Talk:Cryptanalysis of the Enigma/Archive 1

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Archive 1

Poles' use of "cribs"

It's a bit misleading to say that "British attacks usually required cribs, whereas the Polish attacks exploited the indicator system." The Poles also used cribs. Rejewski writes, for example (Kozaczuk, 1984 Enigma, pp. 243-44): "The last phase in reconstructing daily keys was finding the settings of the rings [on the rotors]. In that phase, we relied on the fact that the greater number of messages began with the letters ANX [German for "To," followed by "x" as a spacer]. [...] But the Germans [...] later, probably after 1940, [...] introduced a rule that, at the beginning of a message, one should place some word that has no meaning in connection with the context of the message, so that the message would not open with the letters ANX." logologist 23:29, 10 September 2005 (UTC)

Ah, interesting, I didn't know about that. Finding the first six permutations (A,B,C,D,E,F from AD, BE and CF) also required some insight into the non-random choices the operators made for the message settings (e.g. "lll"). But as a general statement, it's fair to characterise the Polish attacks as not needing cribs, whereas the British methods wouldn't have worked without them. — Matt Crypto 09:04, 11 September 2005 (UTC)

Key-size

Does anybody know how many different keys there are? It is hinted at in the Pre-World War II section:

Finding the proper chains from the 105,456 possibilities was a tremendous task. The Poles, particularly Rejewski's classmates Jerzy Różycki and Henryk Zygalski, developed a number of methods. One technique used clear strips for each rotor showing which letters could be chained, with the letters that could not chain being blacked out. Users would pick up the strips and lay them over each other, looking for selections where the three letters were clear all the way through. The British had also developed such a technique when they succeeded in breaking the common commercial Enigma, though they failed to break the military versions of the Enigma.

But it isn't exactly clear whether 105,456 is, in fact, the right number. I think it would make sense to add, to the end of the Security section, something like "the XXXXXX Enigma had approximately 100000 possible keys" or whatever the correct number is. Ealex292 19:27, 10 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I've added a reference which addresses this topic, but I haven't yet incorporated it into the text. The number of keys is a slightly ambiguous question, as you really need to first state how much you already known about the machine. For example, the number of possible keys is a lot less if it's assumed that the attacker already possesses the rotor wiring. — Matt Crypto 22:38, 6 November 2005 (UTC)

"Jeffreys sheets"

Not "Jefferson sheets." (And Zygalski invented them.) logologist 03:24, 11 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Yes. Welchman referred to Zygalski's perforated sheets as Jeffreys Sheets, but it appears that he misremembered and Jeffreys Sheets were actually sheets used for a different purpose. — Matt Crypto 22:38, 6 November 2005 (UTC)

"Clear strips" technique

What is the source on the supposed Polish "technique [that] used clear strips for each rotor showing which letters could be chained..."? I don't recall seeing in the Polish documentation any mention of such a technique. I would be interested in reading about it. logologist 00:42, 12 Apr 2005 (UTC)

My best guess it that it's a garbled description of perforated sheets. I've moved the text here pending verification/clarification
One technique used clear strips for each rotor showing which letters could be chained, with the letters that could not chain being blacked out. Users would pick up the strips and lay them over each other, looking for selections where the three letters were clear all the way through.
— Matt Crypto 18:27, 17 February 2006 (UTC)

At what point did Germany discover any of this?

It would be a good addition to the article to mention: Did the Germans add the extra rotors in 1939 because they had learned of the Polish decryption? Tempshill 17:55, 22 July 2006 (UTC)

Plugboard Combinations

One's first intuition is usually that there are 26! plugboard combinations - but this is wrong, because, for example, if A transforms to H, then H has to transform to A - whereas if all combinations were possible, then H should be able to transform to another letter.

  • the number of ways to connect no wires in the plug board is 1
  • the number of ways to connect 1 wire is sum(1..25)

This is the "triangle" function, which I defined thus:

tri(x) := sum(i, i, 1, x); (ref: http://maxima.sourceforge.net/docs/manual/en/maxima_6.html#IDX194 )

  • the number of ways to connect 2 wires is tri(25) * tri(23)
  • the number of ways to connect 3 wires is tri(25) * tri(23) * tri(21)
  • I have defined a function for the number of ways to connect n wires thus:

tricons(y) := product(tri(25 - (2 * k)), k, 0, y - 1); (ref: http://maxima.sourceforge.net/docs/manual/en/maxima_6.html#IDX188 )

  • therefore the total number of plug board combinations is:

sum(tricons(z) / z!, z, 0, 13)

The division by z! is because the actual order of the connections doesn't matter.

This gives a result of 532985208200576 - or 5.3 * 10^14

Could someone rewite this using the sum and product symbols and add it to the article, please? Thanks for this! New Thought 08:33, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

A couple of quick comments (sorry, I'm a bit busy atm!). The formula I came up with is the following, derived a slightly different way: . As a source, we can use this paper for related discussion. — Matt Crypto 18:12, 17 April 2007 (UTC)
Turning this into a Maxima expression, sum( 26! / (2^n * n! * (26 - 2*n)!), n, 0, 13), yields the same result I calculated independently above (532,985,208,200,576) - excellent!  :-) . That formula is sufficiently succinct to add to the article without excessively adding to its size. New Thought 19:34, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

26 * 25 * 26

Is there any reason, why the calculation of rotorsettings is 26 * 25 * 26 and not 26 * 26 * 26? I don't get this...--JolleJ 14:06, 24 May 2007 (UTC)

The number of ways you can set the three rotors is 26 * 26 * 26, but the period of the machine is slightly less: 26 * 25 * 26. The reason is that at certain points the middle rotor steps twice in two consecutive key strokes: see [1]. — Matt Crypto 18:06, 24 May 2007 (UTC)

Polish?

