Post by gigi on Sept 3, 2008 13:51:49 GMT 1
How Polish Intelligence Solved Riddle of Germany's Enigma Machine
One of the secrets about WWII that came to light only in recent years was the success the Allies had in breaking Germany's secret code and reading coded messages. And yet most people are still unaware of the full picture. They believe that the British were the only ones able to accomplish this activity that was key to Allied victory. While their dogged efforts were important, even essential, and worthy of every accolade, they were given all the tools at their disposal by the Poles. Bletchley Park owes its existence to Pyry in Poland.
What follows is material gathered by a Polish historian, Jozef Garlinski, and corroborated by the last living senior cryptanalyst, Marian Rejewski.
Marian Rejewski, the Polish Mathematician who solved the Enigma Cipher Machine
The Germans employed an encrypting device called Enigma. Its roots go back to 1919 when a Dutchman, Hugo A. Koch and a German named Arthur Scherbius independently devised secret writing machines. The machines were eventually combined when Scherbius bought Koch's patent. In 1926, the German Navy bought what had become Enigma, and the German Army later followed. Incredibly, the machine was still for sale on the open market and was bought by large companies to protect trade secrets. Also one was sold to the eminent American cryptanalyst William F. Friedman - who later broke Japan's Code Purple, an effort that put him the hospital from the physical and mental strain - however without any breakthrough he never solved the German variations of Enigma.
The Poles had regularly broken German codes until 1926, when they found themselves suddenly mystified. Remember 1926 was the year that the German Navy bought their first Enigma. The Poles started a cryptology course in 1930 in Poznan for 20 of the most gifted mathematics students at the University. The three top graduates formed the core of a Polish intelligence department assigned to solve the riddle of Enigma: Marian Rejewski, Jerzy Rozycki, and Henryk Zygalski.
Enigma
The Poles soon realized that the Germans had made some modifications to the standard Enigma model, which was incredibly still available for purchase from the manufacturer. The Germans added a kind of switchboard - a plug board with plugs - and altered the internal wiring between the rotors. Further, the Poles learned that the rotors were shuffled every 3 months, and ring settings and plug connections were changed daily. This gave the Germans the illusion that Enigma was unbreakable.
The young Poles, however, with the aid of secret documents passed along by an agent code named Asche', solved the mystery of the internal connection by November 1932. They rushed to produce their own copies of the machine.
Meanwhile the Poles were given a daily gift from the German cipher clerks. The clerks had to make up their own telegram key for the signal, after executing the prescribed ring and plug settings. The clerks tended to use simplistic series like AAA, ABC, XYZ, etc. This is like folks who set their email passwords to common ones like abc123, password, and letmein.
In December 1932, the three Polish analysts presented the first completely solved Reichswehr (later known as Wehrmacht) message. Its content is not recorded.
Each arm of the German military had its own modifications to Enigma and its own settings. The Navy installed 5 rotors from the beginning, although only three were in use at any one time. The Navy also used different keys depending on the level of secrecy: low-grade, staff, or Admiralty. The Army and Air Force (Luftwaffe), as well as party security had their own unique settings. The rotors which at first were changed monthly, were from October 1936 changed daily. Finally as of the summer of 1942, with the war in full swing, rotors were changed every 8 hours. Also the Germans began using the letter Y as a full stop to avoid giving away the ends of sentences.
The Poles worked to devise tools to speed up the solving of messages. One technique was the grille, a paper grid, which solved the issue of plug settings. The Poles realized that the plugs were attached to only six pairs of letters, leaving the other 14 letters unchanged.
In early 1938, only the naval messages still caused continual difficulty for the Polish crypt-analysts. Army and Luftwaffe traffic was however, quickly and efficiently translated upon interception. Then in September 1938, their success was stymied by yet another change in German procedures: each message now had its own key.
This led the Poles to build what was called a bombe'. Cryptanalyst Rejewski created a machine that consisted of six Enigmas connected together, which in two hours tested every possible permutation of rotors and plugs. The Poles wound up building six of these rudimentary computers, one for each rotor position. When they reached a correct solution, a light came on and the motor stopped automatically. These bombe's were computers without electronics or memory.
