On This Day In History: British Cryptologists Broke ENIGMA The Secret Code Used By Germans – On July 9, 1941

MessageToEagle.com – On July 9, 1941, British cryptologists broke the secret code – Enigma –  used by the German army to direct ground-to-air operations on the Eastern front.

In fact, many of the Enigma codes for the Western front were broken by the British experts.

Enigma was the Germans’ most sophisticated coding machine, necessary to secretly transmitting information.

The Enigma machine was invented in 1919 by Hugo Koch, a Dutchman. The machine looked like a typewriter and was originally used for business purposes.

The German army adapted the machine for wartime use and considered its encoding system perfect – totally unbreakable.

See also:

World’s Oldest Enigma Machine In Denmark Is Extremely Unique

Surprisingly for them, the British cryptologists had broken the Germans’ first Enigma code as early as the German invasion of Poland and had intercepted virtually every message sent during the occupation of France and Holland. Britain nicknamed the intercepted messages Ultra.

Now, with the German invasion of Russia, the Allies needed to be able to intercept coded messages transmitted on this second, Eastern, front. The first breakthrough occurred on July 9, regarding German ground-air operations, but various keys would continue to be broken by the Brits over the next year, each conveying information of higher secrecy and priority than the next.

These decoded messages were regularly passed to the Soviet High Command regarding German troop movements and planned offensives, and back to London regarding the mass murder of Russian prisoners and Jewish concentration camp victims.

MessageToEagle.com