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Most historians agree that by enabling Allied commanders
to eavesdrop on German plans, Bletchley Park shortened the war by 2 or 3
years. Its decoded messages played a vital role in defeating the U-boat
menace, cutting off Rommel's supplies in North Africa, and launching
the D-Day landings. Decoding Nazi Secrets draws on vivid interviews
with many of the colorful geniuses and eccentrics who attacked the Enigma.
Wartime survivors recall such vivid episodes as the British capture of
the German submarine U-110; one of its officers describes how he saved a
book of love poems inscribed to his sweetheart but failed to destroy
vital Enigma documents on board.
Decoding Nazi Secrets also features
meticulous period reenactments shot inside the original buildings
at Bletchley Park, including recreations of the world's first
computing devices that aided codebreakers with their breakthroughs.
Bletchley Park not only helped reverse the onslaught of the Third
Reich, but also laid the groundwork for the invention of the
digital computer that continues to transform all our lives.
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| Alan Turing - known as the inventor of the computer,
he led the group of codebreakers in England's cipher-cracking
organization, Bletchley Park.
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| Bletchley Park - the code-breaking organization in England
in charge of cracking the Enigma. It was full of mathematicians,
crossword-puzzle fanatics, and other super-brains who worked day
in and day out to break the seeming impregnable code.
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| Enigma - The Enigma is a cipher machine which was created
by a native born German, Arthur Scherbuis. Its function is based on
the principle of the rotor, which is a wired codewheel. The rotor's
body is about the size of a hockey puck and it is made of a nonconducting
material of electricity (ie. rubber). This puck consists of two
sides--the input plate and the output plate. Around the circumference
of this puck, on each side-both the input plate and output plate--there
are twenty-six evenly spaced electrical contacts. The twenty-six contacts
on the input plate are connected by wires through the body of the rotor
to the other twenty-six contacts on the output plate in a random arrangement.
Then, an alphabet ring is placed around the rotor. Since each of the
twenty-six contacts on both sides represents a letter, the rotor is
said to embody a cipher alphabet. It is the initial random wiring of
these contacts that is responsible for the "secret" of the machine.(Rina Mody)
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Decoding Nazi Secrets main focus centers around the
Enigma machine itself. This is a highly complex system, much like the
computer. It involves a high degree of automation, and most of the work
is done internally and not by the user, just like how the computer
works. It existed in the German Army, Navy, and Air Force, with slight
variations in each segment. Without the British Government Code & Cipher
School (GC&CS), and the leadership and brilliance of Alan Turing at
Bletchley Park, the decoding of the Enigma may have never occurred in
time for it to be useful in the war. Turing was also able to speed up
the process of decoding by automating the system using logic circularities
in the Enigma machine itself.
The Enigma shows how complex the inner-workings of machines can be,
and has come a long way from the punch-card system used in earlier
renditions of computers. It was extremely advanced, even for its
time. In the documentary, it was mentioned that it would take a
year's time for a supercomputer in today's modern world to go through
all of the possible permutations for just one encrypted message.
This in itself displays the vast amount of technology and engineering that
went in the coding system. Technology is advancing still to the extent
that these sophisticated types of machines are becoming even smaller and
more difficult to break. Software encryption is a big deal on the
Internet, with Credit Card transactions, Social Security numbers, and
other important personal information being broadcast in the open.
These encryption programs rival that of the Enigma, and more.
However, it is still fascinating to think that a machine like the
Enigma could be produced in its time that would still be a formidable
encryption device today.
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