This article is fairly poorly written and has an obvious strong Polish bias. No I won't cite or otherwise, I know how wikibureaucracy works. But a rewrite would be nice if someone could be bothered. 86.41.67.200 23:16, 13 November 2007 (UTC)

OK. How about if that someone was you? — Matt Crypto 17:16, 14 November 2007 (UTC)
Show us where is this strong Polish bias. I'm from Poland, but I'm not some extremist. In my opinion, people should be rewarded for what they've done, that's all. It is perfectly true, that without Polish mathematicians "Enigma mystery" would not be discovered, or at least at this very moment. But of course without the help of French intelligence, British support and finally huge amounts of money for development from US Goverment, Polish discovery would be fruitless. Only cooperation between allies helped ending the war, or at least speeding up the end. Of course if Poles haven't done the discovery, someone else could have. But they did, and we should remember them, along with Turing and countless people who aided breaking Enigma. I'm very sorry of quality of my english, but I hope I have been understood. Have a nice day! - FunnyPunch (couldn't remember exactly my login - sorry) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 91.142.207.101 (talk) 14:22, 28 October 2008 (UTC)

I am preparing some quite extensive edits which aim to provide more detail and, I hope, thereby provide a balance between Polish, British and American contributions to the overall achievement. TedColes (talk) 15:19, 28 October 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for your efforts; I hope to get time to read it through properly. I did revert one change which I thought I should explain, regarding the period of Enigma. Your text read, "With single-notched rotors, the period of the machine was 17,576 (26 × 26 × 26). Or 16,900 (= 26 × 25 × 26) for those configurations using either rotor IV or rotor V which were "double stepping" rotors." Actually, most Enigma models exhibited double-stepping regardless of the rotors in use (I believe the Abwehr model used a different mechanism). Of the standard German military Enigma rotors I-VIII, rotors I-V had single notches, and rotors VI-VIII had two, but that was altogether separate to the double-stepping effect. — Matt Crypto 17:22, 30 December 2008 (UTC)
That is a useful correction, but was the number of settings that had to be searched in the bomy and bombes still 17,576? TedColes (talk) 18:58, 30 December 2008 (UTC)
I'm fairly sure they did search the full 17,576 settings per rotor combination. I believe to reduce the search space would require knowing the ringstellung part of the key, and then there would have been an extremely complex mechanical job of getting the bombe to simulate Enigma stepping. — Matt Crypto 09:53, 31 December 2008 (UTC)

Polish "bomba" or "Bomb"?

Should the heading for the section on the machine that Marian Rejewski devised be headed Polish "bomba" or simply "Bomb"? Almost all of my sources refer to the Polish machine as the "Bomba" and it seems to me that "Bomb" is too close to the machine devised by Alan Turing called the "Bombe" that developed Rejewski's idea into something that was substantially different in the way that it approached the problem of decrypting Enigma-ciphered messages. Similarly with the American further work on four rotor bombes. The Polish "Bomba kryptologiczna" may properly translate into English as "Cryptologic bomb", but, when not using the full term, "bomba" simply identifies it as the Polish machine to those that have encountered it before, and for those that have not, they are more likely to be alerted to the difference. After all English has a tradition stretching back more than 1,000 years of importing words from other languages that make it richer and more explicit.

To be balanced and with a neutral point of view, the article needs further details of the British and American machines and how they worked. I intend to supply this. TedColes (talk) 17:46, 2 January 2009 (UTC)

Definitely, the more information on British and American bombes (no need to capitalize the "b"), the better.
The British and Americans have already differentiated their bombes by tacking on the superfluous French "e"s. "Bomba" sounds a bit patronizing and may not be necessary where the context makes clear that it is the Polish bomb that is being discussed.
Nihil novi (talk) 07:20, 3 January 2009 (UTC)
Finding more sources that use 'bomba' rather than 'bomb' for the Polish machine has strengthed my feeling that I would like to revert to the former word. It is a long time since English dictionaries moved from a prescriptive to a descriptive philosopy—shouldn't encyclopedias do the same? Are there other editiors interested in this article who have a view on this matter? TedColes (talk) 10:45, 1 February 2009 (UTC)
I'd agree that if a majority of the English language sources use "bomba", then we should too. — Matt Crypto 15:04, 1 February 2009 (UTC)

Jeffreys sheets

"Cryptanalysis of the Enigma (the "Perforated sheets" section, note 36, as of 02:02, 1 February 2009) seems to show some terminological confusion, if one is to believe the "John R.F. Jeffreys" and "Perforated sheets" articles.

