WEBVTT - Codes! Axis Cryptography in World War II 0:00:00.560 --> 0:00:03.760 Welcome to Stuff you missed in History Class from how 0:00:03.800 --> 0:00:13.760 Stuff Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. 0:00:13.840 --> 0:00:17.040 I'm Sarah Dowdy and today I am joined by a 0:00:17.160 --> 0:00:21.560 very special guest, Jonathan Strickland. Hey there, So you guys 0:00:21.600 --> 0:00:25.000 probably remember Jonathan Strickland. He joined um. He joined both 0:00:25.040 --> 0:00:27.520 of us a few months ago as the Admiral for 0:00:27.720 --> 0:00:31.560 our Renaissance Festival episode. But this time he is here 0:00:31.760 --> 0:00:37.479 in his real life version, presenting on technology, which is 0:00:37.520 --> 0:00:41.559 your your specialty, my forte. As they say, there will 0:00:41.600 --> 0:00:45.040 be no hazas this particular episode. Maybe we could squeeze 0:00:45.080 --> 0:00:48.199 one and at the end or something. But Jonathan is 0:00:48.280 --> 0:00:50.320 the co host of tech Stuff is probably a lot 0:00:50.360 --> 0:00:53.200 of y'all know, and he also is a staff writer 0:00:53.240 --> 0:00:58.200 who specializes in technology articles and Deplina and I often 0:00:58.240 --> 0:01:02.280 talk about how you would like somebody like Jonathan and 0:01:02.400 --> 0:01:06.760 Chris to join us for technology related episodes sometimes when 0:01:06.760 --> 0:01:10.399 we really want something better explained than we're able to do. 0:01:10.640 --> 0:01:13.280 And we've actually covered a lot of the same topics 0:01:13.319 --> 0:01:15.920 as you and Chris too, Yes, that's true. We've We've 0:01:15.959 --> 0:01:20.080 covered several things, including Ada Lovelace, who I think got 0:01:20.080 --> 0:01:23.000 an enormous amount of praise on both of our podcast 0:01:23.640 --> 0:01:27.640 she was phenomenal, absolutely holomonal to be able to reach 0:01:27.680 --> 0:01:29.440 a point where not only was she able to write 0:01:29.440 --> 0:01:32.160 programs for a machine that did not yet exist, but 0:01:32.360 --> 0:01:35.760 recognize that numbers can substitute in for things and actually 0:01:35.760 --> 0:01:40.680 represent other forms of media like music or pictures at 0:01:40.680 --> 0:01:43.040 a time where there was no device to do that. 0:01:43.160 --> 0:01:47.280 On is beyond my imagination to do all that while 0:01:47.360 --> 0:01:50.480 being the daughter of Lord Byron. Of course, well you know, 0:01:50.560 --> 0:01:53.560 I would say that helps probably had a little dose 0:01:53.560 --> 0:01:56.800 of the crazy in there too, but no, absolutely phenomenal 0:01:57.120 --> 0:01:59.360 and other topics as well, But yes, and this is 0:01:59.400 --> 0:02:02.080 one that that I know that stuff you missed in 0:02:02.080 --> 0:02:05.920 history classes touched on related topics, and we at Tech 0:02:05.960 --> 0:02:08.519 Stuff have talked about some related topics, but we wanted 0:02:08.560 --> 0:02:11.280 to sort of look at the overall picture of what 0:02:11.360 --> 0:02:15.079 cryptography was like during World War Two. And this will 0:02:15.120 --> 0:02:17.680 be sort of the kickoff of a little series that 0:02:17.680 --> 0:02:19.760 I'm going to do with a few other How Stuff 0:02:19.760 --> 0:02:23.639 Works podcast co host who all focusing on something that's 0:02:23.720 --> 0:02:27.600 history related but also focused on their specialty. So that's 0:02:27.600 --> 0:02:32.000 why Jonathan has picked Codes Today, something that is tech 0:02:32.080 --> 0:02:36.119 related but has a really fascinating history behind it too, Yes, 0:02:36.120 --> 0:02:39.560 and that history stretches way back before World War two, 0:02:39.600 --> 0:02:42.359 of course. Uh. And I even had a little crash 0:02:42.440 --> 0:02:44.959 course in cryptography I wrote up so that we could 0:02:45.040 --> 0:02:48.080 kind of have a common language to work from. And 0:02:48.240 --> 0:02:51.120 it does come from a pair of Greek words. Essentially 0:02:51.120 --> 0:02:55.000 means hidden writing is what cryptography really boils down to, 0:02:55.360 --> 0:02:58.760 and it is the idea of