U.S. Army Signals Intelligence In World War II; A Documentary History

Washington DC: United States Army, Center Of Military History, 1993. First Printing [Stated]. Trade paperback. Good. xii, 237, [3] pages. Illustrations. Appendixes [Chronology, Glossary, Dictionary of People, Places, and Terms]. Typo on page xii. Announcement of Publication, 4 pages, folded in half and stapled at the upper left corner, printed on one side laid in. A printed "A Book for Review" card, printed on one side, laid in. Cover has wear around the edges. Corners of some early pages slightly bent. Some ink marks and notations present on verso only. Much of the intelligence obtained by the United States during World War II came from intercepting and deciphering the most secret communications of adversaries. Now, much of the story can at last be told. Book includes 16 pages of added pictures plus a complete added personality index of all names mentioned in the text. For forty years, James L. Gilbert served as the military historian responsible for documenting the role played by intelligence in peacetime and war. He is credited with directing the publication of a series of official histories that traced the development of military intelligence. John Patrick Finnegan graduated magna cum laude from Boston College in 1957. After a period of employment with the National Security Agency and military service in the U.S, Army Counter Intelligence Corps, he received a Ph.D. in History from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Dr. Finnegan taught at several American universities and worked as a military historian at the U.S. Army Center of Military History. He is the author of Against the Specter of a Dragon: The Campaign Army Lineage Series: Military Intelligence for American Military Preparedness, 1914-1917. U.S. Army Signals Intelligence in World War II preserves the memory of the Army's role in what was perceived as a signals intelligence war. The availability of superb military intelligence was central but heretofore unheralded because of security considerations. With the security barriers now lifted, James L. Gilbert and John P. Finnegan have selected a representative body of tantalizing documents generated by various U.S. Army cryptologic organizations in an effort to acknowledge their contributions to the American victory in World War II. Conceived as part of the Army historical community's commemoration of the fiftieth anniversary of World War II, Gilbert's and Finnegan's fine work not only alerts the public to the existence of a relatively unexplored mass of historical documentation but also honors the signal veterans whose esprit de corps made it possible for the mission to succeed.