According to the latter articles, the term "Jeffreys sheets" did not denote Zygalski's perforated-sheets apparatus (one of which the British delivered to the Poles at PC Bruno outside Paris during the "Phony War"), but a different "catalogue of the effect of any two Enigma rotors and the reflector." Nihil novi (talk) 02:25, 1 February 2009 (UTC)

I believe this is one of the many details about the Enigma story that got mangled at first in the earliest books, and have subsequently been corrected in the literature. — Matt Crypto 07:46, 3 February 2009 (UTC)
Would you then consider correcting the "John R.F. Jeffreys" and "Perforated sheets" articles? Nihil novi (talk) 07:56, 3 February 2009 (UTC)
Oh, sorry for the miscommunication; I meant that those two articles (which reference Erskine's Cryptologia article) are correct. — Matt Crypto 09:05, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

Are you sure about this? I do not have Erskine's Cryptologia article, but the sources I do have, imply to me that the “Jeffreys sheet” method (or "Jeffreys apparatus”) were more powerful than is implied by a "catalogue of the effect of any two Enigma rotors and the reflector". For example Alan Turing says the following in his Treatise on the Enigma (a.k.a. Prof’s Book) – quoted in Copeland’s The Essential Turing pp.314,315.

"It is sometimes possible to find the keys by pencil and paper methods when the number of Stecker is not very great, e.g. 5 to 7. One would have to hope that several of the constatations of the crib were 'unsteckered'. The best chance would be if the same pair of letters occurred twice in the crib (a 'half-bombe').4 In this case, assuming 6 or 7 Stecker there would be a 25% chance of both constatations being unsteckered. The positions at which these constatations occurred could be found by means of the Turing sheets5 [Editor’s note. A catalogue of wheel positions of a type described else where in the Treatise (pp. 87 ff of Turing’s original typescript).] (if there were three wheels) or the Jeffreys sheets.6 [Editor’s note. A type of perforated sheet; see also pp. 233-4.]"

Also, Derek Taunt at p. 104 of Hinsley & Stripp’s Codebreakers: The Inside Story of Bletchley Park says:

"After a year or so I was transferred from Control to the Watch, the heart of the Hut 6 operation. The Watch, then led by Stuart Milner-Barry, had at its disposal a growing number of bombes, enabling it to exploit cribs and recipherments rapidly enough to make frequent current breaks of Red and Light Blue, the names by which the Enigma keys, used by the German Air Force generally and in North Africa respectively, were known in Hut 6. The early days, when 'female indicators' and 'Jeffreys sheets' made breaks possible, were a distant memory, but we still routinely scrutinized many-part messages for 'cillies'."

It seems to me to be possible that the section led by John R.F. Jeffreys might have produced other perforated sheet systems, after all “Banburies” were a type of perforated sheets.

I have a recent publication from Bletchley park Museum Bletchley Park at War which is a timeline “based on the Exhibition in Bletchley Park and contains most of the facts and images used in that display” which gives, the following as an activity in 1939.

"Developing further a method for breaking Enigma ciphers, bequeathed by the Poles, John Jeffreys, with a small team of assistants, works in the Cottage to produce a huge number of sheets of card each with about 1,000 perforations made in predetermined positions. The original method had been invented by the Polish mathematician Henryk Zygalski, but for reasons of security the cards are referred to as the 'Jeffreys sheets'. This task is completed by the end of December."

TedColes (talk) 18:00, 24 February 2009 (UTC)

Style of English

In its guidelines the Wikipedia:Manual of Style says "An article on a topic that has strong ties to a particular English-speaking nation uses the appropriate variety of English for that nation." Given that the vast majority of Anglophone people who worked on this topic were British, should we not therefore adopt British English style? Previously both American English and British English styles have been used. --TedColes (talk) 09:16, 19 February 2009 (UTC)

I'd be a bit skeptical that we can claim that the topic has particularly strong ties to Britain; certainly, the US did a fair amount of work on Enigma as well. If we went with Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style#Retaining_the_existing_variety, there's a "realise" (as opposed to "realize") in the first revision of this article, which was pretty much the only UK/US difference I could find. — Matt Crypto 12:36, 19 February 2009 (UTC)
Although British English, I would prefer it to be US English, just to keep it consistent. The -ize (not -ise) formation is used by the OED and Fowler and has been for over 70 years now, thoiugh early UNIX manuals note the distinction.
Should we mention Robert Harris's Enigma (ISBN 0-09-177923-5)? pub. Random House I have 3rd imprint from 1995 I would image 1st and 2nd are from the same year.
Harris's book and the subsequent film are very much fiction. I don't see that reference to them would add anything worthwhile. --TedColes (talk) 21:38, 20 February 2009 (UTC)
Ted not sure I agree, as many may get towards it that way. I understand that you want it to be an encylopaedic entry not just a write-up but for people to find a "way in" I always think good, in fact perhaps the most valuable thing, which is why I go round adding cross-refs and stuff.
But what should be the plural of Enigma? In Greek it would be enigmata. But that sounds rather formal. Enigmas? Or a German form? —Preceding unsigned comment added by SimonTrew (talk • contribs) 18:08, 24 February 2009 (UTC)
Enigma_machine#Fiction covers Harris's book and the film. I'd agree with Ted that it probably wouldn't add much to mention them here as well. I'd probably go with "Enigma machines" for a plural. — Matt Crypto 18:26, 24 February 2009 (UTC)
Yeah but not linked. I think it should be, with a very brief para (perhaps single sentence). I am not a huge fan of this on the whole, especially not an article as good as this, but one of the benefits of an encyclopaedia like this is being able to navigate around it. Personally I was doing cryptography since I learnt numbers but I am not everyone. SimonTrew (talk) 19:04, 24 February 2009 (UTC)
BTW I agree with your plural, seems the most elegant and undertandable. SimonTrew (talk) 19:08, 24 February 2009 (UTC)
Hmm I think I accidentally deleted max's reply. This was not on purpose, I was trying my very best not to, but managed it all the same. He said basically he agrees with Ted. I'm also working on the LEO computer article, my mum worked on em and I've cross-refed a lot, I hope you appreciate my good intentions somehow I got it wrong. Easier now to get it from history than put it back. SimonTrew (talk) 19:12, 24 February 2009 (UTC)

Article too large?

