Who cracked the enigma code?

[stona]

An elegant monument in Poznan to the three Polish mathematicians who REALLY broke the Enigma code.

A fitting tribute to a great effort but maybe you should go back and read the rest of the thread. We should stick with the facts not a nice story suitable for Hollywood.

The Poles were reading commercial traffic and what they called German Enigma by 1938. Rejewski later said that they could read 75% of this traffic. Unfortunately for the Poles at this time, as war was coming, the Germans added another two wheels to their machines. The operator now chose three out of five wheels on which to make his settings. This raised the bar too high for the Polish methods and they never read another message after this. In other words they never read a single 'Enigma' message after 1938, so none during the war.

What they did do, in July 1939, with the invasion of Poland imminent, was to share their Enigma results with the French and British code breakers. At a meeting in the Kabackie Woods near Pyry just outside Warsaw they gave all their results (including details of their 'Cyclometers', 'Bombas' and 'Zygalski sheets') to the British and French. I for one gladly acknowledge this important contribution.

It is not correct to say that these three Poles 'REALLY broke the Enigma code'. They did some ground breaking work which certainly helped their later allies to break German war time codes encrypted by Enigma machines (machines which continued to develop after the addition of the wheels that stymied the Poles). It took hundreds of very clever people working with thousands of others backed to the hilt by the British (and later US) governments to really break into the German codes. It was an amazing achievement.

Those who say that the Germans were foolish or arrogant to imagine their codes to be unbreakable have no concept of just how difficult it was to get in to them. There is a lesson there which should be well heeded in our times of mass digital communication.

Cheers

Steve

 

[parsifal]

what happened to the Polish team that laid this groundwork. I read somewhere that the first clues came from foreign workers that actually made the machines. From those very early observations, the poles were able to deduce the basic workings of the commercial grade enigma.

Why did the Germans not examine more closely the secret papers of the French and the Poles after these countries were overrun? One would think that surely there might be some scrap of evidence left behind somewhere to give the germans at least a clue that people were onto their secret stuff as well. Obviously they (the Germans) didnt cotton onto what was happening....

 

[stona]

I know that three of the original 1932 team (Jerzy Rozycki, Henryk Zygalski and Marian Rejewski ) made it to France (I think via Romania oddly) in 1939 where they joined Gustave Bertrand and his French code breakers at Chateau Vignolles, outside Paris.
I'd have to look up their subsequent fates which is tricky since all my books are at home and I'm in Leipzig! Bertrand continued his work in the Vichy governed zone. He wrote a book about his career called 'Enigma ou la plus grande énigme de la guerre 1939-1945'. It was published long after the war but I don't know if it was ever translated into English. As a French speaker I can say the title is a play on words which doesn't work in English

The Franco-Polish information which led to their understanding of the machines came from Hans-Thilo Schmidt, codenamed "Asché" by the French.He was an employee at the German Armed Forces' Cryptographic Agency. It was this information which Bertrand ('Bolek' to the Poles) gave to the Polish Cypher Bureau in 1932.

It is important once again to avoid 'Hollywood history'. The mathematicians working on this were largely, though not all Polish but it was a Franco-Polish operation.

Nigel West has Schmidt as one of his seven spies who changed the world. Schmidt was arrested in 1943 having been given up by his own case officer when he was arrested. He died in captivity in September that year, possibly by his own hand.

Cheers

Steve

 

[v2]

Enigma

 

[stona]

That is a very over simplified account. It doesn't even mention Schmidt without whose information, passed to the Poles by the French, none of this would have been possible.

Some of it is simply incorrect. .

"The Germans made frequent changes to the Enigma, but the Poles kept up every step of the way, deciphering every message-sometimes succeeding with only luck and imagination."

No they didn't. After 1938 they didn't break any messages encoded by the latest machines.

"From 1940 to 1945 the Polish success rate skyrocketed - from decoding a few hundred messages to over 9,000 messages."