Each bombe' had cost 100K zlotys to build and had taxed Polish material and financial resources to keep up with the frequent German modifications to protect their military plans' security. The British in this period, although applying far greater resources, had yet to solve the Enigma riddle.
Bombe
By the fall of 1938, German divisions were massing at Polish borders, ready to erase Poland from the map of Europe yet again. (Poland had been resurrected in 1918 as a result of the treaty ending WWI.) Also at that time, the Germans slipped up and transmissions revealed their intent to add two more rotors to the three standard rotors. Faced with the prospect of building 60 bombe's to keep up, a number that was beyond the scope of the fledgling government, forced the decision to share Polish innovations with the Allies.
The Poles organized a three day conference for July 25-27, 1938, in Pyry, a communications center south of Warsaw. (This complex featured aerials 30 feet high that could be lowered and hidden, and an air-raid shelter containing the radio station.) French and British intelligence were given a crash course in Polish methods of reading ciphers - the French being put up at the Hotel Polonia and the British at the Bristol. The Allies were given demonstrations of the bombe', which was the size of a washing machine and featured three vertical columns of switches on one side (labeled A to Z from top to bottom), and six stacks of rotors on top linked by a larger gear in the middle, all powered by a motor housed inside. They were also instructed in the use of the perforated sheets, which were another aid to solving plug settings. The Poles relayed their intercepted messages, the certainty of invasion, the exhaustion of funding, and in the end, made a gift of an Enigma, with drawings and plans for bombe's, to the British and French intelligence efforts. (The British later built room-sized machines to solve German messages.)
A month later, German tanks invaded Poland. And all that most of the world knows of Polish involvement in the war is the gallant but doomed stand by Polish cavalry against German tanks. Little do most of us realize that Poland did more to ensure an Allied victory than anyone could imagine. The entire subject of intelligence was off limits for decades after the victory, lest the defeated parties learn of just how much the Allies knew in advance. Only in the past decade have parts of the story come to light.
from newsvine.com
One of the secrets about WWII that came to light only in recent years was the success the Allies had in breaking Germany's secret code and reading coded messages. And yet most people are still unaware of the full picture. They believe that the British were the only ones able to accomplish this activity that was key to Allied victory. While their dogged efforts were important, even essential, and worthy of every accolade, they were given all the tools at their disposal by the Poles. Bletchley Park owes its existence to Pyry in Poland.
What follows is material gathered by a Polish historian, Jozef Garlinski, and corroborated by the last living senior cryptanalyst, Marian Rejewski.
Marian Rejewski, the Polish Mathematician who solved the Enigma Cipher Machine
The Germans employed an encrypting device called Enigma. Its roots go back to 1919 when a Dutchman, Hugo A. Koch and a German named Arthur Scherbius independently devised secret writing machines. The machines were eventually combined when Scherbius bought Koch's patent. In 1926, the German Navy bought what had become Enigma, and the German Army later followed. Incredibly, the machine was still for sale on the open market and was bought by large companies to protect trade secrets. Also one was sold to the eminent American cryptanalyst William F. Friedman - who later broke Japan's Code Purple, an effort that put him the hospital from the physical and mental strain - however without any breakthrough he never solved the German variations of Enigma.
The Poles had regularly broken German codes until 1926, when they found themselves suddenly mystified. Remember 1926 was the year that the German Navy bought their first Enigma. The Poles started a cryptology course in 1930 in Poznan for 20 of the most gifted mathematics students at the University. The three top graduates formed the core of a Polish intelligence department assigned to solve the riddle of Enigma: Marian Rejewski, Jerzy Rozycki, and Henryk Zygalski.
Enigma
The Poles soon realized that the Germans had made some modifications to the standard Enigma model, which was incredibly still available for purchase from the manufacturer. The Germans added a kind of switchboard - a plug board with plugs - and altered the internal wiring between the rotors. Further, the Poles learned that the rotors were shuffled every 3 months, and ring settings and plug connections were changed daily. This gave the Germans the illusion that Enigma was unbreakable.