At 84K (but only 55K when notes and references excluded), this article is now eliciting the long page warning. Wikipedia:Article size is clear that long pages are discouraged. I had planned to expand the section on the 'Sources of cribs', the 'British bombe', 'German Naval Enigma' and the 'American bombe', and also to add a section about the Abwehr Enigma. I am reluctant to delete or move to another article, the work of other editors without some consensus. I would welcome views on moving elsewhere, much of 'General principles', 'Strengths of Enigma' and 'Security properties of Enigma'. Also, some of the 'dometic' details of the staff of Biuro Szyfrów in 'Polish breakthrough' might reasonably be moved to that article.--TedColes (talk) 15:25, 8 March 2009 (UTC)

Just my opinion but I would say keep going until you think you are done. At that point you can choose where and how to split. But best to get the content in first, ignore the warnings, and then worry about splitting later. SimonTrew (talk) 21:12, 8 March 2009 (UTC)
I would agree. In any case, additional substantive information about German equipment and procedures and about the British and American contributions to Enigma decryption would be most welcome. Nihil novi (talk) 23:28, 8 March 2009 (UTC)

Scale of effort

The article has a "small" failure in that it fails to mention the sheer number of bombes made: 100s on both sides of the Atlantic (perhaps as many as 300). And similarly dozens of Colossi. 198.123.48.21 (talk) 20:30, 8 June 2010 (UTC)

The number of British bombes is given as 210, but the number of US Navy bombes (121) is not included, I will remedy this. The ten Colossus computers were not used on Enigma messages. --TedColes (talk) 22:02, 8 June 2010 (UTC)

Referencing failure

User:Yoenit says that he or she has checked the article against B-class, but it fails reference criteria. How may this be remedied? --TedColes (talk) 08:45, 10 June 2010 (UTC)

I was so impressed with this article that, seeing it was assessed as "start" class, I placed a note here and Yoenit put in the effort to respond. Perhaps I should have approached the Wikiproject more diplomatically. The reply says "the article does not provide proper inline references everywhere, which is criteria 1 for B-class". However, Wikipedia:WikiProject_Military_history/Assessment#Quality_scale actually says "B1. It is suitably referenced, and all major points have appropriate inline citations". There has been for years the issue of some thinking every sentence should have a reference and others thinking that the interested reader should be referred to relevant reliable material. The Military History Wikiproject seems to deal with type of reference rather than number of references so leaving a considerable subjective element. My suggestion is to carry on developing really good articles and and let the assessment criteria look after themselves. I think this says more about the criteria than the article! Thincat (talk) 09:32, 10 June 2010 (UTC)

"General reader" or... what?

This article (Cryptanalysis of the Enigma) is basically a redirect of the "Breaking Enigma" paragraph on the Enigma machine article.
Because there is only the following template shown:
(...)

Main article: Cryptanalysis of the Enigma

(...)
I recently made some changes that just add a scientific approach to the complexity using scientific notation ("Introducing scientific notation so that Orders of magnitude are more comprehensible. Plz feel F3 2 undo. Thanks.") but they have been "undone" by TedColes motivating his action with a "More appropriate for the general reader".
At present there are two university lecturers (Boris Tsirelson and Richard Gill) discussing on the talk page of the Bell's theorem article which, I guess, is also not for the so called "general reader" but noone has undone their edits.
So I will post this waiting for comments in order to revert the changes to a scientific notation:

(...) #The 3-rotor scrambler could be set in 26 × 26 × 26 = 1.7576×104 n! (≈ 17,576) ways, and the 4-rotor scrambler in 26 × 17,576 = 4.56976×105 n! (≈ 456,976) ways.


(...) #With six leads on the plugboard, the number of ways that pairs of letters could be interchanged was 1.003917915×1010 n! (100,391,791,500 ≈ 100 billion)[1] and with ten leads, it was 1.003917915×1010 n! (150,738,274,937,250 ≈ 150 trillion).[2]

"General readers" could start an article on simple english wikipedia.
Thanks.
Maurice Carbonaro (talk) 11:49, 11 June 2012 (UTC)

References

  1. ^ Singh 1999, p. 136
  2. ^ Sale, Tony, Military Use of the Enigma: The complexity of the Enigma machine, retrieved 2 June 2010

German suspicions

I am a total layman on this subject, and cannot cite a source (old memory), but I read somewhere that in late 1944, the Germans were indeed suspicious that the code had been broken; hence, all preparations for what became the Battle of the Bulge were by differently encoded land-lines. The Allies had become so dependent on the info supplied by Enigma that they disregarded conventional intel reports, such as fly-overs, of a massive German build-up in Belgium, and were taken by surprise in December of that year. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.82.148.222 (talk) 01:24, 21 June 2012 (UTC)

