Black (code)
Code used by US military attachés in early World War II
The Black Code (more formally, Military Intelligence Code No. 11) was a secret code used by US military attachés in the early period of World War II. The nickname derived from the color of the superencipherment tables/codebook binding. The code was compromised by Axis intelligence, the information leak costing a great many British lives.
Theft of the Black Code
Unknown to the U.S. government, details of the Black code were stolen from the U.S. embassy in Italy by Italian spies in September 1941. Embassy worker Loris Gherardi took copies of the embassy keys. These were passed on to the Italian Military Intelligence Service, who were able to break in, copy, and replace the documents.
The Italians did not pass on the full code to the Chiffrierabteilung, their German counterparts, only providing limited information such as decoded American messages. However, the limited information still assisted the Germans in their own independent efforts and they too were able to crack the Black Code. Beginning in mid-December 1941 Germany was able to read the reports of Bonner Fellers, U.S. military attaché in Cairo.
Fellers' radiograms provided detailed information about troop movements and equipment to the Axis.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Black (code)” is code used by US military attachés in early World War II. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Black, code and Code, not as a finished interpretation.
Why this record matters
The phrase “code used by US military attachés in early World War II” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.
Chronology, provenance and viewpoint should be read together before a broad social or political interpretation is accepted. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jun 8, 2023. The linked authority identifier is Q18204578. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1941.
Institutional narratives can privilege the records that survived while minimizing voices that were never formally collected. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
How to read it
Compare institutional narratives with records created by participants and affected communities. Dates and formal titles are useful anchors, but not substitutes for context.
- Event chronology
- Institutional context
- Locating named record creators
Contemporary correspondence, government or organizational records, oral histories and cited historical scholarship.
Three-step research path
- Establish the record: confirm the title “Black (code)”, its source revision and the description used here.
- Expand the search: follow Black (code) primary sources, Black (code) archive and Black research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
- Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.
Questions for further research
- Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Black (code)”?
- Which voices are present, absent or mediated by the institution?
- Who created the surviving record, and for what administrative purpose?
Search terms from this dossier
This entry incorporates text from “Black (code)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.