Marian Rejewski
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Marian Adam Rejewski (; 16 August 1905 – 13 February 1980) was a Polish mathematician and
cryptologist This is a list of cryptographers. Cryptography is the practice and study of techniques for secure communication in the presence of third parties called adversaries. Pre twentieth century * Al-Khalil ibn Ahmad al-Farahidi: wrote a (now lost) bo ...
who in late 1932 reconstructed the sight-unseen German military Enigma cipher machine, aided by limited documents obtained by French military intelligence. Over the next nearly seven years, Rejewski and fellow mathematician-cryptologists
Jerzy Różycki Jerzy Witold Różycki (; Vilshana, Ukraine, 24 July 1909 – 9 January 1942, Mediterranean Sea, near the Balearic Islands) was a Polish mathematician and cryptologist who worked at breaking German Enigma-machine ciphers before and during World ...
and
Henryk Zygalski Henryk Zygalski (; 15 July 1908 – 30 August 1978) was a Polish mathematician and cryptologist who worked at breaking German Enigma ciphers before and during World War II. Life Zygalski was born on 15 July 1908 in Posen, German Empire (now Pozn ...
developed and used techniques and equipment to decrypt the German machine ciphers, even as the Germans introduced modifications to their equipment and encryption procedures. Five weeks before the outbreak of World War II the Poles, at a conference in Warsaw, shared their achievements with the French and British, thus enabling Britain to begin reading German Enigma-encrypted messages, seven years after Rejewski's original reconstruction of the machine. The intelligence that was gained by the British from Enigma decrypts formed part of what was code-named
Ultra adopted by British military intelligence in June 1941 for wartime signals intelligence obtained by breaking high-level encrypted enemy radio and teleprinter communications at the Government Code and Cypher School (GC&CS) at Bletchley Park. '' ...
and contributed—perhaps decisively—to the
defeat of Germany Victory in Europe Day is the day celebrating the formal acceptance by the Allies of World War II of Germany's unconditional surrender of its armed forces on Tuesday, 8 May 1945, marking the official end of World War II in Europe in the Easte ...
. In 1929, while studying mathematics at
Poznań University Poznań () is a city on the River Warta in west-central Poland, within the Greater Poland region. The city is an important cultural and business centre, and one of Poland's most populous regions with many regional customs such as Saint John ...
, Rejewski attended a secret cryptology course conducted by the
Polish General Staff Polish General Staff, formally known as the General Staff of the Polish Armed Forces ( Polish: ''Sztab Generalny Wojska Polskiego'') is the highest professional body within the Polish Armed Forces. Organizationally, it is an integral part of the M ...
's Cipher Bureau (''Biuro Szyfrów''), which he joined in September 1932. The Bureau had had no success in reading Enigma-enciphered messages and set Rejewski to work on the problem in late 1932; he deduced the machine's secret internal wiring after only a few weeks. Rejewski and his two colleagues then developed successive techniques for the regular decryption of Enigma messages. His own contributions included the cryptologic card catalog, derived using the
cyclometer The cyclometer was a cryptologic device designed, "probably in 1934 or 1935," by Marian Rejewski of the Polish Cipher Bureau's German section (BS-4) to facilitate decryption of German Enigma ciphertext. The original machines are believed to ...
that he had invented, and the cryptologic bomb. Five weeks before the German invasion of Poland in 1939, Rejewski and colleagues presented their achievements to French and British intelligence representatives summoned to
Warsaw Warsaw ( pl, Warszawa, ), officially the Capital City of Warsaw,, abbreviation: ''m.st. Warszawa'' is the capital and largest city of Poland. The metropolis stands on the River Vistula in east-central Poland, and its population is officia ...
. Shortly after the outbreak of war, the Polish cryptologists were evacuated to France, where they continued breaking Enigma-enciphered messages. They and their support staff were again compelled to evacuate after the
fall 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 German invasion of France during the Second World ...
in June 1940, and they resumed work undercover a few months later in
Vichy France Vichy France (french: Régime de Vichy; 10 July 1940 – 9 August 1944), officially the French State ('), was the fascist French state headed by Marshal Philippe Pétain during World War II. Officially independent, but with half of its ter ...
. After the French "Free Zone" was occupied by Germany in November 1942, Rejewski and Zygalski fled via Spain, Portugal, and Gibraltar to Britain. There they enlisted in the
Polish Armed Forces The Armed Forces of the Republic of Poland ( pl, Siły Zbrojne Rzeczypospolitej Polskiej, abbreviated ''SZ RP''; popularly called ''Wojsko Polskie'' in Poland, abbreviated ''WP''—roughly, the "Polish Military") are the national armed forces of ...
and were put to work solving low-grade German
cipher In cryptography, a cipher (or cypher) is an algorithm for performing encryption or decryption—a series of well-defined steps that can be followed as a procedure. An alternative, less common term is ''encipherment''. To encipher or encode i ...
s. After the war, Rejewski reunited with his family in Poland and worked as an accountant. For two decades, he remained silent about his prewar and wartime cryptologic work to avoid adverse attention from the country's Soviet-dominated government; he broke his silence in 1967 when he provided to the Polish Military Historical Institute his memoirs of his work in the Cipher Bureau. He died at age 74 of a heart attack and was interred with military honors at Warsaw's
Powązki Military Cemetery Powązki Military Cemetery (; pl, Cmentarz Wojskowy na Powązkach) is an old military cemetery located in the Żoliborz district, western part of Warsaw, Poland. The cemetery is often confused with the older Powązki Cemetery, known colloquial ...
.


