Cryptography Reference
In-Depth Information
2.5.3 The Enigma after 1945
So what happened to the Enigma after the end of World War II? The 'Ultra'
project continued to be top secret. Nobody knew officially that the Enigma had
been broken. Hints about that fact remained unnoticed.
The fact that this machine was compromised probably became officially known
in 1974. With the appearance of his topic
The Ultra Secret
, Winterbotham let
the cat out of the bag. In the second edition of
The Codebreakers
by David
Kahn [KahnCode], the author even states that Winterbotham had obtained spe-
cial approval from the government to write his topic. (But the first edition of
The Codebreakers
in 1967 was also a drum-beat. Up to that time, cryptology
appeared to still be what it always was: a sort of occult science. By the way,
the topic by Kahn, especially dedicated to the Enigma, appeared only in 1991
[KahnEnig].)
On October 19, 1993, Sir Harry Hinsley held a seminar at Cambridge Univer-
sity. Hinsley interpreted the German fleet's messages deciphered at Bletchley
Park and is considered the official historian of the 'Ultra' project. This seminar
was recorded and you can find the highly interesting work on the Web site to
this topic.
On May 20, 1994, Keith Lockstone posted an article that summarized the most
important contents in the
sci.crypt
Internet newsgroup (you can also find it on
our Web site):
•
According to that article, Germany and Switzerland continued to produce
Enigmas after the war and sold them to Africa, the Middle East, and South
America for military and diplomatic communications. Germany may still
have believed in its marvel, while the Swiss intelligence agencies knew
back in 1943 about the adversary's activities and had warned Germany
then (!). The Germans turned a deaf ear to this warning. No comment.
•
Similarly 'noble' motives appeared to have encouraged the USA to sell
Enigmas to third-world countries, according to Zimmermann [ZimmPGP],
while the real reason was presumably to be able to listen in on their com-
munications. We will see later on that this tactic is being pursued to this
day. Cries of horror (like in a TV program I watched years ago) would
be feigned. After all, it's about national intelligence.
•
And in the Soviet Union, too, nobody was warned about using the Enigma
though cryptanalysis of the Enigma had allegedly been on the same level
as in the USA and Great Britain, but thanks to a parallel development
