Hopefully you're all staying safe in these difficult times. We're still marching on so that we can keep all of you entertained when you're stuck at home. But we can only continue doing so thanks to your ongoing support. Ad-revenue has dropped significantly because of COVID, and we rely on your support now more than ever. If you can, please support us on www.patreon.com/timeghosthistory or timeghost.tv. Please let us know what other specials you'd like to see. And if you would like to know something about a smaller topic, make sure to submit that as a question for our Q&A series, Out of the Foxholes. You can do that right here: community.timeghost.tv/c/Out-of-the-Foxholes-Qs. Cheers, Francis *RULES OF CONDUCT* STAY CIVIL AND POLITE we will delete any comments with personal insults, or attacks. AVOID PARTISAN POLITICS AS FAR AS YOU CAN we reserve the right to cut off vitriolic debates. HATE SPEECH IN ANY DIRECTION will lead to a ban. RACISM, XENOPHOBIA, OR SLAMMING OF MINORITIES will lead to an immediate ban. PARTISAN REVISIONISM, ESPECIALLY HOLOCAUST AND HOLODOMOR DENIAL will lead to an immediate ban.
I wonder how to crack or make encryption for languages that have no alphabetical system. Please do one on Japanese codes. There so little knowledge out there.
@@MrWhitmen1981 Japanese cipher systems 1) combined coded with ciphered portions 2) for the ciphering used transliterations to roman alphabet. 3) included an additive pad. Figuring out what the pad was (fixed? algorithm?) was perhaps surprisingly the tough part.
Since the Enigma has already been talked a whole lot everywhere, would be interesting to hear about British code systems and did Germans ever manage to break those.
yes, they did. primarily the Kriegsmarine. the primary RN code (B-Dienst) had been broken by '35, by war start the germans knew the locations of most RN ships. they broke the codes for the Atlantic convoys by '42. however, the Germans had so many code-breaking agencies that their was no focus, there were 11 that i know of (including one attached to the post office). B-Dienst was their only real notable success the Italians had a good trick too. prior to war they had "visited" the US embassy in Rome and copied out their diplomatic codes. these codes were also used by US military observers attached to British units. these officers sent regular reports back to the US, including detailed breakdowns of British plans and ORBAT. eventually the British cottoned on to this and told the US, though it was still some time before the US believed them and changed the codes
Tommy Flowers a post office engineer is one of the most influential "scientists " of the 20th century. Even Alan Turing was amazed how he managed to design and build Collosus in just a few months . And used his own money ,for which he was never fully paid back. I am not asking for his head to be put on bank notes. But perhaps a plaque outside his house in Mill Hill a suburb of north west London ,where he lived for over 30 years would be not be OTT. A " neighbour" of his just a couple of miles away in West Finchley has blue plaque for producing the London Underground map.
Bletchley Park was a Post Office Telephones/ BT training college up to the late 1980s & I went to there in 1985 when, as a BT engineer I attended a course on a particular telephone system. I was aware of Bletchley Park's involvement in the war, but not of its crucial role in codebreaking. Bletchley Park was so nearly lost to the bulldozer in the 1990s but thankfully it was saved & opened as a museum and tribute to the many thousands of people who worked there shortening the war & saving so many lives in the process. I was back at Bletchley Park in 2014 as a visitor and the re-engineered Colossus was a must see. The museum staff, once they knew I was ex-BT, invited me to see the machine from inside the cordon and it was fascinating- it looks just like the Strowger telephone exchanges I used to see in my working career (not surprising really as it is constructed from ex-Strowger exchange bits!) Tommy Flowers is the unsung hero of the story of Colossus' part in the breaking of the Lorenz high-level codes. Thankfully he is now comemorated and has his rightful place in the story.
@@barrybernstein4459 I think Tommy Flowers hasn’t been dead long enough to qualify for a blue plaque. You have to be dead for 50 years before a plaque can be put up. For instance the flat that Ted Hughes shared with Silva Plath has a plaque memorialising Plath but not Hughes for that reason.
He is also overbloated just like Turing. The ENIAC was the first full digital computer. It was finished in 1945, but the contract to build it was signed in 1943, based off their smaller Atanasoff-Berry computer made in 1942. That one was not programable but it did invent the electronic ALU...what is now known as a processor. The actual historical thing that should be taught is that the computer, was developed by MANY all around the same time and almost all of them built off the findings of others because they shared it openly.
@@dbkarman they intercepted, reversed engineered the 1st Enigma and then sent all their findings to British intelligence after the war started, but I do understand there is certain misguided believe about British input in to the WWII, like for example, they allegedly won it.
Much respect for the Poles from Romania. The payed a huge price in the war,sacrificing a lot, and their efforts and achievements are so underrated. The Allies knew how to advertise their achievements while many others who had greater achievements are not even mentioned in history. What i like about this guy Indy Neidell, is the fact he is pretty objective in exposing the historical events.
@@johnlewis9158 Indeed indeed. The man was really a genius and together with the ideas of Bill Tutte they cracked the Tunny code produced by the Lorenz machine.
Tommy Flowers did far more to change the world than Alan Turing. But his story is just that of an ordinary, but highly intelligent man. Compare that with the dramatic tortured genius that Turing was and it's obvious why all the films have been made about Turing.
A design flaw of the Enigma Machine is that it would never output the same letter as the input letter. This allowed the code breakers to eliminate many possibilities.
There was a story about when the Kriegsmarine thought Enigma was compromised they sent out a few U-boats and made sure the British received the locations in code to see if they would be attacked but Großadmiral Karl Dönitz recalled the U-boats. Telling him men the Enigma could not be cracked and the U-boats were needed else where. But the British were actually going to attack but did not as the U-boat returned back
Karl Dönitz was actually very sceptic about the safety of Enigma. 3 time, he asked his mathematicians to investigate whether or not Enigma could have been compromised, and 3 times he was told Enigma was impenetrable. But he was never quite convinced. His skepticism is likely also one of the reasons, the Kriegsmarine was so much harder to crack than the Luftwaffe.
Slightly off-topic, but every time Karl Dönitz comes up, I'm reminded of this hilarious Mitchell & Webb sketch: ruclips.net/video/FHnyQXyuTGY/видео.html
Kinda reminds me of a meme on the inpronounceability of the Polish language. Germans: We have the Enigma Poles: We have Polish and we cracked the Enigma already
There was a joke, that during first Arab-Israeli war, the Arabs couldn't break Israeli code. Jews however weren't using any, they were just speaking Polish.
But the Polish effort was useful pre war. it was largely useless post 1939 and most of the praise should go to the Brits and not to mention the invention of the first electronic computer.
@@timphillips9954 What in Sir Turings interview did you not understand? I also get the feeling your higher education didn't have much to do with mathematics, did it? Mathematicaly speaking, cracking 3 rotor and 5 rotor Enigma was almost one and same thing. It just required powerfull enough machine to compensate for greater number of possible permutations. Not to mention, that first wartime breaking of 5 rotor Enigma was done by Polish mathematicians and Polish method via Zygalski's sheets.
Sir Dermot Turing himself: "The origins of Enigma codebreaking at Bletchley" ruclips.net/video/tCFp78trzU8/видео.html Gordon Welchman, who became head of Hut 6 at Bletchley Park, has written: "Hut 6 Ultra would never have gotten off the ground if we had not learned from the Poles, in the nick of time, the details both of the German military version of the commercial Enigma machine, and of the operating procedures that were in use." The Polish transfer of theory and technology at Pyry formed the crucial basis for the subsequent World War II British Enigma-decryption effort at Bletchley Park, where Welchman worked.