Early life

Marian Rejewski was born 16 August 1905 in Bromberg in the
Prussia Prussia, , Old Prussian: ''Prūsa'' or ''Prūsija'' was a German state on the southeast coast of the Baltic Sea. It formed the German Empire under Prussian rule when it united the German states in 1871. It was ''de facto'' dissolved by an em ...
n
Province of Posen The Province of Posen (german: Provinz Posen, pl, Prowincja Poznańska) was a province of the Kingdom of Prussia from 1848 to 1920. Posen was established in 1848 following the Greater Poland Uprising as a successor to the Grand Duchy of Posen, w ...
(now
Bydgoszcz Bydgoszcz ( , , ; german: Bromberg) is a city in northern Poland, straddling the meeting of the River Vistula with its left-bank tributary, the Brda. With a city population of 339,053 as of December 2021 and an urban agglomeration with more ...
, Poland) to Józef and Matylda, ''née'' Thoms. After completing secondary school, he studied mathematics at
Poznań University Poznań () is a city on the River Warta in west-central Poland, within the Greater Poland region. The city is an important cultural and business centre, and one of Poland's most populous regions with many regional customs such as Saint John ...
's Mathematics Institute, housed in Poznań Castle. In 1929, shortly before graduating from university, Rejewski began attending a secret cryptology course which opened on 15 January, organized for select German-speaking mathematics students by the Polish General Staff's Cipher Bureau with the help of the Mathematics Institute's Professor
Zdzisław Krygowski Zdzisław Jan Ewangelii Antoni Krygowski (Lwów, 1872 — 1955, Poznań) was a Polish mathematician, rector of the Lwów Polytechnic (1917–18), and professor at Poznań University (1919–38, 1946–55). Enigma Krygowski has become famous in ...
. The course was conducted off-campus at a military facility and, as Rejewski would discover in France in 1939, "was entirely and literally based" on French Colonel Marcel Givierge's 1925 book, ''Cours de cryptographie'' (Cryptography Course). Rejewski and fellow students
Henryk Zygalski Henryk Zygalski (; 15 July 1908 – 30 August 1978) was a Polish mathematician and cryptologist who worked at breaking German Enigma ciphers before and during World War II. Life Zygalski was born on 15 July 1908 in Posen, German Empire (now Pozn ...
and
Jerzy Różycki Jerzy Witold Różycki (; Vilshana, Ukraine, 24 July 1909 – 9 January 1942, Mediterranean Sea, near the Balearic Islands) was a Polish mathematician and cryptologist who worked at breaking German Enigma-machine ciphers before and during World ...
were among the few who could keep up with the course while balancing the demands of their normal studies. On 1 March 1929 Rejewski graduated with a Master of Philosophy degree in mathematics. A few weeks after graduating, and without having completed the Cipher Bureau's cryptology course, he began the first year of a two-year
actuarial statistics In actuarial science and demography, a life table (also called a mortality table or actuarial table) is a table which shows, for each age, what the probability is that a person of that age will die before their next birthday ("probability of death ...
course at
Göttingen Göttingen (, , ; nds, Chöttingen) is a college town, university city in Lower Saxony, central Germany, the Capital (political), capital of Göttingen (district), the eponymous district. The River Leine runs through it. At the end of 2019, t ...
, Germany. He did not complete the statistics course, because while home for the summer of 1930, he accepted an offer, from Professor Krygowski, of a mathematics teaching assistantship at Poznań University. He also began working part-time for the Cipher Bureau, which by then had set up an outpost at Poznań to decrypt intercepted German radio messages. Rejewski worked some twelve hours a week near the Mathematics Institute in an underground vault referred to puckishly as the "Black Chamber". The Poznań branch of the Cipher Bureau was disbanded in the summer of 1932. In Warsaw, on 1 September 1932, Rejewski, Zygalski, and Różycki joined the Cipher Bureau as civilian employees working at the General Staff building (the
Saxon Palace The Saxons ( la, Saxones, german: Sachsen, ang, Seaxan, osx, Sahson, nds, Sassen, nl, Saksen) were a group of Germanic * * * * peoples whose name was given in the early Middle Ages to a large country (Old Saxony, la, Saxonia) near the Nor ...
). Their first assignment was to solve a four-letter
code In communications and information processing, code is a system of rules to convert information—such as a letter, word, sound, image, or gesture—into another form, sometimes shortened or secret, for communication through a communication ...
used by the ' (German Navy). Progress was initially slow, but sped up after a test exchange—consisting of a six-group signal, followed by a four-group response—was intercepted. The cryptologists guessed correctly that the first signal was the question, "When was
Frederick the Great Frederick II (german: Friedrich II.; 24 January 171217 August 1786) was King in Prussia from 1740 until 1772, and King of Prussia from 1772 until his death in 1786. His most significant accomplishments include his military successes in the Sil ...
born?" followed by the response, "1712." On 20 June 1934 Rejewski married Irena Maria Lewandowska, daughter of a prosperous dentist. The couple eventually had two children: a son, Andrzej (Andrew), born in 1936; and a daughter, Janina (Joan), born in 1939. Janina would later become a mathematician like her father.


Enigma machine

The Enigma machine was an
electromechanical In engineering, electromechanics combines processes and procedures drawn from electrical engineering and mechanical engineering. Electromechanics focuses on the interaction of electrical and mechanical systems as a whole and how the two systems ...
device, equipped with a 26-letter keyboard and 26 lamps, corresponding to the letters of the alphabet. Inside was a set of wired drums ( rotors and a reflector) that scrambled the input. The machine used a
plugboard A plugboard or control panel (the term used depends on the application area) is an array of jacks or sockets (often called hubs) into which patch cords can be inserted to complete an electrical circuit. Control panels are sometimes used to di ...
to swap pairs of letters, and the encipherment varied from one key press to the next. For two operators to communicate, both Enigma machines had to be set up in the same way. The large number of possibilities for setting the rotors and the plugboard combined to form an astronomical number of configurations, and the settings were changed daily, so the machine code had to be "broken" anew each day. Before 1932, the Cipher Bureau had succeeded in solving an earlier Enigma machine that functioned without a plugboard, but had been unsuccessful with the Enigma I, a new standard German cipher machine that was coming into widespread use. In late October or early November 1932, the head of the Cipher Bureau's German section, Captain
Maksymilian Ciężki Maksymilian Ciężki (; Samter, Province of Posen (now Szamotuły, Poland), 24 November 1898 – 9 November 1951 in London, England) was the head of the Polish Cipher Bureau's German section (''BS–4'') in the 1930s, during which time— ...
, tasked Rejewski to work alone on the German Enigma I machine for a couple of hours per day; Rejewski was not to tell his colleagues what he was doing.


Solving the wiring

To decrypt Enigma messages, three pieces of information were needed: (1) a general understanding of how Enigma functioned; (2) the wiring of the rotors; and (3) the daily settings (the sequence and orientations of the rotors, and the plug connections on the plugboard). Rejewski had only the first at his disposal, based on information already acquired by the Cipher Bureau. First Rejewski tackled the problem of discovering the wiring of the rotors. To do this, according to historian David Kahn, he pioneered the use of
pure mathematics Pure mathematics is the study of mathematical concepts independently of any application outside mathematics. These concepts may originate in real-world concerns, and the results obtained may later turn out to be useful for practical applications, ...
in
cryptanalysis Cryptanalysis (from the Greek ''kryptós'', "hidden", and ''analýein'', "to analyze") refers to the process of analyzing information systems in order to understand hidden aspects of the systems. Cryptanalysis is used to breach cryptographic sec ...
. Previous methods had largely exploited linguistic patterns and the statistics of natural-language texts— letter-frequency analysis. Rejewski applied techniques from
group theory In abstract algebra, group theory studies the algebraic structures known as group (mathematics), groups. The concept of a group is central to abstract algebra: other well-known algebraic structures, such as ring (mathematics), rings, field ...
—theorems about
permutation In mathematics, a permutation of a set is, loosely speaking, an arrangement of its members into a sequence or linear order, or if the set is already ordered, a rearrangement of its elements. The word "permutation" also refers to the act or proc ...
s—in his attack on Enigma. These mathematical techniques, combined with material supplied by
Gustave Bertrand Gustave Bertrand (1896–1976) was a French military intelligence officer who made a vital contribution to the decryption, by Poland's Cipher Bureau, of German Enigma ciphers, beginning in December 1932. This achievement would in turn lead to ...
, chief of French radio intelligence, enabled him to reconstruct the internal wirings of the machine's rotors and nonrotating reflector. "The solution", writes Kahn, "was Rejewski's own stunning achievement, one that elevates him to the pantheon of the greatest cryptanalysts of all time." Rejewski used a
mathematical theorem In mathematics, a theorem is a statement that has been proved, or can be proved. The ''proof'' of a theorem is a logical argument that uses the inference rules of a deductive system to establish that the theorem is a logical consequence of the ...
—that two permutations are conjugate if and only if they have the same cycle structure—that mathematics professor and '' Cryptologia'' co-editor Cipher A. Deavours describes as "the theorem that won World War II". Before receiving the French intelligence material, Rejewski had made a careful study of Enigma messages, particularly of the first six letters of messages intercepted on a single day. For security, each message was encrypted using different starting positions of the rotors, as selected by the operator. This message setting was three letters long. To convey it to the receiving operator, the sending operator began the message by sending the message setting in a disguised form—a six-letter
indicator Indicator may refer to: Biology * Environmental indicator of environmental health (pressures, conditions and responses) * Ecological indicator of ecosystem health (ecological processes) * Health indicator, which is used to describe the health ...
. The indicator was formed using the Enigma with its rotors set to a common global setting for that day, termed the ''ground setting'', which was shared by all operators. The particular way that the indicator was constructed introduced a weakness into the cipher. For example, suppose the operator chose the message setting for a message. The operator would first set the Enigma's rotors to the ground setting, which might be on that particular day, and then encrypt the message setting on the Enigma ''twice''; that is, the operator would enter (which might come out to something like ). The operator would then reposition the rotors at , and encrypt the actual message. A receiving operator could reverse the process to recover first the message setting, then the message itself. The repetition of the message setting was apparently meant as an error check to detect garbles, but it had the unforeseen effect of greatly weakening the cipher. Due to the indicator's repetition of the message setting, Rejewski knew that, in the
plaintext In cryptography, plaintext usually means unencrypted information pending input into cryptographic algorithms, usually encryption algorithms. This usually refers to data that is transmitted or stored unencrypted. Overview With the advent of comp ...
of the indicator, the first and fourth letters were the same, the second and fifth were the same, and the third and sixth were the same. These relations could be exploited to break into the cipher. Rejewski studied these related pairs of letters. For example, if there were four messages that had the following indicators on the same day: , , , , then by looking at the first and fourth letters of each set, he knew that certain pairs of letters were related. was related to , was related to , was related to , and was related to : (,), (,), (,), and (,). If he had enough different messages to work with, he could build entire sequences of relationships: the letter was related to , which was related to , which was related to , which was related to (see diagram). This was a "cycle of 4", since it took four jumps until it got back to the start letter. Another cycle on the same day might be \rightarrow\rightarrow\rightarrow, or a "cycle of 3". If there were enough messages on a given day, all the letters of the alphabet might be covered by a number of different cycles of various sizes. The cycles would be consistent for one day, and then would change to a different set of cycles the next day. Similar analysis could be done on the 2nd and 5th letters, and the 3rd and 6th, identifying the cycles in each case and the number of steps in each cycle. Enigma operators also had a tendency to choose predictable letter combinations as indicators, such as girlfriends' initials or a pattern of keys that they saw on the Enigma keyboard. These became known to the allies as "Cillies" ("Sillies" misspelled). Using the data thus gained from the study of cycles and the use of predictable indicators, Rejewski was able to deduce six permutations corresponding to the encipherment at six consecutive positions of the Enigma machine. These permutations could be described by six equations with various unknowns, representing the wiring within the entry drum, rotors, reflector, and plugboard.