The young Poles, however, with the aid of secret documents passed along by an agent code named Asche', solved the mystery of the internal connection by November 1932. They rushed to produce their own copies of the machine.
Meanwhile the Poles were given a daily gift from the German cipher clerks. The clerks had to make up their own telegram key for the signal, after executing the prescribed ring and plug settings. The clerks tended to use simplistic series like AAA, ABC, XYZ, etc. This is like folks who set their email passwords to common ones like abc123, password, and letmein.
In December 1932, the three Polish analysts presented the first completely solved Reichswehr (later known as Wehrmacht) message. Its content is not recorded.
Each arm of the German military had its own modifications to Enigma and its own settings. The Navy installed 5 rotors from the beginning, although only three were in use at any one time. The Navy also used different keys depending on the level of secrecy: low-grade, staff, or Admiralty. The Army and Air Force (Luftwaffe), as well as party security had their own unique settings. The rotors which at first were changed monthly, were from October 1936 changed daily. Finally as of the summer of 1942, with the war in full swing, rotors were changed every 8 hours. Also the Germans began using the letter Y as a full stop to avoid giving away the ends of sentences.
The Poles worked to devise tools to speed up the solving of messages. One technique was the grille, a paper grid, which solved the issue of plug settings. The Poles realized that the plugs were attached to only six pairs of letters, leaving the other 14 letters unchanged.
In early 1938, only the naval messages still caused continual difficulty for the Polish crypt-analysts. Army and Luftwaffe traffic was however, quickly and efficiently translated upon interception. Then in September 1938, their success was stymied by yet another change in German procedures: each message now had its own key.
This led the Poles to build what was called a bombe'. Cryptanalyst Rejewski created a machine that consisted of six Enigmas connected together, which in two hours tested every possible permutation of rotors and plugs. The Poles wound up building six of these rudimentary computers, one for each rotor position. When they reached a correct solution, a light came on and the motor stopped automatically. These bombe's were computers without electronics or memory.
Each bombe' had cost 100K zlotys to build and had taxed Polish material and financial resources to keep up with the frequent German modifications to protect their military plans' security. The British in this period, although applying far greater resources, had yet to solve the Enigma riddle.
Bombe
By the fall of 1938, German divisions were massing at Polish borders, ready to erase Poland from the map of Europe yet again. (Poland had been resurrected in 1918 as a result of the treaty ending WWI.) Also at that time, the Germans slipped up and transmissions revealed their intent to add two more rotors to the three standard rotors. Faced with the prospect of building 60 bombe's to keep up, a number that was beyond the scope of the fledgling government, forced the decision to share Polish innovations with the Allies.
The Poles organized a three day conference for July 25-27, 1938, in Pyry, a communications center south of Warsaw. (This complex featured aerials 30 feet high that could be lowered and hidden, and an air-raid shelter containing the radio station.) French and British intelligence were given a crash course in Polish methods of reading ciphers - the French being put up at the Hotel Polonia and the British at the Bristol. The Allies were given demonstrations of the bombe', which was the size of a washing machine and featured three vertical columns of switches on one side (labeled A to Z from top to bottom), and six stacks of rotors on top linked by a larger gear in the middle, all powered by a motor housed inside. They were also instructed in the use of the perforated sheets, which were another aid to solving plug settings. The Poles relayed their intercepted messages, the certainty of invasion, the exhaustion of funding, and in the end, made a gift of an Enigma, with drawings and plans for bombe's, to the British and French intelligence efforts. (The British later built room-sized machines to solve German messages.)
A month later, German tanks invaded Poland. And all that most of the world knows of Polish involvement in the war is the gallant but doomed stand by Polish cavalry against German tanks. Little do most of us realize that Poland did more to ensure an Allied victory than anyone could imagine. The entire subject of intelligence was off limits for decades after the victory, lest the defeated parties learn of just how much the Allies knew in advance. Only in the past decade have parts of the story come to light.
from newsvine.com
