The world was about to go to war for the second time. Millions of lives would be
lost. In a secret room, hidden deep in the bowels of a Polish government building,
three men work frantically to decipher a German code. If they succeed,
millions of lives will be saved; if they fail, the Nazis could rule the world forever.
Poland had finally gained its independence after World War I.
But the country knew that enemies were lying in wait all around their borders. It seemed as
if their neighbors wanted to retake the lands that the Poles fought so hard to defend. Polish leaders
knew they needed to stay one step ahead of their enemies. In order to do this they would need to
decipher encrypted enemy communications. This would allow them to be prepared for anything.
Unfortunately, war came sooner than expected when Russian forces invaded
the country during the Polish-Soviet War in 1919. But thanks to their foresight,
Poland had set up the Cipher Bureau. The personnel working for this organization were geniuses,
and they were easily able to decipher the Russian’s clunky cryptic messages.
The Russians had not changed their encryption strategy since the first World War,
so the Polish cryptologists were easily able to intercept and decipher Russia's military
communications. This allowed them to always be one step ahead, and in 1921 at the Battle of Warsaw,
Poland declared victory over the invading forces. The vital role
that the Polish Cipher Bureau played in winning the war was not overlooked.
It became clear that in any future conflict deciphering codes would be key to winning.
It was lucky for the rest of the world that Poland had this foresight, because in just under
two decades, the Axis powers would sweep across Europe. The world would be plunged into chaos,
and millions of lives would be lost. However, without what Poland did next, the Allied Forces
may have lost the war, and we would all be living in a Nazi dictatorship right now.
In 1924 the Poles intercepted a new type of encrypted message that the German Navy
was using in its communications. This obviously was concerning for Poland
since Germany had not been very friendly to them during World War I. Even worse,
Germany’s military was growing at an exponential rate. It was assumed that
new encryptions could only be bad news for whatever the Germans were planning.
The Polish Cipher Bureau immediately went to work deciphering this new Enigma code.
The cryptographers knew that there was trouble when the German code seemed impossible to crack.
For several years they had been able to intercept and decipher pretty much
any German communication they could get their hands on. The Polish team never had
a problem with breaking the German codes until now. They would later discover it
all had to do with a device the Germans had developed called the Enigma machine.
The Enigma machine was not new per se. It had been invented at the end of World
War I by a German engineer named Arthur Scherbius. It was actually a commercial
cipher machine that the military had taken and modified to make their codes harder to break.
The machine took messages and scrambled them into strings of random letters. The encrypted
messages became impossible to decipher without an enigma machine to unscramble the message.
There were multiple stages in the encryption process that changed the
letters and randomized the code. The Poles, along with the rest of Europe,
knew they were in trouble unless they could figure out how to break the code the Germans were using.
Teams of linguists from Britain, France,
and Poland worked day and night to figure out how to decipher the Enigma Code.
But they just couldn’t crack it. This was when the Polish Cipher Bureau came to a realization.
Maybe they had been approaching the decryption method all wrong. Maybe the code couldn’t be
broken using the linguistics method they, and every other country, had been using.
After running through their options and brainstorming what could possibly be causing
this code to be unbreakable, the Polish military decided to add the Radio-Intelligence Office to
the Cipher Bureau. Their new task was simple: break the Enigma Code by any means necessary.
The Cipher Bureau was now headed by Major Gwido Langer and Captain Maksymilian Ciężki. It was
Ciężki who first had the idea that would end up saving the world. He was convinced that in order
to break the Enigma Code the Poles needed to shift away from the linguistics approach, and bring in
mathematicians. The key to cracking the encrypted messages wasn’t hidden in letters, but in numbers.
Ciężki had taught a course at Poznań University about cryptology, and it was in his class that
he encountered three students who excelled in the field. Their names were Marian Rejewski,
Jerzy Różycki and Henryk Zygalski. All three of these men had already begun doing the work
that Ciężki knew was needed. They were using mathematics to break codes. He immediately
brought them on board at the Cipher Bureau and put them to work breaking the Enigma Code.
After months and months of frustration, and very little progress, the team finally
caught a break. French allies had gotten a hold of highly classified German documents.
One of these documents was a manual for the Enigma machine. The Poles had already
hypothesized that the Germans were using some kind of device to encode their messages,
but had no idea what it was, or how it worked. But that was all about to change.
The French shared the manual with the British and the Poles who immediately began using it to figure
out the exact methods the Germans were using to encode their messages. Now that the young Polish
cipher team had the manual they were able to make headway on how the code was being generated.
