) was a Finnish

Finland

Finland , officially the Republic of Finland, is a Nordic country situated in the Fennoscandian region of Northern Europe. It is bordered by Sweden in the west, Norway in the north and Russia in the east, while Estonia lies to its south across the Gulf of Finland.Around 5.4 million people reside...

 Colonel

Colonel

Colonel , abbreviated Col or COL, is a military rank of a senior commissioned officer. It or a corresponding rank exists in most armies and in many air forces; the naval equivalent rank is generally "Captain". It is also used in some police forces and other paramilitary rank structures...

 and developer and head of the Finnish Radio Intelligence

Finnish radio intelligence

The Finnish Radio Intelligence was founded in 1927 by Reino Hallamaa. He quickly managed to build up an efficient organization Through international exchange, and during World War II, the radio intelligence proved very successful in breaking the codes and ciphers used by the Soviet Union, as well...

 during World War II

World War II

World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...

.

Early life

Reino Henrik Hallamaa was born in Tampere in 1899 to Juha and Aino Hummelin. After attending college in Helsinki he began working for the Finnish railroad, where one of his tasks was to fill out package lists of cargo arriving from Russia. In 1917 he began working as a signals telegraphist at the Helsinki Central railway station

Helsinki Central railway station

Helsinki Central railway station is a widely recognised landmark in central Helsinki, Finland, and the focal point of public transport in the Greater Helsinki area. The station is used by approximately 200,000 passengers per day, making it Finland's most-visited building...

.

Military career

In 1918, Finland declared its independence, and the Finnish Civil War

Finnish Civil War

The Finnish Civil War was a part of the national, political and social turmoil caused by World War I in Europe. The Civil War concerned control and leadership of The Grand Duchy of Finland as it achieved independence from Russia after the October Revolution in Petrograd...

 erupted. Hallamaa joined the whites in Seinäjoki

Seinäjoki

Seinäjoki is a city located in Southern Ostrobothnia, Finland. Seinäjoki originated around the Östermyra bruk iron and gunpowder factories founded in 1798. Seinäjoki became a municipality in 1868, market town in 1931 and town in 1960...

. Here he was assigned to the Uudenmaan raakunapataljoona unit where he fought in the battles at Väärinmaja, Kuhmoinen

Kuhmoinen

Kuhmoinen is a municipality of Finland.It is located in the province of Western Finland and is part of the Central Finland region. The municipality has a population of and covers an area of of which is water...

, Tampere

Tampere

Tampere is a city in southern Finland. It is the most populous inland city in any of the Nordic countries. The city has a population of , growing to approximately 300,000 people in the conurbation and over 340,000 in the metropolitan area. Tampere is the third most-populous municipality in...

 and Lempäälä

Lempäälä

Lempäälä is a municipality in southwestern Finland with inhabitants . Lempäälä is located south of the city of Tampere. The municipality covers an area of of which is water...

. Hallamaa, now a lance corporal (korpraali), was transferred to the navy after the war, where he worked as a signalist. Later that year he was promoted to corporal (alikersantti) and assigned to Gogland where he was tasked with gathering information on naval traffic in the Gulf of Finland

Gulf of Finland

The Gulf of Finland is the easternmost arm of the Baltic Sea. It extends between Finland and Estonia all the way to Saint Petersburg in Russia, where the river Neva drains into it. Other major cities around the gulf include Helsinki and Tallinn...

 and Red Navy movements in perticular. He was listening to Soviet radio traffic along with Ragnvald Lind (later Ragnvalt Lautakari) who would continue to work in the radio intelligence under Hallamaa's lead. Hallamaa even managed to decipher some of the codes sent out by the Soviets. This awoke the interest in the higher military circles and Hallamaa was invited to come and hold a presentation on the work done at Gogland. Soon after, Hallamaa was appointed sergeant. He was now tasked with training radio operators and sent on trips to Kotka

Kotka

Kotka is a town and municipality of Finland. Its former name is Rochensalm.Kotka is located on the coast of the Gulf of Finland at the mouth of Kymi River and it is part of the Kymenlaakso region in southern Finland. The municipality has a population of and covers an area of of which is water....

 and Turku

Turku

Turku is a city situated on the southwest coast of Finland at the mouth of the Aura River. It is located in the region of Finland Proper. It is believed that Turku came into existence during the end of the 13th century which makes it the oldest city in Finland...

 to try to repair radio stations that had been left there by the Russians.

