Code Breakers: Bletchley Park's Lost Heroes

[MiloMorai]

 

Everyone knows about Enigma and how it helped win the war but few know about Colossus (world's first electronic digital computer that was programmable) and how it was used to break the Lorenz cypher. The Lorenz SZ used 12 wheels compared to 3 to 8 wheels on the Enigma machine.

 

Lorenz was used for high level communications between the OKW and the army commands.

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colossus_computer

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lorenz_Cipher

 

One has to wonder how the Battle of Kursk would have turned out if British Intel had not given the complete German OoB to the Soviets.

 

[HeavyCavalrySgt]

It is a little amazing that the Germans never quite caught on to the act their codes were compromised.  Admittedly people like the folks at Bletchley worked hard to keep it that way.but at times the Germans must have felt their enemies were either lucky or psychic.  

 

When I think of forgotten heroes of the code war in the European theater, I think of the Poles who came up with a mathematical solution to Enigma before the war even started and that formed a basis for Turing work, which probably formed the basis for Colossus.

[SCG_Neun]

With all the hype about the German organizational skills, the historical fact is you had thugs in high levels of Command, each pursuing his own personal empire, with absolutely no desire to work as a cohesive unit.  It stands to reason that they didn't have a clue because they spent so much of their time working against one another.  Good thing for us, because the career military had structure and the organization, they were just fighting the world and their own government leaders.

[Stray]

I am sorry to drop in and bomb the thread nearly at it's start, but Enigma code was first broken by Polish mathematicians, Marian Rejewski, Jerzy Różycki and Henryk Zygalski in 1932.

Enigma was under constant development, but so was the development of code breaking. With June 1939, all work was forwarded to British Intelligence, and it was not just a foundation of code breaking itself, it was, let's say, a buliding without a roof. Machines called "kryptologic bombs" included, designed and built by the team mentioned, used to decrypt the code.

 

The Brits from Bletchley Park put a roof on it and there's no more to it. Poles had no country, no funding and one of the team's three got killed in 1942, the other two arrested while crossing border to Spain, with the rest of the code-cracking team dead later on in Nazi concentration camps ( shadow personas managing the project ).

 

A tiny issue skipped in "Enigma" the movie starring Kate Winslet and generally, in British history lessons, now taught on BBC.

 

Same with 303rd during Battle of Britain.

 

Carry on, Brits! You're doing a great job falsifying history to your liking.

 

No offence intended, just saying.

Edited September 10, 2013 by JG26_Stray

[HeavyCavalrySgt]

You're doing a great job falsifying history to your liking.

 

No offence intended, just saying.

 

 

So, what you are trying to say is you didn't bother reading even the second post in the thread?  

[AndyJWest]

The issue wasn't breaking the cipher - it was being able to do it fast enough for the deciphered material to be of any use. That was where Turing's work, and the Colossus, made a difference.

[Rjel]

Has there ever been one single endeavor in human history that didn't build on someone else's work? That's what progress is. We (mankind in general) are so eager to tear down every achievement if it suits whatever agenda we have to serve our own purpose. 

Edited September 11, 2013 by Rjel

[Stray]

So, what you are trying to say is you didn't bother reading even the second post in the thread?  

 

I have, just didn't quote you.

[J2_Trupobaw]

It is a little amazing that the Germans never quite caught on to the act their codes were compromised.  Admittedly people like the folks at Bletchley worked hard to keep it that way.but at times the Germans must have felt their enemies were either lucky or psychic.  

 

When I think of forgotten heroes of the code war in the European theater, I think of the Poles who came up with a mathematical solution to Enigma before the war even started and that formed a basis for Turing work, which probably formed the basis for Colossus.

The Brits made effort to not act on most of knowledge they had, not stopping the plans just because knew how to stop them; I remember reading they went as far as sacrificing ships they knew Germans were about to attack rather than save miraclously them . They used their knowledge to know the big picture of German plans and stopping them with what looked like random unlucky setbacks, rather than stopping Germans at every step. 

Edited September 11, 2013 by Trupobaw

[Gspot]

Watch this and you will be amazed how close it even was that brits did break the code...

All because one man who put own money in to it.

And no one remembers him.

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A31bN_V10-o&list=PL21C680F30546E909