The secrecy is one aspect of the story that is so impressive, it is easy to do a study on computer history and not know that the British military had the first reprograble computer.
There is mathematics Channel name "Numberphile". They have really good video about enigma decryption. You guys should see that video too, if interested
Thankyou for crediting the early work of the Poles. too often their contribution is overlooked or minimised. If - as Eisenhower apparently asserted - the cracking of enigma shortened the war by two years, six months of that at least must be down to the Poles. The story of the Polish cypher team and their escape from the nazi invasions of Poland and France are worthy of a film in themselves.
You know one thing I just wanted to say, I was so happy when you mentioned Tommy Flowers. So often I see his work on Colossus get overlooked in favour of crediting it to Turing. That's not to downplay Turing's achievements which are many, no question of that, but Mr Flowers deserves his recognition as well.
They were afraid the Soviets would find out and flip him, using blackmail to get him to reveal secrets. This had happened before with British intelligence assets. Doesn't make it right of course, but it wasn't sheer cruelty and homophobia that spurred the authorities to action. Turing knew secrets that could absolutely not fall into the hands of the Soviets.
@@neiloflongbeck5705 Yes we fucking can judge past morals with current day ones. Only that way can we combat the rising homophobia in shit holes like poland, russia and hungary.
@@serenitysessionz Doesnt really have much to do with iron curtain since information about Enigma breaking was classified in UK as well and many details were revealed relatively late (in 70s/80s)
Everyone working there had to sign the official secrets act. When they left they were reminded about this, reminded how critical their work had been and how useful to a foreign power even the slightest information about their work could be. The result was that most never even told their spouse what they really did. There was a book about Enigma that came out in the early 1970s and it was only after that people began to speak about what they did - even then info only came out slowly.
Similarly in the UK, because they passed off captured Enigma machines to the embassies of Commonwealth nations (Pakistan in particular, iirc) after independence
Not mentioned: Welchmann's major contribution was traffic analysis, which greatly assisted the code breakers by identifying cheats - errors in start-up messages (operator laziness). He also assisted by being super cool; the epitome of the ruthless, unflappable, upper crust player with total discretion and a long list of achievements and conquests. Traffic analysis is still used today and was supposed to be a huge secret which was what destroyed him in the end. Winston's ridiculous desire to hide all the secrets saw the computer industry head off to the USA and Silicon Glen never happened. Gee thanks Winnie.
Thank you for appreciating my country's contribution to crack it! :D It means a lot to us in Poland. In the IG movie polish matematician's got like two sentences about them :P
Enigma had one huge "mathematical" failure: certain alphabet etc. was never coded with the same character. Therefor, A was never A or B never B. For example the deciphering was easier when you knew that every morning the units received weather report so it was easy to know where the letters in W E T T E R couldn't be. The code for Finnish long recon patrols was better. Each patrols code was randomized using "lottery balls", and here A could also be A. Simple, yet efficient.
laiska...jus to shorten the success the Brits had with encrypting, some of the Germans communicating with others were using their girlfriend's name/s as the "passwords"...and one guy didn't write the incoming message, so he asked the sender to send it again and "presto" some more ways of decrypting.
Is that design error easy to notice or did the mathematicians at blechley park originally think that A could be A and so forth? Is there a place you recommend for studying that finnish lottopallo system more? :D
@@Lattamonsteri it's of limited use on its own, though it works well reducing the bombe times. It comes in really useful if someone was to press the one key over and over as a test message though, because you now have a known plaintext and can break the code wheels for that day much easier
Definitely recommend Bletchley Park and the National Museum of Computing, fascinating to see the code breaking machines in person and the history of computing that led to the world in which we live today.
Thanks for this TimeGhost! My Grand Uncle, Donald Camfield, was a Major with MI6 who worked in Hut 3 of Bletchley. He passed unfortunately before he could ever talk about the work he did. Here's a shout out to all the top secret folks who worked on this :)
this channel could use this in-depth episodes much more often, so many colorful characters e hateful tactics to kill and yet everything is so interesting. wonderful work, thank you all for the amazing job! respect from the tropics!
That's the bewildering thing about mankind: how much imagination, creativity, organization, and sheer hard work we put into killing one another. From the genius toiling away in obscurity in some lab to the grunt banging a shovel into rock-hard clay ......
Another one of your fine videos, but I think you omitted an important fact. The Poles had an actual Enigma machine to study for two days! It was sent from Germany to the German embassy and by accident, fell into the hands of Polish intelligence. The canny Poles carefully opened the package, to discover a bright, new Enigma machine! They got the package on a Saturday, so had just two days to examine the device, repackage it in an undetectably
And it fell into the hands of the intelligence people because a postal worker alerted them. An embassy guy came by to ship a box to Germany "thank you sir, here's your change." Just at closing he came running back and desperately demanded it back but "I am sorry, we have closed. We will open again on Monday." Postal worker reasoned it was a big deal, got intelligence on the horn and for the whole weekend they had a fun little box to play with.
This is obviously untrue. Poles never had access to the military version of Enigma. They only had access to the commercial version of Enigma, just like the British. All the data the Poles worked on was previously available to the British and French, but they found it a hopeless task. And here is the true story of breaking the Enigma code from Sir Dermot Turing himself: "The origins of Enigma codebreaking at Bletchley" ruclips.net/video/tCFp78trzU8/видео.html Gordon Welchman, who became head of Hut 6 at Bletchley Park, has written: "Hut 6 Ultra would never have gotten off the ground if we had not learned from the Poles, in the nick of time, the details both of the German military version of the commercial Enigma machine, and of the operating procedures that were in use." The Polish transfer of theory and technology at Pyry formed the crucial basis for the subsequent World War II British Enigma-decryption effort at Bletchley Park, where Welchman worked.
In the "Imitation Game" the Alan Turing character played by Benedict Cumberbatch mentions the Polish contribution in one quick little sentence almost under his breath. You can barely catch it. Thank you for crediting the Poles for being the first to break enigma using mathematics and machines. Turing then took this work to the next step, but he wasn't the one who first thought of it. BTW - the reason they were called "bombes" was because that word in English sounded like the Polish word for a certain kind of machine. When running, the decoding machine the Poles built sounded like this other machine with a Polish name that sounded like "bomb" in English. I once read it was a brand of washing machine, but I'm not sure how accurate that is.
9:10 - Although the Colossus was the first of electronic digital machines with (limited) programming, it was not a general-purpose machine, being designed only for a range of crypt analytic tasks. Konrad Zuse, created the first true programmable computer, the Z1 in 1936. It is considered to be the first electro-mechanical binary programmable computer and the first really functional modern computer. It was followed by the Z4 in 1945 which was arguably the world's first commercial digital computer.
Got taken to Bletchley Park probably as a young teenager and was overwhelmed by it all, and this was at a time when the action-packed side of WW2 interested me more! Frequent visited for a time afterward, much to my parents' amusement (how many times did I really need to see it?!). When lockdown ends and if time, ways, and means align for you, definitely get yourself there. An hour or so from London by train, if that helps!
Thanks for that beautifully detailed yet still overview-level snapshot of the story! It's great to have Indy and crew back in my education after all their superb WWI coverage. Please keep it coming; you folks are great and very much appreciated.
The contribution of the Poles in breaking Enigma should NEVER be underestimated. . . Having been introduced to the Enigma machine years ago, I wrote a software system rhat emulates sone of the features. Fun times.
My great Aunt and Uncle were translators at Bletchley, they met there. They were actually asked to be translators at Nuremburg, but they turned it down, understandably...