hiding a message by 0:02:59.000 --> 0:03:02.520 encoding it and so way, and very common way is 0:03:02.600 --> 0:03:05.520 using a cipher where you are replacing letters within a 0:03:05.560 --> 0:03:09.600 message with some other letter or symbol or number, and 0:03:10.000 --> 0:03:13.519 you're using a very specific key so that someone who 0:03:13.520 --> 0:03:18.080 receives that message, the intended recipient, can take the encoded message, 0:03:18.120 --> 0:03:20.799 they take the key, and then using the key, they 0:03:20.880 --> 0:03:25.160 decode the message. But ideally anyone else who intercepts said 0:03:25.160 --> 0:03:27.440 message would just have a bunch of gibberish that they 0:03:27.560 --> 0:03:31.200 could not understand. Now, in reality, a lot of these 0:03:31.200 --> 0:03:35.880 ciphers don't remain secure forever, and we will see, right 0:03:36.240 --> 0:03:38.320 and there we have some very good examples of that. 0:03:38.600 --> 0:03:40.760 But there are a lot of different types of ciphers, 0:03:40.800 --> 0:03:44.440 and one of those, the most basic is the mono 0:03:44.600 --> 0:03:49.080 alphabetic cipher. That's where you use one symbol to replace 0:03:49.720 --> 0:03:52.600 each letter, and probably everybody is familiar with that one. 0:03:52.640 --> 0:03:55.880 It's what I used in my spy club as a kid. 0:03:56.000 --> 0:03:59.200 It's pretty straightforward. Maybe when you're eight it seems like 0:03:59.240 --> 0:04:02.480 it would be a breakable, but in reality it's pretty 0:04:02.520 --> 0:04:04.640 easy to crack right right. This would be when you 0:04:04.880 --> 0:04:07.120 might say, all right, let's shift all the letters over 0:04:07.240 --> 0:04:10.560 four letters, and no one will ever figure it out, right, 0:04:10.920 --> 0:04:14.119 So A becomes D and B becomes E and uh. 0:04:14.320 --> 0:04:17.880 It seems at first, when you are unaware of how 0:04:17.920 --> 0:04:21.640 to analyze cryptography that that would be be fairly secure. 0:04:22.040 --> 0:04:25.479 But just using something simple as a frequency analysis, which 0:04:25.520 --> 0:04:30.240 is typically the frequency that certain letter combinations appear in 0:04:30.279 --> 0:04:32.760 any given language. So if you know that the message 0:04:32.800 --> 0:04:35.120 was written in English, you know it's ciphered, but it's 0:04:35.120 --> 0:04:38.279 an English based language, you could start looking for letter 0:04:38.320 --> 0:04:41.680 combinations that would give away what the coded letters are. 0:04:41.760 --> 0:04:44.640 So look for double letters for example. Those could be 0:04:44.680 --> 0:04:48.000 ta s or l's, things like that, things word very 0:04:48.000 --> 0:04:50.479 short words exactly if you haven't. If you if you 0:04:50.520 --> 0:04:53.520 have your text actually broken up in the same grouping 0:04:53.680 --> 0:04:57.479 of of letters as your plain text, words are that's 0:04:57.480 --> 0:04:59.880 a dead giveaway, which is why a lot of ciphers 0:04:59.880 --> 0:05:03.240 are written in five letter blocks, so that you might 0:05:03.279 --> 0:05:06.120 even have two short words combined together or a very 0:05:06.160 --> 0:05:09.640 long word broken across a couple of blocks, and it 0:05:09.680 --> 0:05:12.120 makes it harder to detect, but even then pretty easy 0:05:12.160 --> 0:05:15.640 to figure out exactly the analysis. So another version of 0:05:15.640 --> 0:05:18.000 this one that's a little bit more complicated, is the 0:05:18.080 --> 0:05:22.719 polyalphabetic ciphers, and those substitute each letter with a different 0:05:22.880 --> 0:05:26.400 symbol based upon where the letter appeared in the message. 