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In many ways, World War II is considered to have been a golden age of warfare. Without the ethical ambiguity of the Vietnam or Middle Eastern conflicts, relatively clear heroes and villains could emerge from the chaos, making World War II a popular subject for storytelling. Of course, for enthusiasts, the tools used in this enormous conflict are also of vital interest. Some of these tools were radio transmitters and receivers. Radio technology played two major roles in World War II. First, great speeches were transmitted via radio to build the morale of the public, and gather support for the war effort. Second, encoded radio transmissions were an essential part of spy-craft and information warfare. Britain’s superior mastery of this spy-radio technology was a major contributing factor in the allied victory.
Radio broadcasts offered a sterling opportunity for leaders to build up the morale of their people. Families who lived on meager rations and obediently followed blackout to avoid being bombed would crowd around their radios for these stirring messages full of news and encouragement. As far as encoded radio transmissions went, there was a constant competition to understand the other side’s transmissions. The most striking thing about the battle of the code breakers is that Germain overconfidence was Britain’s greatest asset. Britain cracked Germany’s radio codes relatively early on, and was able to listen to a great volume of encrypted radio traffic with perfect clarity. To be fair, they didn’t always know what they were reading from the radio traffic. Germany, on the other hand, believed their codes to be absolutely invincible, and took an extremely long time to catch on to what British intelligence called their most secret sources. The necessity of keeping ahead of code breaking technology in order to deal with the ongoing stream of encrypted radio traffic also lead to some important breakthroughs in computing and other technology.