You are right about the Battle of the Bulge, but it was not just Enigma, but also the Lorenz cipher that was unavailable to the allies. This whole topic could do with more research and tying together the main sources of intelligence from decrypted Axis signals. Perhaps it belongs in the Ultra article, than under the individual cryptanalysis articles. --TedColes (talk) 09:51, 21 June 2012 (UTC)

Huh? So 98.82.148.222 is "right" and... what about me? I didn't have any answers to my comment... not even "no comment"... whateva! Maurice Carbonaro (talk) 22:36, 16 July 2012 (UTC)

The first German WW2 Naval Enigma M4 Turingbombe break since 1945

This project broke 26 !! Enigma M4 messages from Uboat U534 the last two weeks. They used a software Turingbombe. More messages will follow. They used 112 CPU cores.

Project website: http://www.enigma.hoerenberg.com 93.209.190.247 (talk) 02:50, 18 August 2012 (UTC)

Minor spelling mistake

I would like to mention that "Keine besondere Ereignisse" is not correct German - it should read "Keine besonderen Ereignisse" (note the missing "n"). —Preceding unsigned comment added by 217.80.125.143 (talk) 20:52, 9 October 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for this correction. I took the spelling from 'Station X' by Michael Smith, but I find that Stuart Milner-Barry in 'Code Breakers' by Hinsley & Stripp gives your correct spelling. I will amend the text and the table.--TedColes (talk) 09:08, 11 October 2009 (UTC)
In fact, the standard expression in German here would be "keine besonderen Vorkommnisse". This is in meaning identical, but I do not know whether the source got something wrong or the language has changed.--131.159.0.47 (talk) 19:22, 28 July 2014 (UTC)

Bad characteristic

User Glrx has made this remank and labelled some statements "dubious" in the section on Rejewski's "characteristics" method. This deserves further explanation. --TedColes (talk) 21:50, 11 September 2014 (UTC)

The example characteristic does not reflect two composed tranposition permutations. See Rejewski 1981 p 217. There must be an even number of cycles, and cycle lengths must pair. The example is not an Enigma permutation. Glrx (talk) 21:59, 11 September 2014 (UTC)

(new user) The explanation of Rejewski's "characteristics" method is not self-evident. The conclusion that "For the 1,4 pairing above, there are only 1×3×9=27 possibilities for the substitution ciphers at positions 1 and 4" is unclear. I assume something involving the observation that a letter can not encipher to itself (so each pair reduces to 24 the possible substitutions for that position) - and if some specific letter eg X substitutes for a, then that letter (X) can not also substitute for any other (at that position) there being exactly 26 paths through the wiring at each position. So, for example, we know (from the example) that the first pair A/N can not represent either a or n. How this leads to the Cycle groups needs explanation, and how that in turn limits the number of possible alphabets (substitution ciphers) also needs explanation.

Rotor and reflector wiring

It would be interesting to identify who and when the rotor and reflector wirings were obtained.

Rejewski, using his characteristic/grill and traffic, figured out rotors I, II, III, and reflector A ca December 1932.

Reflector B introduced in November 1937. Presumably characteristic/grill method used as earlier to figure out its wiring.

Rotors IV and V were introduced ca December 1938. Poles used backward SD net to deduce the wiring.

British told in 1939.

Reflector C introduced ????. British codebreaker (who?) solves the wiring overnight because operator mistakening put C rotor in machine, transmitted message, fixed error, and then retransmitted message. Codebreaker knew initial setting and rotor order, so he could figure out the reflector.

Rotors VI, VII, and VIII. Where these pinches?

Glrx (talk) 19:59, 9 December 2014 (UTC)

Well-written article

This stuff is way over my head. However, by reading it straight through, I find I am able to follow the story pretty well. If the article is as accurate as it is readable, it is quite good. HowardMorland (talk) 05:58, 23 December 2014 (UTC)

Usage of "both" in Abwehr Enigma

To avoid any feeling of edit war between me and DieSwartzPunkt, here is a justification of my edit:

Before: a rotating reflector that could both be set by hand and was advanced by the stepping mechanism.

After: a rotating reflector that both could be set by hand and was advanced by the stepping mechanism.

The rotor reflector can indeed move in two situations: when it is set at a position manually, and when it is advanced by the stepping mechanism of the machine. Consequently, it can both be advanced by the former and the latter, and the right formulation is the second one: the only part of the sentence the verb "could" applies is "be set by hand".

