who broke the enigma code?

Answer 1

Alan Turing. But that's not the whole answer

Answer 2

In actual fact in No one actually broke the code as such. An Enigma prototype machine came into Polish hands in 1929 by mistake and was analyized by Ludomir and Antoni Palluth, some simple codes where read. Then code was touted around in 1931 by a German called Hans Thilo Schmidt, an executive in the German Defence Ministry who tried to sell it to the French. He had the initial manuals to the Enigma Machine built and used from 1930. However the French, followed by the British rejected his advances as they felt that the codes could not be broken by these means. But they brought the manuals for a substantial amount of Money. This then lead to the 'Black Chamber' crypto service in Poland in obtaining more information about the Enigma and learning that there was at least 2 types of different Enigma style machines, Military and Commercial. Over the next few years Schmidt was able to sell on his information to the French, British and Polish associates until 1938. Only then was the Enigma machine upgraded, but the Poles quickly cracked the codes and changes but did not pass the information along until the Invasion of their country. The reason why Enigma was only truly cracked in the 40's was due to the increasing safety the Germans used in changing codes, settings, adding more wheels, junctions and sockets to there machines and of course the Luftwaffe, Army and Kreigsmarine style machine differances.
Plus once the Turing machine had been built the time factor in deciphering the codes was reduced so enabling the passing of information from ULTRA to Commanders.

Answer 3

Breaking the enigma code started from c1940 when American and British intelligence gathered at Bletchly Park to attempt at breaking the Nazi code machine, the Enigma Code.

Please note that the Americans were in on this before having declared war on Nazi Germany. It was a combined US/UK effort from the start.

Breaking the code was a long drawn out process because in effect, even though the Allies had an Enigma Machine, the code it used was so complex it needed to be 'broken' every single day. First, in order to break into the 'code' of a given day, the code breakers needed to know the 'keys' to the code so that they would set up their version of the Enigma Machine.

Luckily for the staff at Bletchly Park, the Nazis were 'sloppy'. Some German Army radio operators closed with a final message actually giving out the following day's keys. How nuts is that?

The Brits built possibly the worl'd first ever fully functioning electronic computer at Bletchly Park and it was the speed of this machine which made it possible to break the code.

Answer 4

During 1931, Polish Intelligence co-operated with the French Deuxieme Bureau, which led a most important agent within the Reichswehr Cipher's Office. Rejewski got a description of the militarised Enigma, as well as old keys tables. This helped him to eliminate many unknown figures in the permutation-alike equation he had previously created. Finally, in December 1932, Rejewski reconstructed the Enigma's internal connections. In January, 1933, the two other cryptologist became also involved in Rejewski's work. In the same month, the first German messages were decrypted. Since then, the General Staff had access to the most secret data transmitted by the German Army, Navy, Air Force, as well as the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

In October 1939, a joint Polish-French radio intelligence centre in Gretz-Armainvillers near Paris was created. It was given a code name "Bruno." Furthermore, the "Bruno" centre had a Teletype link to Gov't Code and Ciphers School in England. There were also Spanish code breakers employed at "Bruno" to crack the Spanish and Italian ciphers.

The main problem the cryptologists were facing was the exchange of the key system, which took place in the German Army on 1 July, 1939. The first decrypted message at the "Bruno" centre on 17 January 1940 was from 28 October 1939.

Unfortunately, there is no evidence that the Poles made any worthwhile use of the intelligence they gathered from Enigma coded messages before 1939. Furthermore, the fact that they possessed such an ability was known by the British.

In the summer of 1939, a small team of codebreakers arrived at the Government Code and Cipher School's (GC&CS) new home at Bletchley Park, Buckinghamshire. Their mission was to crack the backbone of German military and intelligence communications, the Enigma cipher.

Alan Turing realised that 'cribs' offered a way of cracking Enigma. A 'crib' is a piece of encrypted text whose true meaning is known or can be guessed. German messages were formulaic in places and the first line often contained standard information, for example weather conditions. Once a crib was known, it was still necessary to check thousands of potential Enigma settings to read a message, and to do this quickly Turing designed a electro-mechanical codebreaking machine called a Bombe. Each Bombe simulated the actions of 10 Enigma machines and was able to check all potential settings at high speed.

Further codebreaking success enabled Bletchley Park to exploit Lorenz, a highly sophisticated cipher used personally by Hitler and his High Command. But many of the messages still took several weeks to decipher - a computing machine was needed. The result was Colossus, the world's first programmable electronic computer, designed by Max Newman.

Colossus was the size of a living room and weighed about one tonne. Its 2,400 valves replicated the pattern of an encrypted Lorenz message as electrical signals. This breakthrough in computing remained a secret for many years, to the extent that two Americans took the credit for inventing the computer in 1945. But the creation of Colossus proved to be a key contributor to the success on D-Day.

Answer 5

Initially the Poles. Later the Britsh, working at Bletchley Park, primarily continued the work with the U.S. producing many of the 4 wheel bombes used to test keys.

Go to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cryptanalysis_of_the_Enigma. Kate Winslet was in the movie Enigma in 2001 which was somewhat interesting. We can probably thank the codebreaking work for the modern computer.

Answer 6

The code was discovered by the Polish resistance who then sent it to Bletchley park in Southern England who then set about deciphering it...And not the U.S navy as Hollywood have us believe

Answer 7

correct sunflower, and that helped to rid the seas of the German u-boats...... or we would have been decimated. I think it was a General Post Office employee who was instrumental in breaking the code at Bletchley House or Park

Answer 8

The British during WWll

Answer 9

The code breakers at Bletchley Park UK.

Answer 10

It was the British...that film called U-571 or whatever it was called, said it was the Americans. Why does Hollywood do that!?