Where were they doing this, under German occupation? Between 1940 and 1945 the technical means to break into Enigma encoded cyphers did not exist in Poland. It only existed in the UK and later USA.

Don't believe everything that you read on the internet.

I'm sure that various publications will, quite correctly, credit the Poles with the first successes against Enigma. This however....

"Since the end of the war, there emerged a staunch refusal by the British to even acknowledge the contribution made by the Poles to the Enigma. British records which might have attested to this fact mysteriously disappeared or were destroyed. Some attribute this stonewalling to a sense of rivalry experienced by the British Intelligence."

Is nonsense.

"In volume 5 of "British Intelligence in the Second World War" only a passing was made to the fact that the Poles intercepted and deciphered German messages about the V-1 and V-2 rocket plant at Peenemunde".

I don't what this about. The German programme started life at Kummersdorff but in the autumn of 1939 Heeresversuchsstelle Peenemünde (HVP) was fully staffed after the transfer of the remaining personnel from Kummersdorff to Peenemunde. Is it referring to something the Poles deciphered before the war?

Cheers

Steve

 

[Wurger]

The info from Hans-Thilo Schmidt, codenamed "Asché" was given to Poles because it was found valueless by the French Secret Service. All Polish works on the breaking of the Enigma code were our own works without any foreign cooperation. In 1939 Polish Intelligence decided to share the secret with French and English Secret Services. One of the reason for that was the financial matter. In 1939 Germans changed the Enigma coding way and the development of the decoding system was needed. Taking the very meagre budged of the Polish Cipher Bureau into consideration Poles just couldn't afford that. On the 25th July 1939 in Pyry near Warsaw each of British and French representatives of Secret Services was given with a full set of the Polish Enigma and records.
Dispite of the meagre budged Poles continued farther works untill the German invasion in the September 1939. After the campaign Polish cryptologists and other people involved were evacuated to France via Romania. In France they resumed work on German ciphers at a joint French-Polish-Spanish radio-intelligence unit stationed at Gretz-Armainvillers, forty kilometers northeast of Paris, and housed in the Château de Vignolles (code-named "Bruno"). After the Germany's victory in the Battle of France Poles were evacuated to Algieria. In September 1940 they returned to work in secret in unoccupied southern (Vichy) France at a radio intelligence station at the Château des Fouzes near Uzès, code-named "Cadix". The German occupation of the Vichy France in 1942 resulted in the order to evacuate Cadix and this was done by 9 November...

Jerzy Różycki - died in the sinking of a French passenger ship "Lamoriciere" as he was returning from a stint in Algeria to Cadix in southern France in 1942.

Marian Rejewski and Henryk Zygalski via the Spain , Portugal , Gibraltar came to the GB finally. Both of them were posted to a Polish Army facility in Boxmoor, cracking German SS and SD hand ciphers. The ciphers were usually based on the Doppelkassettenverfahren ("double Playfair") system, which the two cryptologists had already worked on in France. On 10 October 1943, Rejewski and Zygalski were commissioned second lieutenants. On 1 January 1945 Rejewski, and presumably also Zygalski, were promoted to lieutenant.
On 21 November 1946, Rejewski, having been on 15 November discharged from the Polish Army in Britain, returned to Poland. He took a position in Bydgoszcz as director of the sales department at a cable manufacturing company, Kabel Polski (Polish Cable). He died 13 February 1980.

Henryk Zygalski - after the war he remained in exile in the United Kingdom and worked, until his retirement, as a lecturer in mathematical statistics at the University of Surrey. During this period he was prevented by the Official Secrets Act from speaking of his achievements in cryptology.He died August 30, 1978, at Liss, was cremated and his ashes taken to London.

Other people involved... Colonel Gwidon Langer and mjr Maksymilian Ciężki – captured by the Germans were sent to the SS concentration camp Schloss-Eisenberg. Liberated in 1945 they stayed in the UK after the war. G.Langer died on 30 March 1948, M.Ciężki on 9 November 1951.

