On american artifacts, we visit visit the national cryptlogic museum on the campus of the National Security agency. To learn about the making and breaking of secret codes and the role in u. S. History. This is the first of the this is our most popular exhibit. We have people that come from all over the world to see it. This is an enigma machine. We have 40 in our collection. We have five we operate. They want to look at an enigma machine, and you can actually operate this device. We will do that in just a second. The germans adopted this as their main Battlefield Tactical Communications device largely because it had an amazing capability. Despite the fact that it is electric electrical mechanical, it can produce permutations of three times 10 to the hundred and 14th power. That is more than all of the stars in the universe, and it makes it virtually impossible, at least on paper, to do a brute force operation. It is way too much information to go through, and because of that, the germans believed you cannot find the key, and you will not be breaking any messages. Now, the cryptologic power comes from the three rotors that make up the device. When you hit a key on the keyboard, the current will flow into this plug board, up through the rotors, reflect, and come back through and then again light up here. This is a very versatile machine. It is portable. You can take this anywhere. One of the critical parts of this process was the key lift. It had three months worth of settings and it was disseminated every four months by german couriers. If you did not have the key list, you would not be able to get it correct, and if you did not get the rotor settings, you could not comedic it with everyone else in the network. Now, i am going to do a quick demonstration here to show you, and we will use vivid imaginations. We will pretend it is march 24, 1942. The world is at lower at war. The rotor setting is 111. The message were going to send from berlin to stuttgart is usa. If we send this out in the clear to stuttgart it will get there but it will also fall into the hands of any number of people who are monitoring our frequency. So were going to encrypt this message before we send it to stuttgart. So im going to hit the u, then im going to hit the s, and then the a. And this is indeed what we would send to stuttgart. Using our imaginations again were no longer in berlin, were in stuttgart now, were in a different place later in the day. However, our rotor setting has not changed. So in stuttgart, im bringing the message back. My machine in stuttgart is set to 010104, thats not the setting for the day. Im going to go back, and now in stuttgart im going to decrypt the message. Heres the f, the u, the y, theres the s, and finally the c. And theres the a. So you can see it works very nicely. A lot of people are not impressed by this, they say things like, well, my grandfather gave me a little orphan annie decoder ring, so whats the big deal. The big deal is it was doing it at a rate of three times 10 to the 114th power and thats why the germans had every reason to believe it was a perfect encryption device. Thankfully for the world the allies were able to break it. The first country to make progress was poland. Poland was worried about a german invasion, they were able to hand select a series of very gifted mathematicians. The leader was marian rejewski. And they begin an earnest effort to break the enigma code. It one thing to have bright intelligent people, but when youre going up against three times 10 to the 114th power in terms permutations, you have a very, very, very tough road to hoe. They didnt give and they got some help there. Was a gentleman who worked in the german cipher bureau, hans schmitt, he had once been a wealthy man, he lost all of his business because of the great depression, now he was destitute, his older brother got him a job as a humble government clerk at the cipher bureau, and hans decided to do something to enhance his financial situation. He contacted an agent of the french secret service, he said ive got some secrets about enigma id like to sell. How much money can you give me. Bertrand said how does 20,000 sound in french franrs, and the exchange was made and bertrand because he talked with the poles before, forwarded the information to them. The poles eventually over time are able to discern how the process works and to begin to break enigma messages. Once you do that, though, youve got to turn it into a 24hour operation so that you can develop real time intelligence. They really didnt get the chance to do that because their country was invaded in 1939. But it is worth noting it was the poles that had the breakthrough. Now, after two years they were able to make to it a place called Bletchley Park, that was the code making and breaking headquarters for the british empire. It was set up by winston churchill, there are any number of brilliant people there, not the least of which was alan turing, he comes up with an innovative purchase that he referred to as assumed text, they were able to find radio stations in the third reich and occupied europe that sent out messages every day at the time the enigma messages were sent, at the same time. And because of the nature of the mission of the radio stations they were able to guess the first sentence of the transmission. Perfect example, station 26 on the coast of france, comes on the air river day at 7 00 a. M. And the first sentence off the tower is the weather today off the coast of france will be. Why, it was concerned with putting out weather reports to the german ships and submarines at sea. With that, you get a head start. You can begin the process, and he was able to design a device that was referred to as a bombe. This is a giant calculating machine, a guessing machine that helps to sort out the other