Hans-Thilo Schmidt (13 May 1888 – 19 September 1943) codenamed Asché or Source D, was a spy who, during the 1930s, sold secrets about the Germans' Enigma machine to the

French French (french: français(e), link=no) may refer to: * Something of, from, or related to France ** French language, which originated in France, and its various dialects and accents ** French people, a nation and ethnic group identified with Franc ...

. The materials he provided facilitated Polish mathematician

Marian Rejewski Marian Adam Rejewski (; 16 August 1905 – 13 February 1980) was a Polish mathematician and cryptologist who in late 1932 reconstructed the sight-unseen German military Enigma cipher machine, aided by limited documents obtained by French mili ...

's reconstruction of the wiring in the Enigma's rotors and

reflector Reflector may refer to: Science * Reflector, a device that causes reflection (for example, a mirror or a retroreflector) * Reflector (photography), used to control lighting contrast * Reflecting telescope * Reflector (antenna), the part of an ant ...

; thereafter the Poles were able to read a large proportion of Enigma-enciphered traffic.

Selling Enigma secrets

A former officer, Schmidt had been forced to leave the army having suffered from gas during the First World War.May, Ernest ''Strange Victory'', New York: Hill & Wang, 2000 page 135. However, his brother, Rudolf Schmidt, secured him a civilian post at the German Armed Forces'

cryptographic Cryptography, or cryptology (from grc, , translit=kryptós "hidden, secret"; and ''graphein'', "to write", or '' -logia'', "study", respectively), is the practice and study of techniques for secure communication in the presence of adve ...

headquarters, the Cipher Office. Shortly after the military version of the Enigma machine was introduced, he contacted

intelligence and offered to supply information about the new machine. His offer was accepted by Captain Gustave Bertrand of French Intelligence, and he received from the French the codename ''Asché'', and was assigned a contact, the French agent codenamed ''Rex''. For the next several years, until he left his position in Germany, he met with French agents at various European cities and supplied them copies of the Enigma machine's instruction manual, operating procedures, and lists of key settings. Even with this information, however, French Intelligence was unable to break messages encrypted on the Enigma. Nor were the British cryptologists whom Bertrand contacted able to make any headway. In December 1932, Bertrand shared intelligence obtained from Asché with the Polish

General Staff A military staff or general staff (also referred to as army staff, navy staff, or air staff within the individual services) is a group of officers, enlisted and civilian staff who serve the commander of a division or other large military un ...

's Cipher Bureau (

Biuro Szyfrów The Cipher Bureau, in Polish: ''Biuro Szyfrów'' (), was the interwar Polish General Staff's Second Department's unit charged with SIGINT and both cryptography (the ''use'' of ciphers and codes) and cryptanalysis (the ''study'' of ciphers and ...

). Mathematician-cryptologist

had already set up a system of equations describing the operation of the then new German Army Enigma rotor-wirings. The key-settings lists provided by Schmidt helped fill in enough of the unknowns in Rejewski's formulae, allowing him to speedily solve the equations and recover the wirings. That accomplished, the Poles were henceforth able to read Enigma traffic for nearly seven years to the outbreak of

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the World War II by country, vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great power ...

as well as for a time into the War, while operating in conjunction with French intelligence in France. In a two-week January 1938 trial, they solved and read about three-quarters of all

Wehrmacht The ''Wehrmacht'' (, ) were the unified armed forces of Nazi Germany from 1935 to 1945. It consisted of the ''Heer'' (army), the ''Kriegsmarine'' (navy) and the ''Luftwaffe'' (air force). The designation "''Wehrmacht''" replaced the previou ...

(German Armed Forces) Enigma intercepts: a remarkable result, considering that parts of the raw intercepts were garbled or incomplete due to interference ozaczuk, ''Enigma'' 1984, p. 45 After the

Battle of France The Battle of France (french: bataille de France) (10 May – 25 June 1940), also known as the Western Campaign ('), the French Campaign (german: Frankreichfeldzug, ) and the Fall of France, was the Nazi Germany, German invasion of French Third Rep ...

, the French agent who had been Schmidt's case officer, a German citizen named Stallmann who went by the name " Rodolphe Lemoine" ( fr) and used the codename "Rex," was arrested by the

Gestapo The (), abbreviated Gestapo (; ), was the official secret police of Nazi Germany and in German-occupied Europe. The force was created by Hermann Göring in 1933 by combining the various political police agencies of Prussia into one or ...

and betrayed Schmidt as a French spy. Schmidt was arrested on 1 April 1943, and in September 1943 his daughter Giselle was called on to identify his body; her account (as recounted in Hugh Sebag-Montefiore's book) suggests that Schmidt may have committed suicide.

References

* Gustave Bertrand, ''Enigma ou la plus grande enigme de la guerre 1939-1945'' (Enigma: the Greatest Enigma of the War of 1939-1945), Paris, Librairie Plon, 1973. * Paul Paillole, ''The Spy in Hitler's Inner Circle'' (English translation of ''Notre Espion chez Hitler''), Oxford, Casemate UK, 2016. * Paul Paillole, ''Notre espion chez Hitler'', Paris, Editions Robert Laffont, 1985. *

Władysław Kozaczuk Władysław Kozaczuk (23 December 1923 – 26 September 2003) was a Polish Army colonel and a military and intelligence historian. Life Born in the village of Babiki near Sokółka, Kozaczuk joined the army in 1944, during World War II, at Bia� ...

, ''Enigma: How the German Machine Cipher Was Broken, and How It Was Read by the Allies in World War Two'', edited and translated by

Christopher Kasparek Christopher Kasparek (born 1945) is a Scottish-born writer of Polish descent who has translated works by numerous authors, including Ignacy Krasicki, Bolesław Prus, Florian Znaniecki, Władysław Tatarkiewicz, Marian Rejewski, and Władysł ...

, Frederick, MD, University Publications of America, 1984. * Hugh Sebag-Montefiore, ''Enigma: the Battle for the Code'', London, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2000. (Provides information on Schmidt obtained from his daughter.) * Fred B. Wrixon, ''Codes, Ciphers & Other Clandestine Communication: Making and Breaking Secret Messages from Hieroglyphics to the Internet'', 1998, Black Dog & Leventhal Publishers, Inc., , p. 84.

Selling Enigma secrets

See also

References

Further reading