Eng. Antoni Palluth and Edward Fokczyński - In March 1943, while attempting to cross the border from German-occupied France into Spain, both were captured by the Germans and sent to the German Sachsenhausen concentration camp, where both of them died. A. Palluth was killed during an Allied air raid at the Sachsenhausen concentration camp. E.Fokczyński died from exhaustion.

None of the Poles betrayed to the Germans the secret of Enigma decryption.

 

[parsifal]

Amazing information guys, and most amazing because, despite capture of certain people who had knowledge of the secrets, nothing was ever passed to the Germans.

Its one thing to say dont over dramatize the events, but that in itself (the ability to keep the intelligence effort a complete secret for so long), is a dramatic episode in the history of warfare.

I think the Poles did an amazing job. but I also think the western allies, particulalry Britain, also did some amazing things. both can claim credit and both achieved some amazing, war changing stuff

 

[stona]

I think the Poles did an amazing job.

They did and I've not seen anyone deny it in this thread. The Poles who started to attack this type of encryption mathematically were the first to do so and the men who attempted it represented the cream of a flowering of Polish mathematicians which started in the 1920s.

Code breaking is like any other scientific endeavour. One group or individual bases his research on work done earlier by others. Watson and Crick got a Nobel prize for 'discovering' the structure of DNA but could never have done so without the work of others who were no so honoured.

As Newton wrote (to Hooke before he had a terminal falling out with him).

" If I have seen further it is by standing on the sholders [sic] of Giants."

Would the allies have broken the German codes during the war without the work done by the Poles in the 1930s? Who knows, possibly not. Could the Poles break German war time messages encoded on the three and then four rotor machines post 1938? No. They had neither the man power nor technology to do it, and being brilliant was not a substitute for either.

Cheers

Steve

 

[pbehn]

(The Kriegsmarine converted default tactical expressions with a code table, called Kurzsignalheft, before enciphering them with Enigma. There are many reasons why this seems like a good idea but in fact the use of Kurzsignale resulted into recognizable patterns in the Enigma messages. For example, a convoy, nearing a U-boat, would probably evoke a contact message. An airplane, spotting a U-boat, would result in a airplane contact message. Repetition or pattern is a code breakers dream come true.)


Steve

I believe some mine laying operations were made to deliberately trigger signals which were known, dunno if the aircrew would have appreciated that.

 

[redcoat]

I believe some mine laying operations were made to deliberately trigger signals which were known, dunno if the aircrew would have appreciated that.

Indeed, so much so that any ploy used to trigger known cribe words in messages was called 'Gardening' after the the RAF code name for mining operations.

 

[gjs238]

There is a Wikipedia page on this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gardening_(cryptanalysis)

 

[pbehn]

There is a Wikipedia page on this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gardening_(cryptanalysis)

Those guys are really sneaky

 

[parsifal]

In the war qgainst the Italians, the British would often know of the departure of a convoy, before it actually left. They would know the intended sailing time, escort, planned route. To preserve the integrity of their SIGINT the British would often send a Maryland recon aircraft to the port of departure, to make it look like the convoy had been detected by standard aerial recon, and thereby, hopefully, reduce suspicion of a more serious security breach. Ive read that where security might be compromised, the british would allow a convoy to get past rather than risk losing ENIGMA as a source of information.

During Alamein, it has been claimed that Montgomery often knew before Rommel, what his (Rommels) orders were.

I dont think the advantages breaking these codes should be under-estimated.

 

[stona]

I dont think the advantages breaking these codes should be under-estimated.

Too true. I don't believe that the code breaking changed the outcome of the war or even a particular battle or campaign. It did undoubtedly reduce allied losses and ultimately probably shortened the war in Europe. All sorts of wild and unsubstantiated estimates are made by various authors for this shortening. I wouldn't care to pick a figure, but it was significant.
Cheers
Steve

 

[fastmongrel]

Battle of the Atlantic certainly could have gone a lot different also the battle of Kursk there have to be others that enigma influenced

 

[gjs238]

<SNIP>also the battle of Kursk there have to be others that enigma influenced

That was my next question...
What was shared with the Communists?