Thanks for this! Imitation Game was a decent movie, but it had quite a few inaccuracies and completely discounted the efforts of the Poles, Tommy Flowers and others. Even some at Bletchley who were completely behind the idea of an electrical machine were reworked to be more antagonistic for dramatic purposes, which was really unfair to those people.
Yes.. Thank you. The Poles have gotten an un-deserved bad rap over the years. They were forward thinking in many ways but just didn't have the resources to exploit it all. I agree women did about 75% of the work and got about 3% of the credit and respect. But I think no historians have really evaluated what influences that Enigma had on most specific events and the grand Allied strategy to win the war. I hope you can help on this.. Now.. the Yanks should get some credit ..Check out Lowman's book MAGIC to see the U.S. had broken the Japanese codes before the war started..... Leading me to believe that some really knew what happened to Amelia Earhart.
OD...there's a current movie (not made in the 60s) about the defense of Britain, and see how these men were treated, when they putting their lives at stake in the defense of another country - the life span of a bomber pilot during "The Battle of/for Britain" was an average of 2-3 missions.
Thx for acknowledging the Polish part of this Story. Breaking Enigma was a Polish-French-British success. You can find on youtube at least two speeches by Sir Dermont Turing where he is going much more into detail about the Polish part of the Enigma Code Breaking. He also wrote a book about the Polish-French-British cooperation in terms of Enigma. "X, Y and Z - The real story of how Enigma was broken". Highly recommended to those who would like to know more details about this topic.
At last Tommy Flowers gets a mention! He has been overshadowed by Alan Turing's brilliance for many years and yet Turing was impressed with Flowers and introduced him to Max Newman. This put Tommy in the right position to help break the Lorenz cypher which was one of the tougher secret codes alluded to by Indy. Colossus, which Flowers designed, is the world's first programmable, electronic, digital computer which led to what you are using today. I'm also glad to see credit where it is due, the Poles did indeed crack Enigma first and passed the information over.
Fascinating stuff. I could certainly understand why Germany would have such faith in their ciphers, as anyone who isn't a genius mathematician would not believe their cracking even plausible. It takes all sorts to fight a war, and the men in suits back in the labs contribute just like those in fatigues on the front lines.
The free Enigma machine simulator exists on the Google Play Store. There are the M3 1939, M4 1942 and the K Raiway and you can set them to your liking. And it works great! I don't know if there is a version of this app on the Apple Store, but maybe something like that for Apple devices will be there for sure
Fun Fact: The Poles actually handed over a fair amount of intelligence and some of their Enigma machines to the British so they could get a head start on their code-breaking efforts. Which really helped them in the long run. And this happened two weeks before Poland was invaded by Germany. Nice job.
What a superb way to bring what happenned at Bletchley to the world, The fact That Tommy Flowers is mentioned is astounding, some school kids wont have a clue, that he existed, mostv believe that alan turing alone broke all the codes......Aaaah
In February 1942 the German Navy started using a four rotor Enigma called Triton. The Royal Navy broke Triton during the Autumn of 1942. In March 1943, the German Navy refined the Enigma key which the Allies managed to break (but only after nine days of heavier Allied shipping losses).
@@DerekCully I am sorry Derek , but I am sick and tired of hearing about the Polish contribution every time the Battle of Britain or enigma is mentioned. The hard facts are there wouldn't have been any Battle of Britain or Enigma would not have been a story without the Brits.
I've studied encryption and WW2 history and that is the best, most succinct layman's explanation of the Enigma I've seen. Fantastic video! Great job and great research!
Aah... the good old days when we wore bakelite headphones that gave us migranes and still had to learn morse code. Cryptologists these days don't know how easy they've got it.
The Machines at Blechly were partially programmable, they still had patch boards to change some circuitry to maych changes in Enigma wiring. The First Fully Programmable computer was ENIAC at the University of Pennsylvania . It calculated artillery tables. It used some much power, that it caused a Brownout when powering on. It also could only be run during the winter with the windows open,it generated a lot of heat and the building had no AC. My Father worked with someone who had worked on ENIAC.
Alan Turing story is really heartbreaking, A quote from Dr Christos Papadimitriou in his "Logicomix" Talks at Google *Papadimitriou talks about the most important mathematicians of the 20th century, the forefathers of mathematical logic, modern computers and computer science in general* "I think it is very amazing that the dark and relentless tragedy that engulfed all of these people, Kurt Gödel died in the 70s out of paranoia, Georg Cantor spent most of his life in mental hospitals battling with severe depression,Emil Leon Post was manic-depressive and essentially died in the hands of his doctor during electroshock treatment, Bertrand Russell the paragon of sanity feared for his mental health all his life - he had a schizophrenic uncle, a scizophrenic son and two scizophrenic grandsons, even David Hilbert had a scizophrenic son. The only normal guy from these giants of mathematics was Alan Turing except that he was not "legally" normal - he was homosexual as a result he was tried for "gross indecency" and condemned to chemical castration - the hormonses changed his mind and his body as a result he commited suicide two years later."
I am extremely grateful that you mentioned Tommy Flowers a Post Office engineer , who physically created the first modern computer.His contribution is rarely mentioned.Without him Turing would have achieved nothing.
As ever great presentation, and to squeeze the enigma story into circa 20 mins is challenging. Having been to the location a few times and read a few of the accounts the one thing you missed and was one of the factors which played a major roll in breaking the enigma machine was that in true germanic style the system was perfect, in that it would never reproduce a letter as itself, so an 'e' would never be an 'e', which was an essential piece of info when developing the decyphering approach. Also the Lorenz system (the successor to Enigma) was cracked in 1944 but the British and USA did not make this known to the Russians as they knew that post war they were using the captured Lorenz machines for military communications.
Brilliant documentary video. The last points you mentioned are so true. We should be grateful to those genius scientists in the first half of the 20th century.
There were two major flaws in Enigma that the code breakers exploited. The first was a structural fault that eliminated thousands of brute force combinations to break the code. That fault was that a enciphered letter could never end up being the same unenciphered letter. As an example, after going through the rotors, an "E" could never be an "E" after the Enigma scrambled it. This eliminated thousands of combinations that the bombe (Turing's machine) didn't have to process. The second was that the weather reports always ended with "Heil Hitler". This gave them a reference to start with.
@Andrew Ongais wasn't that rumour put about later on to cover the fact that we were raiding German Weather Reporting Ships up near Iceland to get Enigma keys - the Germans just assuming that these Trawler sized vessels were just sinking in storms as they had lost so many already?
Great content as usual! After reading the book Secrets of Station X can I suggest a special episode on Welchman and Flowers and their battle against Lorenz code? It makes enigma seem simple in comparison. I know you guys would do the story justice.
Thanks for mentioning Polish mathematicians who did whole lot of groundwork. What interests me is did Germany have similar code breakers? And how the British encrypted their messages?
FYI: the RUclips Channel of "Jared Owen" does computer animated breakdowns of modern and historical machines/vehicles/etc. One of these videos is a detailing of the Enigma machine. It's very interesting and shows just how detailed/complex the encrypting of the machine actually is. Highly recommend the video if you really want to see how the Enigma machine works.
1:20 In 1980 when Dönitz was told the the enigma code was broken he said, "it was a bitter pill to sallow" he also said he had always had his doubts but the experts told him it was impossible to break but he went ahead and added 3 more wheels anyway. In his book "Ten Years And Ten Days"
I had low hopes when Indy started talking about letters coming out as numbers. Enigma only had letters. But then the summary got much better. It was good that Indy mentioned Welchman who is often overlooked even though his contributions were of similar importance to Turing's, just in different ways. Welchman came up with the "diagonal board" for the Bombe machined that speed the process up enough to be really useful a role "given" to Hugh Alexander in The Imitation game movie). Welch had many other major major accomplishments including "Traffic Analysis." Nice to see Tommy Flowers mentioned but probably should wait and cover him along with Bill Tutte. Colossus was more of a "prototypical" computer in that it was not really programmable but more of a calculator for the Fish/Lorenz. A lot of the glory these days goes to the cracking of Enigma, in part because it was not kept a secret for as long. The cracking of Lorenz was seen as so important, it was kept a secret much longer.