0:05:26.800 --> 0:05:31.080 So instead of a direct substitution, just it's the first letter, 0:05:31.120 --> 0:05:33.040 it's the second letter, and so on, it can be 0:05:33.080 --> 0:05:35.360 like that. Yeah, and there's there's a couple different methods 0:05:35.360 --> 0:05:37.719 of doing this where, for example, the first time the 0:05:37.800 --> 0:05:40.560 letter if the letter A appears in your message, it 0:05:40.640 --> 0:05:44.279 maybe in ciphered. I'm just grabbing the letter at random 0:05:44.279 --> 0:05:47.120 with L. And the second time the letter A appears, 0:05:47.400 --> 0:05:51.560 it may be the letter D. And it all depends 0:05:51.680 --> 0:05:55.440 upon the specific set of rules you have set down 0:05:55.480 --> 0:05:58.240 for that key the algorithm, if you like, that's the 0:05:58.520 --> 0:06:02.080 specific protocol the you follow, and that does make it 0:06:02.160 --> 0:06:05.240 much more difficult to break because you can't guarantee that 0:06:05.279 --> 0:06:07.760 every time you see a certain cipher that it's going 0:06:07.800 --> 0:06:10.280 to translate to the same letter. Moving on from there, 0:06:10.279 --> 0:06:14.240 we get a little bit more complicated and have polygraphic ciphers. 0:06:14.320 --> 0:06:18.680 Those use a combination of letters, numbers, or symbols for 0:06:18.800 --> 0:06:24.359 each quoted letters, so we don't have this direct translation anymore. 0:06:24.440 --> 0:06:26.599 It's not going to be something that you can just 0:06:26.720 --> 0:06:30.039 break out into the original words in the plane text 0:06:30.120 --> 0:06:33.520 to the cipher text. That's right. You. It's very confusing 0:06:33.520 --> 0:06:35.520 when you first get one of these messages because you 0:06:35.560 --> 0:06:39.119 can't be sure how many characters represent one single letter, 0:06:39.680 --> 0:06:42.240 and by doing that you really make it more difficult 0:06:42.279 --> 0:06:44.480 to break the code. And then I think the last 0:06:44.480 --> 0:06:47.320 one we have here is the transposition ciphers, which it's 0:06:47.400 --> 0:06:50.280 kind of like a word jumble, where you've taken the 0:06:50.400 --> 0:06:53.719 letters of the of the message, the plane text message, 0:06:53.760 --> 0:06:55.640 and you just mixed up the letters. So you're not 0:06:55.720 --> 0:06:59.680 replacing any letters here, you're mixing them up according to 0:06:59.800 --> 0:07:04.560 a in a prearranged code. So you might say, all, right, 0:07:05.360 --> 0:07:08.000 letter of this message should appear first, then the fifth 0:07:08.040 --> 0:07:10.960 letter of the message apers second, and you just follow 0:07:11.040 --> 0:07:12.880 that key and as long as the other person has 0:07:12.920 --> 0:07:15.360 the same key, they can unscramble it, but of course 0:07:15.400 --> 0:07:18.640 that's not terribly safe either. People with a lot of 0:07:18.680 --> 0:07:21.800 imagination can piece us together, sort of like Sunday Morning. 0:07:21.880 --> 0:07:25.000 Not for your top secret message. Yeah, a hobbyist could 0:07:25.080 --> 0:07:28.520 could crack that with enough ingenuity and time. So another 0:07:28.600 --> 0:07:30.480 element in here, and one that we're going to be 0:07:30.520 --> 0:07:33.680 talking about quite a bit in our second episode on 0:07:33.720 --> 0:07:37.200 this uh this subject is codebook. So code books, of 0:07:37.200 --> 0:07:40.960 course contain a list of phrases that linked to specific 0:07:40.960 --> 0:07:42.920 code words. So if you were just reading them, they 0:07:43.000 --> 0:07:45.440 might be familiar words, but they don't have any meaning 0:07:45.520 --> 0:07:48.640 to you. You can't you can't decipher it. You can't 0:07:48.640 --> 0:07:51.520 into it what the word might represent in any way 0:07:51.640 --> 0:07:54.520 unless you have the book right. So you could possibly 0:07:54.600 --> 0:07:57.880 break a cipher and you know that this next word 0:07:58.240 --> 0:08:01.920 is hawk, but you don't know what hawk means. It 0:08:02.000 --> 0:08:04.520 could it could mean a bird, but it might actually 0:08:04.640 --> 0:08:07.200 stand for something else, probably does in the case of wartime, 0:08:07.760 --> 0:08:10.120 And you know, you might be able to make some guesses, 0:08:10.200 --> 0:08:13.200 but you're not necessarily going to know. So codebooks were 0:08:13.200 --> 0:08:17.440 also very very important on both sides during the World 0:08:17.440 --> 0:08:20.040 War Two, And if you combine that with ciphers, you 0:08:20.040 --> 0:08:23.280 are getting a pretty tough code. Finally, and then a 