 

[pbehn]

That was my next question...
What was shared with the Communists?

As I remember the British told Stalin what they knew but not how they knew it, so Stalin was suspicious. In the end kursk was the opposite of Blitzkrieg, the Russians knew exactly what the Germans would do with or without Enigma. I think the Battle of the Atlantic and D Day (to name just 2) would have run very badly without Enigma!

 

[redcoat]

During Alamein, it has been claimed that Montgomery often knew before Rommel, what his (Rommels) orders were.

I dont think the advantages breaking these codes should be under-estimated.

They could also work against the British, especially with someone like Rommel who had a tendency to tell his bosses one thing and do another.
For example, just before Rommels first offensive in North Africa in 1941 the British had been reading his instructions ordering him to stay on the defensive, and his plea's for more supplies, this lead them to believe that the Axis forces would continue to stay on the defensive, giving them time to support the effort in Greece, before they reinforced their forces in the desert.
So when he did attack they were more unprepared than they would have been than if they hadn't been reading the messages.

 

[parsifal]

As I remember the British told Stalin what they knew but not how they knew it, so Stalin was suspicious. In the end kursk was the opposite of Blitzkrieg, the Russians knew exactly what the Germans would do with or without Enigma. I think the Battle of the Atlantic and D Day (to name just 2) would have run very badly without Enigma!

The Russians also had some effctive spy rings operating both in Germany and England. The most well known (though iit remains shrouded in secrecy even today) was the Lucy spy ring

The Lucy Spy Ring was an anti-Nazi Germany information network that operated out of Switzerland. A better way of describing it would be a series of inter-connected networks operating in several countries with the goal of bringing about the downfall of the Nazi regime.

The ringleader of the ring was Rudolph Roessler , the owner of a small publishing firm called Vita Nova. Roessler was approached by two German officers (Lieutenant General Frtiz Thiele, the German Deputy Head of Communications and Rudolph von Gersdorf, (chief of Intelligence Army Group Centre) who were a part of one (of many) plots to overthrow Adolph Hitler. They persuaded him to act as a channel for high level military intelligence information, equipping him with radio equipment and an Enigma machine. They also had him designated as a German military station, enabling him to receive their transmissions through normal broadcast channels.

Roessler passed the information to Swiss Military Intelligence which in turn passed it along to the British SIS. Recognizing that the Soviet Union was an important partner in bringing down the Nazi's, Roessler passed information directly to the Soviets through a Soviet GRU spy network run by Sandor Rado . Rado knew of Roessler only through his code name "Taylor" and that he was broadcasting from Lucerne, Switzerland and thus labeled the broadcasting network "Lucy."

Roessler passed along significant information starting with the details of Operation Barbarossa. Germany had planned to invade the Soviet Union but the Lucy network got the information to Soviet intelligence in May 1941, causing the Soviets to recognize the immense value of the Lucy network. The network continued to funnel high-grade military intelligence to the Soviet regarding invasions of Stalingrad and Caucausus and the German Plans for Operation Zitadelle allowing the Soviets to repel the German offensive on the eastern front and changing the course of the war.

One of the major feats of the Lucy network was the speed with which was able to deliver the information, with information from Germany arriving in Soviet hands in under ten hours. Hundreds of messages were passing along the channel each month with Roessler doing the bulk of the work on his end and Allan Foote, Rado's main radio operator, on the other.

By 1942 Germany had become aware of Rado's transmissions through their counter esionage work against the "Red Orchestra network. They attacked the Lucy network's legitimacy through the Red Orchestra counter-espoinage program. Eventually, they used military and political pressure on the Swiss government to shut down the Lucy network. Swiss authorities arrested several network participants in October 1944 and the German officials who were supplying the information were arrested after the failed 20 July plot to assassinate Adolph Hitler.