I hope that I explained enough the meaning behind an edit I believed minor,

--PLNech (talk) 01:58, 8 February 2015 (UTC)

@PLNech: Having reread your edit and the original text, it is clear that the original is not quite, "just as correct as was". In reality your change has created an ambiguity in the context (and possibly there was one already). Your edit of, "... three conventional rotors, and a rotating reflector that both could be set by hand and was advanced by the stepping mechanism". In this construct, "both could" implies that there are two items that can be set by hand and are advanced by the stepping mechanism. This would suggest the conventional rotors as the immediately preceeding item. The key point about the Abwher Enigma was that it was the only wartime version of the Enigma where the reflector was stepped by the mechanism (in all other models it was fixed). The original wording of, "three conventional rotors, and a rotating reflector that could both be set by hand and was advanced by the stepping mechanism" was stating that only one item (the reflector) was capable of being set by hand and was advanced by the stepping mechanism (though the conventional rotors also could, this was not a difference - but this is ambiguous in the current and previous version). The statement was attempting to state the difference to any other Enigma (and not doing it well). The simplest solution here is to reword the whole thing to avoid any ambiguity and clarify that it is the important difference - which I have done. See what you think. DieSwartzPunkt (talk) 13:17, 9 February 2015 (UTC)
@DieSwartzPunkt: Indeed, I didn't realise my edit did introduce a potential misunderstanding of the amount of items that can rotate. Thank you for your rewording which removes all ambiguity (and eliminates the rather unencyclopedic "in fact")!

PLNech (talk) 13:32, 11 February 2015 (UTC)

Characteristic

The section confuses several issues. The characteristic was used long before there was ever a cyclometer.

The article confuses Rejewski's characteristic (the 3 sets of cycles formed by the double-encrypted 3-letter indicator), the method of finding an indicator using that characteristic and additional information (Rejewski used the method and operator mistakes to find indicators without knowing anything about the plugboard or even caring about the number of rotors, their initial positions, and the ring settings), and the cyclometer method (which exploits that the plugboard does not move and therefore its permutation does not affect the length of the cycles in the characteristic).

A step in the cyclometer method is to compare the characteristic with a null plugboard to the characteristic with the plugboard. That comparison can solve for the plugboard exchanges. Just knowing the lengths of the cycles is not sufficient to break the daily key.

The statements about the indicator are confused with terminology. There are only 26 cubed indicator settings. There are 26 cubed ring settings. There are 6 rotor orders. There are trillions of plugboard settings.

The characteristic did not reduce the number of indicator settings.

The 100K catalog entrees were not the complete catalog; the catalog did not include middle or left steps.

See Grill (cryptology)#Rejewski's characteristic.

Glrx (talk) 18:42, 12 June 2015 (UTC)

Numbers of personnel

I don't see any numbers of personnel on any articles, for the breaking of general Enigma and particularly naval Enigma. A breakdown that splits cryptanalysts between linguistics and mathematical academics, collators and sorters, bombe operators, clerks and admin staff, etc would be ideal. You compare services with the German effort particularly B-Dienst without it. I suppose you can broadly, but have number well... Perhaps not the right article but it needs to go somewhere. Scope creep (talk) 15:44, 24 August 2016 (UTC)

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"Cynthia" (Amy Elizabeth Thorpe)

Re "See also": It is disconcerting to see a cock-and-bull story such as William Stevenson's about "Cynthia" (Amy Elizabeth Thorpe) and her supposed theft of Enigma secrets through an amorous aide of Polish Foreign Minister Józef Beck (in Stevenson's A Man Called Intrepid, 1976) once more being offered to the public as bona-fide history, over a quarter-century after historian Richard Woytak demonstrated its falsehood—and that of other fabrications presented by F.W. Winterbotham, Anthony Cave Brown and F.H. Hinsley—in his introduction to Marian Rejewski's "Remarks on Appendix 1 to British Intelligence in the Second World War by F.H. Hinsley," published in Cryptologia, vol. 6, no. 1 (January 1982).

Historical fiction such as this should not be presented as fact in an encyclopedia. Unless verification can be provided for other of the vague, unsubstantiated assertions that are made in the "Amy Elizabeth Thorpe" article and in Stevenson's discredited book, on which that article is largely based, the "Amy Elizabeth Thorpe" article should be deleted in its entirety. Nihil novi (talk) 20:08, 29 August 2010 (UTC)

What is disconcerting is that editors with a single agenda to emphasize the Polish role in Engima and minimize others can not see that Rejewski et al. have no knowledge of Thorpe and other Allied spies in Warsaw while spymasteres like William Stephenson are aware of a broader picture. Thorpe is not seeking full credit (nor does Stephenson give it to her) for cracking Engima, rather she is noted as providing early assistance (before official Polish cooperation with the Allies) in the long story of cracking Engima.
Leidseplein (talk) 01:27, 12 September 2010 (UTC)
And just what exactly, pray tell, was the nature of the "early assistance" that Ms. Thorpe — Mrs. Arthur Pack — provided, apart from alleged amatory ministrations to cohorts of diplomats and officials on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean?
She found out through Beck's aid that the Poles had keys to some Germany army cryptograms; she copied items from Beck's safe that told the details about how and where the German's used Enigma, according to BSC head William Stephenson.Leidseplein (talk) 03:16, 12 September 2010 (UTC)
Can anyone imagine William Friedman sharing information about his Purple-breaking operation with U.S. Secretary of State Cordell Hull? Please provide the name of the traitorous aide to Polish Foreign Minister Józef Beck.
Not relevant to the discussion and not an editor's role to argue the topic, but the Polish Diplomat was probably Edward Kuliowski, see, for example, (hard as it is to accept that a Pole could give away secrets...)

http://books.google.com/books?id=nKaHjVFxwXAC&pg=PA210&lpg=PA210&dq=edward+kulikowski+diplomat&source=bl&ots=wx2yFoWMyH&sig=pUbXZY3GeDSWRaxQFCDk0ZkcPZg&hl=en&ei=cXeNTIHLMoOKlweNxd1h&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=7&ved=0CDEQ6AEwBg#v=onepage&q=edward%20kulikowski%20diplomat&f=false. Leidseplein (talk) 16:41, 12 September 2010 (UTC)