0:08:23.360 --> 0:08:28.760 related technique to cryptography is called steganography, which is hiding 0:08:28.880 --> 0:08:32.840 a message within an image or some other kind of medium. Right, 0:08:32.920 --> 0:08:36.440 this is really super cool stuff. This is where let's say, 0:08:36.440 --> 0:08:38.240 Sarah that I met you on the street and I 0:08:38.280 --> 0:08:40.760 handed you a postcard and the postcard just said hey, 0:08:40.760 --> 0:08:43.040 how are you doing? And it has nothing else on 0:08:43.120 --> 0:08:44.920 there's no other message there, and you think, oh, well, 0:08:44.920 --> 0:08:47.400 that's just completely innocent. But on the flip side of 0:08:47.400 --> 0:08:50.720 the the postcard, where the picture is, which looks like 0:08:50.760 --> 0:08:54.800 this nice little landscape, you could maybe actually noticed that 0:08:54.840 --> 0:08:57.720 along the edge of a lake, there's really a message 0:08:57.760 --> 0:09:00.080 that's in there. And you look more carefully and you 0:09:00.120 --> 0:09:03.480 see that there's something hidden and it's hidden from plain 0:09:03.559 --> 0:09:05.880 sighte uh. And it can get a lot more complicated, 0:09:05.960 --> 0:09:08.280 especially with today's technology, where you can hide things in 0:09:09.360 --> 0:09:12.840 u R L, you can hide things within a QR code. 0:09:13.000 --> 0:09:15.520 It's it's lots of different ways of hiding a message, 0:09:15.800 --> 0:09:17.760 but it's done in such a way that from the 0:09:17.840 --> 0:09:22.400 casual observer's perspective, no message even existed. I like this one, 0:09:22.440 --> 0:09:25.280 although it doesn't sound quite as practical as the others, 0:09:25.400 --> 0:09:30.160 especially for wartime communications. You're not really thinking romantic spy 0:09:30.280 --> 0:09:34.520 sort of stuff. Yes, exactly, all right, So now that 0:09:34.559 --> 0:09:39.320 we've gotten a background on cryptography, we can start talking 0:09:39.360 --> 0:09:43.360 about how it was used in World War Two, which 0:09:43.440 --> 0:09:46.720 is sort of the heyday almost it seems, of cryptography. 0:09:46.840 --> 0:09:49.000 It's it's really I would say World War Two is 0:09:49.040 --> 0:09:53.800 probably the foundation for modern cryptography. The developments that were 0:09:53.840 --> 0:09:56.760 made during that era leading up to World War Two, 0:09:56.800 --> 0:10:01.680 but really uh intensely built upon during the years of 0:10:01.720 --> 0:10:04.880 World War Two that has led to to the way 0:10:04.920 --> 0:10:09.600 we use cryptography today. So it's it's an important time 0:10:09.640 --> 0:10:12.280 in history as far as this whole development of science 0:10:12.360 --> 0:10:14.200 is concerned. It is. And we're going to start by 0:10:14.200 --> 0:10:18.480 talking about the axis powers use of cryptography, partly because 0:10:18.520 --> 0:10:20.439 we want to start this whole thing off by talking 0:10:20.440 --> 0:10:24.679 about the Enigma machine. It's probably the most famous example 0:10:24.880 --> 0:10:27.360 of cryptography in World War Two, I would say, and 0:10:27.480 --> 0:10:30.520 something that we have both talked about on our podcast. 0:10:30.720 --> 0:10:33.600 Deplena and I talked about it in our Alan Touring episode. 0:10:33.640 --> 0:10:37.120 You and Chris talked about it in your Alan Touring episode. 0:10:36.640 --> 0:10:40.079 It's something that I think most people out there are 0:10:40.600 --> 0:10:43.079 they've at least heard of it. Yes, And if you 0:10:43.120 --> 0:10:44.800 were to look at one of these things, it would 0:10:44.800 --> 0:10:47.160 look like it was a typewriter and a whole bunch 0:10:47.160 --> 0:10:50.760 of lightbulbs and some plugs going every which way, and 0:10:50.920 --> 0:10:53.120 you might wonder what was the purpose. Looks like a 0:10:53.120 --> 0:10:56.240 mad inventor thought. It really doesn't. And the person who 0:10:56.320 --> 0:10:58.400 actually thought it up was not a mad inventor. He 0:10:58.520 --> 0:11:01.319 was he was quite He was ingenious in his own way, 0:11:01.360 --> 0:11:04.920 as Dr Arthur Sherbius, And that was in nineteen twenty three, 0:11:04.960 --> 0:11:07.640 and he was inventing this not as a means for 0:11:07.800 --> 0:11:10.840 the government to pass along secret messages to various branches 0:11:10.840 --> 0:11:14.480 of the military or intermilitary messages. It wasn't meant for 0:11:14.480 --> 0:11:16.800 that at all. It was meant for corporations to try 0:11:16.840 --> 0:11:19.960 and send secret messages so they could keep corporate secrets, 0:11:20.320 --> 0:11:26.079 so that other competitors wouldn't steal corporate information, private information private. 