Code Breaking In World War I

During the world wars, the biggest wars in modern history, it was important for countries to send their messages to allies and armies without being detected by other countries. The information transported by secret message, or codes, was usually about tactics, military orders or top secrets. So for the enemies, it was also very crucial for them to break the code and know what their enemy was thinking about. Although code breaking was done in the hidden place that Breaking code was one of the important actions done during the world war in order to reduce the danger but increase the probability of winning. In 1915, when World War I just occurred, RMS Lusitania was sunk at the coastline near Ireland. Total of 1,960 people were on board and more

The German code was based on the machine called ‘Enigma’. The Enigma story began in the 1920s, when German started to use ‘Enigma’ machine for developing business market and communicated in coded messages (“Code Breaking”). The people who actively helped allies for cracking the Enigma code were the Polish. In 1939, September 1st, Germany attacked Poland in early morning that Poland could not even resist (much of the attack done within hours). Within few days Poland falls. Although they lost the battle, Polish endeavored secretly to crack the Enigma code and this could be performed because of the close links between German and Polish engineering industries. A widely known person for working on breaking code is Polish Cipher Bureau. He shared information with British where began to crack Enigma code with the help of early models of computers in Bletchley Park, a place where is established as the purpose of Government Code and Cipher School. Since Germany thought their code was undecipherable, they used Enigma codes for all sorts of communication. British referred Enigma codes as Ultra, treated it as top secret and put effort on making decoding machine, bombe. Around 1940, the allies finally succeeded to decode German Enigma codes. Later, German made changes in indicating procedure for code but allies have anticipated this and figured out. By the second half of 1941, 30,000 Enigma messages were decoded a month and later 90,000 a month. Here are some works done by Ultra intelligence, or decoding: In April 1930, Ultra information provided detailed picture of location of German forces, their orders and attacking route for attack on Low Countries prior to the Battle of France in May. (Winterbotham 31) Ultra was crucial in the preparation for the Allied invasion of Sicily. It provided information like where the enemy’s forces were strongest and with elaborate