French help

At this point, Rejewski ran into difficulties due to the large number of unknowns in the set of equations that he had developed. He would later comment in 1980 that it was still not known whether such a set of six equations was soluble without further data. But he was assisted by cryptographic documents that Section D of French
military intelligence Military intelligence is a military discipline that uses information collection and analysis approaches to provide guidance and direction to assist commanders in their decisions. This aim is achieved by providing an assessment of data from a ...
(the ''
Deuxième Bureau The Deuxième Bureau de l'État-major général ("Second Bureau of the General Staff") was France's external military intelligence agency from 1871 to 1940. It was dissolved together with the Third Republic upon the armistice with Germany. Howeve ...
''), under future General
Gustave Bertrand Gustave Bertrand (1896–1976) was a French military intelligence officer who made a vital contribution to the decryption, by Poland's Cipher Bureau, of German Enigma ciphers, beginning in December 1932. This achievement would in turn lead to ...
, had obtained and passed on to the Polish Cipher Bureau. The documents, procured from a spy in the German Cryptographic Service,
Hans-Thilo Schmidt 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. The materials he provided facilitated Polish mathematician Maria ...
, included the Enigma settings for the months of September and October 1932. About 9 or 10 December 1932, the documents were given to Rejewski. They enabled him to reduce the number of unknowns and solve the wirings of the rotors and reflector. There was another obstacle to overcome, however. The military Enigma had been modified from the commercial Enigma, of which Rejewski had had an actual example to study. In the commercial machine, the keys were connected to the entry drum in German keyboard order (" QWERTZU..."). However, in the military Enigma, the connections had instead been wired in alphabetical order: "ABCDEF..." This new wiring sequence foiled British cryptologists working on Enigma, who dismissed the "ABCDEF..." wiring as too obvious. Rejewski, perhaps guided by an intuition about a German fondness for order, simply guessed that the wiring was the normal alphabetic ordering. He later recalled that, after he had made this assumption, "from my pencil, as by magic, began to issue numbers designating the connections in rotor ''N''. Thus the connections in one rotor, the right-hand rotor, were finally known." The settings provided by French Intelligence covered two months that straddled a changeover period for the rotor ordering. A different rotor happened to be in the right-hand position for the second month, and so the wirings of two rotors could be recovered by the same method. Rejewski later recalled: "Finding the iringin the third otor and especially... in the eflector now presented no great difficulties. Likewise there were no difficulties with determining the correct torsion of the otors'side walls with respect to each other, or the moments when the left and middle drums turned." By year's end 1932, the wirings of all three rotors and the reflector had been recovered. A sample message in an Enigma instruction manual, providing a
plaintext In cryptography, plaintext usually means unencrypted information pending input into cryptographic algorithms, usually encryption algorithms. This usually refers to data that is transmitted or stored unencrypted. Overview With the advent of comp ...
and its corresponding
ciphertext In cryptography, ciphertext or cyphertext is the result of encryption performed on plaintext using an algorithm, called a cipher. Ciphertext is also known as encrypted or encoded information because it contains a form of the original plaintext ...
produced using a stated daily key and message key, helped clarify some remaining details. There has been speculation as to whether the rotor wirings could have been solved without the documents supplied by French Intelligence. Rejewski recalled in 1980 that another way had been found that could have been used to solve the wirings, but that the method was "imperfect and tedious" and relied on chance. In 2005, mathematician John Lawrence claimed that it would have taken four years for this method to have had a reasonable likelihood of success. Rejewski had earlier written that "the conclusion is that the intelligence material furnished to us should be regarded as having been decisive to solution of the machine."


Solving daily settings

After Rejewski had determined the wiring in the remaining rotors, he was joined in early 1933 by Różycki and Zygalski in devising methods and equipment to break Enigma ciphers routinely. Rejewski later recalled:
Now we had the machine, but we didn't have the
key Key or The Key may refer to: Common meanings * Key (cryptography), a piece of information that controls the operation of a cryptography algorithm * Key (lock), device used to control access to places or facilities restricted by a lock * Key (map ...
s and we couldn't very well require Bertrand to keep on supplying us with the keys every month ... The situation had reversed itself: before, we'd had the keys but we hadn't had the machine—we solved the machine; now we had the machine but we didn't have the keys. We had to work out methods to find the daily keys.


Early methods

A number of methods and devices had to be invented in response to continual improvements in German operating procedure and to the Enigma machine itself. The earliest method for reconstructing daily keys was the " grill", based on the fact that the plugboard's connections exchanged only six pairs of letters, leaving fourteen letters unchanged. Next was Różycki's "
clock A clock or a timepiece is a device used to measure and indicate time. The clock is one of the oldest human inventions, meeting the need to measure intervals of time shorter than the natural units such as the day, the lunar month and the ...
" method, which sometimes made it possible to determine which rotor was at the right-hand side of the Enigma machine on a given day. After 1 October 1936, German procedure changed, and the number of plugboard connections became variable, ranging between five and eight. As a result, the grill method became considerably less effective. However, a method using a
card catalog A library catalog (or library catalogue in British English) is a register of all bibliographic items found in a library or group of libraries, such as a network of libraries at several locations. A catalog for a group of libraries is also c ...
had been devised around 1934 or 1935, and was independent of the number of plug connections. The catalog was constructed using Rejewski's "
cyclometer The cyclometer was a cryptologic device designed, "probably in 1934 or 1935," by Marian Rejewski of the Polish Cipher Bureau's German section (BS-4) to facilitate decryption of German Enigma ciphertext. The original machines are believed to ...
", a special-purpose device for creating a catalog of permutations. Once the catalog was complete, the permutation could be looked up in the catalog, yielding the Enigma rotor settings for that day. The cyclometer comprised two sets of Enigma rotors, and was used to determine the length and number of cycles of the permutations that could be generated by the Enigma machine. Even with the cyclometer, preparing the catalog was a long and difficult task. Each position of the Enigma machine (there were 17,576 positions) had to be examined for each possible sequence of rotors (there were 6 possible sequences); therefore, the catalog comprised 105,456 entries. Preparation of the catalog took over a year, but when it was ready about 1935, it made obtaining daily keys a matter of 12–20 minutes. However, on 1 or 2 November 1937, the Germans replaced the reflector in their Enigma machines, which meant that the entire catalog had to be recalculated from scratch. Nonetheless, by January 1938 the Cipher Bureau's German section was reading a remarkable 75% of Enigma intercepts, and according to Rejewski, with a minimal increase in personnel this could have been increased to 90%.