0:11:26.120 --> 0:11:29.600 But of course the German government quickly realized that this 0:11:29.679 --> 0:11:34.320 could be a useful tool for very secret communications, and 0:11:34.360 --> 0:11:38.960 so in nineteen the German Navy started using a modified 0:11:39.120 --> 0:11:42.120 version of the Enigma machine and and from there it 0:11:42.200 --> 0:11:44.600 sort of picked out the German Army followed in nineteen 0:11:45.320 --> 0:11:48.480 The Air Force started using one in nineteen thirty three. 0:11:48.520 --> 0:11:50.720 We should say, though they were all modified, they were 0:11:50.760 --> 0:11:54.440 all a complicated version of this commercial machine, right, and 0:11:54.440 --> 0:11:58.400 they even evolved during the course of World War Two somewhat. Now, 0:11:58.600 --> 0:12:00.440 if you want to know what the basic sheen is, 0:12:00.440 --> 0:12:05.040 you have to imagine imagine a disk around wheel, all right, 0:12:05.120 --> 0:12:07.520 and it's thick, It's about maybe half an inch thick, 0:12:08.160 --> 0:12:12.720 and on either side of the wheel are contacts electrical 0:12:12.800 --> 0:12:17.160 context that an electrical UH current can pass through. Along 0:12:17.200 --> 0:12:20.240 the outer edge of the wheel, where if it were 0:12:20.280 --> 0:12:22.199 a tire, this is the part that we make contact 0:12:22.240 --> 0:12:25.600 with the ground. Along that outer edge are letters that 0:12:25.640 --> 0:12:29.000 represent positions. Now you have three of these in a 0:12:29.080 --> 0:12:32.640 basic Enigma machine, all right, and you the way you 0:12:32.679 --> 0:12:36.280 set these, how you set them determines the pathway the 0:12:36.320 --> 0:12:39.640 electricity takes when it comes in on one side and 0:12:39.720 --> 0:12:44.319 goes out the other. Now, uh, you can change the 0:12:44.800 --> 0:12:48.080 orientation of these reels in multiple ways, so that makes 0:12:48.120 --> 0:12:51.559 it very complex. So this pathway could take lots of 0:12:51.559 --> 0:12:55.400 little criss cross the ways. And what it boils down 0:12:55.400 --> 0:12:58.839 to is the typewriter part with all the keys. When 0:12:58.880 --> 0:13:02.200 you press a letter, it sends an electric signal into 0:13:02.360 --> 0:13:06.000 the rotors. It goes through this complicated pathway that's determined 0:13:06.040 --> 0:13:08.880 by the orientation of those rotors. When it comes out 0:13:08.920 --> 0:13:11.719 the other side, it lights up a light bulb representing 0:13:11.800 --> 0:13:14.719 a different letter when you So when you press the 0:13:14.800 --> 0:13:19.000 letter A, perhaps the letter Q yes. And so it 0:13:19.040 --> 0:13:22.440 takes two people to do this. Someone has the normal message, 0:13:22.480 --> 0:13:24.719 the message that is supposed to be encoded, and they 0:13:24.760 --> 0:13:27.440 press a key. There's a second person who watches the 0:13:27.520 --> 0:13:31.240 light bulbs and writes down which letter lights up. And 0:13:31.480 --> 0:13:34.600 after you press that A, the rotor, the first rotor 0:13:34.679 --> 0:13:37.920 on the left rotates one position. So that means the 0:13:37.960 --> 0:13:41.640 pathways for the that electric current to follow through have 0:13:41.880 --> 0:13:44.160 changed from the first letter to the second. That's right. 