History. Enigma, device used by the German military command to encode strategic messages before and during World War II.The Enigma code was first broken by the Poles, under the leadership of mathematician Marian Rejewski, in the early 1930s. They also thought it would likely emerge as a crucial factor in some of them, which it didn’t. It was employed extensively by Nazi Germany during World War II, in all branches of the German military.. Enigma has an electromechanical rotor mechanism that scrambles the 26 letters of the alphabet. W hen it was finally revealed in 1974 that the Allies had been reading the encrypted German Enigma transmissions throughout much of the war—intelligence the Allies called Ultra—historians initially expected the news to shed light on the conflict’s numerous turning points, which it did. Winterbotham's book "The Ultra Secret" in 1974 to really rock the boat. The most common version of the Enigma machine that was broken by the codebreakers at Bletchley Park (BP) was the Enigma-I, the machine that was used by the German Army and Air Force. Enigma key broken On this day in 1941, crackerjack British cryptologists break the secret code used by the German army to direct ground-to-air operations on the Eastern front. The Enigma machine is an encryption device developed and used in the early- to mid-20th century to protect commercial, diplomatic and military communication. Never did! It was employed extensively by Nazi Germany during World War II, in all branches of the German military.. Enigma has an electromechanical rotor mechanism that scrambles the 26 letters of the alphabet. Leaked away, even over the leaders supposedly secure telephones like the Admirals of the Kriegsmarine like Erich Raeder and Karl Donitz! Yes, you are right, certainly Germany and "even" Italy (I don't know for Japan). The Enigma 'typewriter' In 2001, the release of the feature film Enigma sparked great interest in the tweedy world of the boffins who broke Nazi Germany's … Cryptanalysis of the Enigma ciphering system enabled the western Allies in World War II to read substantial amounts of Morse-coded radio communications of the Axis powers that had been enciphered using Enigma machines.This yielded military intelligence which, along with that from other decrypted Axis radio and teleprinter transmissions, was given the codename Ultra. Alan Turing was a brilliant mathematician. He was already working part-time for the British Government’s Code and Cypher School before the Second World War broke out. Born in London in 1912, he studied at both Cambridge and Princeton universities. In reality though, Hitler generally did agree with his generals on most things, especially by 1941, so it's quite likely that even you could convince all the generals that Enigma was broken (quite possible, but not a certainty), but Hitler probably wouldn't agree, and Germany would still be using Enigma. How long did it take for the Nazis to figure out that had happened, and what did they... jump to content. The announcement of Enigma in 73 came in a book by Gustave Betrand: Enigma: ou, La plus grande énigme de la guerre 1939-1945.To be honest, it seemed to go mostly unremarked at the time. The Enigma code being solved had huge strategic importance. The disclosure follows the controversy over the American film U-571, which inaccurately suggested that the Enigma cipher was broken only because the US Navy captured an Enigma machine.