ENIGMA WW2 CRACKED
ENIGMA WW2 CODE

But their efforts – fragmented and divided between rival cryptology departments - lacked the consistent success achieved at Bletchley Park.įrom 1941 onwards, Bletchley's experts focused upon breaking the codes used by German U-boats in the Atlantic.

ENIGMA WW2 CODE

The Germans also managed to crack Soviet and Danish code systems. Although the US altered its naval code in April 1942, the change came too late to prevent the havoc wreaked by Operation Paukenschlag, the German U-boat campaign off America's east coast early that year. The B-Dienst (surveillance service) broke British Naval code as early as 1935, which allowed them to pinpoint Allied convoys during the early stages of the Battle of the Atlantic. The Germans also enjoyed some noteworthy code breaking successes. Information obtained from such high-level German sources was codenamed ULTRA. In the autumn, the Allies gained advantage in North Africa from deciphering coded messages used by Rommel's Panzer Army. Although the experts at Bletchley first succeeded in reading German code during the 1940 Norwegian campaign, their work only began to pay off meaningfully in 1941, when they were able to gather evidence of the planned invasion of Greece, and learn Italian naval plans for the Battle of Cape Matapan. The Germans, convinced their Enigma messages were unbreakable, used the machine for battlefield, naval, and diplomatic communications. Read more about: Mysteries 4 secret codes that are almost impossible to break Mathematicians and intelligence experts, with the help of primitive early computers, began the complex and urgent task of cracking the Enigma code. In 1939, with German invasion looming, the Poles shared their information with the British, who in turn established the Government Code and Cipher School at Bletchley Park in Buckinghamshire. Close links between the German and Polish engineering industries allowed the Polish Cipher Bureau to reconstruct an Enigma machine and read the Wehrmacht's messages between 19.

The first people who came close to cracking the Enigma code were the Polish. German code experts added new plugs, circuits and features to the machine during the pre-war years, but its basic principle remained the same.

To decode the message, the recipient needed to know the exact settings of the wheels. The Enigma machine enabled its operator to type a message, then 'scramble' it using a letter substitution system, generated by variable rotors and an electric circuit. The Enigma story began in the 1920s, when the German military - using an 'Enigma' machine developed for the business market – began to communicate in unintelligible coded messages.

ENIGMA WW2 CRACKED

However, the meticulous work of code breakers based at Britain's Bletchley Park cracked the secrets of German wartime communication, and played a crucial role in the final defeat of Germany. The find, made by divers working on behalf of WWF aiming to find abandoned fishing nets that endanger marine life, will be given to the archaeology museum in Schleswig.It was thanks to ULTRA that we won the war.ĭuring World War II, Germany believed that its secret codes for radio messages were indecipherable to the Allies.

They sell at auction for tens of thousands of euros. The Enigma device, which looked like a typewriter, consisted of a keyboard and wheels which scrambled messages.Īlthough several hundred thousand machines were produced, only a few hundred are known to exist. Overall, Germans sank more than 200 of their submarines in the North and Baltic Seas at the end of the war. 'We suspect our Enigma went overboard in the course of this event,' said Dr Huber, of the company Submaris which leads underwater research missions.

Shortly before Germany's surrender in May 1945, the crews of about 50 submarines, or U-Boats, followed an order to scuttle their ships in Gelting Bay, near the Danish border, to avoid handing them to the Allies.ĭestroying encryption devices was part of the order. ( Reuters: Christian Howe)Īt Bletchley Park codebreaking centre, a British team led by Alan Turing is credited with unravelling the code, shortening the war and saving many thousands of lives. Underwater archaeologists Christian Howe (left), Florian Huber (middle) and Uli Kunz pose with their discovery.

Enigma ww2