Enigma & Intelligence, Essay Example
During World War II, German operators coded top-secret messages by using an electrical cipher machine known as Enigma. Enigma paved the way for current intelligence agencies and battles for information from a myriad of countries. This battle for information saw the inception of coded messages into spy agencies such as MI6, and the C.I.A. as can be supported with Allied intelligence officers combating Enigma with their own machines; Ultra and Tunny (Encyclopedia Britannica, n.d. para. 2-4).Germany’s defeat in WWII had a lot to do with British intelligence cryptology units (Encyclopedia Britannica, n.d. para 1). These furtive, Allied units would not have been in existence, nor any of the other intelligence agencies, had the German’s not had Enigma.
Enigma was the impetus by which these agencies, and the shift of battle from a geographical point on a map, to intelligent design and secrets, saw a nascent in their spy/counter spy units. This expository essay will reveal Enigma’s origins, it’s eventual defeat by British intelligence, and will argue that Enigma was the catalyst by which war in the 20th century changed (Encyclopedia Britannica, n.d. para 1).
German’s business market in the 1920’s saw the nascent design of Enigma (Military Intelligence, n.d., para. 5), which allowed for an operator to send a coded message through a letter substitution design to another person using the same rotor sequence(Cryptologia, 1993, p. 238). Enigma’s design resembled that of a typewriter which ‘scrambled’ a coded message through its wheels and rotors that would then be ‘unscrambled’ by a mirrored machine set to the same rotor standard setting as the first in order to decode the message.The Enigma used three 26-point “wired metal and black plastic rotors selected from a set of five to eight. Each rotor was a cylinder with a large, moveable notched wheel on one end with an alphabet (or numbers) around its circumference. One face of the cylinder had twenty-six spring-loaded copper pins protruding from it, and the other face had twenty-six flush copper contacts…Inside each cylinder was a wired “maze” connecting the contacts to the pins” (Mowry, 2011, p. 1). German intelligence officers, comprised of engineers and cipher experts, added on to Enigma’s basic design (e.g. plugs, circuits) with an additional rotor, that they hoped would make this “unbreakable” machine that much more difficult to crack. Another important feature of Enigma was that German coders would change the rotor dial every 24 hours, thereby making any encrypted message have a deadline to it’s usability (Barratt, 2002 para. 3):
ENIGMA used three rotors, each one wired differently, and a reflector. When a letter was input, the rightmost wheel would turn one space forward and an electrical pulse would route through each wheel in turn, then through the reflector, then back through the three wheels by a different route, and a glow- lamp would light to show the encrypted character. When the notch on that wheel progressed around to the reading point, the middle wheel would advance one space; and when the notch on the middle wheel progressed to its reading point, the leftmost wheel would advance one space. It would take 16,900 characters to return the three wheels to their initial position. By limiting allowable message length, this “cycling” would not happen (Mowry, 2011, p. 2).
As the codes were encrypted, German businessmen had to scheme a way to decode messages: this was done by knowing the precise combination, or setting, of Enigma wheels. Enigma was modified during the war to account for heavier workload (e.g. the prodigious amount of messages being transferred from headquarters to front lines during the war) and encryption and as such experts in cryptology added new plugs to Enigma as well as new circuits and other similar features to the wartime machine. There were millions of different code variations with Enigma. This lead to the German High Command believing that Enigma was an unbreakable system (a belief that was held close to the end of the war). Since Allied forces were for a long duration of the war unable to decode Enigma (and with limited technology available to Allied intelligence), it was a belief well founded. WWII saw a lot of battles on the field, but Enigma upped the game and attested to intellectual battles as Allied forces sought eagerly to try and decode German messages: the Polish tried decoding Enigma first (Cryptologia, 1993, p. 240). This, as well as several key mistakes made by German intelligence led to Enigma’s eventual comprise (Barratt, 2002 para. 4).
The level of intelligence, tenacity, and engineering ingenuity the Germans put into Enigma changed the way that countries deciphered codes with their cryptology units: “It took two and sometimes three people to operate the machine, but first it had to be set up.This involved selecting three rotors from the provided set according to the instructions in the monthly key list. Each rotor had a moveable placement notch on an outer ring. The notch forced the rotor to its left to step one place forward and could be moved to a different point on the rotor by rotating the outer ring” (Mowry, 2011, p. 3)
Poland for instance had a leg up on other Allied countries in trying to decode Enigma because of the shared engineering industries between them and Germany (History, 2006, para. 2). This meant that the Polish Cipher Bureau was able to adequately reconstruct similar “enigma” machines (and through such efforts they were able to decode Wehrmacht messages). The Wehrmacht’s messages were one of the first surpassed roadblocks over Enigma that Allied troops accomplished, but this led to the further intelligent design of war as Polish military units shared their engineering accomplishment with the British who in turn created the Government Code and Cipher School more commonly referred to as, Bletchley Park (Cryptologia, 1993, p. 239). At this point, war grew beyond the battlefield and entered into the realm of mathematics, and eventually to very early model computers as Allied troops sought to decode the German Enigma code (Benson, 1997, p. 1-2).