''Bomba'' and sheets

In 1937 Rejewski, along with the German section of the Cipher Bureau, transferred to a secret facility near Pyry in the
Kabaty Woods The Stefan Starzyński Kabaty Woods Nature Reserve ( pl, Rezerwat przyrody Las Kabacki im. Stefana Starzyńskiego) is a woodland park located in southern Warsaw, between two major arteries, Puławska Street, Warsaw, Puławska and Łukasz Drewny ...
south of Warsaw. On 15 September 1938, the Germans introduced new rules for enciphering message keys (a new "indicator procedure"), making the Poles' earlier techniques obsolete. The Polish cryptanalysts rapidly responded with new techniques. One was Rejewski's ', an electrically powered aggregate of six Enigmas, which solved the daily keys within about two hours. Six ''bomba''s were built and were ready for use by mid-November 1938. The ''bomba'' exploited the fact that the plugboard connections did not affect all the letters; therefore, when another change to German operating procedure occurred on 1 January 1939, increasing the number of plugboard connections, the usefulness of the ''bomba''s was greatly reduced. The British
bombe The bombe () was an electro-mechanical device used by British cryptologists to help decipher German Enigma-machine-encrypted secret messages during World War II. The US Navy and US Army later produced their own machines to the same functiona ...
, the main tool that would be used to break Enigma messages during World War II, would be named after, and likely inspired by, the Polish ''bomba'', though the cryptologic methods embodied in the two machines were different. Around the same time as Rejewski's ''bomba'', a manual method was invented by Henryk Zygalski, that of " perforated sheets" ("Zygalski sheets"), which was independent of the number of plugboard connections. Rejewski describes the construction of the Zygalski mechanism and its manipulation: However, application of both the ''bomba'' and Zygalski sheets was complicated by yet another change to the Enigma machine on 15 December 1938. The Germans had supplied Enigma operators with an additional two rotors to supplement the original three, and this increased the complexity of decryption tenfold. Building ten times as many ''bomba''s (60 would now be needed) was beyond the Cipher Bureau's ability—that many ''bomba''s would have cost fifteen times its entire annual equipment budget. Two and a half weeks later, effective 1 January 1939, the Germans increased the number of plug connections to 7–10, which, writes Rejewski, "to a great degree, decreased the usefulness of the bombs." Zygalski's perforated ("Zygalski") sheets, writes Rejewski, "like the card-catalog method, was independent of the number of plug connections. But the manufacture of these sheets, ..in our ..circumstances, was very time-consuming, so that by 15 December 1938, only one-third of the whole job had been done. e Germans' ntroduction of rotorsIV and V ..increased the labor of making the sheets tenfold ince 60, or ten times as many, sets of sheets were now needed considerably exceeding our ..capacities."


Allies informed

As it became clear that war was imminent and that Polish financial resources were insufficient to keep pace with the evolution of Enigma encryption (e.g., due to the prohibitive expense of an additional 54 ''bomba''s and due to the Poles' difficulty in producing in timely fashion the full 60 series of 26 "
Zygalski sheets The method of Zygalski sheets was a cryptologic technique used by the Polish Cipher Bureau before and during World War II, and during the war also by British cryptologists at Bletchley Park, to decrypt messages enciphered on German Enigma mac ...
"), the Polish General Staff and government decided to initiate their Western allies into the secrets of Enigma decryption. The Polish methods were revealed to French and
British British may refer to: Peoples, culture, and language * British people, nationals or natives of the United Kingdom, British Overseas Territories, and Crown Dependencies. ** Britishness, the British identity and common culture * British English, ...
intelligence representatives in a meeting at Pyry, south of Warsaw, on 25 July 1939. France was represented by Gustave Bertrand and Air Force cryptologist Captain Henri Braquenié; Britain, by
Government Code and Cypher School Government Communications Headquarters, commonly known as GCHQ, is an intelligence and security organisation responsible for providing signals intelligence (SIGINT) and information assurance (IA) to the government and armed forces of the Uni ...
chief
Alastair Denniston Commander Alexander "Alastair" Guthrie Denniston (1 December 1881 – 1 January 1961) was a Scottish codebreaker in Room 40, deputy head of the Government Code and Cypher School (GC&CS) and hockey player. Denniston was appointed operational he ...
, veteran cryptologist Alfred Dillwyn Knox, and Commander Humphrey Sandwith, head of the section that had developed and controlled the
Royal Navy The Royal Navy (RN) is the United Kingdom's naval warfare force. Although warships were used by English and Scottish kings from the early medieval period, the first major maritime engagements were fought in the Hundred Years' War against F ...
's intercept and direction-finding stations. The Polish hosts included Cipher Bureau chief Gwido Langer, the Bureau's German-Section chief
Maksymilian Ciężki Maksymilian Ciężki (; Samter, Province of Posen (now Szamotuły, Poland), 24 November 1898 – 9 November 1951 in London, England) was the head of the Polish Cipher Bureau's German section (''BS–4'') in the 1930s, during which time— ...
, the Bureau's General-Staff-Intelligence supervisor
Stefan Mayer Colonel Stefan A. Mayer (1895 — 23 March 1981, London) was a Polish military intelligence officer and prewar chief of Counterintelligence within the Polish General Staff's Section II (''Oddział II''). In that capacity, he supervised the General ...
, and the three cryptologists Rejewski, Różycki and Zygalski. The Poles' gift of Enigma decryption to their Western allies, five weeks before the outbreak of World War II, came not a moment too soon. Knowledge that the cipher was crackable was a morale boost to Allied cryptologists. The British were able to manufacture at least two complete sets of perforated sheets—they sent one to ''
PC Bruno ''PC Bruno'' was a Polish–French–Spanish signals–intelligence station near Paris during World War II, from October 1939 until June 1940. Its function was decryption of cipher messages, most notably German messages enciphered on the Enigma ...
'', outside Paris, in mid-December 1939—and began reading Enigma within months of the outbreak of war. Without the Polish assistance, British cryptologists would, at the very least, have been considerably delayed in reading Enigma.
Hugh Sebag-Montefiore Nicholas Hugh Sebag-Montefiore (born 5 March 1955) is a British writer. He trained as a barrister before becoming a journalist and then a non-fiction writer. His second book ''Dunkirk: Fight to the Last Man'' was published in 2006. His previous b ...
concludes that substantial breaks into German Army and Air Force Enigma ciphers by the British would have occurred only after November 1941 at the earliest, after an Enigma machine and key lists had been captured, and similarly into Naval Enigma only after late 1942. Intelligence gained from solving high-level German ciphers—intelligence codenamed
Ultra adopted by British military intelligence in June 1941 for wartime signals intelligence obtained by breaking high-level encrypted enemy radio and teleprinter communications at the Government Code and Cypher School (GC&CS) at Bletchley Park. '' ...
by the British and Americans—came chiefly from Enigma decrypts. While the exact contribution of Ultra intelligence to Allied victory is disputed, Kozaczuk and Straszak note that "it is widely believed that Ultra saved the world at least two years of war and possibly prevented
Hitler Adolf Hitler (; 20 April 188930 April 1945) was an Austrian-born German politician who was dictator of Germany from 1933 until his death in 1945. He rose to power as the leader of the Nazi Party, becoming the chancellor in 1933 and then ...
from winning." The English historian Sir
Harry Hinsley Sir Francis Harry Hinsley, (26 November 1918 – 16 February 1998) was an English historian and cryptanalyst. He worked at Bletchley Park during the Second World War and wrote widely on the history of international relations and British Int ...
, who worked at Bletchley Park, similarly assessed it as having "shortened the war by not less than two years and probably by four years". The availability of Ultra was due to the earlier Polish breaking of Enigma;
Gordon Welchman William Gordon Welchman (15 June 1906 – 8 October 1985) was a British mathematician. During World War II, he worked at Britain's secret codebreaking centre, "Station X" at Bletchley Park, where he was one of the most important contributors. ...
, head of Bletchley Park's
Hut 6 Hut 6 was a wartime section of the Government Code and Cypher School (GC&CS) at Bletchley Park, Buckinghamshire, Britain, tasked with the solution of German Army and Air Force Enigma machine cyphers. Hut 8, by contrast, attacked Naval Enigma. ...
(which solved German Army and Air Force Enigma ciphers), writes: "Hut 6 Ultra would never have gotten off the ground if we had not learned from the Poles, in the nick of time, the details both of the German military version of the commercial Enigma machine, and of the operating procedures that were in use."


