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Re:WWII Bombe operator Ruth Bourne: I'd never heard of Enigm... by oh_sigh on Tuesday September 25, 2018 @01:41PM (#18068588)
What was it about the Poles that let them break Enigma while other countries couldn't? Mathematics talent? Mechanical talent? Luck? A desire to not be invaded and overrun by Germany?
Re:WWII Bombe operator Ruth Bourne: I'd never heard of Enigm... by EthanHeilman on Tuesday September 25, 2018 @04:29PM (#18070227)
I'm not a historian, but from what I can tell:

1. The Poles won a decisive victory in the Polish–Soviet War (1921) a war in which the Soviet's had a clear advantage because the Polish forces were able to intercept and read Soviet communication during the Battle of Warsaw [0]. This reinforced the value of such intelligence to the Polish government.

2. Poland understood it was only a matter of time before Germany or the Soviets/Russia attempted to occupy them again. They made the breaking of German and Soviet codes and ciphers a priority.

3. The Polish cryptographers understood the importance of their work. They had the shared national trauma of Germany and Russia's many attempts at exterminating Polish culture during over several hundreds years of foreign occupation. They were the best cryptanalysis in the world and they had the full support of the government and intelligence services and were dedicated to their mission

The wikipedia article on the Cipher Bureau "Biuro Szyfrów" [1] is worth reading.

>During this period, until the collapse of France in June 1940, ultimately 83 percent of the Enigma keys that were found, were solved at Bletchley Park, the remaining 17 percent at PC Bruno. Rejewski commented: "How could it be otherwise, when there were three of us [Polish cryptologists] and [there were] at least several hundred British cryptologists, since about 10,000 people worked in Bletchley... Besides, recovery of keys also depended on the amount of intercepted cipher material, and that amount was far greater on the British side than on the French side. Finally, in France (by contrast with the work in Poland) we ourselves not only sought for the daily keys, but after finding the key also read the messages.... One can only be surprised that the Poles had as many as 17 percent of the keys to their credit"

{0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polish%E2%80%93Soviet_War#Batt...

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biuro_Szyfr%C3%B3w

Re:WWII Bombe operator Ruth Bourne: I'd never heard of Enigm... by fortpoint on Tuesday September 25, 2018 @08:23PM (#18071660)
The Poles set up a cryptography program for mathematics students at Poznań University in 1929[1]. I believe Marian Rejewski, Henryk Zygalski and Jerzy Różycki we're all associated with that program.

[1]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zdzis%C5%82aw_Krygowski

Re:WWII Bombe operator Ruth Bourne: I'd never heard of Enigm... by munin on Tuesday September 25, 2018 @04:41PM (#18070300)
There was an alliance between the Polish, French, and British to work on the Enigma problem. Rejewski made a simple assumption about the connection between the keyboard and the rotors that turned out to be correct. The British did not think to make this assumption. Why, who knows. The brains of the British operation was Dilly Knox, who was smart but not a mathematician. Rejewski was a mathematician.

Rejewski was aided by a French spy, though. It's not clear how far he would have gone without that. It's neat to try and play this game of "who was first" but I think ultimately you have to give credit to the team: it was Poland, England, and France, and they each had some contribution in the early days of Enigma. However, critical to note, this work had been going on before Turing got involved with GC&CS. The alliance began around 1931, and Turing got involved with GC&CS in 1938.

The entire signals problem was also not constrained at all to Enigma. Turing worked extensively on that problem, but there were other cipher systems, like Tunny, that Turing had a much more limited role in, which was mostly a crypotanalysis result from Tiltman (the "1+2 break") and engineering work by Flowers, to create an almost-entirely-electronic vacuum tube computer (which he personally funded because Bletchely thought it was impossible).

Re:WWII Bombe operator Ruth Bourne: I'd never heard of Enigm... by Apocryphon on Tuesday September 25, 2018 @05:13PM (#18070518)
Now that would make a great movie- or a mini-series.
Re:WWII Bombe operator Ruth Bourne: I'd never heard of Enigm... by munin on Tuesday September 25, 2018 @05:22PM (#18070603)
If society celebrated math and science, there is a huge cast of heroes to draw from that period to tell an amazing range of stranger-than-fiction true stories. When you read the real story, Cryptonomicon seems comically small minded in comparison.
Re:WWII Bombe operator Ruth Bourne: I'd never heard of Enigm... by 323454 on Tuesday September 25, 2018 @09:16PM (#18071901)
As someone who really enjoyed Cryptonomicon, do you have any good recommendations for reading the real story?
Re:WWII Bombe operator Ruth Bourne: I'd never heard of Enigm... by munin on Tuesday September 25, 2018 @10:12PM (#18072152)
"Battle of Wits" by Stephen Budianski

"Colossus" by Jack Copeland

"Between Silk and Cyanide" by Leo Marks

Re:WWII Bombe operator Ruth Bourne: I'd never heard of Enigm... by abetlen on Tuesday September 25, 2018 @05:39PM (#18070728)
Someone can correct me if I'm wrong but I was under the impression that they where the first to realize that the Enigma machine wasn't able to map any letter onto itself. This being the core principle behind all of the machines built to crack the messages, guess part of the plaintext message and discard all the enigma settings which could not have produced that cipher text.
Re:WWII Bombe operator Ruth Bourne: I'd never heard of Enigm... by jnbiche on Tuesday September 25, 2018 @04:11PM (#18070066)
A trio of top-notch Polish mathematicians/codebreakers: Jerzy Rozycki, Henryk Zygalski and Marian Rejewski.
Re:WWII Bombe operator Ruth Bourne: I'd never heard of Enigm... by ajuc on Tuesday September 25, 2018 @07:43PM (#18071511)
Poles had pretty good mathemathicians at the time https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polish_School_of_Mathematics

Germany was considered a threat (Piłsudski even proposed preventive invasion of Germany in 1935 to France and UK, which declined).

They also had some luck guessing the rotors arrangement in early military versions, and noticed some regularities caused by German operators being lazy (repeating common phrases etc). That gave them something to start with.