He was appointed warrant officer after graduation from the NCO

Non-commissioned officer

A non-commissioned officer , called a sub-officer in some countries, is a military officer who has not been given a commission...

 course in 1921 and was sent to the Radio Battalion in Santahamina

Santahamina

Santahamina is an island and neighbourhood of Eastern Helsinki, Finland. At present it is a military base housing the Guard Jaeger Regiment, making access restricted...

 and served as assistant chief for the Radio School. He held several lectures on codes and ciphers for higher officers in the 1920s. He was appointed lieutenant in 1925 and was sent to the Finnish National Defence University

Finnish National Defence University

The Finnish National Defence University is the Finnish Defence Forces' university located in Helsinki. The university trains officers for the Defence Forces and the Finnish Border Guard...

 in 1927.

After graduation, he was tasked with creating a Finnish radio intelligence organization. He received a stipend and began a series of travels to countries in Europe to study their SIGINT organizations. He travelled to Germany

Germany

Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...

, Austria

Austria

Austria , officially the Republic of Austria , is a landlocked country of roughly 8.4 million people in Central Europe. It is bordered by the Czech Republic and Germany to the north, Slovakia and Hungary to the east, Slovenia and Italy to the south, and Switzerland and Liechtenstein to the...

, Switzerland

Switzerland

Switzerland name of one of the Swiss cantons. ; ; ; or ), in its full name the Swiss Confederation , is a federal republic consisting of 26 cantons, with Bern as the seat of the federal authorities. The country is situated in Western Europe,Or Central Europe depending on the definition....

, Italy

Italy

Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...

, Czechoslovakia

Czechoslovakia

Czechoslovakia or Czecho-Slovakia was a sovereign state in Central Europe which existed from October 1918, when it declared its independence from the Austro-Hungarian Empire, until 1992...

 and Poland

Poland

Poland , officially the Republic of Poland , is a country in Central Europe bordered by Germany to the west; the Czech Republic and Slovakia to the south; Ukraine, Belarus and Lithuania to the east; and the Baltic Sea and Kaliningrad Oblast, a Russian exclave, to the north...

. He learned code and cipher theories from an Austrian Professor named Fiegl, and he also set up and intensive cooperation network with the Polish intelligence. He learned about radio direction finding vehicles in Italy and managed to get some to Finland.

Beginning from 1927, the newly created Finnish Radio Intelligence followed the movements and the radio traffic of the Soviet Red Fleet. The first Soviet Red Fleet codes were broken in 1934 and soon more followed, including foreign diplomatic codes. Hallamaa was appointed Captain in 1929 and Major in 1939.

Hallamaa published "Basic Enciphering" (Salakirjoitustaidon perusteet) in 1937 and this publication was used as a training manual within the Finnish Army. It was the first Finnish-language book on the subject.

World War II

At the beginning of the Winter War

Winter War

The Winter War was a military conflict between the Soviet Union and Finland. It began with a Soviet offensive on 30 November 1939 – three months after the start of World War II and the Soviet invasion of Poland – and ended on 13 March 1940 with the Moscow Peace Treaty...

, Reino Hallamaa worked as the chief of the intelligence unit. On November 29, 1939, the unit intercepted and deciphered a message, which ordered the attack on Finland. Later on in the war, the intelligence managed to gather information on Soviet troop movements near Suomussalmi

Suomussalmi

Suomussalmi is a municipality in Finland and is located in the Kainuu region. The municipality has a population of and covers an area of of which is water. The population density is . The municipality is unilingually Finnish...

 and warned Colonel Hjalmar Siilasvuo, who managed to defeat the Soviet 44th Division at the Raattee road. The radio intelligence also relayed information on encircled Soviet units, helping the Finnish commanders in their decisions where and when to attack. By giving Soviet codes to the Swedish radio intelligence, the Finns received much needed equipment for radio intelligence. Similar deals were also struck with other nations.

Hallamaa was appointed Lieutenant Colonel in 1941 and became commander of the HQ Radio Battalion. The Finnish radio intelligence managed to decipher 80% of Soviet radio traffic during the attack phase of the Continuation War

Continuation War

The Continuation War was the second of two wars fought between Finland and the Soviet Union during World War II.At the time of the war, the Finnish side used the name to make clear its perceived relationship to the preceding Winter War...

