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During World {{nowrap|War II}}, Friedman's Coast Guard unit was transferred to the Navy where they were the principal U.S. source of intelligence on [[Operation Bolívar]], the clandestine German network in [[South America]]. Prior to the Japanese [[attack on Pearl Harbor]] that brought the U.S. into the war, there was concern that Germany could eventually attack the U.S. via Latin America. The Nazi authorities also saw Latin America as a potential opportunity to out flank the U.S. While the [[FBI]] was given responsibility for countering this threat, at the time, the one U.S. agency with staff experienced in detecting and monitoring clandestine spy transmissions was the Coast Guard, due to its earlier work against smugglers,<ref name=Unit387-Memo-1943 /> and Friedman’s team was its sole cryptoanalytic asset.
Friedman’s team remained the primary U.S. code breakers assigned to the South American threat and they solved numerous cipher systems used by the Germans and their local sympathizers, including three separate [[Enigma machine]]s. One turned out to be an unrelated Swiss network, but the other two were used by [[Johannes Siegfried Becker]] (codename: ’’Sargo’’), the SS agent who headed the operation, to communicate with Germany. Regarding Becker, biographer [[Jason Fagone]] states: “Elizebeth was his nemesis. She successfully tracked him where every other law enforcement agency and intelligence agencies failed. She did what the FBI could not do.”<ref name="Time2021" /> After the spy ring was broken, Argentina, Bolivia and Chile broke with the [[Axis powers]] and supported the [[Allies of World War II|Allies]].<ref name="Time2021" />
Over the course of the war, Friedman’s team decoded 4,000 messages sent on 48 different radio circuits.<ref name= fagone2017 />{{rp|197–202}} The work of Friedman's Unit 387 (Coast Guard Cryptanalytic Unit) was often in support of the FBI and [[J. Edgar Hoover]], and was not always credited.<ref name=Unit387-Memo-1943 /> At the end of World War II, Hoover began a public media campaign claiming that the FBI led the code-breaking effort that resulted in the collapse and arrest of the German spy network in South America. This effort included a story in ''The American Magazine'' titled "How the Nazi Spy Invasion Was Smashed" and a publicity film called ''The Battle of the United States.'' Neither mentioned Friedman or the Coast Guard.<ref name= "Time2021" /><ref name= fagone2017 />{{rp|299–300}}
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Friedman had signed an oath with the U.S. Navy promising to keep her role in World War II secret until her death, and she did so. It was not until 2008 that the documents were finally declassified.<ref name= "Time2021" />
In 2017, after three years researching information about the Friedmans in their personal papers and declassified U.S. and British government files, Jason Fagone published a biography entitled ''The Woman Who Smashed Codes: A True Story of Love, Spies, and the Unlikely Heroine who Outwitted America’s Enemies''.<ref name= fagone2017/>{{rp|xiii-xiv}}
In April 2019, the [[United States Senate|U.S. Senate]] passed a resolution "Honoring the life and legacy of Elizebeth Smith Friedman, Cryptanalyst".<ref>https://www.wyden.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/Resolution%20Honoring%20Elizebeth%20Smith%20Friedman.pdf {{Bare URL PDF|date=March 2022}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.wyden.senate.gov/news/press-releases/senate-passes-wyden-fischer-resolution-recognizing-wwii-codebreaker-elizebeth-friedman|title=Senate Passes Wyden-Fischer Resolution Recognizing WWII Codebreaker Elizebeth Friedman|date=2019-04-02|website=wyden.senate.gov|access-date=2019-04-06}}</ref>
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