An air of controversy surrounds the Lucy network years after it was dismantled. It has been alleged that the Lucy network was in actuality an operation created by the British Secret Service, but most historians dismiss this notion. What is indisputable is that the Lucy network provided essential and invaluable intelligence information to the Allies during World War II, specifically getting information to the Soviet Union and allowing the Soviets to turn the tide of the war around.

"Red Orchestra" is a complex and often contradictory story ....The Red Orchestra | WW2 Resource

 

[Wavelength]

...... I think the Battle of the Atlantic and D Day (to name just 2) would have run very badly without Enigma!

Indeed. I didn't realize what a close shave D-day and the Battle of Normandy actually was until I read Winterbotham's account about Ultra's influence on that operation.

The first Engima signal intercepted was at 0200. It was the Kriegsmarine's warning and assessment sent to the OKW and von Rundstedt. The intercept caused some alarm because it indicated that the KM radars had not been blacked out and that the KM had a remarkably clear picture of what was happening. Surprise had been lost. Admiral Krancke also correctly put the main thrust at Normandy and not at the Pas de Calais region. Krancke suggested that part of the panzer reserve start moving into position west of Caen while it was still dark. However, von Rundstedt's reply came as a great relief to the Allies. OKW and von Rundstedt rejected the KM assessment out of hand with von Rundstedt even suggesting that KM radars must have just mistaken a flock of seagulls for the Allied invasion armada. All von Rundstedt did was to put the troops at the Pas de Calais on alert. Thus the Allies had the knowledge that they could probably establish their beach heads with out a panzer lead counter attack. When the going got tough they need not press the panic button. Rommel's entire plan of action was based on a panzer counter attack before the Allies could establish a stable beach head. So it was already too late for Rommel's Plan A to go into effect.

By the late afternoon of the 6th, however, a signal was intercepted from Rommel ordering the 12th and 21st Panzer divisions into position west of Caen. This was followed by an intercept from Hitler telling von Rundstedt to go ahead and let Rommel have portions of the panzer reserve. This was a brilliant move by Rommel. It could have driven the British back into the sea and then he would be in position to roll up the American flank with the Americans pinned down just inland of Omaha Beach. Von Rundstedt took the liberty of also ordering the Panzer Lehr division to also move into position.

However, the reply from the 12th Panzer was they could not move until after dark owing to Allied air superiority. At around midnight Rommel sent a message confirming that the first two Panzer divisions had been successfully staged. The British dug in and awaited the onslaught but nothing happened.

On the night of the 9th Rommel informed von Rundstedt that the 12th Panzer did not have enough fuel and that Panzer Lehr was not prepared for attack and more time would be required. (My personal opinion was that Speidel, Rommel's chief of staff, delayed the counter attack and had told Rommel that they could not mount an attack any time soon. Speidel was a key conspirator against Hitler and privately wanted the Allied landings to succeed. Speidel also drug his heals about transferring assets from the Pas de Calais region.) This news was of vital importance to Monty because had he not known this information he would have advanced right into the teeth of entrenched Panzer divisions which would have been a disaster. Instead Monty realized that he could keep the Panzers occupied with attrition warfare in the meantime and this would protect the hard pressed American flank.

The Germans wanted to avoid mobile warfare because the Allies had complete control of the air. However, the positions of the well hidden panzers were gradually revealed by Ultra over the next two weeks and this information was forwarded to the 2nd Tactical Air Force. When Ultra revealed that the Germans were transferring additional assets to the area from the east and that there were transferring Panzer divisions from southern France to bottle up the Americans in the Cherborg area, Monty acted. Monty ordered Gen Dempsey to drive the panzers out of the areas between British forces and the American flank with aid of Tac Air. Dempsey from Ultra knew just where to attack and Tac Air also knew where to attack the Panzer positions. German positions close to the sea had been pin pointed by Ultra intercepts and these were eliminated by naval bombardment. Thus Monty successfully pre-empted Rommel's Plan B counter attack. If not for Ultra the Germans may have been victorious.