0:13:44.160 --> 0:13:46.600 So if the first two letters were A A for 0:13:46.640 --> 0:13:49.719 some reason, and you pressed A and the Q lit up, 0:13:50.000 --> 0:13:53.600 the second time you press A, perhaps the M lights up, 0:13:54.080 --> 0:13:56.360 and every time after that's gonna light up differently. So 0:13:56.400 --> 0:13:59.640 you already have so many possibilities just from that simple 0:13:59.720 --> 0:14:01.600 disc option. But there's a way to make it even 0:14:01.600 --> 0:14:04.160 more complicated, right there. There are two things that make 0:14:04.240 --> 0:14:06.679 this even more complex. One is that once you go 0:14:06.760 --> 0:14:10.840 through a certain number of of moves with that first rotor, 0:14:11.000 --> 0:14:14.079 the second rotor can rotate, which means you've just added 0:14:14.080 --> 0:14:17.760 a whole new set of variables. And with the German 0:14:17.840 --> 0:14:20.600 Navy they had four rotors in their Enigma machines, which 0:14:20.640 --> 0:14:23.080 means that once the third one would rotate, it just 0:14:23.120 --> 0:14:26.040 made it even more complex. And this allows you to 0:14:26.080 --> 0:14:29.240 have a key that does not repeat. It does mean 0:14:29.280 --> 0:14:31.880 that whoever has the recipient, whoever the recipient is, they 0:14:31.880 --> 0:14:33.960 have to have a machine set up the exact same 0:14:34.040 --> 0:14:36.640 way that your machine was set up. Now, the other 0:14:36.680 --> 0:14:41.200 thing that made this complicated was they had plug boards, 0:14:41.240 --> 0:14:44.280 so unfair really, the plug boards, and what the plug 0:14:44.320 --> 0:14:46.800 boards did was you were you would attach a cable 0:14:47.720 --> 0:14:52.440 that would swap the input of a certain key with 0:14:52.480 --> 0:14:55.920 another key. So let's stick with A. Let's say that 0:14:55.960 --> 0:14:58.240 you have a plug in the A and a plug 0:14:58.280 --> 0:15:00.560 in the H, which means every time you press A, 0:15:01.040 --> 0:15:05.320 it's as if you had pressed H on an unaltered machine. 0:15:06.040 --> 0:15:09.160 So that makes it even more complex. And the plugboards 0:15:09.160 --> 0:15:11.440 were added a little later. That was an evolution of 0:15:11.480 --> 0:15:15.480 the Enigma machine. And the Germans were so confident that 0:15:15.600 --> 0:15:19.560 this machine was uncrackable that they never ever worried about 0:15:19.560 --> 0:15:24.760 anyone intercepting their messages because those ciphered messages would be 0:15:24.960 --> 0:15:27.840 impossible to decipher. They were a little too confident, though, 0:15:27.880 --> 0:15:30.760 because there were a few problems with the whole thing, 0:15:31.360 --> 0:15:35.080 one being that the machine couldn't encode a letter as itself. 0:15:35.120 --> 0:15:38.160 So you've been using the example A A could never 0:15:38.240 --> 0:15:41.680 be A no matter what combination of rotors you were using, 0:15:41.680 --> 0:15:44.840 no matter how many cables were involved, A just couldn't 0:15:44.840 --> 0:15:46.520 be A. That's a pretty big clue. I mean, it 0:15:46.560 --> 0:15:50.800 doesn't sound like it reduces your your options that much, 0:15:50.880 --> 0:15:52.720 but it really does if you're thinking about it in 0:15:52.800 --> 0:15:55.360 terms of probability. Right, Yes, that's that was one of 0:15:55.360 --> 0:15:58.280 the things Touring jumped on right away was he said, well, 0:15:58.440 --> 0:16:02.200 if this machine cannot in code a letter as itself, 0:16:02.440 --> 0:16:05.640 that removes one option out, and by removing one option 0:16:05.640 --> 0:16:09.280 you have given us a foothold. That was definitely a weakness. 0:16:09.440 --> 0:16:12.240 Another was that in order to make this work again, 0:16:12.280 --> 0:16:14.760 you had to have two machines and you had to 0:16:14.760 --> 0:16:17.440 have them both set up the same way, which meant 0:16:17.440 --> 0:16:19.960 if someone were able to get hold of a machine 0:16:20.000 --> 0:16:24.040 and the codebook so they you could see which which 0:16:24.080 --> 0:16:26.720 set up was needed for any particular day. You know, 0:16:26.840 --> 0:16:29.600 everyone had to know how to set their machine up 0:16:29.600 --> 0:16:33.800 once they received the message, then they could intercept a 0:16:33.880 --> 0:16:37.720 message and then interpret how to decipher it. Um, you 0:16:37.840 --> 0:16:40.000 just had to know the day the message had been sent. 0:16:40.120 --> 0:16:41.680 You had to know the day the message was sent, 0:16:41.760 --> 0:16:43.880 so and you had to have a corresponding codebook that 0:16:43.920 --> 0:16:46.080 would tell you the right setting for that day. But 0:16:46.160 --> 0:16:49.560 even without that, once they started learning how the actual 0:16:49.760 --> 0:16:53.200 machine worked, they were able to start thinking, how can 0:16:53.240 --> 0:16:57.400 we simulate this by building something of our own that 0:16:57.520 --> 0:17:00.360 can take this information and perhaps decide of it. So 0:17:00.360 --> 0:17:03.480 if we intercept a message, we can if if even 0:17:03.520 --> 0:17:06.200 if we don't know what the original settings were, perhaps 0:17:06.240 --> 0:17:09.960 we'll be able to create something that can run enough 0:17:10.040 --> 0:17:13.400 simulations through where we can crack the code. And Polish 0:17:13.400 --> 0:17:17.919 mathematicians got a toe hold in this by intercepting an 0:17:18.080 --> 0:17:20.840 Enigma machine, so they could see a little bit what 0:17:20.840 --> 0:17:22.960 what they were dealing with and what kind of machine 0:17:22.960 --> 0:17:26.680 would need to be created to possibly break this code. Yes, 0:17:26.760 --> 0:17:29.840 and they ended up sharing that information with Bletchley Park, 0:17:29.960 --> 0:17:33.680 which a famous famous institution there during World War Two. 0:17:33.720 --> 0:17:37.679 That was that was codebreaker central for the British a 0:17:37.760 --> 0:17:40.320 manor house, and I should take this opportunity to I 0:17:40.320 --> 0:17:42.520 think one time we said it was in London. It's 0:17:42.520 --> 0:17:44.800 outside of London. That was the whole point, because it 0:17:44.920 --> 0:17:48.160 was more secure being away from the city. But yeah, 0:17:48.160 --> 0:17:51.560 with this information that the Polish mathematicians had with their 0:17:51.600 --> 0:17:55.920 intercepted Enigma, the teams at Bletchley Park started working on 0:17:56.880 --> 0:18:01.840 building these early computers called bombs to a eventually simulate 0:18:02.119 --> 0:18:04.960 the Enigma machine and figure out how it worked and 0:18:05.000 --> 0:18:06.680 figure out how to break it. But what I think 0:18:06.800 --> 0:18:09.159 is interesting is that this was I was talking to 0:18:09.200 --> 0:18:10.800 you about this earlier, and it's kind of hard for 0:18:10.840 --> 0:18:13.199 me to wrap my mind around. But they're working by 0:18:13.240 --> 0:18:16.679 process of elimination. Rather than like, Okay, what was it 0:18:16.800 --> 0:18:18.800 set on? It's more what was it? How was it 0:18:18.880 --> 0:18:23.639 not set? Yes? Yeah, By eliminating all the potential factors, 0:18:23.720 --> 0:18:28.040 they narrow it down to the one that it actually was. Uh. 0:18:28.240 --> 0:18:30.800 It really reminds me of quantum computing. Actually, I'm not 0:18:30.840 --> 0:18:32.800 going to go into it, don't get there. But but 0:18:32.840 --> 0:18:36.200 I'm just saying a similar thing. You're eliminating all the 0:18:36.480 --> 0:18:40.280 all of the possibilities to get down to the one reality. 0:18:40.359 --> 0:18:45.440 And it is pretty amazing. The bombas that the Polish 0:18:45.480 --> 0:18:48.879 mathematicians had created ended up informing the British when they 0:18:48.920 --> 0:18:52.440 started creating the the bumba b O m b E. 0:18:53.000 --> 0:18:55.600 I always like to say the bum and uh and 0:18:55.720 --> 0:18:59.760 yeah that was that was a huge, huge jump in 0:19:00.000 --> 0:19:04.640 of crypto cryptanalysis and just the British war effort in general. 