Breaking the Code

The codebreakers knew they needed an Enigma or a similar replica of one to break the code. In June of 1936, the head of the MI6 (British Intelligence Services) got a transmission from the Polish Intelligence services that they had gotten hold of a man who had claimed to have worked as a mathematician and an engineer in one of the factories in which the Enigmas were being produced. Upon meeting this man, they confirmed he had significant knowledge of how to reproduce the Enigma. By July of 1939, the replica of the Enigma was finished. Cracking the code was extremely difficult, for example, as one could enter A into the Enigma and get W the first time, then enter A again into the Enigma and get a completely different letter. The Germans changed the settings of the Enigma every day, so the codebreakers had to keep up the Germans. The codebreakers were eventually able to crack the daily settings by using the replica of the Enigma and listening in on the radio when the Germans transmitted the code and thereafter, inputting it into the replica of the Enigma for translation. The codebreaker's manual translation process could not keep up with the thousands of messages sent every day by the Germans. The codebreakers had to find a way to automate translating the code.