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Breaking ENIGMA: A Polish Contribution
Canada Free Press ^
| Tuesday, February 14, 2006
| David Dastych
Posted on 02/14/2006 9:49:24 AM PST by Anne_Conn
"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).
(Excerpt) Read more at canadafreepress.com ...
TOPICS: Foreign Affairs; Government
KEYWORDS: alanturing; crytanalists; enciphering; enigma; enigmacode; hutsix; poland; secretcodes; worldwar11; wwii
1
posted on
02/14/2006 9:49:26 AM PST
by
Anne_Conn
To: Anne_Conn
2
posted on
02/14/2006 9:52:51 AM PST
by
CarrotAndStick
(The articles posted by me needn't necessarily reflect my opinion.)
To: Anne_Conn
Most of the history books I've read mentioned the role of the Poles in breaking Enigma. Tom Clancy even mentioned it in
The Hunt For Red October, in a subplot that didn't make the movie.
-Eric
3
posted on
02/14/2006 9:58:35 AM PST
by
E Rocc
To: E Rocc
Agreed. I've known about this for a long time. Unfortunately, the Poles didn't get to exploit this success because the Germans occupied them after the West handed Hitler the Rhineland and Munich and Stalin sold them out.
4
posted on
02/14/2006 10:03:23 AM PST
by
colorado tanker
(We need more "chicken-bleep Democrats" in the Senate!)
To: lizol
5
posted on
02/14/2006 10:51:30 AM PST
by
DTA
To: Anne_Conn
Good article. I recently saw an Emigma on display in Warsaw, and it may have been the original given to Buzek in 2000, tho' I'm not sure of that. The Poles became aware of the importance of cryptography during their 1920 war with the Bolsheviks. By the summer of 1939 they had a highly sophisticated and secret operation going in a forest near Pyry just south of Warsaw. It was there that they gave the amazed British and French copies of Engima -which set off a chain of events that had much to do with Germany's ultimate defeat in WWII.
To: Anne_Conn
7
posted on
02/14/2006 11:41:54 AM PST
by
Iris7
(Dare to be pigheaded! Stubborn! "Tolerance" is not a virtue!)
To: Iris7
8
posted on
02/27/2006 3:33:09 PM PST
by
SirTaurus
(Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of their country!)
To: SirTaurus
"..what took them years was done in months with open source software."
Looks like computers came from WWII code breaking, Turing and Von Neuman, Colossus and Eniac. The first big real time application, SAGE, was run on late model Forrester and Olsen Whirlwinds.
The Whirlwind began building in 1945 as I recall, and ended with SAGE, where each computing center had two CPUs each using, count them, 55,000 vacuum tubes. 12AU7s as I recall. Whole new vacuum tube technologies had to be developed to increase CPU uptime but two were still needed. All 55,000 tubes were replaced all at once by tubes made in one lot and by an interval determined by extensive statistical analysis made on the same lot of tubes installed in the machine for failure likelyhood probability functions. 110000 12AU7 tubes each putting out maybe 15 watts apiece or over one million watts of heat.
9
posted on
02/28/2006 3:14:43 AM PST
by
Iris7
(Dare to be pigheaded! Stubborn! "Tolerance" is not a virtue!)
To: SirTaurus
Incredible flaws in Enigma algorithm and even more flaws in their crypto procedures. Extremely fun WWII crypto simulators
here.
This guy can not be broken at all, nohow, no-when, even by quantum computing (if such a thing exists) and it was deployed in 1943.
SIGSALY
10
posted on
03/01/2006 2:26:42 AM PST
by
Iris7
(Dare to be pigheaded! Stubborn! "Tolerance" is not a virtue!)
To: CarrotAndStick
I read "A Man Called Intrepid" years ago--it had quite a bit about ENIGMA in it; before reading Intrepid I had no idea how prevalent the Nazis were on U.S. soil.
Makes me glad Bush is hunting the Al Qaeda jackasses down here in the homeland, too.
11
posted on
03/01/2006 2:28:37 AM PST
by
Recovering_Democrat
((I am SO glad to no longer be associated with the party of Dependence on Government!))
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