Along with Polish and British cryptologist serving to break Enigma, German’s own leak in their system lead to Enigma’s eventual downfall. The first sign of an enervated system occurred in 1931 when Hans Thilo (who at the time was a German Defence Ministry official) sold intelligence to the French. Although this “leak” was a massive threat to German operations, the true significance of such a move was not fully realized at the time. When Polish intelligence was working to crack Enigma they were using an Enigma they obtained some time around 1929. In order to fully appreciate this endeavor it is important to note that Polish intelligence was working in the dark with Enigma – a machine they knew nothing about, and the mechanisms of which proved difficult to break. In order to decrypt messages from Enigma, Polish intelligence made one of the very first computers called ‘Bomby’ (primitive compared to today’s standards, but relatively advanced for its time). When the Germans added extra rotors to Enigma however, this left such progressive technological machinery in the dust as there was no way to decipher Enigma with previous erudite programs (Barratt, 2002 para. 5).
Throughout the early part of the war, Germans believed that their Enigma machine was unbeatable. That they were safely delivering messages back and forth to one another without interruption or without fear of being decoded. Since German engineering was so well thought out, Allied intelligence agents knew that they had to create and generate ideas and machines to combat such audacity. Germany was using the Enigma machine for a myriad of communications during WWII (Cryptologia, 1993, p. 241). The work done at Bletchley was aided by Polish intelligence giving Britain and France replica Enigma machines (circa 1939) (Barratt, 2002 para. 6). The Allied forces however didn’t work symbolically and this in turn lead to work in a vacuum that took that much longer to find success (Maneki, 1996, p. 30). When France was defeated by Germany Britain took on sole responsibility for cracking the Enigma code(Barratt, 2002 para. 7).
Britain had a set of code breakers during World War I known as ID 25 (aka “Room 40”). After the war ended they were ensconced in the Secret Intelligence Service (SIS) which heralded World War II intelligence and became known as the Code and cipher School to Government Communications Head Quarters (located in Bletchley Park). This operation numbered in the thousands (Barratt, 2002 para. 8). The British worked furtively on Enigma. The SIS was sectioned off into three separate parts during this period which was termed ISK (Illicit Series Knox), ISOS (Illicit Services Oliver Strachey) and ISTUN (Illicit Series TUNNY). Bletchley Park hosted two of these sections on their clandestine mission: Section ISK “was wholly cryptanalytic, and Section ISOS did crypt work on all traffic other than ISK and ISTUN. ISOS also was the intelligence and distributing center for the entire clandestine output. ISTUN was broken by the TUNNY Section under Pritchard which handled all TUNNY traffic including clandestine” (Mowry, 2011, p. 88). Among these three clandestine sections there was an approximation of 350 encrypted, Enigma messages per day during World War II. Of these messages, 300 were read. The other messages were too unintelligible to read. The other sections had their work cut out for them in deciphering Enigma’s codes:
The ISOS Section was established at the end of 1939 and by mid-1943 was reading about 150 illicit radio circuits. The traffic consisted of a wide variety of transposition and substitution ciphers, with the traffic usually in German but including considerable Spanish and French and occasionally many other languages. All RSS groups, except VIII, XII, XIV, and XVI carried only Abwehr traffic [a particular type of Enigma coding machine]. Groups VIII and XVI were Italian Secret Intelligence and were not handled by ISOS but by Bletchley Park’s Research Section. Group XIII was ISK and ISOS traffic of the Security Service; Group XIV carried Abwehr traffic, both ISK and ISOS and diplomatic traffic. Group XIII ISOS traffic was double transposition. Groups I and XV used simple transposition; Group XIV ISOS, included a variety of substitution and double transposition (Mowry, 2011, p. 88-89).
