Tuesday Tidbit: Enigma Decoded

In the last few years, much has been made about code breaking during WWII. Movies and books have come out about Bletchley Park and the men and women who worked there-tirelessly, under cover of secrecy, for years. Stories have recently come to light about husbands and wives, who unknown to each other, both worked at Bletchley and other similar facilities. Because of laws prohibiting workers from speaking about their assignments, it is only since the declassification of projects and information about the war that these people discovered they commuted to the same location day after day.

Code breaking took many forms during the war, because of the myriad ways codes were encrypted, but one of the most important projects was decoding Enigma.

Invented near the end of WWI by a German engineer named Arthur Schlerbius, Enigma looks somewhat like a typewriter. Approximately the same size, the machine features a series of rotors (also called wheels or drums) which turn by way of electrical contacts on either side. The wiring creates a substitution of letters and replaces them in some complex fashion. After encrypting each letter, the rotors advance which changes the substitution.

Enigma is family of machines that includes multiple designs. Therefore, in one sense work to decode the machine had to start over with each new edition.

In May, 1941 the Allies struck gold when the German weather ship München was attacked and found with Enigma code books for the following month on board. Then in June the supply ship Gedania and weather ship Lauenburg were also captured. Both had codebooks for July in their possession. Scholars and employees at Bletchley concur that the intelligence gained by these events was a significant asset and shortened the war.

Fast forward three years when the Americans captured the German submarine U-505 possessing an Enigma codebook on June 4, 1944. Authorities should have been ecstatic, right? Well, it turns out the timing for this was poor because of the date’s proximity to the landings at Normandy. The Navy classified the incident secret, towed the submarine to Bermuda where her crew was interned at a U.S. prisoner-of-war camp and denied access to International Red Cross visits. In addition, the U.S. sailors who took part in the capture were forbidden to discuss it under penalty of death.

Two captures. Two different outcomes.

Linda Shenton Matchett is an author, speaker, and history geek. A native of Baltimore, Maryland, she was born a stone’s throw from Fort McHenry and has lived in historic places all her life. Linda is a member of ACFW, RWA, and Sisters in Crime. She is a volunteer docent and archivist for the Wright Museum of World War II. 

Visit her website to learn more about Linda and her books, including her latest release Love’s Belief: http://www.lindashentonmatchett.com/p/books.html. Receive a free short story when you sign up for her newsletter.