TO WIN THE RACE AGAINST TIME. Polish inventions which helped break the Enigma code
anat Grzegorz W C PH
Discovering the secrets guarded by the Enigma code meant that Polish mathematicians had to reconstruct the design of an unknown device and discover the key to messages, that is the correct initial position of rotors. The brilliant mind of Marian Rejewski and the materials obtained by the French secret intelligence enabled them to reconstruct the machine, create Polish models of the device and break the Enigma code. In order to make the most of the achievement, they had to develop a quick method that would enable them to determine the initial position of the coding machine’s rotors. The problem was that even when only three rotors were used, there were 105,456 possible ways in which they could be positioned. This is why an idea emerged to fight Enigma with the use of another machine.
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An inconceivable amount of permutations produced by the Enigma code was a challenge that the teams of cryptographers from the countries interested in the secrets of the Weimar Republic, and then the Third Reich, had to face. German cryptologists were positive that the code used by their armed forces was impossible to break in any reasonable amount of time. It turned out they were wrong. The reason for their mistake was the assumption that all attempts to break the Enigma code would rely on the methods known from the previous war and would be based on the linguistic analysis of encrypted messages by teams of linguists and translators. They did not foresee that their machine code would have to face a brand new enemy – other machines.
