Hi All, I understand that the enigma machine, in an unmodified commercial form, was available on the open market. I presume that Poland was the original inventor of this machine because it would not make sense for Germany to have been selling it commercially. Is this true since I am speculating. Thanks in advance, Bob
No, the Enigma machine was invented by a German engineer, Arthur Scherbius at the end of WW I. It was sold commercially in Germany and other European countries throughout the 1920's and 1930's. The military versions were somewhat more complex than the commercial models and it was felt that the greater complexity rendered the codes generated by the military versions unbreakable, even when the operating principles were understood.
Here is an interesting Wiki article about the Polish breaking of Enigma... Cryptanalysis of the Enigma - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
There's a common misconception that having an Enigma machine meant you could read encrypted messages. If that had been the case Enigma would have been completely useless. The Germans used thousands of Enigma machines and always knew some would be captured. To use an Enigma machine to decrypt a message you have to know which of the code wheels to fit, a choice of 3 or 4 wheels from a total of up to 8. You have to get the wheels in the correct order. Once you've done that you have to turn each wheel to its correct starting point. The wheels had 26 letters, so even when you know the correct combination of wheels, a navy Enigma would have 456,976 possible starting combinations. When the wheels are set up, you have to connect the plugboard connections. The plugboard switched letters, so any letter could be switched for any other letter. In total there were billions of ways of setting up an Enigma. Unless you had the correct wheel and plugboard settings, which changed every day, the machine on its own was useless.
Which is the reason the Germans were so positive their machines couldn't possibly be at the core of their compromised messages. It had to be spies, or traitors, or something else than their beloved Enigmas. The British pioneered the use of computers in the breaking process, and the captured code setting books from U-boats and that weather ship in the north Atlantic coupled with the "Bombe" and "Colossus", supplimented by "lazy" operators broke the Enigma. The only code machines which were never broken were the American SIGABA, and the telephonic SIGSALY. They were so advanced that the SIGABA remained in service until 1959, when communication speed finally rendered it less capable. Even at that the patent remained classified until well into the 1990s. I've got a link hiding around in my files somewhere about those two amazing units. I'll see if I can round it up if anybody is interested.
Most of the Germans did think Enigma was unbreakable yet by mid-war the British and American cryptologists were regularly breaking enigma messages. They could not break every message, and those they could break were not always decoded in time to be of any use. But allied code-breaking of Enigma messages allowed many important successes, an example is that the British were able warn Stalin of Hitler's planned Operation Citadel at Kursk in 1943 (and for once he believed them). The reason the Ardennes Offensive in 1944 took the allies by surprise was that they sent all their important messages by land line (possible due to the proximity of the attack area to Germany) so even the Germans must have suspected Enigma was compromised. When the Luftwaffe launched its last air offensive on New years day 1945, 30% of the German fighters were shot down by flak - GERMAN flak. The operation was so secret no one had told the flak commanders.
Sorry to necromance this thread, but neither 'computers' or the Colossus machines were involved in the breaking of Enigma. The Colossus machines, which were semi-programmable computers, were used to aid cryptanalysts decipher the messages protected by the Lorenz SZ-40 and SZ-42 machines which were used for high level teleprinter traffic. The machines produced a more secure cipher than Enigma, which was a portable devise.
I stand corrected. I was under the impression that both Turing's Bombe and the Colossus were used at Bletchly in the Enigma code cracking. I was aware of the Lorenz system being more complicated and secure, but was unaware the Colossus was only used on them. Thanks for the information.
Well both were indeed used at Bletchley Park, or more commonly Bletchley's various outstations dotted around the nearby countryside and towns. As for the info, any time mate.
And the old p/o teleprinters used by RAF and other Brit forces since ww2 derive from this. 7 BRP and other mechanical teleprinters in the network...5 baud coded teletype punch tape survived in major RAF MOD comms networs right thru to 80's.