0:19:05.080 --> 0:19:08.040 And one thing about all of these these codes and 0:19:08.080 --> 0:19:10.840 decoding them is there's so many different names. There's the 0:19:10.920 --> 0:19:14.159 name of the machine, there's the name that the opposing 0:19:14.200 --> 0:19:17.280 force usually calls the code, and then the name of 0:19:17.359 --> 0:19:21.359 the machine that is able to decode it. But in 0:19:21.359 --> 0:19:25.480 this case, the Allied efforts to decode the German messages 0:19:25.640 --> 0:19:28.840 was known as Ultra. Yeah, it was known as Ultra, 0:19:28.960 --> 0:19:32.200 but you never said it ever, Ultra. I just didn't 0:19:32.200 --> 0:19:35.560 say anything at Fletchley Park, like it's all done through 0:19:35.600 --> 0:19:40.640 semaphoreign mime. Uh No. Ultra was such a secret term 0:19:40.800 --> 0:19:43.480 that you were not supposed to utter it to other people. 0:19:43.920 --> 0:19:47.080 Ultra was just a general term that referred to intercepted 0:19:47.080 --> 0:19:52.119 and deciphered messages. And because it was such secret information, 0:19:52.600 --> 0:19:55.920 you could not you could not reveal that to anyone 0:19:56.000 --> 0:19:58.880 who was not already classified to know it so much 0:19:58.920 --> 0:20:02.280 so that there were people who lost their jobs, who 0:20:02.280 --> 0:20:06.919 were court martialed because they refused to deliver sources of 0:20:07.000 --> 0:20:09.840 information because it fell under the umbrella of ultra. And 0:20:09.920 --> 0:20:12.320 so there are people who are discredited during the war 0:20:12.840 --> 0:20:15.520 because they were maintaining this level of secrecy, which is 0:20:15.520 --> 0:20:20.720 pretty phenomenal, and they had a huge burden, which is 0:20:20.880 --> 0:20:25.760 the flip side to cryptography. If you've intercepted a message 0:20:25.760 --> 0:20:28.359 and you've successfully deciphered it, and you now know what 0:20:28.520 --> 0:20:31.879 that information is, how do you act on that? Because 0:20:31.920 --> 0:20:34.040 if you act on it in a way that reveals 0:20:34.040 --> 0:20:37.520 to the enemy that you have understood what their messages are, 0:20:37.880 --> 0:20:41.000 they are going to take efforts to change the way 0:20:41.000 --> 0:20:43.359 that they are encoding things, thus putting you back to 0:20:43.480 --> 0:20:46.040 square one. As long as your enemy feels that their 0:20:46.080 --> 0:20:50.280 code is unbreakable, you're in a great position because they're 0:20:50.320 --> 0:20:53.320 not going to take any more precautions with it. Otherwise 0:20:53.359 --> 0:20:56.000 they can just develop a new machine, developed a more 0:20:56.040 --> 0:20:58.600 difficult code. And yeah, like you said, you're back at 0:20:58.600 --> 0:21:02.920 square one, then yes, and it is. I mean, it's 0:21:02.960 --> 0:21:05.199 just it's it's hard to think about because you know 0:21:05.280 --> 0:21:08.160 that a lot of these messages had life or death 0:21:08.200 --> 0:21:12.480 consequences exactly, and they had to take very careful consideration 0:21:12.520 --> 0:21:15.080 of how to act on it so that they could 0:21:15.520 --> 0:21:19.240 preserve as many lives as possible without tipping their hand. 0:21:19.480 --> 0:21:21.840 Was it information that could have been procured from some 0:21:22.000 --> 0:21:25.000 other sources aside from breaking the code or how important 0:21:25.160 --> 0:21:31.240 was it? Fortunately for the Allies, the Germans were extremely 0:21:31.320 --> 0:21:35.000 confident that the Enigma code was unbreakable. And I think 0:21:35.600 --> 0:21:37.879 the only way that they would have I think, I 0:21:37.920 --> 0:21:41.439 think what their normal routine was the Germans this is 0:21:42.119 --> 0:21:44.840 would be that if they felt that the code was endangered, 0:21:44.840 --> 0:21:47.280 they would issue new codebooks and they would have a 0:21:47.280 --> 0:21:51.440 new set of codebooks go out to the field rather 0:21:51.520 --> 0:21:54.639 than scrap the system and start with something new, so 0:21:54.680 --> 0:21:56.880 they'd stick with the system. They would just say, oh, well, 0:21:56.880 --> 0:22:00.600 what's what is at risk? Here are the physical codebooks 0:22:00.600 --> 0:22:03.320 that tell people what settings they need to have the 0:22:03.400 --> 0:22:05.760 Enigma machine on. And I didn't really talk about but 0:22:05.760 --> 0:22:09.000 the recipient of the message. To to de cipher a 0:22:09.040 --> 0:22:13.680 message from the the coded one, you would give the 0:22:13.680 --> 0:22:16.600