Stephenson and Stevenson are worthless on the subject of Enigma. Nihil novi (talk) 05:09, 12 September 2010 (UTC)
Worthless to you perhaps because your recorded history on Wikipedia is to minimize or eliminate any cited source you don't like, especially those who assign some of the credit for breaking Enigma to other than Poles. Rejewski etc... had NO WAY of knowing about secret Allied spies in Warsaw and what they were doing in 1938, William Stephenson did.Leidseplein (talk) 16:41, 12 September 2010 (UTC)
We know pretty exactly what Marian Rejewski and his colleagues, and Dilly Knox and Alan Turing and their colleagues, did with Enigma, from documentation that began to be released before William Stevenson wrote his thriller about William Stephenson and the seductive Ms. Thorpe, but we know nothing about what she is actually supposed to have done with Enigma.
I have seen no credible documentation of any contribution that she may have made to Enigma decryption.
Please see William Stevenson's A Man Called Intrepid, pp 342-343. ISBN-345-25558-5-225; or online at:
http://books.google.com/books?id=EHtrn0Pzpz8C&pg=PA77&lpg=PA77&dq=amy+elizabeth+thorpe+enigma&source=bl&ots=KBEHGPvxrd&sig=SLY9ZXHwH3GOkFX7xXaupZDyuwY&hl=en&ei=qUWMTN3QGIGdlgew0qhg&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=9&ved=0CD4Q6AEwCA#v=onepage&q=amy%20elizabeth%20thorpe%20enigma&f=false
Leidseplein (talk) 03:16, 12 September 2010 (UTC)
Not a credible source. Nihil novi (talk) 05:09, 12 September 2010 (UTC)
Credible to you means = agrees with your opinions and especially means a source that only gives Poles credit for solving Enigma. There are dozens of publish accounts of Amy Thorpe's work in Poland in 1938 before Rejewski etc... finally decide to meet with the allies a few weeks before war breaks out in 1939, see Amy Thorpe's page for these sources.Leidseplein (talk) 16:41, 12 September 2010 (UTC)
If no more information can be produced about Ms. Thorpe's "assistance" to Enigma decryption, I propose that all vague mention of that assistance be expunged from Wikipedia. Her amatory contributions to the Allied cause should suffice to secure her name in prewar and wartime history.
A simple Google Search of Amy Elizabeth Thorpe and Enigma provides 6+ sourcesLeidseplein (talk) 03:16, 12 September 2010 (UTC)
So what, if they're not credible on the subject? Nihil novi (talk) 05:09, 12 September 2010 (UTC)
Since credible to you means only one thing, that Poles alone provided early work on Enigma, your definition of credible is irrelevant. You reject sources because you don't like their report of history when an editor's role is to report both sides of disputed subject fairly. Leidseplein (talk) 16:41, 12 September 2010 (UTC)
Nihil novi (talk) 02:14, 12 September 2010 (UTC)
I suggest this argument belongs on [Amy Thorpe]'s page, not here. Leidseplein (talk) 03:18, 12 September 2010 (UTC)
Readers may indeed find the discussion there amusing. Nihil novi (talk) 05:09, 12 September 2010 (UTC)
This is not a blog or forum to discuss this topic, but yes if you want to see someone with a pro-Polish-agenda to the exclusion of anyone else's efforts on Enigma, we can look at ALL of your work on wiki.Leidseplein (talk) 16:41, 12 September 2010 (UTC)
When Stevenson, Winterbotham, et. al., were writing their books Poland was behind the Iron Curtain and was part of the Warsaw Pact. Because of this many of the Poles involved in the ULTRA project, some of whom had returned to Poland after the war, would have appreciated the authors keeping the Polish involvement secret. By doing so, the authors may well have saved the Poles involved from imprisonment by their own Polish govenrment, or worse. These Poles might have been suspected of carrying out espionage for Britain.
Stevenson, Winterbotham, et. al., would have known this and so would have come up with plausible alternative explanations when writing their books. If not they would have been told to do so when their manuscripts were vetted by MI5/MI6 before publication.
SIS may have had their faults but unlike some, they weren't usually stupid enough to jeopardise the lives of friends, or former-friends, in potentially hostile foreign countries. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 95.150.11.136 (talk) 11:17, 9 December 2016 (UTC)
The foregoing argument would seem to be undermined by the Polish military historian Władysław Kozaczuk's having disclosed the Polish Cipher Bureau's interwar breaking of the Third Reich's Enigma ciphers, in his 1967 book, Bitwa o tajemnice. That disclosure — 7 years before F.W. Winterbotham's 1974 The Ultra Secret, 9 years before William Stevenson's 1976 A Man Called Intrepid, and 23 years before the fall of communism in Poland — was based on documentation provided by Polish mathematician-cryptologist Marian Rejewski, who clearly by then did not fear punitive measures by Poland's communist government. Whatever it was that Winterbotham, Stevenson, and some other English-language authors were "protecting", it wasn't the Polish Cipher Bureau's employees or directors. Nihil novi (talk) 08:15, 13 December 2016 (UTC)

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Decisive?

