Enigma :: history

Enigma What is an Enigma? Enigma â€Å"means a mystery† (Guynn). Although there are several alternative meanings, to the Germans this meant a thin line between victory and defeat. During World War II the allies not only intercepted encrypted messages, they broke them but not without the help of A.M. Turing. â€Å"In the early years of World War II,† (Sales), the airways in Poland were flooded with coded messages that created confusion with the â€Å"cryptanalyst working in the cipher bureau† (Maziakowski). Over a several years over Poland received thousands of messages but still hadn’t any luck. In 1930 they had found the source of their problem. Germany had hired, â€Å"Hans Schmidt, who invented the enigma machine†, (Sales). This machine enabled Germany to send messages effortlessly with the security of knowing the codes could not be broken. Initially there was only one machine that was to be used as a public machine, but soon the German military contracted Schmidt to build a machine that the German Military could only use. It wasn’t until 1932 that â€Å"the enigma code was broken by Marian Rejewski† (Maziakowski) that Poland started to feel the fear of an oncoming invasion by Germany. Without the knowledge of the break in security, Germany sent out a machine to every military outpost in preparations for war. The Polish government then listened closely to the airways, trying to pick up any information they could. They sent spies out to intercept messages in hopes of learning more about their neighbor’s plans. It was only by chance that the polish government was able to break the enigma code the first time. A man working at the Head Quarters in Berlin contacted a French operative in hopes of exchanging sensitive information for money. The French agreed and after exchanging money and information several times they found it of little use and then forwarded it to the Polish who you might say found the Holy Grail of information. Nearing the end of the exchanges between the French operative and the inside man, there was a particular document that was passed, its value would cost the French one hundred thousands dollars, an equivalent of 1 million dollars in today’s market, for a complete diagram of the enigma machine. This did little to help France and they once again sent the information right to the Poles. With this â€Å"Marian Rejewski† to â€Å"mathematically determine the wiring of one of the three routers† (Maziakowski).