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Hitler's Japanese Confidant

General Oshima Hiroshi and MAGIC Intelligence, 1941–1945

Carl Boyd

Foreword by Peter Paret

xxii, 272 pages, 2 maps, 25 photographs, 6 x 9
Modern War Studies
Paper ISBN 978-0-7006-1189-8, $19.95

Book Cover ImageIn 1940 the U.S. Army Signal Intelligence Service broke the Japanese diplomatic code. In 1975 Oshima Hiroshi, Japan's ambassador to Berlin during World War II, died, never knowing that the hundreds of messages he transmitted to Tokyo had been fully decoded by the Americans and whisked off to Washington, providing a major source of information for the Allies on Nazi activities.

Resurrecting Oshima's decoded communications, which had remained classified for several decades, Carl Boyd provides a unique look at the Nazis from the perspective of a close foreign observer and ally. He uses Oshima's own words to reveal the thought and strategies of Adolf Hitler and other high-ranking Nazis, with whom Oshima associated.

In addition to providing illuminating insight into Nazi activities and attitudes--military buildup in North Africa, the unwillingness to accept a separate peace with the Soviets--Boyd illustrates the functions of MAGIC. He demonstrates how that intelligence, gathered by teams of American cryptographers, influenced Allied strategy and helped bring about the downfall of Hitler and his Japanese confidant.

"A fascinating study. To read it is comparable to having been "inside the loop" during the critical years when MAGIC was unraveling the secrets of Japan's diplomatic communications."--R. J. C. Butow, author of Japan's Decision to Surrender

"In 1944, U.S. Army Chief of Staff George C. Marshall declared that 'our main basis of information regarding Hitler's intentions in Europe is obtained from Baron Oshima's messages from Berlin.' Carl Boyd reveals how the Allies got that intelligence and used it to help win World War II."--David Kahn, author of The Codebreakers

"Every student of the history of the present century, in which the war of 1939-45 formed so crucial a part, must read this-and one uses the word advisedly-definitive account."--Robert H. Ferrell, author of American Diplomacy: The Twentieth Century

"Offers new insight into the otherwise obscure story of how American ability to penetrate Japanese codes provided unique valuable knowledge of German military plans and capabilities."--Stanley L. Falk, author of Seventy Days to Singapore

"An extremely valuable work. It clears up many puzzles, and it helps to make understandable how high-level communications intelligence was used in Washington during World War II."--Ernest R. May, author of Imperial Democracy: The Emergence of America as a Great Power

"This book will have a special place in the story of the war in Europe and also in that of the wartime relations of Germany and Japan, which has been much neglected."--Harold C. Deutsch, author of The Conspiracy Against Hitler in the Twilight War

CARL BOYD is professor and graduate program director of history at Old Dominion University. He is the author of The Extraordinary Envoy: General Hiroshi Oshima and Diplomacy in the Third Reich, 1934–1939 and numerous journal articles on communications intelligence in World War II.