Military Wiki
Register
Advertisement

Question book-new

This article does not contain any citations or references. Please improve this article by adding a reference. For information about how to add references, see Template:Citation.

Cryptography was used extensively during World War II, with a plethora of code and cipher systems fielded by the nations involved. In addition, the theoretical and practical aspects of cryptanalysis, or codebreaking, was much advanced. Probably the most important cryptographic event of the war was the successful decryption by the Allies of the German "Enigma" Cipher. The first complete break into Enigma was accomplished by Poland around 1932; the techniques and insights used were passed to the French and British Allies just before the outbreak of the War in 1939. They were substantially improved by British efforts at the Bletchley Park research station during the War. Decryption of the Enigma Cipher allowed the Allies to read important parts of German radio traffic on important networks and was an invaluable source of military intelligence throughout the War. Intelligence from this source (and other high level sources, including the Fish ciphers) was eventually called Ultra. A similar break into an important Japanese cipher (PURPLE) by the US Army Signals Intelligence Service started before the US entered the War. Product from this source was called MAGIC. It was the highest security Japanese diplomatic cipher. For Japanese Naval ciphers see JN-25. See also Attack on Pearl Harbor.

Australia[]

France[]

  • PC Bruno
  • Hans Thilo-Schmidt

Germany[]

Italy[]

Japan[]

Poland[]

Soviet Union[]

As is common with World War II discussions of cryptology, there is a curious absence of information on Soviet efforts and accomplishments. Given the Red Army offenses on the Eastern Front, they must have obtained Enigma machines. What they did with them seems to be an unanswered question. Later they divised the lesser known Fialka (Russian for purple).

Sweden[]

  • Arne Beurling

United Kingdom[]

United States[]

See also[]

  • Hans Thilo-Schmidt


All or a portion of this article consists of text from Wikipedia, and is therefore Creative Commons Licensed under GFDL.
The original article can be found at World War II cryptography and the edit history here.
Advertisement