The Enigma captured on U-110 was a three rotor machine, not a four rotor machine as depicted in the photograph. The four rotor Enigma did not enter service with the Kriegsmarine until February 1942.
This was an awesome video. And it is awesome to think about how British Intelligence was able to turn the war in there favor through their deciphering and control of information.
I’d love to see a part two to this episode describing the US involvement of decoding the Enigma in Dayton, Ohio my hometown. The Bombe was developed by Joe Desch at National Cash Register with the help from WAVES female navy reserves.
That is a small weakness, not a major flaw - it shortens the odds a bit but not by as much as all that. The biggest flaw was that it was operated by human beings.
I am pretty certain that the enigma machine only used upper-case letters, and no numbers. So an A could be any other upper-case letter (except A of course, which was enigma's biggest flaw), but not either a B or b or 2 etc. as mentioned in the video.
Tommy Flowers designed & built colossus in a telephone exchange before being dismantled and rebuilt at Bletchley is a great story in itself. He was the UK’s foremost telephone exchange engineer and while in his 90’s, he lectured on his achievement in Canadian colleges and a RUclips video exists of one of his presentations.
@@sankarchaya there was a book came out in the early 1970s and that was the trigger for people to start talking because it wasn't secret any more. You must have had some cracking tales told.
The video is illustrated with examples from the modern alphanumeric keyboard (with cases). Actually, Enigma was based on just the 26 upper-case letters, without spaces, numerals, or punctuation.
U-110 is, incedentally, commanded by Fritz-Julius Lemp, who sank the liner Athenia during the first week of the war. When he realized that his sub wasn't sinking, he tried jumping from a life raft to swim back to the boat and scuttle it. Armed RN sailors gunned him down.
If anyone want to know how Enigma machine works, how it got beaten, and like a little bit of math. I found some videos about Enigma machine on Numberphile channel :)
I read the book Enigma by Robert Harris. The back drop was Bletchley Park in 1943. It was a suspense mystery thriller. A lot of detail about the struggle to crack the code and the race against time
My English granny, Edith Singleton worked at and from Bletchley Park.. She never actually spoke much about it but we have a photograph of her and Alan Turin leaning on bicycles by the huts...we never realised who it was until cracking the Enigma became popular and my Dad went through her extensive photo album she kept...there were no names or dates but Turin is easily recognisable 👉💎👈👉🇬🇧👈
@@russbellew6378 No... It's a good idea but dad (her youngest son) seems to feel it is not "appropriate"...my English family are really of that ilk that one did not 'make a fuss'...maybe one day if I have my way her whole time @ Bletchley will be told as it is really interesting 👉💎👈👉🇬🇧👈
A small point, but Indy you do such a good job, I know you are concerned about even the smallest detail. At 6:15 into the video you speak of Luftwaffe and Wehrmacht traffic and later Kriegsmarine as if the Wehrmacht were the land forces, army, of Germany during World War II. Wehrmacht was the term for all regular military forces, so it excludes SS units. Heer was the term for the land forces.
I've been at Bletchley Park twice, last time in 2014. It's one of the most interesting WW2 museums I've ever seen. And I'm a history & archaeology guy, not quite fond of maths. And they had rebuilt not only a Bombe, but the f#k#ing Colossus, the first computer in the World. Amazing. Quite an experience, to see it working.
Hopefully you're all staying safe in these difficult times. We're still marching on so that we can keep all of you entertained when you're stuck at home. But we can only continue doing so thanks to your ongoing support. Ad-revenue has dropped significantly because of COVID, and we rely on your support now more than ever. If you can, please support us on www.patreon.com/timeghosthistory
or timeghost.tv.
Please let us know what other specials you'd like to see. And if you would like to know something about a smaller topic, make sure to submit that as a question for our Q&A series, Out of the Foxholes. You can do that right here: community.timeghost.tv/c/Out-of-the-Foxholes-Qs.
Cheers,
Francis
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Hi i have a cuestion relate whit the last episode Is was any british officer trial for neglengence in ww2 ?
I wonder how to crack or make encryption for languages that have no alphabetical system. Please do one on Japanese codes. There so little knowledge out there.
Will you make a special on Juan Pujol Garcia or Agent Garbo?
"war is looming" well if we must CLOTHO, LACHESIS? FRONT AND CENTER. ATROPOS CANNOT BE TURNED.
@@MrWhitmen1981 Japanese cipher systems 1) combined coded with ciphered portions 2) for the ciphering used transliterations to roman alphabet. 3) included an additive pad. Figuring out what the pad was (fixed? algorithm?) was perhaps surprisingly the tough part.
Since the Enigma has already been talked a whole lot everywhere, would be interesting to hear about British code systems and did Germans ever manage to break those.
Triiker if i remember right they tried and failed to break the British codes. The failure to break the British codes made them feel safe about Enigma.
@@simonk2001 So Germans' code breaking system wasn't as sophisticated as that of the British?
And the Americans and how they broke the Japanese one. But i image we’ll hear more about that in 1942
The Brit where lazy, they just had an improved version of enigma after its capture
yes, they did. primarily the Kriegsmarine.
the primary RN code (B-Dienst) had been broken by '35, by war start the germans knew the locations of most RN ships. they broke the codes for the Atlantic convoys by '42.
however, the Germans had so many code-breaking agencies that their was no focus, there were 11 that i know of (including one attached to the post office). B-Dienst was their only real notable success
the Italians had a good trick too. prior to war they had "visited" the US embassy in Rome and copied out their diplomatic codes. these codes were also used by US military observers attached to British units. these officers sent regular reports back to the US, including detailed breakdowns of British plans and ORBAT. eventually the British cottoned on to this and told the US, though it was still some time before the US believed them and changed the codes
So glad to see Tommy Flowers mentioned, he is often forgotten for his work at Bletchley and his world changing invention.
Very true. I live near Bletchley Park in Milton Keynes.
Tommy Flowers a post office engineer is one of the most influential "scientists "
of the 20th century. Even Alan Turing was amazed how he managed to design
and build Collosus in just a few months . And used his own money ,for which he was never fully paid back.
I am not asking for his head to be put on bank notes. But perhaps a plaque
outside his house in Mill Hill a suburb of north west London ,where he
lived for over 30 years would be not be OTT. A " neighbour" of his just
a couple of miles away in West Finchley has blue plaque for producing
the London Underground map.
Bletchley Park was a Post Office Telephones/ BT training college up to the late 1980s & I went to there in 1985 when, as a BT engineer I attended a course on a particular telephone system. I was aware of Bletchley Park's involvement in the war, but not of its crucial role in codebreaking.
Bletchley Park was so nearly lost to the bulldozer in the 1990s but thankfully it was saved & opened as a museum and tribute to the many thousands of people who worked there shortening the war & saving so many lives in the process.
I was back at Bletchley Park in 2014 as a visitor and the re-engineered Colossus was a must see. The museum staff, once they knew I was ex-BT, invited me to see the machine from inside the cordon and it was fascinating- it looks just like the Strowger telephone exchanges I used to see in my working career (not surprising really as it is constructed from ex-Strowger exchange bits!)
