ASA BRIGGS: SECRET DAYS

At  the beginning of the XX. century, a german engineer called Arthur Scherbius designed a rotor crypto device which is he thougt it will be practical, useful and powerful and also, provide commercial secrecy in line with especially banks’ and businessmen’s requirements and gave it the name of Enigma which is meaning of puzzlement, riddle. Scherbius took a patent for Enigma with the dreams of rising to the wealth but, he didn’t attract the expected attention. Enigma’s star was going to shine with  german navy’s  interest.

 

 The Germans needed a handly, lightweight and cheap crypto device in battle field. Enigma was the thing what exactly German forces were looking for. The Nazis were transmitting their war strategies by coding with this machine between themselves without leaking information. This machine’s coding system which is called as non-breakable, were changing everyday by German army. Thanks to continuous alteration, messages were keeping privacy. Enigma became the coding machine that German forces used most commonly during the world war 2. End of the war, there were almost 100 thousand Enigma in army’s inventory.

 German’s Enigma was broken first by the Polish. Early in 1930’s, they built a password cracking school which the best mathematicians came together, near to Warsaw. In this school, the most successful three mathematicians, Marian Rejewski, Henry Zgolski and Jerzy Rozicki, were entrusted with a top secret mission in order to analyse Enigma in Bıuro Szyfrom (Code Burou). Enigma was broken with these 3 mathematicians great efforts. At the same time, the germans played into the polish’s hands. German government sent a diplomatic Enigma from Berlin to the Embassy of Warsaw, like an ordinary cargo by making a big mistake. The polishes who realised this situation, captured the Enigma and tampered it throughout 2 days. Then , they packaged and delivered it to German Embassy as if nothing happened. The Germans didn’t even notice but, the Polish had learnt everything about the system. Also, they generated 2 copy Enigma. In Bıuro Szyfrom, after Marian Rejewski had made enigma analysis, he developed the fırst crypto analysis device in history and gave it ‘Bombe’ as a name.

In 1939’s autumn, just before the Germans invaded Poland, crypto analysis activities had been stopped in order not to leave evidence behind and all of these works had been destroyed. With the invasion, most of the Polish crypto analysts escaped to France or England. Now, it devolved on to the British to analyse Enigma.

In 1939 in London, Britain’s Government code and chiper school (GC&CS) set its headquarters in Bletchley. Code breakers who worked in Bletchley Park, were chosen from the most talented mathematicians in the country, chess players and puzzle devotees. Between this names, especially Alan Turing and Gordon Welchma were drawing attention.

The enigma –as you know- was a type of enciphering machine used by the German armed forces to send messages securely. Polish mathematicians had worked out how to read Enigma messages and had shared this information with the British. The Germans increased its security at the out break of war by changing the cipher system daily. Changing coding system daily wasn’t allowing to solve such a complex code with any human mind or physical abilities so qıickly,tirelessly and without distracting.  Alan Turing dreamed that these solving operations can be made by a machine instead of a human . Turing worked away with Poland Bombes and eventually, he succeeded in developing a Enigma code cracking device. This unusual machine were calculating all possibilities and giving the the code's answer.

The Bombes were producing by BTM (British Tabulating Machine) Factory in the strictest confidence and were brought to the Bletchley Park. First Bombe took up its position in March in 1940. The British produced more than 200 bombes until the end of the war. With these machines, they achieved to solve almost half million German messages. As a result, even Hitler’s commumication became listenable.

Allys located the positions of German’s submarines in Atlantic easily. Also, German commander,Marshall Rommel who became a legend in the world war 1 , lost the war in Africa because of the code crackers. Furthermore, British Marshall  Montgamery was taking possession German’s battle plans instantly. Some messages which Hitler were sending to Rommel, could delay and until these messages arrive to Rommel, they had already been solved in Bletchley Park and had been transmitted to Montgamery. Most of the historians agree that due to th code breakers in Bletchley, the war curtailed at least 2 years and 14 million lives were saved.

Enigma was a highly superior enciphering machine in comparison to its period. The germans overplayed their hands and believed it is impossible to break the machine’s codes. This over confidence costed them a lot. Enigma’s breaking machine was a great machine, too. History contain a variety of invention like these examples. Most of them changed  the  course of history.