Hans-Thilo Schmidt (13 May 1888 – 19 September 1943) codenamed Asché or Source D, was a

spy Espionage, spying, or intelligence gathering is the act of obtaining secret or confidential information (intelligence) from non-disclosed sources or divulging of the same without the permission of the holder of the information for a tangib ...

who, during the 1930s, sold secrets about the

Germans , native_name_lang = de , region1 = , pop1 = 72,650,269 , region2 = , pop2 = 534,000 , region3 = , pop3 = 157,000 3,322,405 , region4 = , pop4 = ...

' Enigma machine to the French. The materials he provided facilitated

Polish Polish may refer to: * Anything from or related to Poland, a country in Europe * Polish language * Poles Poles,, ; singular masculine: ''Polak'', singular feminine: ''Polka'' or Polish people, are a West Slavic nation and ethnic group, w ...

mathematician A mathematician is someone who uses an extensive knowledge of mathematics in their work, typically to solve mathematical problems. Mathematicians are concerned with numbers, data, quantity, structure, space, models, and change. History On ...

Marian Rejewski's reconstruction of the

wiring Electrical wiring is an electrical installation of cabling and associated devices such as switches, distribution boards, sockets, and light fittings in a structure. Wiring is subject to safety standards for design and installation. Allowable ...

in the Enigma's rotors and reflector; 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 headquarters, the Cipher Office. Shortly after the military version of the Enigma machine was introduced, he contacted French

intelligence Intelligence has been defined in many ways: the capacity for abstraction, logic, understanding, self-awareness, learning, emotional knowledge, reasoning, planning, creativity, critical thinking, and problem-solving. More generally, it can be des ...

and offered to supply information about the new machine. His offer was accepted by Captain

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 ...

of French Intelligence, and he received from the French the

codename A code name, call sign or cryptonym is a code word or name used, sometimes clandestinely, to refer to another name, word, project, or person. Code names are often used for military purposes, or in espionage. They may also be used in industrial c ...

''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

encrypt In cryptography, encryption is the process of encoding information. This process converts the original representation of the information, known as plaintext, into an alternative form known as ciphertext. Ideally, only authorized parties can deci ...

ed on the Enigma. Nor were the

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, ...

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 ...

s whom Bertrand contacted able to make any headway. In December 1932, Bertrand shared intelligence obtained from Asché with the Polish General Staff's Cipher Bureau ( Biuro Szyfrów). Mathematician-cryptologist Marian Rejewski 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 vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposing ...

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 previo ...

(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 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 orga ...

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

, ''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 Władysław ...

, 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