Tommy Flowers is the unsung hero of the story of Colossus' part in the breaking of the Lorenz high-level codes. Thankfully he is now comemorated and has his rightful place in the story.
@@barrybernstein4459 I think Tommy Flowers hasn’t been dead long enough to qualify for a blue plaque. You have to be dead for 50 years before a plaque can be put up. For instance the flat that Ted Hughes shared with Silva Plath has a plaque memorialising Plath but not Hughes for that reason.
He is also overbloated just like Turing. The ENIAC was the first full digital computer. It was finished in 1945, but the contract to build it was signed in 1943, based off their smaller Atanasoff-Berry computer made in 1942. That one was not programable but it did invent the electronic ALU...what is now known as a processor.
The actual historical thing that should be taught is that the computer, was developed by MANY all around the same time and almost all of them built off the findings of others because they shared it openly.
Finally a document that acknowledges Polish side of the story!
@@dbkarman If not for their work, it wouldn't be done this quickly or not at all, so... I think it's pretty much.
M Kid KURWA I CRACK CODE IN WW2
@@dbkarman they intercepted, reversed engineered the 1st Enigma and then sent all their findings to British intelligence after the war started, but I do understand there is certain misguided believe about British input in to the WWII, like for example, they allegedly won it.
@@dbkarman I understand that truth hurts and ignorance is bliss. Watch this series you will. It will challenge many of your convictions
What the hell is this thread?
Much respect for the Poles from Romania. The payed a huge price in the war,sacrificing a lot, and their efforts and achievements are so underrated. The Allies knew how to advertise their achievements while many others who had greater achievements are not even mentioned in history. What i like about this guy Indy Neidell, is the fact he is pretty objective in exposing the historical events.
I was taught at schools about the Polish cypher agency and their part in this . I live in the UK
Thank you Indy for mentioning Tommy Flowers and Collosus. He is the genious that came up with the actual building of tge machine.
Back in the days when working for the post office involved more than just delivering letters
@@johnlewis9158 Indeed indeed. The man was really a genius and together with the ideas of Bill Tutte they cracked the Tunny code produced by the Lorenz machine.
Tommy Flowers did far more to change the world than Alan Turing. But his story is just that of an ordinary, but highly intelligent man. Compare that with the dramatic tortured genius that Turing was and it's obvious why all the films have been made about Turing.
Still though Tommy Flowers gets shafted as bad as Jackie Robinson's brother
Wasn't Colossus the first programmable computer ever built
I remember street in Warsaw called Polish Enigma Cryptologists street
Actually it's not a street but a roundabout.
@@robert357900 Ok, Rondo Polskich Kryptologów Enigmy
@@robert357900 Like the rotor on an enigma, or a Bombe. Elegant.
@@neilwilson5785 hah, good point
@@robert357900 almost the same
Well done Polish mathematians.
Luv from Hungary
Polak-Węgier, dwa bratanki....
A design flaw of the Enigma Machine is that it would never output the same letter as the input letter. This allowed the code breakers to eliminate many possibilities.
& Welsh of course!!
Interesting. But how?
Greatest channel to ever grace RUclips. War is Hell but this is Heaven.
Glad you appreciate us in such divine terms!
There was a story about when the Kriegsmarine thought Enigma was compromised they sent out a few U-boats and made sure the British received the locations in code to see if they would be attacked but Großadmiral Karl Dönitz recalled the U-boats. Telling him men the Enigma could not be cracked and the U-boats were needed else where. But the British were actually going to attack but did not as the U-boat returned back
Karl Dönitz was actually very sceptic about the safety of Enigma. 3 time, he asked his mathematicians to investigate whether or not Enigma could have been compromised, and 3 times he was told Enigma was impenetrable. But he was never quite convinced. His skepticism is likely also one of the reasons, the Kriegsmarine was so much harder to crack than the Luftwaffe.
@Andrew Ongais wasn't it after that that the Kriegsmarine had a 4th rotor added to their enigma machines?
Slightly off-topic, but every time Karl Dönitz comes up, I'm reminded of this hilarious Mitchell & Webb sketch: ruclips.net/video/FHnyQXyuTGY/видео.html
@@tobybartels8426
I love that comedy sketch
Fantastic for mentioning the Poles extensive work, the work which saved the British at least 2 years of work, saving millions of lives.
Kinda reminds me of a meme on the inpronounceability of the Polish language.
Germans: We have the Enigma
Poles: We have Polish and we cracked the Enigma already
Americans: We have the Navajo
Tbh for me(as a Pole) this is kinda ironic as inpronounceability is an insane word to pronounce.
There was a joke, that during first Arab-Israeli war, the Arabs couldn't break Israeli code. Jews however weren't using any, they were just speaking Polish.
But the Polish effort was useful pre war. it was largely useless post 1939 and most of the praise should go to the Brits and not to mention the invention of the first electronic computer.
@@timphillips9954 What in Sir Turings interview did you not understand? I also get the feeling your higher education didn't have much to do with mathematics, did it? Mathematicaly speaking, cracking 3 rotor and 5 rotor Enigma was almost one and same thing. It just required powerfull enough machine to compensate for greater number of possible permutations.
Not to mention, that first wartime breaking of 5 rotor Enigma was done by Polish mathematicians and Polish method via Zygalski's sheets.
Thank you for crediting Polish mathematicians for initial success in breaking the codes. This is usually left out of these discussions.
Felix Klempka you’ll be pleased to know the museum at Bletchley goes into a great detail about the Polish bomba machines and initial successes
The conduct of the Polish, and their contribution to the war effort, was amazing! They saved a lot of lives because of their work and their courage.
I never even knew Poland had a role in cracking the Enigma. Great video and thanks for making the pandemic less boring.
Sir Dermot Turing himself: "The origins of Enigma codebreaking at Bletchley"
ruclips.net/video/tCFp78trzU8/видео.html
Gordon Welchman, who became head of Hut 6 at Bletchley Park, has written: "Hut 6 Ultra would never have gotten off the ground if we had not learned from the Poles, in the nick of time, the details both of the German military version of the commercial Enigma machine, and of the operating procedures that were in use." The Polish transfer of theory and technology at Pyry formed the crucial basis for the subsequent World War II British Enigma-decryption effort at Bletchley Park, where Welchman worked.
The last of Alan Turing's codebreaking papers were declassified in 2012 - that's how vital the work was
Got a link to them?
The secrecy is one aspect of the story that is so impressive, it is easy to do a study on computer history and not know that the British military had the first reprograble computer.
There is mathematics Channel name "Numberphile". They have really good video about enigma decryption. You guys should see that video too, if interested
Thankyou for crediting the early work of the Poles. too often their contribution is overlooked or minimised. If - as Eisenhower apparently asserted - the cracking of enigma shortened the war by two years, six months of that at least must be down to the Poles. The story of the Polish cypher team and their escape from the nazi invasions of Poland and France are worthy of a film in themselves.
@Andrew Ongais Thankyou - i shall edit.
You know one thing I just wanted to say, I was so happy when you mentioned Tommy Flowers. So often I see his work on Colossus get overlooked in favour of crediting it to Turing. That's not to downplay Turing's achievements which are many, no question of that, but Mr Flowers deserves his recognition as well.
Alan Turing's role makes his post-war treatment even more despicable.
The way he was treated was an absolute travesty.
Its not un common for Heroes to be treated like shit by their own country.
They were afraid the Soviets would find out and flip him, using blackmail to get him to reveal secrets. This had happened before with British intelligence assets. Doesn't make it right of course, but it wasn't sheer cruelty and homophobia that spurred the authorities to action. Turing knew secrets that could absolutely not fall into the hands of the Soviets.