In France and Britain


''PC Bruno''

On 5 September 1939 the Cipher Bureau began preparations to evacuate key personnel and equipment from Warsaw. Soon a special evacuation train, the Echelon F, transported them eastward, then south. By the time the Cipher Bureau was ordered to cross the border into allied Romania on 17 September, they had destroyed all sensitive documents and equipment and were down to a single very crowded truck. The vehicle was confiscated at the border by a Romanian officer, who separated the military from the civilian personnel. Taking advantage of the confusion, the three mathematicians ignored the Romanian's instructions. They anticipated that in an internment camp they might be identified by the Romanian security police, in which the German
Abwehr The ''Abwehr'' (German for ''resistance'' or ''defence'', but the word usually means ''counterintelligence'' in a military context; ) was the German military-intelligence service for the ''Reichswehr'' and the ''Wehrmacht'' from 1920 to 1944. A ...
and SD had informers. The mathematicians went to the nearest railroad station, exchanged money, bought tickets, and boarded the first train headed south. After a dozen or so hours, they reached Bucharest, at the other end of Romania. There they went to the British embassy. Told by the British to "come back in a few days", they next tried the French embassy, introducing themselves as "friends of Bolek" (Bertrand's Polish code name) and asking to speak with a French military officer. A French Army colonel telephoned Paris and then issued instructions for the three Poles to be assisted in evacuating to Paris. On 20 October 1939 the three Polish cryptologists resumed work on German ciphers at a joint French–Polish– (anti-fascist) Spanish radio-intelligence unit stationed at
Gretz-Armainvilliers Gretz-Armainvilliers () is a commune in the Seine-et-Marne department in the Île-de-France region in north-central France. Demographics Inhabitants are called ''Gretzois'' in French. See also *Communes of the Seine-et-Marne department The ...
, forty kilometers northeast of Paris, and housed in the Château de Vignolles (code-named ''PC Bruno''). As late as 3–7 December 1939, when Lt. Col. Langer and French Air Force Capt. Henri Braquenié visited
London London is the capital and largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary down to the North Sea, and has been a majo ...
and
Bletchley Park Bletchley Park is an English country house and estate in Bletchley, Milton Keynes ( Buckinghamshire) that became the principal centre of Allied code-breaking during the Second World War. The mansion was constructed during the years following ...
, the British asked that the Polish cryptologists be made available to them in Britain. Langer, however, took the position that they must remain where the Polish Army in exile was forming—on French soil. On 17 January 1940 the Poles found the first Enigma key to be solved in France, one for 28 October 1939. The ''PC Bruno'' staff collaborated by
teleprinter A teleprinter (teletypewriter, teletype or TTY) is an electromechanical device that can be used to send and receive typed messages through various communications channels, in both point-to-point and point-to-multipoint configurations. Initia ...
with counterparts at Bletchley Park in England. For their mutual communications security, the Polish, French, and British cryptologic agencies used the Enigma machine itself. ''Bruno'' closed its Enigma-encrypted messages to Britain with an ironic "''
Heil Hitler The Nazi salute, also known as the Hitler salute (german: link=no, Hitlergruß, , Hitler greeting, ; also called by the Nazi Party , 'German greeting', ), or the ''Sieg Heil'' salute, is a gesture that was used as a greeting in Nazi Germany. T ...
!''" In the first months of 1940,
Alan Turing Alan Mathison Turing (; 23 June 1912 – 7 June 1954) was an English mathematician, computer scientist, logician, cryptanalyst, philosopher, and theoretical biologist. Turing was highly influential in the development of theoretical com ...
—principal designer of the British cryptological
Bombe The bombe () was an electro-mechanical device used by British cryptologists to help decipher German Enigma-machine-encrypted secret messages during World War II. The US Navy and US Army later produced their own machines to the same functiona ...
, elaborated from the Polish '' bomba''—would visit ''Bruno'' to confer about Enigma decryption with the three Polish cryptologists. On 24 June 1940, after Germany's victory in 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 ...
, Gustave Bertrand flew ''Brunos international personnel—including fifteen Poles, and seven Spaniards who worked on Italian ciphers—in three planes to Algeria.


Cadix

Some three months later, in September 1940, they returned to work covertly in unoccupied southern,
Vichy France Vichy France (french: Régime de Vichy; 10 July 1940 – 9 August 1944), officially the French State ('), was the fascist French state headed by Marshal Philippe Pétain during World War II. Officially independent, but with half of its ter ...
. Rejewski's cover was as ''Pierre Ranaud'', a ''
lycée In France, secondary education is in two stages: * ''Collèges'' () cater for the first four years of secondary education from the ages of 11 to 15. * ''Lycées'' () provide a three-year course of further secondary education for children between ...
'' professor from
Nantes Nantes (, , ; Gallo: or ; ) is a city in Loire-Atlantique on the Loire, from the Atlantic coast. The city is the sixth largest in France, with a population of 314,138 in Nantes proper and a metropolitan area of nearly 1 million inhabita ...
. A radio-intelligence station was set up at the Château des Fouzes, code-named ''
Cadix ''Cadix'' was a World War II clandestine intelligence center at Uzès, in southern France, from September 1940 to 9 November 1942. During this period southern France was under the control of Vichy France and not occupied by Nazi Germany. At ''Cad ...
'', near
Uzès Uzès (; ) is a commune in the Gard department in the Occitanie region of Southern France. In 2017, it had a population of 8,454. Uzès lies about north-northeast of Nîmes, west of Avignon and south-east of Alès. History Originally ''Uc ...
. ''Cadix'' began operations on 1 October. Rejewski and his colleagues solved German
telegraph Telegraphy is the long-distance transmission of messages where the sender uses symbolic codes, known to the recipient, rather than a physical exchange of an object bearing the message. Thus flag semaphore is a method of telegraphy, whereas p ...
ciphers, and also the Swiss version of the Enigma machine (which had no plugboard). Rejewski may have had little or no involvement in working on German Enigma at ''Cadix''. In early July 1941, Rejewski and Zygalski were asked to try solving messages enciphered on the secret Polish
Lacida The Lacida, also called LCD, was a Polish rotor cipher machine. It was designed and produced before World War II by Poland's Cipher Bureau for prospective wartime use by Polish military higher commands. History The machine's name derived from ...
cipher machine, which was used for secure communications between ''
Cadix ''Cadix'' was a World War II clandestine intelligence center at Uzès, in southern France, from September 1940 to 9 November 1942. During this period southern France was under the control of Vichy France and not occupied by Nazi Germany. At ''Cad ...
'' and the
Polish General Staff Polish General Staff, formally known as the General Staff of the Polish Armed Forces ( Polish: ''Sztab Generalny Wojska Polskiego'') is the highest professional body within the Polish Armed Forces. Organizationally, it is an integral part of the M ...
in London. Lacida was a
rotor machine In cryptography, a rotor machine is an electro-mechanical stream cipher device used for encrypting and decrypting messages. Rotor machines were the cryptographic state-of-the-art for much of the 20th century; they were in widespread use in the 19 ...
based on the same cryptographic principle as Enigma, yet had never been subjected to rigorous security analysis. The two cryptologists created consternation by breaking the first message within a couple of hours; further messages were solved in a similar way. The youngest of the three Polish mathematicians who had worked together since 1929—
Jerzy Różycki Jerzy Witold Różycki (; Vilshana, Ukraine, 24 July 1909 – 9 January 1942, Mediterranean Sea, near the Balearic Islands) was a Polish mathematician and cryptologist who worked at breaking German Enigma-machine ciphers before and during World ...
—died in the sinking of a French passenger ship on 9 January 1942, as he was returning to ''Cadix'' from a stint in Algeria. By summer 1942 work at ''
Cadix ''Cadix'' was a World War II clandestine intelligence center at Uzès, in southern France, from September 1940 to 9 November 1942. During this period southern France was under the control of Vichy France and not occupied by Nazi Germany. At ''Cad ...
'' was becoming dangerous, and plans for evacuation were drawn up. Vichy France was liable to be occupied by German troops, and ''Cadixs radio transmissions were increasingly at risk of detection by the German ''
Funkabwehr Funkabwehr, or ''Radio Defense Corps'' was a radio counterintelligence organization created in 1940 by Hans Kopp of the German Nazi Party High Command during World War II. It acted as the principal organization for radio Counterintelligence, i.e ...
'', a unit tasked with locating enemy radio transmitters. Indeed, on 6 November a pickup truck equipped with a circular antenna arrived at the gate of the Château des Fouzes where the cryptologists were operating. The visitors, however, did not enter, and merely investigated nearby farms, badly frightening their occupants. Nonetheless, at Bertrand's suggestion French intelligence ordered the evacuation of ''Cadix''. The order was carried out on 9 November, the day after the Allied "
Operation Torch Operation Torch (8 November 1942 – Run for Tunis, 16 November 1942) was an Allies of World War II, Allied invasion of French North Africa during the Second World War. Torch was a compromise operation that met the British objective of secu ...
" landings in North Africa. Three days later, on 12 November, the Germans occupied the chateau.


