[Spooks] OT Enigma movie

Mon, 21 Jan 2002 16:28:25 -0500

-----Original Message-----
From: [email protected]
[mailto:[email protected]]On Behalf Of Maciej Muszalski
Sent: Thursday, January 17, 2002 7:30 AM
To: [email protected]
Subject: Re: [Spooks] OT Enigma movie

Paul Beaumont wrote:

> No problem with Marion Rejewski and his team, passed all the details onto
> Bletchley Park fearing the Nazi War machine.
> BBC lately ran a program that charted that and made special mention of the
> Polish effort.
> I gave the Enigma movie a miss.
> Cheers
> Paul

I know abt last british efforts to fix that sick situation... last year
they even passed some documents to our museums but the problem is that
not too many people know history and for them that movie will be as the
final truth

--
73 de
SQ5EBM

Maciej "Miles" Muszalski
http://mushal.luftbrandzlung.org

Good afternoon Miles, Paul and all:  Apologies for such a late response.
Someone had mentioned Simon Singh's book "The Code Book" earlier and it's a
good one.  May I also recommend "Code Breaking - A History and Exploration"
by  former U. of Gottingen professor Rudolf Kippenhahn.
Prof. Kippenhahn adds more information about the activities and background
of the Polish mathematicians/cryptologists (Rejewski, Zygalski, Rozycki and
others), working out of the Cipher Bureau (Biuro szyfrow) in Warsaw, in
cracking ENIGMA, which they had accomplished by 1934. One interesting story
has the Polish customs house people informing their intelligence service
about a frantic German legation official looking for a certain railway crate
in 1928. After telling the legation man there was no crate, the customs
people then turned the crate over to intelligence, which found a brand new
ENIGMA machine in it. They thoroughly examined the machine over the weekend
and then turned it over to the German legation the following Monday, with no
indication that the crate had been opened. Polish intelligence learned much
about the machine, but not everything. Eventually the Germans would improve
upon ENIGMA and the Poles attempted to keep up. sharing information later
with Britain and France. Kippenhahn also questions as to why British
intelligence didn't make much use of Rejewski and Zygalski (Rozycki was
killed when the French liner he was traveling on either hit a mine or ran
aground in 1941) after they found their way to England. After the trio had
gotten out of Poland ahead of the German and Russian onslaught and arrived
in Romania, the British embassy in Bucharest turned them away, whereas the
French embassy took them in and got them out of the country. At least
someone was thinking straight at that time.

Another superb book appears to be David Hahn's "Code Breaking", but at $65
(US) hardbound, it'll be a while before it ends up in my library.

Best regards,

Jim Bjaloncik
Stow, OH   USA