With work done at Bletchley, British troops were eventually able to decode Enigma in 1940 with positive results occurring with the 1941 invasion of Greece. Once Enigma’s code was broken, forces on both sides of the war began to scramble to either create unbreakable codes or to try and decode the other sides encrypted messages(Parker, 1993, p. 20).British leading mathematicians from various universities as well as the aid from the Poles (with their contraband Enigma machines donated to the British intelligence in 1939) helped break Luftwaffe codes, but, “those used by the Kriegsmarine, however, proved a much tougher proposition” (Barratt, 2002 para. 9). Essentially Enigma was the catalyst by which Intelligence programs for Allied and Axis powers saw their origins.
The British Intelligence program, Code and cipher School to Government Communications Head Quarters, was quick to action with the aid of mathematician Alan Turing who decoded an Enigma message in early 1940. Though the mathematician’s contribution to Enigma decoding proved informative, lack of initial efforts by British intelligence was detrimental to early decoding:
In 1940 Safford set up a small team dedicated to solving enciphered German U-boat traffic. At the time, OP-20-G did not know that this cipher traffic was generated by a more advanced naval version of the commercial Enigma cipher machine, a copy of which the navy possessed. The cryptanalytic effort was small, perhaps fewer than ten people, but it represented a diversion of scarce resources. In the months prior to Pearl Harbor, he resisted efforts to coordinate work with the British in OP-20-G’s attack on the traffic. When he finally allowed cooperation, he often ignored their experienced technical advice in favor of that from his own analysts like Agnes Driscoll that proved ultimately to be an analytic dead end (Hanyok& Mowry, 2008, p. 54).
Later that same year Enigma messages were being deciphered within a 24 hour time period (which was the time period Enigma changed rotors). Such endeavors, known as Ultra, were the breakthrough the Code and cipher School to Government Communications Head Quarters needed (History, 2006, para. 1). One means by which Enigma was decoded was when U-33 sank off the coast of Scotland and Code and cipher School to Government Communications Head Quarters found three rotor wheels in the wreckage, and among survivors. This gave Bletchley a peek into Germany’s Enigma. Despite the stroke of luck this was at the time, the rotors only gave Code and cipher School to Government Communications Head Quarters a little bit of information needed on something that was massively engineered. Bletchley had another stroke of luck with Germany’s mishap in April, 1940 when partial Enigma documents were found on Polaris (another German U-boat). This boat was apprehended off the coast of Norway; such a prize lead to the very first full decoding of an Enigma message. Although this was the breakthrough Allied forces needed, because of the 24 hour time constraints on coded messages, the codes were still unreadable (Barratt, 2002 para. 10).
The decoding war was on. Germans used “wolf-pack” tactics along with their Enigma codes to deter British and Allied forces from detrimentally effecting Axis power. Codebreaker, Harry Hinsley discovered that German ships were moving in the Atlantic according to a set regimen and that these ships had code information on board vital to understanding Enigma. Allied troops had to capture the boats with the information on board without betraying their plans/position. British ships succeeded in capturing Munchen (a German ship) and U-110 captain Lemp failed in protocol to destroy Enigma and thus Code and Cipher School to Government Communications Head Quarters captured much needed Enigma equipment and codes (Barratt, 2002 para. 13).
After this success British Naval ships succeeded in capturing Lauenberg a few months later and this lead to a decisive break as onboard were keys to Enigma for both June and July (Barratt, 2002 para. 14). British intelligence had to be coy with their information otherwise Germany would suspect that Enigma was compromised and either add another rotor on it or change all of the codes. British intelligence was faced with how to be discreet in their knowledge:
From the second half of 1941 onwards, information from Enigma was one of the key factors enabling the Royal Navy to divert convoys away from waiting wolf packs. The German practice of changing their rotor settings every day or two meant that messages were often at least several days old when deciphered. Before sending them on, analysts would add notes on any significant content, such as the identities of persons mentioned. The gist of the information contained in the signals…was passed on to operational commanders, only a very few of the most senior of whom were let even partially into the secret of Enigma (Barratt, 2002 para. 16).
When Allied forces decoded messages from Rommel’s Panzer Army they began calling the information by the codename ULTRA which was “combined with intelligence from a wide variety of other sources, including HF/DF and wireless intercepts and reconnaissance reports, into a body of information known collectively as “SIGINT”” (Barratt, 2002 para. 17).Not to be out-maneuvered by Allied intelligence officers, however, the Germans were also figuring out Allied coded messages with the B-Dienst which was a surveillance service that cracked British Naval code, in fact, Germany had been able to crack Britain’s code as early as 1935, almost a full half decade before Britain intelligence agents were able to crack Enigma’s code in an operation known as Operation Paukenschlag. Germans had a great track record for decoding messages during World War II.Although Germans had great success in decoding Soviet and Danish codes, their intelligence program saw great losses through divided cryptology programs in the intelligence sector that lead to rivalries between units. This in turn damaged further decoding progress.
