The Code Book: The Science of Secrecy from Ancient Egypt to Quantum Cryptography

With the advent of new communication technology, the Second World War was the first major conflict that depended heavily on the use of intelligence. At the same time, there was an increasing contrast between the kind of intelligence that could be communicated via complex code in the comfort of war rooms and command stations on battleships and what was needed in the heat of battle. As one war correspondent put it, “When the fighting became confined to a small area, everything had to move on a split-second schedule. There was not time for enciphering and deciphering” (261).

In order to solve this problem, a creative solution was found by Philip Johnston: The use of very rare languages could be employed to great effect, specifically the language of the Navajo people who inhabited the reservations in the American southwest: “Fully aware of how impenetrable the language was for those outside the tribe, Johnston was struck by the notion that Navajo, or any other Native American language, could act as a virtually unbreakable code” (261).

After developing the idea and training a company of Navajo code talkers, they put the communication process to the test. They discovered that even with weeks of analysis, their own Navy code breakers could not crack the code.