Escaping France

The Poles were split into groups of two and three. On 11 November 1942 Rejewski and Zygalski were sent to
Nice Nice ( , ; Niçard: , classical norm, or , nonstandard, ; it, Nizza ; lij, Nissa; grc, Νίκαια; la, Nicaea) is the prefecture of the Alpes-Maritimes department in France. The Nice agglomeration extends far beyond the administrative c ...
, in the Italian-occupied zone. After coming under suspicion there, they had to flee again, moving or hiding constantly. Their trek took them to
Cannes Cannes ( , , ; oc, Canas) is a city located on the French Riviera. It is a communes of France, commune located in the Alpes-Maritimes departments of France, department, and host city of the annual Cannes Film Festival, Midem, and Cannes Lions I ...
,
Antibes Antibes (, also , ; oc, label=Provençal dialect, Provençal, Antíbol) is a coastal city in the Alpes-Maritimes Departments of France, department of southeastern France, on the French Riviera, Côte d'Azur between Cannes and Nice. The town of ...
, back to Nice, then on to
Marseilles Marseille ( , , ; also spelled in English as Marseilles; oc, Marselha ) is the prefecture of the French department of Bouches-du-Rhône and capital of the Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur region. Situated in the camargue region of southern Franc ...
,
Toulouse Toulouse ( , ; oc, Tolosa ) is the prefecture of the French department of Haute-Garonne and of the larger region of Occitania. The city is on the banks of the River Garonne, from the Mediterranean Sea, from the Atlantic Ocean and from Par ...
,
Narbonne Narbonne (, also , ; oc, Narbona ; la, Narbo ; Late Latin:) is a commune in France, commune in Southern France in the Occitania (administrative region), Occitanie Regions of France, region. It lies from Paris in the Aude Departments of Franc ...
,
Perpignan Perpignan (, , ; ca, Perpinyà ; es, Perpiñán ; it, Perpignano ) is the prefecture of the Pyrénées-Orientales department in southern France, in the heart of the plain of Roussillon, at the foot of the Pyrenees a few kilometres from the ...
, and Ax-les-Thermes, near the Spanish border. On 29 January 1943, accompanied by a local guide, Rejewski, and Zygalski, bound for Spain, began a climb over the
Pyrenees The Pyrenees (; es, Pirineos ; french: Pyrénées ; ca, Pirineu ; eu, Pirinioak ; oc, Pirenèus ; an, Pirineus) is a mountain range straddling the border of France and Spain. It extends nearly from its union with the Cantabrian Mountains to C ...
, avoiding German and Vichy patrols. Near midnight, close to the Spanish border, the guide pulled out a pistol and demanded that they hand over their remaining money. After being robbed, Rejewski and Zygalski succeeded in reaching the Spanish side of the border, only to be arrested within hours by security police. They were sent first to a prison in
La Seu d'Urgell La Seu d'Urgell (; es, Seo de Urgel, formerly in ca, Urgell}) is a town located in the Catalan Pyrenees in Spain. La Seu d'Urgell is also the capital of the comarca Alt Urgell, head of the judicial district of la Seu d'Urgell and the seat of ...
, then on 24 March transferred to a prison at Lerida. On 4 May 1943, after having spent over three months in Spanish prisons, on intervention by the
Polish Red Cross Polish Red Cross ( pl, Polski Czerwony Krzyż, abbr. PCK) is the Polish member of the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement. Its 19th-century roots may be found in the Russian and Austrian Partitions of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwe ...
the pair were released and sent to
Madrid Madrid ( , ) is the capital and most populous city of Spain. The city has almost 3.4 million inhabitants and a metropolitan area population of approximately 6.7 million. It is the second-largest city in the European Union (EU), and ...
. Leaving there on 21 July, they made it to Portugal; from there, aboard HMS ''Scottish'', to Gibraltar; and then by air to
RAF Hendon Hendon is an urban area in the Borough of Barnet, North-West London northwest of Charing Cross. Hendon was an ancient manor and parish in the county of Middlesex and a former borough, the Municipal Borough of Hendon; it has been part of Great ...
in north London, arriving on 3 August 1943.


Britain

Rejewski and Zygalski were inducted as
private Private or privates may refer to: Music * " In Private", by Dusty Springfield from the 1990 album ''Reputation'' * Private (band), a Denmark-based band * "Private" (Ryōko Hirosue song), from the 1999 album ''Private'', written and also recorde ...
s into the
Polish Armed Forces The Armed Forces of the Republic of Poland ( pl, Siły Zbrojne Rzeczypospolitej Polskiej, abbreviated ''SZ RP''; popularly called ''Wojsko Polskie'' in Poland, abbreviated ''WP''—roughly, the "Polish Military") are the national armed forces of ...
on 16 August 1943 and were posted to a Polish Army facility in
Boxmoor Boxmoor is part of Hemel Hempstead in Hertfordshire. It is within the district of Dacorum and comprises mainly 19th-century housing and meadowland, with transport links from London to the Midlands. At the 2011 Census, the population of Boxmoor wa ...
, cracking German SS and SD hand ciphers. The ciphers were usually based on the ''Doppelkassettenverfahren'' ("double Playfair") system, which the two cryptologists had already worked on in France. British cryptologist
Alan Stripp Alan may refer to: People *Alan (surname), an English and Turkish surname *Alan (given name), an English given name **List of people with given name Alan ''Following are people commonly referred to solely by "Alan" or by a homonymous name.'' * A ...
suggests that "Setting them to work on the ''Doppelkassetten'' system was like using racehorses to pull wagons." On 10 October 1943, Rejewski and Zygalski were commissioned second lieutenants; on 1 January 1945 Rejewski, and presumably also Zygalski, were promoted to lieutenant. When Gustave Bertrand fled to England in June 1944, he and his wife were provided with a house in Boxmoor, a short walk from the Polish radio station and cryptology office, where it seems likely that his collaboration with Rejewski and Zygalski continued. Enigma decryption, however, had become an exclusively British and American domain; the Polish mathematicians who had laid the foundations for Allied Enigma decryption were now excluded from making further contributions in this area. By that time, at
Bletchley Park Bletchley Park is an English country house and estate in Bletchley, Milton Keynes ( Buckinghamshire) that became the principal centre of Allied code-breaking during the Second World War. The mansion was constructed during the years following ...
, "very few even knew about the Polish contribution" because of the strict secrecy and the "
need-to-know The term "need to know", when used by government and other organizations (particularly those related to the military or espionage), describes the restriction of data which is considered very sensitive. Under need-to-know restrictions, even if one ...
" principle.


