Forgotten heroes of the Enigma Story (2018)
1–10 of 13 posts
Re: Forgotten heroes of the Enigma Story (2018)
#2Link is to a book review of Dermot Turing's book about Polish contributions to cryptanalyzing the WW2 Enigma cipher. I heard about this book and have been wanting to read it sometime, but the authoritative book on this subject is probably still Enigma, by Władysław Kozaczuk. HN readers will want the 1984 edition since the 2004 reissue/revision chopped out all the technical parts, though the war stories left over in the paperback were likely still interesting. Kozaczuk's wikipedia biography has some more info on this.
Re: Forgotten heroes of the Enigma Story (2018)
#3This is a good time to throw out a recommendation for Bletchley Park and the Computer History Museum, two museums next door to each other and not far from Luton Airport outside London. Bletchley Park is for the masses and focuses a lot on the history, the people and the impact on the war. The Computer History Museum has tours of working replicas of the codebreaking machines and very knowledgeable docents who love talking with a fellow geek. It's a must for anyone in our industry with some historical inklings.
Re: Forgotten heroes of the Enigma Story (2018)
#4I don't think it would have been safe for their families or themselves if it was known the poles had cracked enigma in the early days? This follows from the german-ussr pact all the way the post war period
Anyway there are so many contributions to cracking enigma that the story is full of forgotten heroes
Re: Forgotten heroes of the Enigma Story (2018)
#5I don't think it would have been safe for their families or themselves if it was known the poles had cracked enigma in the early days? This follows from the german-ussr pact all the way the post war period Anyway there are so many contributions to cracking enigma that the story is full of forgotten heroes
Although the Polish contribution is by no means forgotten; it's one of the least forgotten "forgotten heroes" stories I know of.
Re: Forgotten heroes of the Enigma Story (2018)
#6They were not forgotten. It was inconvenient for the British to acknowledge their debt to the Polish who did all the theoretical lifting that turned cracking Enigma into a challenging, but pedestrian engineering effort.
Re: Forgotten heroes of the Enigma Story (2018)
#7The NSA Cryptological Museum at Ft. Meade in Maryland has a functioning Enigma machine (the Army version, I think) on display. It actually saw battle during WWII. As part of the display, they do acknowledge the efforts of the Polish codebreakers in their efforts in understanding how it worked and how to decrypt messages. Fascinating bit of history!
Re: Forgotten heroes of the Enigma Story (2018)
#8This is a good time to throw out a recommendation for Bletchley Park and the Computer History Museum, two museums next door to each other and not far from Luton Airport outside London. Bletchley Park is for the masses and focuses a lot on the history, the people and the impact on the war. The Computer History Museum has tours of working replicas of the codebreaking machines and very knowledgeable docents who love tal…
It's ~50 minutes away from central London by train from Euston station. It's a fantastic way to spend half a day away from London.
Re: Forgotten heroes of the Enigma Story (2018)
#9They were not forgotten. It was inconvenient for the British to acknowledge their debt to the Polish who did all the theoretical lifting that turned cracking Enigma into a challenging, but pedestrian engineering effort.
They were never forgotten. Even the earliest 1977 BBC account "Still Secret" in "The Secret War" series credited them greatly.
Later simplifications, especially Hollywood movies simplified the story for mass-consumption.
Re: Forgotten heroes of the Enigma Story (2018)
#10I don't think it would have been safe for their families or themselves if it was known the poles had cracked enigma in the early days? This follows from the german-ussr pact all the way the post war period Anyway there are so many contributions to cracking enigma that the story is full of forgotten heroes
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