Nazi Operated Enigma Machine Retrieved In Baltic Sea

ANCIENT ARCHEOLOGY ^ | 12-12-2020 | Joyce Williams

[PAUL09]

Nazi Operated Enigma Machine Retrieved In Baltic Sea Recovery of the century’s long lost-quintessential mechanical encryption machine: The Enigma code machine was made in the cold Baltic Sea in Europe nearly three centuries after its drastic beneficial purpose had been served during the second world war.

Having been said that during the ending period of World War II, the machine was abandoned deep into the sea by German to keep it out of reach of the allies.

WHAT IS AN ENIGMA CODE?

The Enigma code machine. ( image source ) Enigma machines also used a form of substitution encryption. Substitution encryption is a simple way to decipher messages, but these codes are very easy to crack. The Caesar cipher is a good example of a substitution encryption scheme. The Caesar cipher transfers several positions for each letter of the alphabet.

For example, A Caesar cipher with a shift of 1 would encode P as a Q, and Z as an A, and many more. Similarly with a shift of 5 would encode A as F, M as R, and so on.

HOW ENIGMA CODE WAS USED DURING WORLD WAR-II? The Enigma machine is an authentication device evolved and utilized in the mid-20th century to safeguard industrial, political, armed, and economic information. It was commonly used by Nazi Germany during the Second World War, in all divisions of the German Army.

The machine allowed gazillions of ways to encrypt a data/statement, making it extremely tricky for other European countries during the war to decode German codes, thus securing themselves from foreign invasion and prevent attacks.

RETRIEVAL OF THE MACHINE DEEPER INTO THE BALTIC SEA : When a team of divers was given a task, based on the nature conservancy of the World Wildlife Fund unexpectedly found a mysterious object in northern Germany’s Bay of Gelting while trying to collect old fishing nets. They obtained what was supposedly deemed to be a typical typewriter.

The team immediately grasped and contacted the authorities that they had uncovered a historic artifact. Allied troops fought tooth and nail during the war to decode the codes generated by the Enigma machine, which were constantly updated, to obtain crucial information about the activities of German soldiers.

But it was suggested to be what was long lost enigma code machine used during world war-II on extensive research being carried out by marine archaeologist Florian Huber at Bletchley Park.

“As per the Imperial War Museums, English mathematician Alan Turing was vital to the efforts to crack the German Navy’s Enigma messages in 1941, which were much more complicated”

The achievement assisted the Allies in decoding crucial radio communications regarding German military activities.

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The milestone assisted the Allies in decrypting important coded messages concerning German military activities, setting a war to an end and saving the lives of millions of people; Turing and his team’s story was rendered into a 2014 movie titled The Imitation Game, starring Benedict Cumberbatch, an Oscar-nominated UK actor.

The divers pledged to fund the machine in a museum where it could be preserved and exhibited.

Surviving Enigma machines are rare in 2020, but specimens can be found in museums spread all over the world. The reconstruction process for the discovery is expected to take around a year.

[Tallguy]

And the early 3-Rotor machines were used by Germany & German private corporations to encrypt radio traffic in the interwar years. Polish intelligence agents realized that a variation of that basic machine was serving with the German armed forces and set about working on the mathematics involved in solving the internal workings. Poland’s misfortune was being invaded only a very short time after their work was completed. They did, however, manage to get their work along with an example of the machine to the British & French.

[left that other site]

“a little wobbly in their dating”...LOL.

A HALLMARK of Archaeology. hehehe

[Boogieman]

Not a big Reagan fan though...

[OrioleFan]

The key to cracking the Enigma was to figure out what the settings were for the day. At the start of the war the machine had 3 rotors and a 4th was added later. There were also a set of plug wires that further increased the possibilities.

Once you found the settings, you entered the encrypted message into the machine and out came the decrypted message (and vice versa).

Turing’s machine (predecessor for modern computers) was set up to find the settings. The big break came when they figured out that the weather data was being transmitted in the beginning of the message, and I believe the messages contained “heil hitler”.

Early computers were often called Turing machines.