patterns and sequences. I dont want to make this sound easy, it was not. It took between 8 to 12 hours and a core of analysts linguists and many more support personnel. But heres the bottom line. By the end of the day, with some exceptions, they were able to determine the rotor settings theyd been intercepting messages all day long and now they are able in some sense to be able to discern the future tactical intentions of the German Military. It is a critical, critical breakthrough, because people forget that Great Britain was standing alone against the nazi onslaught. The battle of britain was a very tough challenge for the royal air force. And the ability to discern future Tactical Operations of the German Military was a huge advantage. One of the methods that the germans used with great effect was to conduct their bombing raids at night. And if you read anything at all about the blitz, it was an incredibly difficult time. Huge portions of Great Britain are being destroyed, lives are being lost. And when indeed when the germans bombed at night it was more effective. They lost fewer pilots, they lost fewer planes. And one of the systems that they used was they would send a radio beam from the air field, either in germany or france or somewhere in occupied europe, to the target in the u. K. They would lock onto the beam, they would be able to deposit their bombs and then lock back on the beam and fly back to their air base. This proved to be very effective. But when this enigma code was broken, the british, knowing what the azimuths were, they were able to use their bend the beams. They put powerful transmitters on the codes and they were able to move the beams so that the bombers eventually dropped their armaments on open cow pastures rather than on military and population centers. Thats a very early, almost primitive, example of information warfare, but it shows you what you can do when you know what your adversary is going to do before they do it. While it was the effectiveness of their armed forces that played a huge role in helping Great Britain survive, you could also make the case that the ability to read enigma messages also was key. Now id like to tell you that the story ends here, but its always a cat and mouse game. Its always one side adjusting to the other. An admiral in the german navy noticed a change and began an effort to try to make sure that enigma was secure. He had asked the german high command to be sure that there wasnt a problem, that enigma was indeed as secure as they believed to it be. They told him to stop worrying but he wanted to take out a little insurance, so he took all of the enigmas out of the ships and submarine that he controlled, and just so he could sleep better at night he had his technicians install a permanent fourth rotor. The problem is the entire process at Bletchley Park was based on three rotor traffic which means that the allies lose track of the german subs. For a portion of 1942, german submarine commanders referred to those months as the happy time. They sunk over 200 ships off the coast of the United States alone. The u. S. Navy is now growing frantic because the convoys are being destroyed on a far too regular basis. They signed a contract with National Cash register in dayton, ohio to develop a device similar to the ones the brits had developed to solve the fourrotor problem. Now were going to take a look at americas contribution. Now what you see here is one of our most precious artifacts. This is the last existing u. S. Navy device. There were over 100 of these filled in dayton, ohio. They were put on trains and moved to a facility just out of nebraska avenue. That facility is owned by the department of Homeland Security today. It belonged to the United States navy in the past years. Like the british device, it was important to get clues in the morning. Once you were able to obtain this, you could begin the process during this is basically like the british device. A giant calculating machine guessing machine that helps you with the head start and finally get, in this case, a four rotor setting. It is not easy. It took a very long time, eight to 12 hours, sometimes longer. It took a lot of very good cryptologic work. A lot of linguists, personal. By the end of the day, with some exceptions, they were able to get the four rotor settings. With that, they could do one of two things. They could send out Tactical Unit to destroy the pack, because they knew the location and sometimes the convoys were at sea, in those cases, they could radio the captain to help them understand where the danger lies. Many historians believe that this project helped to shorten the war by one year. Basically because it helps to resecured the north atlantic. Other historians disagree with that, but there is consensus on the critical point. That is ultimately it saved thousands and thousands of allied lives. In 1974, after almost three decades or three over three decades, the british hold the world and the germans told the world and the germans guess what . We broke the code as early as 1940. When it was announced, there were any number of individuals living in germany who were involved with and responsible for the program. When they found out, they were absolutely and utterly stunned. They had believed of it a perfect machine up to that point in time. So it was a very, very wellkept secret. Is theres a lesson you can take from this. Its one anyone in anyone in a position of responsibility should know and its this always be careful of the word impossible. When something is impossible and theres a lot riding on it, you really need to check it out. You have to be careful of your assumptions. If you assume too much and you dont investigate what you believe to be the truth, you can meet with
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