Polish Intelligence Service behind cracking of Enigma

0 Comments | Insight on the News, Sept 23, 2002 | by Michael Wallach

In Scott Hagen's article on the International Spy Museum ["Lifting the Veil of Espionage" Aug. 26], he credits the breaking of the Enigma cipher to the capture of a working Enigma machine.

In fact, in late 1932, the Polish cryptanalyst Marian Rejewski, while working at the Cipher Bureau of the Polish Intelligence Service in Warsaw, used a mathematical model to deduce the wiring of the Enigma machine. The Poles routinely were reading Enigma traffic throughout the 1930s. On July 24, 1939, they turned over their cryptanalysis work and a replica of Enigma to the French and British intelligence services. This was credited with saving several years of effort in breaking later Enigma ciphers.

Michael Wallach
Freehold, N.J.