It was Marian Rejewski who finally figured out how the rotors and connections within
the Enigma machine worked to scramble the messages. This allowed the Cipher Bureau to
build replicas of the German Enigma machine. They were finally getting closer to breaking the code.
However, the team found that just having the machine was not enough because breaking the
encrypted messages took far too much time. Rejewski developed a solution to this as
well. He and the team built electromechanical machines called ‘bombes’ that could speed up
the decryption process. The mathematicians had finally done it. They broke the Enigma Code,
and could decipher German messages quickly. But then something incredibly frustrating happened.
The Germans either found out that their messages were no longer secure,
or someone leaked information to them, because they added another set of encryption devices
to their machines. Once again the Polish cipher team was in the dark.
In 1936, with World War II looming on the horizon, the Germans began changing
the settings of the rotors in their Enigma machines much more frequently.
Previously the rotors remained the same for months. Then when they did change,
it was just a matter of time before the Polish mathematicians figured out the new settings,
and could begin deciphering the messages once again. Now however,
the Germans were changing the rotors in their machines daily, and the Poles couldn’t keep up.
It seemed as if the Cipher Bureau was back to page one. Not only were the rotors being
constantly changed, but the Germans had added another layer of encryption
to the keyboard of the machine that increased the number of ways that the message could be encoded.
Rejewski and his team worked around the clock to make adjustments to their own machines,
which would allow them to once again decipher the German Enigma Code.
Their painstaking work paid off, and by 1938 the Polish Cipher Bureau could decode around 75% of
German messages. However, the Germans kept adding layers of encryption to their codes. Rejewski
and his team kept up with the changes, and developed ways around the new layers of coding.
In 1939 they could break the codes on around 95% of German messages. Then the unthinkable happened.
As 1939 progressed the Polish Cipher Bureau deciphered more and more military
communications from the Germans that indicated war was imminent. They knew that their country
was going to be invaded, and since the rest of Europe was dragging there feet in
taking the new Nazi threat seriously, the Poles needed to make a difficult choice.
Should they hold tight and try to defend all the hard work they’d accomplished on their own?
Or should they send their cipher team, replica enigma machines,
and bombes decipherers out of the country and give them to the French and the British?
As September 1st approached, and the invasion was about to get underway, the Poles made the
decision. The Cipher Bureau handed over all of their work and their machines to the French
cipher chief Gustave Bertrand and the head of the British cipher team, Alastair Denniston.
Once the French and British were given the Cyber Bureau's resources,
they realized that the Poles were light-years ahead of where they were on deciphering the
Nazi’s messages. The main reason for this was because of the mathematical code breaking
that Marian Rejewski, Jerzy Różycki, and Henryk Zygalski had employed in their methods.
Over the past several years the French and British had continued using a linguistic
foundation to try and break the Enigma Code, and had made very little progress.
It was the Poles' information and machinery that allowed for future breakthroughs on codes used
by the Axis Powers. The Nazi’s continued to modify their machines and encryptions, but the foundation
that the Polish team had provided for the French, and more importantly the British, allowed them
to build the machine that would save millions upon millions of lives by helping end the war.
This machine was the Colossus Computer at Bletchley Park that allowed Alan Turing and
his team to decipher the Enigma messages that the Axis Powers were using during World War
II. The Cipher Bureau’s work also made it possible for the British
team to eventually break the German Lorenz cipher that was even more sophisticated,
and was used by the Nazis towards the end of the war. If Turing and his team did not have the
foundation set by the Polish mathematicians, the war may have ended very differently.
Even if the Allies had won World War II it would have taken much longer, and there would have been
many more casualties. Luckily, this did not happen thanks to the codebreakers in Poland.
Unfortunately at the end of World War II Poland was forced into the Communist rule
of the Soviet Union. During this time Polish achievements were suppressed,
and the Communists controlled information coming into, and going out of the country.
The heroes of the Cipher Bureau were all but forgotten.
Recently, the Polish government has fought hard to make the accomplishments of Marian Rejewski,
Jerzy Różycki, and Henryk Zygalski known to the rest of the world.
They are finally being recognized for their contributions, and even have a plaque dedicated
to them outside of Bletchley Park. We here at The Infogrpahics Show are happy to help spread
the news of how Poland helped save the world, even if it couldn’t save itself. It is crazy
to think that without the early contributions of these cryptographers millions more people
may have died during World War II. Or that we might all be living in a Nazi empire today.
Now watch “Most Terrifying Weapons of World War 2.” Or check out “CIA Spy Techniques:
The Shoelace Code and Other Secret Spy Techniques.”