Around 1942 Bletchley began a nonstop campaign to deter future encrypted messages from Germans informing their different units about maneuvers on the battlefield. British intelligence focused its efforts on deterring German U-boats during this period of the war. This turn in the war in intelligence proved extremely beneficial for Allied troops as the trawler was equipped onboard with Enigma machines and codebooks. The benefits of this capture aided Allied intelligence to discover where Germany was positioning its U-boats and so British intelligence used this information to keep their battle positions away from danger zones (Hanyok, 2004, p. 44).
Germany didn’t let this set back uproot their entire Enigma operation but what it did was escalate an already progressive intelligence war. As the Germans found out about their U-boat capture and the comprise of their Enigma, they set about engineering a fourth wheel to their device in order to deter future decoding. This fourth wheel did a lot to vanquish their rivals as it added twenty six more possible settings to Enigma and thereby making it still more difficult to decipher it’s messages. Such maneuvers by Germany were counter-acted upon by British intelligence cryptologists or by capturing more Enigma codes. If codes were not broken in time they lead to serious catastrophe such as the Arctic convoy PQ17 loss (Barratt, 2002 para. 21). Not to be outdone, however, British intelligence eventually cracked the code a little over a year later in 1942 with a device called ‘Shark’(Cryptologia,1993, p. 242-243). Decoding Enigma was invaluable throughout the war: in 1943, with the Battle of the Atlantic, Shark was broken (Shark was the nickname Bletchley Park gave to Enigma’s messages) (Barratt, 2002 para. 25). Further code capturing during the war (such as USS Pittsburgh) lead to Allied forces being supremely ahead of the Axis force:
By the time of the D-Day landings, the Naval Enigma was being broken almost instantly by the improved knowledge of the codes and the greater number of “bombes” available in the UK and USA. Only in the very last days of the war did the Germans introduce another code variation which threatened Allied supremacy in this field, and by then it no longer mattered. (Barratt, 2002 para. 27)
Enigma lead to code breakers beefing up their intelligence game as well as the U.S. creating their own coded message with SIGABA. Germany’s Enigma was the catalyst for codes in WWII that lead to such intelligent designs as well as to mathematical ingenuity and a push for Allied nations working together. Essentially, Enigma, although an Axis power play to send coded military messages to various strategic points of potential conquest was thought to be unbreakable(National Museum of U.S. Airforce, 2011, para. 3), it lead to British forming their own intelligence agency and enlisting the help of Poland and university mathematicians (History, 2006, para. 2). Enigma officially lead to the ground work of these intelligence agencies as it required of its adversary a depth of thinking, collaboration and intelligence that could not be garnered in an insular manner. Enigma gave way to TUNNY which gave way to SIGABA all in the name of coded messages or trying to decipher other country’s coded messages. The war machine that lay waste to nations on a physical level propagated the intelligentsia as well. Enigma was a tool used to infiltrate a technologically inept system and with it sprang forth our modern warfare, espionage, and hoodwinking strategies. Men on both sides of the war fought hard to rescue parts of Enigma from the jettison of U-boats in order for British intelligence to get a leg up on Axis’s power movements and points of contact. These men propelled the notion that in war, one life sacrificed for the many, is a life well served. Enigma brought with it a new way to function on a strategic level during WWII and changed the face of all future battles and wars with post-industrial countries. Thus, Enigma was the sole catalyst for how intelligence agencies, and intelligence designs, protocol, equipment (e.g. computers) are prevalent and established today. Without Germany’s business ventures in the 1920’s Enigma would not have developed in the way that it did, nor to the capacity that it developed. Enigma’s development sparked a type of race between countries on whose populace was more intelligent, keener, and more innovative. The Germans held to the belief that Enigma was an unbreakable code but during the course of the war they had to add an extra rotor to contend with it’s comprised state, and even then, it didn’t save the Germans from being vanquished by Allied powers. Enigma changed the entire course of intelligence work.
References
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War of secrets: cryptology in WWII. (2011, 7 Feb.). National Museum of the U.S. Airforce. Retrieved from http://www.nationalmuseum.af.mil/factsheets/factsheet.asp?id=9722
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