Poland's Overlooked Enigma Codebreakers

Discussion in 'Top Secret' started by Gage, Jul 5, 2014.

  1. Gage

    Gage The Battle of Barking Creek

    The first breakthrough in the battle to crack Nazi Germany's Enigma code was made not in Bletchley Park but in Warsaw. The debt owed by British wartime codebreakers to their Polish colleagues was acknowledged this week at a quiet gathering of spy chiefs.

    http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-28167071
     
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  2. spidge

    spidge RAAF RESEARCHER

    I thought we had a thread on here quite a while ago about the Poles getting the first Enigma Machine to Britain.

    Unable to find it though.

    Anyone?

    Cheers

    Geoff
     
  3. geoff501

    geoff501 Achtung Feind hört mit

    I'm sure it has been mentioned before. can't find a specific thread.

    There were three brits on the visit to Poland, Commander Humphrey Sandwith was the third.
     
  4. Harry Ree

    Harry Ree Very Senior Member

    I think it has been aired before but overall the Poles took their intelligence to the French shortly before the German invasion.

    They had had some success in cracking the diplomastic codes a little time before the war outbreak but at the time had come to a standstill as it might be said with their work.

    Britain and France had jointly guaranteed the securty of Poland,a redefined state which was the result of Versailles and Polish intelligence no doubt wished that the French as one of their allies would find the intelligence valuble as the storms of war threatened Europe.
     
  5. Fred Wilson

    Fred Wilson Member

  6. Chris C

    Chris C Canadian

    This seems like the most appropriate place to post this as I can't find it elsewhere: I just read on the Twitter that Poland actually gained the Enigma machine itself because the Germans sent an Enigma machine through the mail to their embassy in Poland before the invasion, and a Polish postmaster became suspicious.

    Is this accurate?

    Emma Taylor on Twitter

    "8/ The staff at the German embassy were hassling the postmaster at the Polish depot: "we've got a very important parcel on the way, make sure it gets to us immediately". He said "sorry, it's the weekend, we're closed, we'll get it to you on Monday morning". The nerve of him"
    "9/ Their haste made him suspicious, so he rang a friend who happened to work for Polish military intelligence. They turned up and very carefully unpacked the parcel, found the 5-wheel Enigma machine. Realised what they'd got, and also that the Nazis must never know."
    "10/ So over the weekend, they painstakingly took it to bits, photographed it, drew circuit diagrams, then by Monday morning it was back in its box looking untouched, delivered to the embassy. They had no idea, so kept using the code for their military communication."
     
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  7. Roy Martin

    Roy Martin Senior Member

    Doesn't sound right. And a 5-wheel Enigma machine in 1939?
     
  8. Tricky Dicky

    Tricky Dicky Don'tre member

    Enigma machine - Wikipedia

    In December 1938, the Army issued two extra rotors so that the three rotors were chosen from a set of five.[39] In 1938, the Navy added two more rotors, and then another in 1939 to allow a choice of three rotors from a set of eight


    A four-rotor Enigma was introduced by the Navy for U-boat traffic on 1 February 1942, called M4

    Cryptanalysis of the Enigma - Wikipedia
    On 1 February 1942, the Enigma messages to and from Atlantic U-boats, which Bletchley Park called '"Shark," became significantly different from the rest of the traffic, which they called "Dolphin."[153]
    This was because a new Enigma version had been brought into use. It was a development of the 3-rotor Enigma with the reflector replaced by a thin rotor and a thin reflector

    TD
     
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  9. Bala

    Bala Member

    Colonel Colin McVean Gubbins was with the military mission in Poland when the Germans invaded. He got out just in time and brought back with him (thanks to the Poles) an Enigma machine and early timepencils. Both proved so important and help us win the war.
    He was given the task of forming Auxiliary Units (The secret british resistance organisation)which he left to help form the SOE and eventually Command it. Setting Europe ablaze.
     
