Radio Kills: Rommel’s 621st Radio Intercept Company

You know life is rough when you welcome British food. But Captain Alfred Seebohm, commander of the German Afrika Korps’ 621st Radio Intercept Company, traded for cans of bully beef whenever he could. His focus in life was British military radio traffic, so why not eat their food, too? Seebohm’s 621st was a set of ears for his commander, Lieutenant General (later Field Marshal) Erwin Rommel. Rommel needed to know who he was fighting, where they were, what they were planning to do, when they would do it, and how they would do so. Not surprisingly, his British-led opponents did not want him to know any of these things. He needed intelligence—men from different disciplines trying to learn who, where, what, when, and how. Seebohm was not Rommel’s only ears. The German Cipher Branch could read the U.S. State Department’s Black Code. Cipher Branch decrypted the reports of the U.S. military attaché in Cairo detailing the British situation in North Africa and shared them with Rommel. But hearing is...