@@neiloflongbeck5705 Yes we fucking can judge past morals with current day ones. Only that way can we combat the rising homophobia in shit holes like poland, russia and hungary.
@@neiloflongbeck5705Neutralizing Turing as a potential security threat was literally the only thing that matted in his instance.
Any info about Enigma breaking was classified in Poland until 1970s.
Dirty iron curtain
@@serenitysessionz Doesnt really have much to do with iron curtain since information about Enigma breaking was classified in UK as well and many details were revealed relatively late (in 70s/80s)
Everyone working there had to sign the official secrets act. When they left they were reminded about this, reminded how critical their work had been and how useful to a foreign power even the slightest information about their work could be.
The result was that most never even told their spouse what they really did.
There was a book about Enigma that came out in the early 1970s and it was only after that people began to speak about what they did - even then info only came out slowly.
Similarly in the UK, because they passed off captured Enigma machines to the embassies of Commonwealth nations (Pakistan in particular, iirc) after independence
Not mentioned: Welchmann's major contribution was traffic analysis, which greatly assisted the code breakers by identifying cheats - errors in start-up messages (operator laziness). He also assisted by being super cool; the epitome of the ruthless, unflappable, upper crust player with total discretion and a long list of achievements and conquests. Traffic analysis is still used today and was supposed to be a huge secret which was what destroyed him in the end. Winston's ridiculous desire to hide all the secrets saw the computer industry head off to the USA and Silicon Glen never happened. Gee thanks Winnie.
See "The Hut Six Story" by Welchman.
Never mind Enigma - I want to know more about that mug on Indy's desk!
You're asking the real question!
Thank you for appreciating my country's contribution to crack it! :D It means a lot to us in Poland.
In the IG movie polish matematician's got like two sentences about them :P
Enigma had one huge "mathematical" failure: certain alphabet etc. was never coded with the same character. Therefor, A was never A or B never B. For example the deciphering was easier when you knew that every morning the units received weather report so it was easy to know where the letters in W E T T E R couldn't be.
The code for Finnish long recon patrols was better. Each patrols code was randomized using "lottery balls", and here A could also be A. Simple, yet efficient.
And iirc, the Germans had a 'hail Hitler' in every transmission, a big help to the codebreakers.
laiska...jus to shorten the success the Brits had with encrypting, some of the Germans communicating with others were using their girlfriend's name/s as the "passwords"...and one guy didn't write the incoming message, so he asked the sender to send it again and "presto" some more ways of decrypting.
I pointed this out in the comments some weeks ago, it was critical in decoding before the battle of cape matapan
Is that design error easy to notice or did the mathematicians at blechley park originally think that A could be A and so forth?
Is there a place you recommend for studying that finnish lottopallo system more? :D
@@Lattamonsteri it's of limited use on its own, though it works well reducing the bombe times. It comes in really useful if someone was to press the one key over and over as a test message though, because you now have a known plaintext and can break the code wheels for that day much easier
Definitely recommend Bletchley Park and the National Museum of Computing, fascinating to see the code breaking machines in person and the history of computing that led to the world in which we live today.
Thanks for this TimeGhost! My Grand Uncle, Donald Camfield, was a Major with MI6 who worked in Hut 3 of Bletchley. He passed unfortunately before he could ever talk about the work he did. Here's a shout out to all the top secret folks who worked on this :)
A cracking insight into the Enigma story.
this channel could use this in-depth episodes much more often, so many colorful characters e hateful tactics to kill and yet everything is so interesting. wonderful work, thank you all for the amazing job! respect from the tropics!
That's the bewildering thing about mankind: how much imagination, creativity, organization, and sheer hard work we put into killing one another. From the genius toiling away in obscurity in some lab to the grunt banging a shovel into rock-hard clay ......
Thanks for the kind words! Glad you liked the video. We have plenty of in-depth episodes already and there will be many more to come.
Another one of your fine videos, but I think you omitted an important fact. The Poles had an actual Enigma machine to study for two days! It was sent from Germany to the German embassy and by accident, fell into the hands of Polish intelligence. The canny Poles carefully opened the package, to discover a bright, new Enigma machine! They got the package on a Saturday, so had just two days to examine the device, repackage it in an undetectably
They could have bought it on Amazon.
And it fell into the hands of the intelligence people because a postal worker alerted them. An embassy guy came by to ship a box to Germany "thank you sir, here's your change." Just at closing he came running back and desperately demanded it back but "I am sorry, we have closed. We will open again on Monday." Postal worker reasoned it was a big deal, got intelligence on the horn and for the whole weekend they had a fun little box to play with.
This is obviously untrue. Poles never had access to the military version of Enigma. They only had access to the commercial version of Enigma, just like the British. All the data the Poles worked on was previously available to the British and French, but they found it a hopeless task. And here is the true story of breaking the Enigma code from Sir Dermot Turing himself: "The origins of Enigma codebreaking at Bletchley"
ruclips.net/video/tCFp78trzU8/видео.html
Gordon Welchman, who became head of Hut 6 at Bletchley Park, has written: "Hut 6 Ultra would never have gotten off the ground if we had not learned from the Poles, in the nick of time, the details both of the German military version of the commercial Enigma machine, and of the operating procedures that were in use." The Polish transfer of theory and technology at Pyry formed the crucial basis for the subsequent World War II British Enigma-decryption effort at Bletchley Park, where Welchman worked.
I'd love to solve puzzles in an english manor, I prefer the jigsaw kind though.
In the "Imitation Game" the Alan Turing character played by Benedict Cumberbatch mentions the Polish contribution in one quick little sentence almost under his breath. You can barely catch it. Thank you for crediting the Poles for being the first to break enigma using mathematics and machines. Turing then took this work to the next step, but he wasn't the one who first thought of it.
BTW - the reason they were called "bombes" was because that word in English sounded like the Polish word for a certain kind of machine. When running, the decoding machine the Poles built sounded like this other machine with a Polish name that sounded like "bomb" in English. I once read it was a brand of washing machine, but I'm not sure how accurate that is.
9:10 - Although the Colossus was the first of electronic digital machines with (limited) programming, it was not a general-purpose machine, being designed only for a range of crypt analytic tasks. Konrad Zuse, created the first true programmable computer, the Z1 in 1936. It is considered to be the first electro-mechanical binary programmable computer and the first really functional modern computer. It was followed by the Z4 in 1945 which was arguably the world's first commercial digital computer.
So, are those coffee mugs available to buy?
Looking at the exact same thing.
I'd buy one of those.
Me too! I collect coffee mugs
.
Got taken to Bletchley Park probably as a young teenager and was overwhelmed by it all, and this was at a time when the action-packed side of WW2 interested me more! Frequent visited for a time afterward, much to my parents' amusement (how many times did I really need to see it?!).
When lockdown ends and if time, ways, and means align for you, definitely get yourself there. An hour or so from London by train, if that helps!
Thanks for that beautifully detailed yet still overview-level snapshot of the story! It's great to have Indy and crew back in my education after all their superb WWI coverage. Please keep it coming; you folks are great and very much appreciated.
The contribution of the Poles in breaking Enigma should NEVER be underestimated. . .
Having been introduced to the Enigma machine years ago, I wrote a software system rhat emulates sone of the features. Fun times.
My great Aunt and Uncle were translators at Bletchley, they met there.
They were actually asked to be translators at Nuremburg, but they turned it down, understandably...
that cup is super cool
Thanks for this! Imitation Game was a decent movie, but it had quite a few inaccuracies and completely discounted the efforts of the Poles, Tommy Flowers and others. Even some at Bletchley who were completely behind the idea of an electrical machine were reworked to be more antagonistic for dramatic purposes, which was really unfair to those people.