Back in Poland

After the Germans suppressed the 1944
Warsaw Uprising The Warsaw Uprising ( pl, powstanie warszawskie; german: Warschauer Aufstand) was a major World War II operation by the Polish resistance movement in World War II, Polish underground resistance to liberate Warsaw from German occupation. It occ ...
, they sent Rejewski's wife and children west, along with other Warsaw survivors; the family eventually found refuge with her parents in Bydgoszcz. Rejewski was discharged from the Polish Army in Britain on 15 November 1946. Six days later, he returned to Poland to be reunited with his wife and family. On his return, he was urged by his old Poznań University professor,
Zdzisław Krygowski Zdzisław Jan Ewangelii Antoni Krygowski (Lwów, 1872 — 1955, Poznań) was a Polish mathematician, rector of the Lwów Polytechnic (1917–18), and professor at Poznań University (1919–38, 1946–55). Enigma Krygowski has become famous in ...
, to take a university mathematics post at Poznań or
Szczecin Szczecin (, , german: Stettin ; sv, Stettin ; Latin: ''Sedinum'' or ''Stetinum'') is the capital and largest city of the West Pomeranian Voivodeship in northwestern Poland. Located near the Baltic Sea and the German border, it is a major s ...
, in western Poland. Rejewski could have looked forward to rapid advancement because of personnel shortages as a result of the war. However, he was still recovering from
rheumatism Rheumatism or rheumatic disorders are conditions causing chronic, often intermittent pain affecting the joints or connective tissue. Rheumatism does not designate any specific disorder, but covers at least 200 different conditions, including art ...
, which he had contracted in the Spanish prisons. Soon after his return to Poland, in the summer of 1947, his 11-year-old son Andrzej died of
polio Poliomyelitis, commonly shortened to polio, is an infectious disease caused by the poliovirus. Approximately 70% of cases are asymptomatic; mild symptoms which can occur include sore throat and fever; in a proportion of cases more severe s ...
after only five days' illness. After his son's death, Rejewski did not want to part, even briefly, with his wife and daughter, so they lived in Bydgoszcz with his in-laws. He took a position in Bydgoszcz as director of the sales department at a cable-manufacturing company, '' Kabel Polski'' (Polish Cable). Between 1949 and 1958 Rejewski was repeatedly investigated by the Polish Office of Public Security, who suspected he was a former member of the
Polish Armed Forces in the West The Polish Armed Forces in the West () refers to the Polish military formations formed to fight alongside the Western Allies against Nazi Germany and its allies during World War II. Polish forces were also raised within Soviet territories; thes ...
. He retired in 1967, and moved with his family back to Warsaw in 1969, to an apartment he had acquired 30 years earlier with financial help from his father-in-law. Rejewski had written a "Report of Cryptologic Work on the German Enigma Machine Cipher" in 1942. Before his 1967 retirement, he began writing his "Memoirs of My Work in the Cipher Bureau of Section II of the olishGeneral Staff", which were purchased by the Polish Military Historical Institute, in Warsaw. Rejewski had often wondered what use
Alan Turing Alan Mathison Turing (; 23 June 1912 – 7 June 1954) was an English mathematician, computer scientist, logician, cryptanalyst, philosopher, and theoretical biologist. Turing was highly influential in the development of theoretical com ...
(who in early 1940 had visited the Polish cryptologists at ''
PC Bruno ''PC Bruno'' was a Polish–French–Spanish signals–intelligence station near Paris during World War II, from October 1939 until June 1940. Its function was decryption of cipher messages, most notably German messages enciphered on the Enigma ...
'' outside Paris) and the British at Bletchley Park had ultimately made of the Polish discoveries and inventions. For nearly three decades after the war, little was publicly known due to a ban imposed in 1945 by British Prime Minister
Winston Churchill Sir Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill (30 November 187424 January 1965) was a British statesman, soldier, and writer who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom twice, from 1940 to 1945 Winston Churchill in the Second World War, dur ...
. In a 1967 book
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 ...
, associated with the Military Historical Institute, disclosed Poland's breaking of the German Enigma ciphers. Until 1974, the scant information published concerning Enigma decryption attracted little attention.
Ladislas Farago Ladislas Faragó or Faragó László (21 September 1906 – 15 October 1980) was a Hungarian military historian and journalist who published a number of best-selling books on history and espionage, especially concerning the World War II era. Bi ...
's 1971 best-seller ''The Game of the Foxes'' presented a garbled account of Ultra's origins: "Commander Denniston went clandestinely to a secluded Polish castle 'sic''on the eve of the war
o pick up an Enigma, 'the Wehrmacht's top system' during World War II O, or o, is the fifteenth letter and the fourth vowel letter in the Latin alphabet, used in the modern English alphabet, the alphabets of other western European languages and others worldwide. Its name in English is ''o'' (pronounced ), pl ...
Dilly Knox Alfred Dillwyn "Dilly" Knox, CMG (23 July 1884 – 27 February 1943) was a British classics scholar and papyrologist at King's College, Cambridge and a codebreaker. As a member of the Room 40 codebreaking unit he helped decrypt the Zimm ...
later solved its keying 'sic''.." Still, this was marginally closer to the truth than many British and American best-seller accounts that would follow after 1974. Their authors were at a disadvantage: they did not know that the founder of Enigma decryption, Rejewski, was still alive and alert, and that it was reckless to fabricate stories out of whole cloth. With
Gustave Bertrand Gustave Bertrand (1896–1976) was a French military intelligence officer who made a vital contribution to the decryption, by Poland's Cipher Bureau, of German Enigma ciphers, beginning in December 1932. This achievement would in turn lead to ...
's 1973 publication of his ''Enigma'', substantial information about the origins of Ultra began to seep out; and with F. W. Winterbotham's 1974 best-seller, '' The Ultra Secret'', the dam began to burst. Still, many aspiring authors were not averse to filling gaps in their information with whole-cloth fabrications. Rejewski fought a gallant (if, into the 21st century, not entirely successful) fight to get the truth before the public. He published a number of papers on his cryptologic work and contributed generously to articles, books, and television programs. He was interviewed by scholars, journalists, and television crews from Poland, East Germany, the United States, Britain, Sweden, Belgium, the Soviet Union, Yugoslavia, and Brazil. Rejewski maintained a lively correspondence with his wartime French host, General
Gustave Bertrand Gustave Bertrand (1896–1976) was a French military intelligence officer who made a vital contribution to the decryption, by Poland's Cipher Bureau, of German Enigma ciphers, beginning in December 1932. This achievement would in turn lead to ...
, and at the General's bidding he began translating Bertrand's ''Enigma'' into Polish. In 1976, at the request of the
Józef Piłsudski Institute of America The Józef Piłsudski Institute of America (full name: Józef Piłsudski Institute of America for Research in the Modern History of Poland) was created in New York City in July 1943. It is an archive, museum and research center devoted to the stud ...
, Rejewski broke enciphered correspondence of
Józef Piłsudski ), Vilna Governorate, Russian Empire (now Lithuania) , death_date = , death_place = Warsaw, Poland , constituency = , party = None (formerly PPS) , spouse = , children = Wan ...
and his fellow Polish Socialist conspirators from 1904. On 12 August 1978 he received from a grateful Polish people the Officer's Cross of the Order of ''
Polonia Restituta The Order of Polonia Restituta ( pl, Order Odrodzenia Polski, en, Order of Restored Poland) is a Polish state order established 4 February 1921. It is conferred on both military and civilians as well as on foreigners for outstanding achievement ...
''. Rejewski, who had been suffering from
heart disease Cardiovascular disease (CVD) is a class of diseases that involve the heart or blood vessels. CVD includes coronary artery diseases (CAD) such as angina and myocardial infarction (commonly known as a heart attack). Other CVDs include stroke, hea ...
, died of a heart attack on 13 February 1980, aged 74, after returning home from a shopping trip. He was buried with military honors at
Warsaw Warsaw ( pl, Warszawa, ), officially the Capital City of Warsaw,, abbreviation: ''m.st. Warszawa'' is the capital and largest city of Poland. The metropolis stands on the River Vistula in east-central Poland, and its population is officia ...
's
Powązki Military Cemetery Powązki Military Cemetery (; pl, Cmentarz Wojskowy na Powązkach) is an old military cemetery located in the Żoliborz district, western part of Warsaw, Poland. The cemetery is often confused with the older Powązki Cemetery, known colloquial ...
.