  10. Harry Ree

    Harry Ree Very Senior Member

    The inherent problem the Germans had was that the Enigma machine was derived from a similar machine used by the Swiss banking system and available commercially for any power to obtain.This device was exhibited,soon after its invention at the International Postal Union Congress in 1923

    In the early 1930s,the Germans undertook this approach rather than employ their own initial R&D.They added improvements to the commercial machine in such a way that the machine although retaining the name of Enigma was a much more effective machine than the commercial one.

    The Germans believed that their modifications to the commercial Enigma would achieve a sense of being very close to practical unsolvability. But when Turing arrived at Bletchley in September 1939,he found it a high intensity from the disclosures of the Polish cryptanalysts. the technical detail and gear had only arrived at Bletchley in mid August and illustrated the methods that the Polish had been using to decipher Enigma messages for at least 7 years.The Poles had given an indication to the British in 1938 that they had information on the Enigma machine but a meeting in Warsaw by Dillwyn Knox to negotiate for it failed.Knox it is recorded did not think much of the Poles and thought that they knew nothing.The position changed with British and French guarantee to Poland's security and on 24 July 1939,British and French representatives met the Poles and came away with the prize that they wanted.

    The French also had a contribution in that their secret service through spying had obtained a copy of the operating instruction of the Enigma machine in the autumn of 1932.These were passed to the British and the Poles,the difference was that the Poles utilised three energetic mathematicians to study the operating instructions and determine the electrical wiring circuit.By this breakthrough the Poles were then able to beat the system but not the machine ..breaking the early Enigma would follow.
     
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  11. davidbfpo

    davidbfpo Patron Patron

    A few years ago I visited Bletchley Park Museum and had a guided tour which was excellent. We visited the memorial stone to the Poles and the guide said a few words. It struck me that BP did not really acknowledge the Polish contribution. In my reading I am sure more recent history has complimented the Poles on their pre-war help.

    Incidentally the story of what the French did with their Enigma machine and work is quite intriguing. They fled to Vichy France and successfully hid away. From memory one of them was captured and did not say anything.
     
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  12. IvanTony

    IvanTony New Member

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  13. davidbfpo

    davidbfpo Patron Patron

    Good catch the documentary, so full of lessons. A couple of gems; the Polish team in France were decoding Soviet messages and the pre-war meeting in Poland, with the British, French and Poles - the agreement has yet to be fully revealed.
     
  14. davidbfpo

    davidbfpo Patron Patron

    Oddly I could not easily find a thread on this theme, although there are threads refer to the Poles and one implies there was a discussion a few years ago somewhere.

    This post is prompted by this commentary: Poland’s Decisive Role in Cracking Enigma and Transforming the UK’s SIGINT Operations

    The opening passage:
    The author is well qualified:
    Now a few years ago I took a guided tour of Bletchley Park and was surprised the Polish contribution was only mentioned at a stone memorial to them, near some outbuildings.
     
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  15. ltdan

    ltdan Nietenzähler

    In Germany this fact is quite well known...
    The biggest irony of the whole story was that ENIGMA was originally a cipher machine developed for civilian use.
    This civilian version was secretly purchased by the Reichsmarine in 1926 and subsequently developed into the military ENIGMA.
    From 1928, the cipher machine was also used by the Reichswehr.
    In order to be able to decipher the new military codes, the Polish military intelligence simply purchased the civilian version in Germany, which was still freely available.
    With this hardware, various additional devices developed in Poland and a tremendous lot of calculations, the Polish specialists finally succeeded in cracking the German naval code.
    And significantly, the entire Wehrmacht never realized that it had compromised its own secrecy, later increased to the point of absurdity, from the very beginning itself :lol:

    International ENIGMA-Patent (applicated in UK March 25, 1925 No. 5027/25)
    ENIGMA.png
     
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  16. CL1

    CL1 116th LAA and 92nd (Loyals) LAA,Royal Artillery

  17. Les Carter

    Les Carter Member

    I was in UK in 2018 and went over to Bletchley Park and spent the day there, tour etc. Very interesting to see it in real life after seeing the movies and docos about it.
     
  18. davidbfpo

    davidbfpo Patron Patron

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