the beginning of cooperation between the British and Russians in the cracking of enemy codes. Both are said to have used this code book for the reading of German messages. In a few weeks they had discovered how the codes had been made more difficult to crack, by adding new components. With the help of the naval code, the British were also able to break the German diplomatic code.
"The Germans might have suspected something, but it was a mistake for them not to stop using the code book. They simply added some components to the code and thought that it would be enough. That kind of wishful thinking is very human. Nobody wants to start rewriting such a large new book without a very good reason."
In much the same way, the United States National Security Agency managed to decipher messages of the Soviet intelligence service after the Second World War, because the Soviets carelessly used wartime codes.
"Throughout history, not a single war or great battle had been won with the help of reconnaissance information", Kahn explains. "This changed with the First World War, when radio came into use. Then it was possible to get reliable information fast about the enemy's intentions."
In the Second World War the British knew what to look for. They took German Enigma coding machines from captured submarines. Cracking the Enigma code had important implications for the war at sea.
Kahn is a renowned expert in cryptology - the cracking of codes. Books that he has written include The Codebreakers - a tome of nearly 1,200 pages, which has sold 80,000 copies in 40 years.
Kahn admits that the book does not mention the achievements of Finnish radio reconnaissance.
"I plan to correct this for the next edition. I interviewed Erkki Pale on many occasions before his death, and I corresponded with Reino Hallamaa, who lived in Spain". Pale was a mathematician, and a skilful breaker of codes. Hallamaa was an officer who led Finnish radio reconnaissance, and at the end of the Continuation War, the reconnaissance department of the Military Headquarters.
Our guide on the island is a high-school student, Carmen Koppel, whose grandparents are the only year-round residents of the island.
The old lighthouse has collapsed on the beach, which has been eaten away by the waves. On the outermost peninsula, by the new lighthouse, Kahn and Miss Koppel reach agreement. "Over there!", they say, pointing west, to the sea.
During the Second World War the Germans cut up the metal parts of the wreck for the needs of their war industry.
Russian war history buffs claim that the massive metal cylinder sticking out of the water is the boiler of the Magdeburg, which was brought to shore by a storm.
They say that the other remnants of the wreckage are about three kilometres away.
The occupying army left the island in 1992, and today it is a protected area open to the public. Thousands of soldiers served on the island. Relics of the Russian army can be seen everywhere - bunkers, towers, caves, foundations for heavy artillery. Some of the tunnels are under water, and the Estonians have not studied them.
The Germans, the Finns, and the Estonians took the island without a fight in 1941.
On our way back I get the answer to the question that cannot be avoided: no, Kahn says he has not read Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code. "I tried, but already at the beginning I ran into bad English, and so I stopped."
Helsingin Sanomat / First published in print 5.9.2006
Helsingin Sanomat
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| 12.9.2006 - THIS WEEK |
 Treasure hunt for World War 1 code book |
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