In parallel to the British efforts, at Blechley Park, to find the settings, Americans were working on a system in Dayton Ohio at NCR called the Bombe. The Bombe was built to solve the 4-rotor Naval Enigma machines. These early computers were mass produced and shipped to Mount Vernon Seminary for Girl, a requisitioned former boarding school in Washington DC, where they were essential to our Navy’s efforts in the Atlantic.

Some good books are “The Secret In Building 26” by Jim DeBrosse and Colin Burke, and “Seizing the Enigma” by David Kahn. You can also watch “The Imitation Game”.

[Vaduz]

Bet they found hundreds of Dominion machines next to it.

[Boogieman]

Most dates in archaeology should have an asterisk next to them, for sure.

[C210N]

Just think, a hundred years from now, archaeologists will dig deep into basements of government SOS buildings, and unearth the code that three hundred years prior were used in Dominion voting machines.

[null and void]

Red Dwarf Ping!

KRYTEN: Sir, with the greatest respect, that is complete and utter shash. (His right leg is bouncing up and down, nervously.)
LISTER: Kryten, I know when you're lying. Your right foot jiggles. It's involuntary.
KRYTEN: Nonsense. (It jiggles harder.) I'm not afraid to die. (Harder still.) For me, death holds no fear. (His leg is now jiggling so much his whole body is moving.) I believe in Silicon Heaven! I believe in an afterlife for androids! Haven't you got through those damn manacles yet!?
LISTER: (Yelling) Kryten!! (LISTER bangs the hammer down.) I'm not gonna let it happen, man.
KRYTEN: Cause and effect, sir. It already _has_ happened. There's nothing we can do except to try and save your life. (Motioning towards the gauntlet.) Okay, now I think I have this, it's a variant of the Enigma decoding system.
LISTER: Enigma! Enig -- Enigma!
KRYTEN: "Enig," of course! My last words! Well, anyway, if this thing works, it should age those manacles by half a million years.
LISTER: If it doesn't work?
KRYTEN: It'll wipe out the universe.

[left that other site]

Most dates in archaeology should have an asterisk next to them, for sure.

I love to date an ancient find
In digs I love to frisk
But reputation's on the line
When dating shards of bisque
If I quote a Carbon Date
And on that date insist,
I would be a foolish gal,
My Little *.

[Boogieman]

Bravo!

[Kommodor]

Good book, but the author has gotten a bit silly.

More pages != better.

Now I want some Cap’n Crunch.

[Vlad0]

While SOME German Kreigsmarine personnel were probably die-hard National Socialists, this piece of equipment was a standard-issue cryptographic device used on the U-Boats; hence, German naval personnel operated it, the majority of whom were probably just sailors performing their normal duties.

It's interesting distinction you are making here, but I'm not sure I understand it.

Would you not call the Red Army "communists" either, after all probably many of the soliders in the Red Army were just Russian (or Belarussians, etc.) who were conscripted.

In typical usage we say that "the Nazis attacked Poland in 1939", etc. In a totalitarian regime was there really any difference between being a Nazi and being a non-Nazi member of the German military? How about volunteers vs. conscripts? Would it be fair to call volunteers "Nazis"?

Looking at German insignia of WW2, almost every military award (like the Iron Cross) incorporates the swastika.

It seems to me that you are making a distinction without a difference, and that anyone fighting as part of the German armed forces in the period of WW2 can quite properly be called a Nazi.

[left that other site]

:-)

[sauropod]

.

[sima_yi]

Another good book is Battle of Wits by Stephen Budiansky. It goes into the stories of the breaking of the Enigma, and also of the Japanese diplomatic and naval codes.

[MortMan]

Well played, sir! I am literally LOL!

[Tom Bombadil]

I am currently reading “A Man Called Intrepid” describing William Stephenson’s contributions in winning WWII.

Among other things it describes the successful efforts at developing a system to break enigma coding even as the machine settings were constantly changed. The book does a really good job of giving WWII context to the whole enigma story.

The book also gives a good description of the difference between using intelligence for strategic and tactical purposes and the need to protect intelligence sources for larger goals.

[Tom Bombadil]

I will look for it.