By David Dastych
Tuesday, February 14, 2006
"While all historians agree that the interception of German secret traffic by the allies was a major factor in the ultimate victory in World War II, for many years, even after the declassification of official wartime documents on the subject, the role of Poles was either totally ignored or skimmed over with only vague references in historical literature." (Witold K. Liliental, Ph.D., Montreal, Canada in Everyone's War, Great Britain, 2000).
It seems that almost all has been told and written about the Polish contribution to a major breakthrough in the warfare against Hitler's Germany. But 65 years after the outbreak of WW II (1939, aggression against Poland) it is still worth remembering and reading about. The Web is full of detailed descriptions, including many interesting and intriguing technical details of the description techniques in the pre-computer era. These techniques seem to be primitive now, when huge and ultra-fast computers devise and break secret codes. But even simple methods, enhanced by the genius of the human brain, produce startling results. I remember my conversations with professor Pei Yuan, called the 'Father' of the Chinese a-bomb. He told me that the team of scientists and technicians worked in poor barracks in a remote desert place, using traditional Chinese abacuses to perform the calculations. and the bomb was ready in a relative short time.
It all began in 1918, when a German inventor, arthur Scherbius, developed and patented a rotary electro-mechanical enciphering machine and called it Enigma. It was designed for business companies to be able to guard industrial and technical secrets. But soon Enigma was picked up and modified by the German army and used for encrypting messages prior to radio transmission. Polish military intelligence became interested in the machine and procured its commercial version. In 1932, the year before Hitler came to power, the Polish Cipher Bureau embarked on a determined effort to break Enigma. Some unexpected help came from the French intelligence: a set of documents stolen by a German agent of Deuxieme Bureau with a code name asche (ashes). Hans-Tilo Schmidt, a cipher clerk, sold these documents to his French masters (later, in 1943, he was shot for treason). Gustave Bertrand, a French cryptographer and intelligence officer, obtained these documents in 1931-1932 and handed them over to the British. But the French and the British specialists could not break the German code. The Polish Cipher Bureau obtained them from Bertrand in 1932, not revealing the progress of their own work.
Only one year later, in 1933, three brilliant Polish cryptanalists (Marian Rejewski, Henryk Zygalski and Jerzy Rozycki) succeeded in breaking the Enigma codes. The code-breaking process was enabled by mathematical calculations, Zygalskiís perforated sheets and two machines: a cyclometer and Rejewskiís bomba, named after an ice-cream cone by Rozycki. The technical description of these methods and machines can be found on the Web (see: Useful links). By 1938, the Polish cryptographers were able to read some 75 percent of the intercepted German radio transmissions, enciphered with the help of the Enigma machine. But in 1939, before the war, the German army increased the sophistication of Enigma, and the Poles were not able to break the new codes, even with their new techniques. Yet, at that time, they were much more capable than the French and the British.
When war came near, on July 24-26, 1939, Polish, British and French cryptologists met at a clandestine location near Warsaw. The Poles presented each foreign delegation with a "clone" of the Enigma, along with all the necessary coding materials. The British and the French were surprised at the progress made by the Polish experts. a funny side of that meeting was the common language: all three sides could communicate only in German.
Some time later, in 1939, Colonel Gustave Bertrand took the copies of Enigma to France by diplomatic pouch and, on august 16, one of the 'clones' was handed over to the chief of British Intelligence, Colonel Steward Menzies, in London. From that moment on, British top cryptologists (including Gordon Welchman and the genius alan Turing) benefited from the Polish achievements and developed the code-breaking methods at the center at Bletchley Park. By 1940, the Polish bombs and perforated sheets were already obsolete. The British "bombs" worked on different principles and proved to be very effective.
By October 1939, the Polish cryptologists of the Cipher Bureau made their way to France and operated a French-Polish decryptic center, named "Bruno". after the fall of France, in 1940, it was moved to the new location under the Vichy-Government administration and was secretly operated as "Cadix" until November 1942. at the same time, the British began Operation Magic, creating a giant decrypting complex at Bletchley Park. The three leading Polish mathematicians (Rejewski, Zygalski and Rozycki) were also working there.
Marian Rejewski returned to Poland after the war and died in 1980. as for Henryk Zygalski and Jerzy Rozycki, I am not sure what their fate was.
For many years after, the allies shunned the Polish contribution to the breaking of Enigma. The great moment of change came on September 18, 2000: Prince andrew, the Duke of York, presented the Polish Prime Minister, Jerzy Buzek, with the original Enigma machine. He also said about the Polish heroes of cryptography: "They helped us, among others, during the Battle of Britain and in the Battle of atlantic." Two years later, in July 2002, a great ceremony took place in Bletchley Park, north of London. The Duke of Kent inaugurated a monument in the form of an open book, cast in bronze and placed on a granite base. Three names were engraved there: Marian Rejewski, Jerzy Rozycki and Henryk Zygalski. That ended a long dispute about the Polish contribution. The victory over Enigma should be attributed to the people from three nations: Polish, French and British and to a German traitor, who helped to start the process and paid for it with his life.