General Discussions  
This is the place to discuss general issues related to the U-boat war or the war at sea in WWII. 
Go to: Forum List•Message List•New Topic•Search•Log In•Print View
RE: Cracking Enigma
Posted by: Dietzsch ()
Date: December 20, 2000 08:44AM

<HTML>I\'ve seen a documentary on the National Geographic Channel a while ago, of which I cannot remember the name. I have to say that I cannot remember all details and I might get one or two wrong, but this is more or less what was said in the documentary:

The British actually were succesful in breaking the first Enigma. The main reason for this is that the German radiomen had to code the message themselves by sending a sort of header, consisting of a three letter code, that led to the actual encrypted three letter code. As these letters were, as it were, only one \'code-layer\' deep, these codes could be found out, if they were not carefully (i.e. randomly, as opposed to logically, too obviously) chosen by the operators.

An example: the three letter code BER would be linked to the word LIN. Easy to guess for the code-breakers. HIT and LER was a well-known combination as well. DON and ITZ is another one. Once the code-breakers found out about this, they were able to decypher the general pattern behind the encryptions. This led to a period, early in the war, during which the Allies could break the German codes quite quickly.

(It amazes me, that the Germans, so thorough usually, would allow communications to be compromised by such an easily avoidable human error.)

With the introduction of the four-wheel Enigma, the codebreakers were thwarted in their efforts again, but this Enigma machine was captured on U-559.

I hope the real experts on encryption and Enigma machines can fill in the details and correct my story where necessary!

regards,

Dietzsch</HTML>

Options: Reply•Quote


Subject Written By Posted
Cracking Enigma Marco 12/19/2000 08:34PM
RE: Cracking Enigma Craig McLean 12/20/2000 03:05AM
RE: Cracking Enigma Takeo 12/20/2000 10:39AM
RE: Cracking Enigma Fin Bonset 12/20/2000 12:52PM
Your P.S. SuperKraut 12/20/2000 03:56PM
RE: Your P.S. Fin Bonset 12/20/2000 05:25PM
Hey wait a minute... :-) MCE 12/20/2000 06:38PM
RE: Hey wait a minute... :-) Fin Bonset 12/20/2000 06:47PM
RE: Hey wait a minute... :-) MCE 12/20/2000 06:58PM
RE:What This..? Joe Brennan 12/22/2000 09:12AM
RE:What This..? MCE 12/22/2000 08:00PM
Computers at Bletchley SuperKraut 12/20/2000 04:12PM
RE: Computers at Bletchley MCE 12/20/2000 06:46PM
RE: Computers at Bletchley Ralph Langley 12/20/2000 07:01PM
RE: Cracking Enigma Dietzsch 12/20/2000 08:44AM
Enigma and Ultra SuperKraut 12/20/2000 10:19AM
RE: Enigma and Ultra philip henderson 12/23/2000 12:27AM
Enigma and Fish SuperKraut 12/23/2000 10:18AM


Go to: Forum List•Message List•Search•Log In
Your Name: 
Your Email: 
Subject: 
Spam prevention:
Please, enter the code that you see below in the input field. This is for blocking bots that try to post this form automatically.
 **     **  **         ********  ********  **       
 **     **  **    **      **     **        **       
 **     **  **    **      **     **        **       
 *********  **    **      **     ******    **       
 **     **  *********     **     **        **       
 **     **        **      **     **        **       
 **     **        **      **     ********  ********