The Brains behind the Enigma Code Breaking before the Second World War

Abstract

The German Enigma encoding machine and the contributions of famous cryptologists who broke it are still topics that fascinate both scientists and the general public. After the monarchy of Kaiser Wilhelm II fell, the Weimar republic came into being, and the idea of equipping the armed forces with machine ciphers already found realization in 1926. The German cipher machine, called Enigma, alarmed the general staffs of neighbouring countries, especially Poland and France. This work describes the efforts of cryptanalysts who solved the mystery of Enigma during the 1930s before the beginning of the war.