Yes.. Thank you. The Poles have gotten an un-deserved bad rap over the years. They were forward thinking in many ways but just didn't have the resources to exploit it all. I agree women did about 75% of the work and got about 3% of the credit and respect. But I think no historians have really evaluated what influences that Enigma had on most specific events and the grand Allied strategy to win the war. I hope you can help on this..
Now.. the Yanks should get some credit ..Check out Lowman's book MAGIC to see the U.S. had broken the Japanese codes before the war started..... Leading me to believe that some really knew what happened to Amelia Earhart.
l can't agree - women got 13.27% credit and respect.
OD...there's a current movie (not made in the 60s) about the defense of Britain, and see how these men were treated, when they putting their lives at stake in the defense of another country - the life span of a bomber pilot during "The Battle of/for Britain" was an average of 2-3 missions.
@Superdude70 Sorry .. I most humbley apologize .
Thx for acknowledging the Polish part of this Story. Breaking Enigma was a Polish-French-British success.
You can find on youtube at least two speeches by Sir Dermont Turing where he is going much more into detail about the Polish part of the Enigma Code Breaking. He also wrote a book about the Polish-French-British cooperation in terms of Enigma. "X, Y and Z - The real story of how Enigma was broken". Highly recommended to those who would like to know more details about this topic.
That tie-sweater-shirt combination makes you look like a math teacher, Indy. Which I guess is actually apt here. 3/5
Would have been better with a sleeveless pullover for the full on British WWII maths nerd look, but yes, a good effort.
At last Tommy Flowers gets a mention! He has been overshadowed by Alan Turing's brilliance for many years and yet Turing was impressed with Flowers and introduced him to Max Newman. This put Tommy in the right position to help break the Lorenz cypher which was one of the tougher secret codes alluded to by Indy. Colossus, which Flowers designed, is the world's first programmable, electronic, digital computer which led to what you are using today. I'm also glad to see credit where it is due, the Poles did indeed crack Enigma first and passed the information over.
Glad you appreciated the video!
Fascinating stuff. I could certainly understand why Germany would have such faith in their ciphers, as anyone who isn't a genius mathematician would not believe their cracking even plausible. It takes all sorts to fight a war, and the men in suits back in the labs contribute just like those in fatigues on the front lines.
Men AND women. 3/4 of Bletchley Park workers were female.
The free Enigma machine simulator exists on the Google Play Store. There are the M3 1939, M4 1942 and the K Raiway and you can set them to your liking. And it works great! I don't know if there is a version of this app on the Apple Store, but maybe something like that for Apple devices will be there for sure
Fun Fact: The Poles actually handed over a fair amount of intelligence and some of their Enigma machines to the British so they could get a head start on their code-breaking efforts. Which really helped them in the long run. And this happened two weeks before Poland was invaded by Germany. Nice job.
@Andrew Ongais---Yeah I can see trains and ships playing a really important role.
What a superb way to bring what happenned at Bletchley to the world, The fact That Tommy Flowers is mentioned is astounding, some school kids wont have a clue, that he existed, mostv believe that alan turing alone broke all the codes......Aaaah
In February 1942 the German Navy started using a four rotor Enigma called Triton. The Royal Navy broke Triton during the Autumn of 1942. In March 1943, the German Navy refined the Enigma key which the Allies managed to break (but only after nine days of heavier Allied shipping losses).
Great video as usual
Once again Congratulations on a very interesting and informative video, well done all.
Can’t forget about the Polish contributions to Enigma.
We never get the chance. BTW what was there contribution post 1939?
tim phillips; I believe one could argue the Allies advances would have been much more limited, had it not been for the Polish contributions, Pre 1939.
@@DerekCully You could also argue hundreds of thousands of French and British troops died in the defense and final liberation of Poland.
tim phillips; The topic is The Enigma Code... Not the land war.
@@DerekCully I am sorry Derek , but I am sick and tired of hearing about the Polish contribution every time the Battle of Britain or enigma is mentioned. The hard facts are there wouldn't have been any Battle of Britain or Enigma would not have been a story without the Brits.
I went to school near Bletchley when the information on the Code Breaking was released to the Public in the 1980’s.
I've studied encryption and WW2 history and that is the best, most succinct layman's explanation of the Enigma I've seen. Fantastic video! Great job and great research!
Thanks! In that case always be sure to send it to people if they are ever confused about Enigma ;)
I feel a special connection to the communications intelligence folks of WW2. During the Cold War, I served in the US Army and did similar work.
Aah... the good old days when we wore bakelite headphones that gave us migranes and still had to learn morse code. Cryptologists these days don't know how easy they've got it.
The Machines at Blechly were partially programmable, they still had patch boards to change some circuitry to maych changes in Enigma wiring. The First Fully Programmable computer was ENIAC at the University of Pennsylvania . It calculated artillery tables. It used some much power, that it caused a Brownout when powering on. It also could only be run during the winter with the windows open,it generated a lot of heat and the building had no AC. My Father worked with someone who had worked on ENIAC.
@Andrew Ongais I was refering to Indies comment about the first all electroic computer, not the electromechanilcal systems like the Bombe.
Alan Turing story is really heartbreaking,
A quote from Dr Christos Papadimitriou in his "Logicomix" Talks at Google
*Papadimitriou talks about the most important mathematicians of the 20th century, the forefathers of mathematical logic, modern computers and computer science in general*
"I think it is very amazing that the dark and relentless tragedy that engulfed all of these people, Kurt Gödel died in the 70s out of paranoia, Georg Cantor spent most of his life in mental hospitals battling with severe depression,Emil Leon Post was manic-depressive and essentially died in the hands of his doctor during electroshock treatment, Bertrand Russell the paragon of sanity feared for his mental health all his life - he had a schizophrenic uncle, a scizophrenic son and two scizophrenic grandsons, even David Hilbert had a scizophrenic son.
The only normal guy from these giants of mathematics was Alan Turing except that he was not "legally" normal - he was homosexual as a result he was tried for "gross indecency" and condemned to chemical castration - the hormonses changed his mind and his body as a result he commited suicide two years later."
I am extremely grateful that you mentioned Tommy Flowers a Post Office engineer , who physically created the first modern computer.His contribution is rarely mentioned.Without him Turing would have achieved nothing.
As ever great presentation, and to squeeze the enigma story into circa 20 mins is challenging. Having been to the location a few times and read a few of the accounts the one thing you missed and was one of the factors which played a major roll in breaking the enigma machine was that in true germanic style the system was perfect, in that it would never reproduce a letter as itself, so an 'e' would never be an 'e', which was an essential piece of info when developing the decyphering approach. Also the Lorenz system (the successor to Enigma) was cracked in 1944 but the British and USA did not make this known to the Russians as they knew that post war they were using the captured Lorenz machines for military communications.
I love this channel... These guys should have a Netflix special.
Brilliant documentary video. The last points you mentioned are so true. We should be grateful to those genius scientists in the first half of the 20th century.
the lighting on the back wall is beautiful. sorry I love the little details. Keep up the good work!
Thanks
Love the tie AND the coffee mug!
There were two major flaws in Enigma that the code breakers exploited. The first was a structural fault that eliminated thousands of brute force combinations to break the code. That fault was that a enciphered letter could never end up being the same unenciphered letter. As an example, after going through the rotors, an "E" could never be an "E" after the Enigma scrambled it. This eliminated thousands of combinations that the bombe (Turing's machine) didn't have to process. The second was that the weather reports always ended with "Heil Hitler". This gave them a reference to start with.
