That Fourth Dimension Poland Took The Nazi's Well-Nigh Precious Treasure, Gave It To The French In Addition To British In Addition To Changed History

On this 100th anniversary of the Polish Air Force, as promised.

Not to diminish Alan Turing's genius or the sacrifices of the troops on the footing simply what the Poles did literally saved lives in addition to changed history.

From the Journal Nature, September 3, 2018:

Forgotten heroes of the Enigma story
Polish codebreakers paved the agency for Alan Turing to decrypt High German messages inward the Second World War. Joanne Baker commends a gripping tale.

X, Y & Z: The Real Story of How Enigma Was Broken 

Dermot Turing The History Press (2018)

Alan Turing’s crucial unscrambling of High German messages inward the Second World War was a tour de strength of codebreaking. From 1940 onwards, Turing in addition to his squad engineered hundreds of electronic machines, dubbed bombes, which decrypted the thousands of missives sent yesteryear enemy commanders each twenty-four lx minutes menses to guide their soldiers. This deluge of cognition shortened the war. Bletchley Park, UK — the secret centre where it all happened — rightly gained its house inward history. But equally amongst all breakthroughs, many to a greater extent than people seat the foundations.

In his majority X, Y & Z, Dermot Turing, the dandy mathematician’s nephew, tells the gripping even of a band of Polish mathematicians who figured out much nigh how High German Enigma encoding machines operated, years earlier Alan Turing did. The Poles shared their secrets amongst French in addition to British news services earlier in addition to during the Second World War — the letters X, Y in addition to Z were shorthand for the French, British in addition to Polish codebreaking teams, respectively.

The author’s interrogation is painstaking. After the war, armed forces documents were scattered across Europe, in addition to cardinal French records were declassified alone inward 2016. Many master copy Polish papers were destroyed, simply the mathematicians’ families cause got shared personal letters. Turing unearths a remarkable tale of intellect, bravery in addition to camaraderie that reads similar a nail-biting spy novel.

Polish skills inward cryptography in addition to radio applied scientific discipline came together during the 1920 Russo-Polish War. Signallers decoded a telegram from Red Army armed forces commander Joseph Stalin, which indicated that an assail on Warsaw was imminent. Jamming the Russians’ radio communications bought plenty fourth dimension to secure in addition to salve the city. Maksymilian Ciężki in addition to Antoni Palluth were amidst those signallers. After the 1920 conflict, Ciężki became leader of a radio-intelligence unit. Palluth gear upwardly a work concern making electronic equipment, including radios the size of a credit bill of fare for Polish secret agents.

In 1926, the High German navy began to post messages that were scrambled inward a to a greater extent than random way, making them almost impossible to decipher. They were encoded using the typewriter-like Enigma machine. The keyboard was wired then that typing 1 missive of the alphabet lit upwardly a dissimilar 1 inward a seat of bulbs on top. Rotors altered the path of the electrical circuit amongst every keystroke. The machines were commercially available simply modified for High German armed forces use. Without knowing the precise setting of a machine, at that spot was no agency to unpick the code.

The majority tells how Ciężki hired a grouping of mathematics students to crevice the problem. They worked quietly inward basements in addition to inward a bunker deep inward the woods. Marian Rejewski, an alumnus of Poznań University inward Poland, was one. At the helm was Gwido Langer, a Pole who had worked inward radio news for the Austrian army.

Meanwhile, inward France, Gustave Bertrand headed the equivalent unit. The French had a to a greater extent than conventional approach to gathering information: proficient agents, secret meetings in addition to generous pay-offs. Bertrand managed 2 formidable spies. Rudolf Stallmann — code refer Rex — was a High German card-sharp who had posed equally a baron to fleece casino-goers; he picked upwardly languages in addition to people amongst ease. Rex recruited Hans-Thilo Schmidt, or Agent Asche, whose blood brother was a colonel inward the High German army. Schmidt supplied cases of armed forces documents to the French, which Rex received in addition to Bertrand in addition to his colleagues photographed inward hotel bathrooms.

Bertrand built upwardly a network for sharing intelligence, including amongst Poland in addition to the United Kingdom. In 1931, he agreed to provide Langer amongst High German armed forces documents if the Poles would top dorsum decrypted High German messages. One of those documents, passed on yesteryear Schmidt, was a manual for Enigma.

Langer, Ciężki in addition to Rejewski leapt on it. They discovered that a panel added to the front end of the machine altered the settings, although they notwithstanding could non enjoin how the device was wired. They seat nigh collecting coded messages in addition to applied their wits to discovery clues. Sometimes the senders made telling mistakes. The High German soldiers mightiness role uncomplicated sets of 3 letters, such equally QQQ, to broadcast the settings to the receiver. Occasionally, the messages could hold upwardly guessed: for instance, they ofttimes said maschine defekt.

By 1936, inward the run-up to war, the High German armed forces was tightening its communications. In Oct that year, the senders began to reset the Enigma machines daily. Dermot Turing credits closed to other Polish mathematician, Jerzy Różycki, amongst realizing that this altered the frequency of letters, revealing extra information. The squad developed tools to travel through the hundreds of permutations, including punched cards in addition to a mechanical device amongst rotors that mimicked Enigma, which, for uncertain reasons, the squad called a bomba. Both concepts were later on used in addition to developed yesteryear Alan Turing....MORE