Did Germany learn that Britain had broken its naval codes and used them at Jutland?
Short answerGerman explanations focused on spies in the fleet, Admiralty, or dockyards and failed to recognize that high-power radio transmissions and compromised codes revealed deployments.
NotesThe Imperial German Navy did not correctly identify British naval codebreaking as the source of repeated forewarning. German explanations instead moved among spies inside the fleet, the Admiralty, and dockside communities watching ships depart. Those theories focused attention on human betrayal. They did not ask whether powerful radio transmissions made operations detectable or whether Britain was reading the traffic itself. An organization can investigate security failures repeatedly while preserving the wrong model of how information is leaking.