@Andrew Ongais wasn't that rumour put about later on to cover the fact that we were raiding German Weather Reporting Ships up near Iceland to get Enigma keys - the Germans just assuming that these Trawler sized vessels were just sinking in storms as they had lost so many already?
Great content as usual! After reading the book Secrets of Station X can I suggest a special episode on Welchman and Flowers and their battle against Lorenz code? It makes enigma seem simple in comparison. I know you guys would do the story justice.
Thank God for ENIGMA. My Mummy and Daddy met at Bletchley Park.
Thank you.
Thanks for mentioning Polish mathematicians who did whole lot of groundwork. What interests me is did Germany have similar code breakers? And how the British encrypted their messages?
FYI: the RUclips Channel of "Jared Owen" does computer animated breakdowns of modern and historical machines/vehicles/etc. One of these videos is a detailing of the Enigma machine. It's very interesting and shows just how detailed/complex the encrypting of the machine actually is. Highly recommend the video if you really want to see how the Enigma machine works.
1:20 In 1980 when Dönitz was told the the enigma code was broken he said, "it was a bitter pill to sallow" he also said he had always had his doubts but the experts told him it was impossible to break but he went ahead and added 3 more wheels anyway.
In his book "Ten Years And Ten Days"
Very educational,quite fascinating.
Why no one knows about this documentary series? So creative, exceptional story telling, I am into this.
Good job. Great narrative and pictures, and as always outstanding delivery by Indy.
Thanks!
Oh yes, been waiting for an episode about breaking the enigma encryption.
Awesome work, keep it up
Thanks, Indy! My regimental and clan tartan tie was well received!
Thanks for mentioning the Genius Tommy Flowers the forgotten hero of Bletchly Park
The Navy adopted the 4 rotor machine in February 1942. Enigma key setting sheets were captured from U559 as it sank in October 1942.
I am like the most biggest fan of history. Thank you for this series. 👍🏻
I had low hopes when Indy started talking about letters coming out as numbers. Enigma only had letters. But then the summary got much better.
It was good that Indy mentioned Welchman who is often overlooked even though his contributions were of similar importance to Turing's, just in different ways. Welchman came up with the "diagonal board" for the Bombe machined that speed the process up enough to be really useful a role "given" to Hugh Alexander in The Imitation game movie). Welch had many other major major accomplishments including "Traffic Analysis." Nice to see Tommy Flowers mentioned but probably should wait and cover him along with Bill Tutte. Colossus was more of a "prototypical" computer in that it was not really programmable but more of a calculator for the Fish/Lorenz. A lot of the glory these days goes to the cracking of Enigma, in part because it was not kept a secret for as long. The cracking of Lorenz was seen as so important, it was kept a secret much longer.
The Enigma captured on U-110 was a three rotor machine, not a four rotor machine as depicted in the photograph. The four rotor Enigma did not enter service with the Kriegsmarine until February 1942.
That mug is a masterpiece of craftsmanship.
This was an awesome video. And it is awesome to think about how British Intelligence was able to turn the war in there favor through their deciphering and control of information.
One of the more fascinating stories of WW2.
I’d love to see a part two to this episode describing the US involvement of decoding the Enigma in Dayton, Ohio my hometown. The Bombe was developed by Joe Desch at National Cash Register with the help from WAVES female navy reserves.
Ken I have the book but haven’t gotten around to reading it yet. An episode on the Dayton Project would be interesting as well.
Tommy Flowers was a Post Office Engineer and worked at Neasden
the enigma biggest flaw, was that one character could never become itself once encrypted.
That is a small weakness, not a major flaw - it shortens the odds a bit but not by as much as all that. The biggest flaw was that it was operated by human beings.
@me hee He literally agreed with you, just in other words.
I am pretty certain that the enigma machine only used upper-case letters, and no numbers. So an A could be any other upper-case letter (except A of course, which was enigma's biggest flaw), but not either a B or b or 2 etc. as mentioned in the video.
Excellent. Learned a few extra tidbits on the subject as well.
Glad you liked it!
Tommy Flowers designed & built colossus in a telephone exchange before being dismantled and rebuilt at Bletchley is a great story in itself. He was the UK’s foremost telephone exchange engineer and while in his 90’s, he lectured on his achievement in Canadian colleges and a RUclips video exists of one of his presentations.
My grandmother was a wren. I think it was the proudest moment in her life, as she was full of stories about that time.
What years was it she was telling you about this?
@@DraigBlackCat in the 2000s, I was too young in the 90s and anyway I don't even know if it was declassified by then
@@sankarchaya there was a book came out in the early 1970s and that was the trigger for people to start talking because it wasn't secret any more.
You must have had some cracking tales told.
The video is illustrated with examples from the modern alphanumeric keyboard (with cases). Actually, Enigma was based on just the 26 upper-case letters, without spaces, numerals, or punctuation.
U-110 is, incedentally, commanded by Fritz-Julius Lemp, who sank the liner Athenia during the first week of the war. When he realized that his sub wasn't sinking, he tried jumping from a life raft to swim back to the boat and scuttle it. Armed RN sailors gunned him down.
If anyone want to know how Enigma machine works, how it got beaten, and like a little bit of math. I found some videos about Enigma machine on Numberphile channel :)
I read the book Enigma by Robert Harris. The back drop was Bletchley Park in 1943. It was a suspense mystery thriller. A lot of detail about the struggle to crack the code and the race against time
My English granny, Edith Singleton worked at and from Bletchley Park.. She never actually spoke much about it but we have a photograph of her and Alan Turin leaning on bicycles by the huts...we never realised who it was until cracking the Enigma became popular and my Dad went through her extensive photo album she kept...there were no names or dates but Turin is easily recognisable 👉💎👈👉🇬🇧👈
Your granny was cool! Have you published that photo on the web?
@@russbellew6378 No... It's a good idea but dad (her youngest son) seems to feel it is not "appropriate"...my English family are really of that ilk that one did not 'make a fuss'...maybe one day if I have my way her whole time @ Bletchley will be told as it is really interesting 👉💎👈👉🇬🇧👈
A small point, but Indy you do such a good job, I know you are concerned about even the smallest detail. At 6:15 into the video you speak of Luftwaffe and Wehrmacht traffic and later Kriegsmarine as if the Wehrmacht were the land forces, army, of Germany during World War II. Wehrmacht was the term for all regular military forces, so it excludes SS units. Heer was the term for the land forces.
Yes thanks for pointing this out! A minor mistake but its better to not have any at all. We'll be more careful in the future.
my cousin's paternal grandmother worked at blechley park
It would be cool to see an episode on Arne Beurling and the Geheimfernschreiber too
Numberphile YT channel has 2 wonderful videos explaining how enigma works, and how it was decripted, using an original working enigma machine!
Can you give a link for the curious people?
@@jakubcesarzdakos5442 ruclips.net/video/G2_Q9FoD-oQ/видео.html here it its! part 1
@@NicAimo thanks!
I've been at Bletchley Park twice, last time in 2014. It's one of the most interesting WW2 museums I've ever seen. And I'm a history & archaeology guy, not quite fond of maths. And they had rebuilt not only a Bombe, but the f#k#ing Colossus, the first computer in the World. Amazing. Quite an experience, to see it working.
Glad you are recovering well! Who says mathematics is boring? Wonderful video. Question: Did the Allies share any Enigma intel with the Soviets?
Yes, Alies shared a lot of intel with soviets, tho they never admited they gain it by code-breaking the enigma.
Yes,
UK - Germany is going to invade you.
USSR - How do you know that?
UK We just do, trust us on this.
USSR - No.