Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
They openly discussed their plans and movements, handing the Allies huge amounts of information, not all of which was used effectively. For example, Rommel's actions at Kasserine Pass were clearly foreshadowed in decrypted Enigma traffic, but the Americans did not properly appreciate the information. [citation needed]
The first break into Enigma was accomplished by Polish Cipher Bureau around 1932; the techniques and insights used were passed to the French and British Allies just before the outbreak of the war in 1939. They were substantially improved by British efforts at Bletchley Park during the war.
The Enigma machine was invented by German engineer Arthur Scherbius at the end of World War I. [4] The German firm Scherbius & Ritter, co-founded by Scherbius, patented ideas for a cipher machine in 1918 and began marketing the finished product under the brand name Enigma in 1923, initially targeted at commercial markets. [5]
The title refers to the French, British and Polish teams which worked on breaking the Enigma cipher, known by shorthand as "X", "Y" and "Z", respectively. The Enigma cipher, produced by the Enigma machine, was used from the 1920s to the end of World War II by Germany—later Nazi Germany—for military and other high security communications.
The intelligence gained by the British from Enigma decrypts formed part of what they code-named Ultra and contributed—perhaps decisively—to the defeat of Nazi Germany. [Note 1] Soon after the outbreak of war, the Polish cryptologists were evacuated to France, where they continued breaking Enigma ciphers.
The German Enigma used a combination key to control the operation of the machine: rotor order, which rotors to install, which ring setting for each rotor, which initial setting for each rotor, and the settings of the stecker plugboard. The rotor settings were trigrams (for example, "NJR") to indicate the way the operator was to set the machine.
They had further success in the early stages of the war as the British were slow to change their codes. The B-Dienst could regularly read the Broadcast to Allied Merchant Ships (BAMS) code, which proved valuable for U-boat warfare in the early phases of the Battle of the Atlantic.
The Japanese are said to have obtained an Enigma machine in 1937, although it is debated whether they were given it by the Germans or bought a commercial version, which, apart from the plugboard and internal wiring, was the German Heer/Luftwaffe machine. Having developed a similar machine, the Japanese did not use the Enigma machine for their ...