Enigma machine
The Enigma machine was a cipher device used by the German military during World War II, originally developed by engineer Arthur Scherbius in 1918 for secure commercial communication. This machine allowed operators to encode messages through a series of rotating wheels, with the recipient needing to know the specific settings to decode the communication. The Allies recognized the importance of the Enigma code early on and made efforts to decipher it, beginning with insights gained from a stolen operating manual in 1931. Polish cryptographers significantly advanced this effort in 1932, sharing their breakthroughs with British intelligence in 1939. The Government Code and Cipher School at Bletchley Park became pivotal in these efforts, where mathematicians like Alan Turing played key roles in breaking the code. By 1940, the Allies had successfully decrypted important military communications, gaining crucial advantages in various battles, including naval engagements. Despite the German's attempts to enhance the machine's security, the Allies continued to make progress, leading to significant impacts on the war effort. The intelligence obtained through decrypted Enigma messages is believed to have shortened the war and saved countless lives.
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Enigma machine
The Enigma machine was a German code machine used by Axis powers during World War II to communicate military strategies and other top secret plans to each other. Because of the highly sensitive information being communicated via the machine, the Allied Forces made it a priority to learn all that they could about the machine and its code system. It took several years to accomplish, but the Allies finally deciphered the code and unlocked the mystery behind the Enigma. As a result, they were able to prevent some dangerous situations for the Allies and possibly help bring the war to an earlier end.
Overview
The Enigma machine was invented by German engineer Arthur Scherbius in 1918 as a tool for transcribing coded information to help commercial companies maintain secure communications. He founded the Cipher Machines Corporation in Berlin in 1923 to manufacture the product; within a few years, the German military began producing its own versions.
The Enigma machine enabled an operator to type a message and then scramble it using three to five notched wheels that displayed letters of the alphabet. To decode the text and read the message, the recipient needed to know the precise settings of each of the wheels.
Great Britain and the Allied Forces got their first glimpse of the Enigma machine in 1931, when a spy working for the French shared a photograph of a stolen Enigma machine operating manual; however, Allied code breakers could not decipher the code. By 1932, the Polish Cipher Bureau had succeeded in building an Enigma machine that enabled them to read messages intended for German forces. They shared this information with the British when German aggression escalated in 1939. At that time, Britain’s Government Code and Cipher School at Bletchley Park took over as the center for Allied efforts to stay on top of the Enigma messaging. It was also at that time, however, that the German military started adding electronic circuits to the Enigma machines to make the ciphers even more difficult to decode.
Mathematicians Alan Turing, John Jeffreys, and Peter Twinn, along with other experts at Bletchley Park, first broke the German code in 1940, but it was not until 1941 that the first real impact was achieved when the Allies were able to decode messages about naval plans for the battle of Cape Matapan in Greece. Later that year, the Allies gained advantage in North Africa thanks to successful decoding of Enigma messages between General Rommel and the Panzer Army.
After that, the Bletchley Park decoders focused on deciphering the codes used by German U-boats in the Atlantic Ocean. The capture of a German armed trawler off the coast of Norway in March of that year gave the Allies access to a working German Enigma machine and its code books. That meant the Allies could read messages sent via German naval code, alerting them to U-boat hunting grounds and enabling Allied Forces to steer clear of attack.
Realizing that its code had been cracked, the German navy added another code wheel to the Enigma machine, but the Allies were able to crack the code by December 1942. While the war continued for several more years, it has been postulated that it may have continued even a few years longer had it not been for the intelligence gained from the Enigma machine code breakers.
Bibliography
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Kahn, David. Seizing the Enigma: The Race to Break the German U-Boat Codes, 1933–1945. Frontline, 2012.
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Sebag-Montefiore, Hugh. Enigma: The Battle for the Code. Orion, 2011.
Watson, Ian. The Universal Machine: From the Dawn of Computing to Digital Consciousness. Copernicus, 2012, pp. 51–88.
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