Recognition

On 21 July 2000, Poland's President
Aleksander Kwaśniewski Aleksander Kwaśniewski (; born 15 November 1954) is a Polish politician and journalist. He served as the President of Poland from 1995 to 2005. He was born in Białogard, and during communist rule, he was active in the Socialist Union of Poli ...
posthumously awarded Poland's second-highest civilian decoration, the Grand Cross of the Order of ''Polonia Restituta'', to Marian Rejewski and Henryk Zygalski. In July 2005 Rejewski's daughter, Janina Sylwestrzak, received on his behalf the
War Medal 1939–1945 The War Medal 1939–1945 is a campaign medal which was instituted by the United Kingdom on 16 August 1945, for award to citizens of the British Commonwealth who had served full-time in the Armed Forces or the Merchant Navy for at least 28 days ...
from the British Chief of the Defence Staff. On 1 August 2012 Marian Rejewski posthumously received the Knowlton Award of the U.S. Military Intelligence Corps Association; his daughter Janina accepted the award at his home town, Bydgoszcz, on 4 September 2012. Rejewski had been nominated for the Award by
NATO The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO, ; french: Organisation du traité de l'Atlantique nord, ), also called the North Atlantic Alliance, is an intergovernmental military alliance between 30 member states – 28 European and two No ...
Allied Command Counterintelligence. In 2009, the
Polish Post Poczta Polska ( lit. ''Polish Post'') is the state postal administration of Poland, initially founded in 1558. It is the largest mail-handling company in the country, which additionally provides courier, banking, insurance and logistics servi ...
issued a series of four commemorative stamps, one of which pictured Rejewski and fellow mathematician-cryptologists
Jerzy Różycki Jerzy Witold Różycki (; Vilshana, Ukraine, 24 July 1909 – 9 January 1942, Mediterranean Sea, near the Balearic Islands) was a Polish mathematician and cryptologist who worked at breaking German Enigma-machine ciphers before and during World ...
and
Henryk Zygalski Henryk Zygalski (; 15 July 1908 – 30 August 1978) was a Polish mathematician and cryptologist who worked at breaking German Enigma ciphers before and during World War II. Life Zygalski was born on 15 July 1908 in Posen, German Empire (now Pozn ...
. On 5 August 2014 the
Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) is a 501(c)(3) professional association for electronic engineering and electrical engineering (and associated disciplines) with its corporate office in New York City and its operation ...
(IEEE) honored Rejewski, Różycki, and Zygalski with its prestigious Milestone Award, which recognizes achievements that have changed the world. A three-sided bronze monument was dedicated in 2007 in front of the
Imperial Castle An imperial castle or ''Reichsburg'' was a castle built by order of the Holy Roman Emperor, whose management was entrusted to '' Reichsministeriales'' or ''Burgmannen''. It is not possible to identify a clear distinction between imperial castles an ...
in
Poznań Poznań () is a city on the River Warta in west-central Poland, within the Greater Poland region. The city is an important cultural and business centre, and one of Poland's most populous regions with many regional customs such as Saint John ...
. Each side bears the name of one of the three Polish mathematicians who broke the Enigma cipher. Rejewski and colleagues were the heroes of ''Sekret Enigmy'' (''The Enigma Secret''), a thriller movie about the Poles' solution of the German Enigma cipher. Late 1980 also saw a Polish TV series with a similar theme, ''Tajemnice Enigmy'' ("The Secrets of Enigma"). In 2021 the Enigma Cipher Centre, an educational and scientific institution dedicated to the Polish mathematicians who broke the Enigma cipher, including Marian Rejewski, opened in Poznań.


See also

*
List of cryptographers This is a list of cryptographers. Cryptography is the practice and study of techniques for secure communication in the presence of third parties called adversaries. Pre twentieth century * Al-Khalil ibn Ahmad al-Farahidi: wrote a (now lost) book ...
*
List of Poles This is a partial list of notable Polish or Polish-speaking or -writing people. People of partial Polish heritage have their respective ancestries credited. Science Physics * Czesław Białobrzeski * Andrzej Buras * Georges Charpak ...
*
Polish contribution to World War II In World War Two, the Polish armed forces were the fourth largest Allied forces in Europe, after those of the Soviet Union, United States, and Britain. Poles made substantial contributions to the Allied effort throughout the war, fighting on lan ...


Notes


References


Citations


Bibliography

:''The main source used for this article was .'' * * * * * * * * * * * * (Kozaczuk's Polish-language book that was later elaborated into the English-language .) * . (The standard reference on the Polish part in the Enigma-decryption epic. This English-language book is substantially revised from the Polish-language , with additional documentation, including many substantive chapter notes and papers by, and interviews with, Marian Rejewski.) * * * * * * , 117 pp., PRO HW 25/2 * * * ; has afterwords by
I. J. Good Irving John Good (9 December 1916 – 5 April 2009)The Times of 16-apr-09, http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/obituaries/article6100314.ece was a British mathematician who worked as a cryptologist at Bletchley Park with Alan Turing. Afte ...
and Cipher A. Deavours; also appears as * * * * . Covers much the same ground as . * Rejewski, Marian, interview (transcribed 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 Władysław ...
) in Woytak, Richard (1999), ''Werble historii'' istory's Drumroll edited by and with introduction by Stanisław Krasucki, illustrated with 36 photographs,
Bydgoszcz Bydgoszcz ( , , ; german: Bromberg) is a city in northern Poland, straddling the meeting of the River Vistula with its left-bank tributary, the Brda. With a city population of 339,053 as of December 2021 and an urban agglomeration with more ...
, Poland, Związek Powstańców Warszawskich w Bydgoszczy ssociation of Warsaw Insurgents in Bydgoszcz , pp. 123–143. A more complete transcript of the interview, highlights of which earlier appeared in , and as Appendix B to Kozaczuk, Władysław, ''Enigma'', pp. 229–240. * * * * * * *


Further reading

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External links


The Breaking of Enigma by the Polish Mathematicians
by Tony Sale
How Mathematicians Helped Win WWII – National Security Agency



Marian Rejewski and the First Break into Enigma

Plaque location
{{DEFAULTSORT:Rejewski, Marian 1905 births 1980 deaths 20th-century Polish mathematicians Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań alumni Cipher Bureau (Poland) Enigma machine Grand Crosses of the Order of Polonia Restituta People from Bydgoszcz People from the Province of Posen Polish cryptographers 20th-century Polish inventors Polish Army officers Pre-computer cryptographers Polish military personnel of World War II