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History of Enigma

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Enigma was one of the greatest advances in cryptology. It was a portable mechanical encryption machine. Enigma was mainly (but not only) used by the German armies during the Second World War and inspired many encryption machines.

Before WW2

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In 1860, no cypher method was reliable: the most complex technique at that moment, the Vigenere cipher, had just been broken. It was the beginning of a long time of crisis in the history of encryption.

 

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Enigma was invented by the german engineer Arthur Scherbius in 1918. It was the first real mechanization of an encryption process! But no one seemed to care about his invention.

It's only when the german army realized the weaknesses of its encryption (german army messages were quite transparent to the Allied Powers during WW1), it decided to use Scherbius' invention: the Enigma machine. By 1928, all the forces of the german army used it.

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  • 1932: Polish mathematicians working for the Polish government break the Enigma code and understand its working principles. They rebuilt decypher machines, the Bomba. https://www.cryptomuseum.com/crypto/bombe/

  • 1938: The Germans became more cautious about using the cypher and improved the machine. The analytical work of the Polish became laborious and later unfeasible for the restricted ressources of the Polish specialists.

World War 2 (or how Alan Turing saved Europe !)

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  • 1939: German army invaded Poland. The Polish knowledge and instruments were sent to the British and the French who had up to that date no clue of how to decyper german Enigma messages that they thought to be unbreakable.

  • 1942: The mathematician and British "father of computer science" Alan Turing broke the Enigma code with the help of "Turing bombs" (precursor of the computer) without the German army realizing it. According to some estimates, this may have shortened the war by 2 years.
    https://www.tnmoc.org/bombe

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