Which excerpt from “The Enigma Machine” supports the idea that Allied forces expected the Germans to complicate their coding system?
The Enigma machine was invented at the end of World War I by German engineer Arthur Scherbius. He used rotors and an electrical pathway in his design. The telegram was intercepted and deciphered by British intelligence, and it caused such outrage in the US that it helped generate public support for the United States’ entry into the war.After 1938, when the Germans introduced additional rotors and plugs to increase the number of possible combinations, Polish and British cryptologists had already developed alternative methods of recovering the daily keys. The two main weaknesses of the Enigma machine were careless operators and the distribution of the daily key. The daily key was printed on paper, and it had the potential of being captured en route to the field.
The Enigma Machine
For most of the twentieth century, long-distance communications were carried out using a teleprinter. It used a transmitter with a typewriter keyboard and a type-printing telegraph receiver. During World War II, the German army, air force, and navy transmitted thousands of coded messages every day, from battlefront situation reports and weather reports to strategic decisions made by Hitler himself. These secret messages were encrypted on an Enigma machine.
The importance of intercepting German communications became clear with the Zimmermann Telegram during World War I. This was a proposal from Germany to Mexico to form an alliance in the event the US entered the war. Mexico was promised territories in Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona. The telegram was intercepted and deciphered by British intelligence, and it caused such outrage in the US that it helped generate public support for the United States’ entry into the war.
The Enigma machine was invented at the end of World War I by German engineer Arthur Scherbius. He used rotors and an electrical pathway in his design. There were soon different models for use in business to keep commercial exchanges secret. Later, it was adopted by the governments of several countries, including Nazi Germany during World War II. The effort to decode those messages by the Allies—the US, Britain, Poland, France, the Soviet Union, and other countries—was the difference between victory and defeat. The Enigma was essentially a portable encoding machine that could be used in the field. Since the Enigma machine could encrypt text into over 150 trillion possible combinations, Germans were convinced the codes were not decipherable.
To use the Enigma machine, an operator typed a message into the machine, which would be scrambled by three rotors, or notched wheels, and plugboard connectors. The recipient had to know the exact settings of these rotors in order to reconstruct the coded text. This was provided in a codebook, which was a monthly list of daily keys distributed to various networks in the German military. With the right settings, the recipient only needed to type in the encrypted text and the message would light up in plain text.
The two main weaknesses of the Enigma machine were careless operators and the distribution of the daily key. The daily key was printed on paper, and it had the potential of being captured en route to the field. Typing in messages was a boring task, so operators took shortcuts, like choosing three letters in a row or other simple, predictable patterns. One Enigma operator repeatedly used his girlfriend’s three initials as the daily key! Cryptologists looked for cribs, which are repeated expressions in messages. Sloppy operators would repeat phrases like “nothing to report” or “weather forecast” ( Wettervorhersage), which served as clues. If there were no cribs to be found, the British would send out false information about, say, British mines planted in a given area. The Germans might then send messages with the name of that area, which would provide clues about deciphering that code.
The Germans changed the key every twenty-four hours, so breaking each daily key quickly was important. With the help of Polish intelligence, British cryptologists were able to decrypt a vast number of messages enciphered on Enigma. Polish intelligence developed the “bomba,” a complicated system of wires and rotors to scan and decode messages within hours. After 1938, when the Germans introduced additional rotors and plugs to increase the number of possible combinations, Polish and British cryptologists had already developed alternative methods of recovering the daily keys.
At Bletchley Park, the main site in Britain where Enigma codes were deciphered, six thousand messages were decoded every day by a staff of ten thousand men and women. Many of the messages were inconsequential, but more than a few were critical to the outcome of the war.
For example, Bletchley Park was crucial in the Battle of the Atlantic, which lasted six years. German boats prevented merchant ships from carrying food and fuel to Britain, nearly starving the British people into defeat. Finally, an Enigma machine from a captured U-boat helped the British understand German marine movement. This, plus the Allies’ new anti-submarine capabilities, saved the day. Later, Winston Churchill wrote that “the only thing that ever really frightened me during the war was the U-boat peril.” Some have estimated that the work of the Bletchley Park cryptologists shortened the war by three years.
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