This was considered by western Supreme Allied Commander Dwight D. Eisenhower to have been "decisive" to Allied victory.

How? This shouldn't be introduced in the lead without explanation.--Jack Upland (talk) 08:54, 4 September 2020 (UTC)

Polish cryptologists' escape from Poland

Chumchum7, Władysław Kozaczuk's book Enigma (1984) gives a different account of how Rejewski, Różycki, Zygalski, and other key Polish Cipher Bureau personnel were evacuated by special Polish government train to Romania, where the cryptologists visited Allied embassies in an effort to obtain assistance in getting to France. Kozaczuk's account, based on Rejewski's, mentions that Colin Gubbins tried to make contact with them but was unable to, and they got out of Romania without his help. At the moment I don't have Kozaczuk's book at hand, but I believe the British embassy told them to come back later, while the French embassy contacted Gustave Bertrand in France, who facilitated their travel to Paris. Kozaczuk's account is quite detailed and seems the more reliable of the two. Best, Nihil novi (talk) 20:04, 4 December 2021 (UTC)

P.S. The account you are sourcing is William Stevenson, Spymistress: The Life of Vera Atkins, the Greatest Female Secret Agent of World War II, Arcade Publishing, 2006.
Stevenson seems often to have embroidered on the careers of relatively minor figures. Some might question whether Vera Atkins was a more notable female secret agent than Krystyna Skarbek, on whom she offered some opinions.
Nihil novi (talk) 21:09, 4 December 2021 (UTC)
The "Colin Gubbins" article, "Second World War" section, says:
"When British forces were mobilized in August 1939, Gubbins was appointed Chief of Staff to the military mission to Poland led by Adrian Carton de Wiart. Gubbins and some of a contingent from MI(R) arrived in Warsaw on 3 September, within hours of the British declaration of war, but after only a few days the mission was forced by the rapidly deteriorating situation to abandon Warsaw. They finally crossed into Roumania in late September."
No mention of Gubbins' escorting the Polish Cipher Bureau personnel; no mention of Vera Atkins.
The Polish cryptologists crossed into Romania on 17 September 1939, apparently well before Gubbins reached Romania.
Please see "Marian Rejewski", the "In France and Britain" section.
Nihil novi (talk) 06:27, 5 December 2021 (UTC)
Nihil novi, thanks. NB this is not new content, I carried it over from the Vera Atkins article. I looked at Stevenson years ago and did not check through it again this time, nor do I have time to - due to my job. There are four seperate conceptual issues here. (i) Two sources giving conflicting accounts. In that case we accomodate them both, explaining there are different versions of the story. (ii) Credibility of the source. If we want to discredit the reliability or rule out a published secondary source from Wikipedia that requires a major intervention by consensus-building in the relevant forum, not our own opinion. Some people want to rule out Norman Davies based on their opinion that he has embroidered. Wikipedia is not a record of facts, it's a record of what has been published in what Wikipedia defines as reliable sources, which until now Stevenson is recognized as. (iii) Notability of Atkins versus Skarbek. I don't see this as an issue here because it's about Enigma, not these people - if either one of them had anything to do with Enigma then they are relevant. Besides, Skarbek features prominently in Stevenson as one of Atkins' friends - and is described many times in very flattering, heroic terms. (iv) Failure of verification. If you are totally certain that article content is not supported anywhere in the source, then it should be removed immediately from both articles with a record in the edit summary of why you are doing so. -Chumchum7 (talk) 05:04, 7 December 2021 (UTC)
Chumchum7, if you had read William Stevenson's 1976 bestseller A Man Called Intrepid, you would have found on p. 343:
"Foreign Minister Beck's aide took CYNTHIA [wife of a British diplomat, Arthur Pack, who had been transferred to Warsaw] with him on confidential missions to Prague and Berlin. She learned that the Polish Biuro Szyfrow (cipher bureau) had possession of some keys to German Army cryptograms. This reinforced earlier information that three Polish mathematicians in the bureau, Jerzy Rozycki, Henryk Zygalski, and Mademoiselle Marian Rejewski had been working on the Heydrich-Enigmas [?!]. Some of her [CYNTHIA's] material doubtless duplicated details from other sources, but [Sir William] Stephenson always felt that she contributed a great deal to the vital statistics that were required for a machine that later, as part of the ULTRA system, became the first modern computer, nicknamed 'Colossus.' Being an electronics breakthrough, it came within Stephenson's own scientific sphere. By the time the future chief cryptologist of Bletchley flew to Warsaw for a sample of the Heydrich-Enigma, in the summer of 1939, CYNTHIA had been moved out of harm's way. Her affairs were coming to light, and the British had to stop any investigation, however private and personal."
Stevenson comes across here, and in his account of Vera Atkins' alleged kidnapping of the Polish cryptologists, as a tenth-rate novelist with a preoccupation for burnishing the résumés of women, real or imagined.
If you want to know the real story of how the cryptologists got from Poland to France in September 1939, you will find an extensive, detailed quotation from Richard Woytak's 24 July 1978 interview with Marian Rejewski (who, nota bene, was not an unmarried woman) on pp. 79–80 in Władysław Kozaczuk's Enigma (1984). It is a bit too long to quote here in full, but it deserves to be read.
Nihil novi (talk) 11:47, 7 December 2021 (UTC)
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