. The advancing Finns also managed to come across some Russian code books. When the Soviets switched to another code, that had previously been used in the Far East, the Finns broke the code quite quickly, as they had received heaps of encoded Soviet radio messages from the Japanese. Hallamaa was awarded with the Iron Cross

Iron Cross

The Iron Cross is a cross symbol typically in black with a white or silver outline that originated after 1219 when the Kingdom of Jerusalem granted the Teutonic Order the right to combine the Teutonic Black Cross placed above a silver Cross of Jerusalem....

 first class after the Finnish radio intelligence had intercepted and deciphered a message resulting in the precise travel plan of the British convoy PQ-18. Attacks by the German Luftwaffe

Luftwaffe

Luftwaffe is a generic German term for an air force. It is also the official name for two of the four historic German air forces, the Wehrmacht air arm founded in 1935 and disbanded in 1946; and the current Bundeswehr air arm founded in 1956....

 exacted a heavy toll on the supply convoy.

The Finns also worked on other countries codes and ciphers, cracking for instance the US STRIP code, as well as Brazilian, Portuguese, Romanian, Serbian, Vatican, and Vichy French codes.

Hallamaa was promoted colonel in 1944 and, at this point heading an organization that had grown from 75 to 1,000 during the war. The Air Force, which had its own radio intelligence organization had another 300 men decrypting Soviet Air Force radio traffic.

Stella Polaris

As a preparation for a Soviet attack in mid-1944, Hallamaa, along with Aladar Paasonen

Aladár Paasonen

Colonel Aladár Antero Zoltán Béla Gyula Arpád Paasonen , known as Aladár Paasonen, was a Finnish military officer who served as Chief of Intelligence of the Finnish Defence Forces during the Continuation War, and later in the CIA.Paasonen was born in Budapest, Hungary, son of...

, who was Chief of Intelligence, began drawing up plans for Operation Stella Polaris

Operation Stella Polaris

Operation Stella Polaris was the cover name for activity in which Finnish signals intelligence records, equipment and personnel were transported into Sweden after the ending of the Continuation war in 1944...

 - the secret transfer of material and men to Sweden in case of a Soviet take-over of the country. The operation was funded by selling of the work (codes, ciphers, decoded material etc.) to the intelligence organizations of at least the United States, Japan and Sweden. The U.S. Office of Strategic Services

Office of Strategic Services

The Office of Strategic Services was a United States intelligence agency formed during World War II. It was the wartime intelligence agency, and it was a predecessor of the Central Intelligence Agency...

 bought material in secrecy, informing only the U.S. President, but not the U.S. State Department.

They also planned to set up a secret radio movement in the case of a Soviet invasion. These would use both domestically designed light-weight radios, as well as captured radios. The Swedish contact person for the Stella Polaris operation was the Chief of the Swedish intelligence Carl Petersén

Carl Petersen

Carl Petersen was a Danish politician, representing the Social Democratic Party in Parliament . He served as Minister for Public Works in 1945, Traffic Minister from 1947 to 1950 and again from 1953 to 1955, Minister for Agriculture in 1950, and Interior Minister of Denmark from 30 August 1955 to...

.

The operation was initiated in September 1944 on orders from Hallamaa. About 350 wooden boxes were transferred by ship to Sweden, along with some 700-800 men who had worked with the radio intelligence, and their families. As the Soviet invasion failed to materialize, the majority of the Finns returned home, but only after destroying all intelligence records that had not been sold.

After the war, Hallamaa decided to leave Finland. On 8 February 1945 he travelled via Sweden to France, where he worked in the French intelligence. He decided to move to Spain when the Soviets began putting pressure on France to hand him over. He settled with his family in Costa del Sol

Costa del Sol

The Costa del Sol is a region in the south of Spain, in the autonomous community of Andalusia, comprising the coastal towns and communities along the Mediterranean coastline of the Málaga province. The Costa del Sol is situated between two lesser known costas: Costa de la Luz and Costa Tropical...

 in 1947 and began using the name Ricardo Palma. He started up a construction company with his son and retired at the age of 70. He died at the age of 80 in 1979 in Churrina, where he also is buried.

Literature

• Karhunen Joppe: Reino Hallamaan salasanomasotaa
• Manninen, Ohto & Liene, Timo: Stella Polaris, suomalaista sotilastiedustelua, Helsinki, 2002, ISBN 951-37-3645-8
• Pale, Erkki: Suomen radiotiedustelu vuosina 1927-1944
• Rislakki, Jukka: Erittäin salainen - vakoilu Suomessa. Love-kirjat 1982
• Hallamaa, R. H.: Salakirjoitustaidon perusteet, own publication 1937.

Sources

• Radiotiedustelun synty Suomessa
• Robert Brantberg: Eversti Reino Hallamaa