Customer Reviews

Hitler's Japanese Confidant: General Oshima Hiroshi and MAGIC Intelligence, 1941-1945

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Carl Boyd has produced an exceptionally lucid and revealing book that traces U.S. decoding attack on Berlin-Tokyo radio communications of Gen. Oshima Hiroshi, Japanese Ambassdor to the Third Reich, and its impact on the outcome of WWII. According to Boyd, these decoded diplomatic messages, known in the U.S. and Great Britain as MAGIC, were pivotal in Allied decision-making at critical junctures during the war. The author contends that, because the British were unable to read the secret communications of the top Nazi leadership, MAGIC filled a crucial gap in British ULTRA message decoding efforts. According to Boyd, Oshima was covertly converted into "an inadvertent informer of incalculable importance in leading the Allies to victory." Because Oshima had a very close personal relationship with Hitler and foreign minister von Ribbentropp, had their trust and respect, and had access to their higest level secrets, his MAGIC decoded radio messages were especially revealing and valuable for Allied planners. His military experience and analytical abilities also made his detailed characterizations of the disposition and condition of German forces in Europe and on the eastern front especially enlightening to the Allies and critical to planning for Operation OVERLORD. Boyd observes that "The margin of success on the Normandy beaches was narrow, but MAGIC and Anglo-American cooperation made the difference." Boyd's book is the first detailed account of Oshima's role as a primary source of Allied wartime intelligence through MAGIC. He draws heavily on declassified National Security Agency documents recently released to the National Archives. There is more, however, to this story of decoding covertly collected enemy radio intercepts that remains classified, especially in the British archives, which won't be declassified for more than twenty years. This is a thoroughly documented, superbly written, and rich account of the application of communications intelligence during WWII. It should be a stimulating read for all serious WWII historians and an entertaining read for all others.

This is an account of a circumstance that I suspect most World War II buffs are at least vaguely aware of: the fact that since the Japanese codes were compromised by the Allies even before the war, the Allies got a lot of information on German high-level strategy and diplomatic thinking through the intercepted communiques that the Japanese ambassador to Berlin sent back to Tokyo, informing his masters what the Germans were intending. "Hitler's Japanese Confidant" by Carl Boyd outlines what the messages contained, and the information that the Allies gleaned therefrom, and in turn what actions they took as a result, in considerable detail.

Oshima Hiroshi (the name arranged in the Japanese style with the family name first, unlike in the title of Boyd's first book on him) was a general in the Japanese army who served as ambassador (with a short break early in the war) throughout the conflict. He was an enthusiastic supporter of Naziism and the Nazi cause, and spent much of the war advocating a Japanese attack on the Soviet Union, for instance (Stalingrad finally persuaded him this was a bad idea). He spent much of the war repeating to Tokyo Hitler's optimistic pronouncements about the progress of the war and the state of his allies and enemies. As the war progressed, Oshima became a bit skeptical of Hitler's opinions, but only a bit: towards the end he was still an optimist at heart.

This book is fairly interesting, though the author has a lot of information to convey and he's not going to win any awards for gracious prose. Most of the book consists of synopses of the various messages that were intercepted and translated, and a discussion of what occurred as a result. This means the heart of the book is an account of the high-level decision-making process during the war, with a special emphasis on these messages and their impact on those decisions. This is very interesting, and very detailed. The author conveys a lot of information here concisely.

I enjoyed this book, and felt I learned a good deal from it. I would recommend it to anyone reading about this subject seriously, but this book isn't for the casual reader.