"For what was done by a machine might all the more easily be undone by a machine."

​​​​​​​     Used extensively in World War II, cryptography disguised war messages. Germans used ciphers for air, land, and sea, communicating across radio. Anyone could listen to radio messages, so they encrypted every message. ​​​​​​​

     German Enigma ciphers were patternless with nearly every German radio communication enciphered on them. Discerning patterns in these patternless codes was the Allied cryptanalysts' work at Bletchley Park, codebreakers’ top-secret mansion estate center. The information gleamed from Enigma decriptions was known as "Ultra."

     German operators used codebooks, which communicated daily keys for setting-up. Allied interceptors picked up Morse over wireless transmission. The way to break each cipher would be to know the exact set-up of that message’s Enigma.

Birch, Naval Section Chief at Bletchley, stated:

"that he was told when war broke out that 'all German codes were unbreakable.’"

Germany believed it, too:

"If a million million computers on each of a million million planets in each of a million million galaxies spent a million million years trying every possible combination or wiring three Enigma rotors, and took a millionth of a millionth of a second, to test each one, they still would have less than one change in a million million of finding the correct one in that time." ​​​​​​​

     The Polish Cipher Bureau began picking up unreadable German messages in the late 1920s. Initially thinking it a hoax, traffic became more usual, and they realized the barrier of the Enigma. Their future work contributed greatly to breaking Enigma.

"The original work of the Poles in solving Enigma, along with the collective efforts of the Allies at Bletchley Park, made the intelligent exploitation of Enigma data possible... we had firsthand knowledge of their intentions and plans." - Prof. Garlinski