Analysis shows WWII codebreakers missed Nazi camps

[dArKeR]

Coded Nazi messages intercepted by Britain could have exposed the scope of the Holocaust years before the liberation of the death camps, but Allied codebreakers failed to fully understand the information they had, according to US government analysis of intelligence from the era.
In what is being likened to the intelligence failures before the September 11 attacks, German military and police communications from as early as 1941 provided lurid but fragmentary accounts of the massacres and deportations, and later even statistics on the numbers killed in concentration camps.

According to the report titled Eavesdropping on Hell, by Robert Hanyok, a historian with the National Security Agency's center for cryptologic history, British and US efforts to sort evidence were hampered by case backlogs and a shortage of translators, as well as the two allies' reluctance to share information about German communications.

http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/world/archives/2005/08/02/2003266104

[wli]

1. is this recent? I seem to remember hearing this ages ago

I'm not sure how long ago "ages ago" is but it's at least 5 years.

[Historic NY]

2. Only a small fraction of all messages were read and fully decoded......

they concentrated on, names, places, troops that were familiar or repeated themselves over & over. Basically they only were able to decode a few words in each intercept and if it wasn't of interest it was placed on the side.