Erich Hüttenhain (26 January 1905 in
Siegen
Siegen () is a List of cities and towns in Germany, city in Germany, in the south Westphalian part of North Rhine-Westphalia.
It is located in the district of Siegen-Wittgenstein in the Arnsberg (region), Arnsberg region. The university town (n ...
– 1 December 1990 in
Brühl) was a German academic
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, mathematical structure, structure, space, Mathematica ...
and
cryptographer
Cryptography, or cryptology (from "hidden, secret"; and ''graphein'', "to write", or '' -logia'', "study", respectively), is the practice and study of techniques for secure communication in the presence of adversarial behavior. More gen ...
and considered a leading
cryptanalyst
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 se ...
in the Third Reich.
He was Head of the cryptanalysis unit at OKW/Chi, the
Cipher Department of the High Command of the Wehrmacht
The Cipher Department of the High Command of the Wehrmacht () (also ''Oberkommando der Wehrmacht Chiffrierabteilung'' or ''Chiffrierabteilung of the High Command of the Wehrmacht'' or ''Chiffrierabteilung of the OKW'' or ''OKW/Chi'' or ''Chi'') ...
.
Life
Hüttenhain was the son of a
conrector and studied after the high school diploma () 1924 in
Siegen
Siegen () is a List of cities and towns in Germany, city in Germany, in the south Westphalian part of North Rhine-Westphalia.
It is located in the district of Siegen-Wittgenstein in the Arnsberg (region), Arnsberg region. The university town (n ...
at the
University of Marburg
The Philipps University of Marburg () is a public research university located in Marburg, Germany. It was founded in 1527 by Philip I, Landgrave of Hesse, which makes it one of Germany's oldest universities and the oldest still operating Prote ...
, the
Johann Wolfgang Goethe-University Frankfurt and the
University of Münster
The University of Münster (, until 2023 , WWU) is a public research university located in the city of Münster, North Rhine-Westphalia in Germany.
With more than 43,000 students and over 120 fields of study in 15 departments, it is Germany's ...
. He studied mathematics with
Heinrich Behnke and astronomy at Münster. There he was assistant to (1880–1967), who was director of the observatory at Münster. In 1933, at the University of Münster, he took his examination for promotion of
Dr. phil. in astronomy under Lindow with the thesis titled: ''Spatial infinitesimal orbits around the libration points in the straight-line case of the (3 + 1) bodies''.
Military career
In 1936, he was sent to the cipher bureau of the OKW
OKW/Chi under the director
Wilhelm Fenner. Erich Hüttenhain had an interest in
Mayan chronology which led him to cryptology and thus to OKW/CHi. As a recruitment test, Fenner had sent him a message which had been enciphered with a private cipher. Hüttenhain duly deciphered it and was accepted as a possible cryptanalyst. At OKW/Chi he was employed as a specialist to build a cryptanalytic research unit, and later he was most recently Executive Council Head of group IV Analytical
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 se ...
.
During his time in OKW/Chi he succeeded, among other things, in the deciphering of the Japanese
Purple
Purple is a color similar in appearance to violet light. In the RYB color model historically used in the arts, purple is a secondary color created by combining red and blue pigments. In the CMYK color model used in modern printing, purple is ...
cipher machine (
William Frederick Friedman) He and his staff also temporarily succeeded in deciphering American
rotary machines, such as the M 138 A and the
M-209
In cryptography, the M-209, designated CSP-1500 by the United States Navy (C-38 by the manufacturer) is a portable, mechanical cipher machine used by the US military primarily in World War II, though it remained in active use through the Korean W ...
in
North Africa
North Africa (sometimes Northern Africa) is a region encompassing the northern portion of the African continent. There is no singularly accepted scope for the region. However, it is sometimes defined as stretching from the Atlantic shores of t ...
. Later in the war, when the allies
invaded Italy, the allies learned in turn by deciphering Italian ciphers that their later systems, e.g. among others the
SIGABA
In the history of cryptography, the ECM Mark II was a cipher machine used by the United States for message encryption from World War II until the 1950s. The machine was also known as the SIGABA or Converter M-134 by the Army, or CSP-888/889 by th ...
designed by Friedman, had not been broken and around that time, Hüttenhain had no more major successes.
After
World War II
World War II or the Second World War (1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945) was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War II, Allies and the Axis powers. World War II by country, Nearly all of the wo ...
, being a high value target, he was taken by
TICOM
TICOM (Target Intelligence Committee) was a secret Allied project formed in World War II to find and seize German intelligence assets, particularly in the field of cryptology and signals intelligence.
It operated alongside other Western Allied ...
to the USA to be interrogated.
For the Americans, he built a machine (which was already used by the Germans during World War II) that deciphered the Russian rotor machine encryption. He also created reports on the successes of the Germans on cryptographic territory during World War II (as deciphering the French naval codes, the Polish diplomat cipher and the security of the
Enigma).
Gehlen organisation
After his return he founded in 1947 the "Study Group for Scientific Investigation" () within the
Gehlen Organization
The Gehlen Organization or Gehlen Org (often referred to as The Org) was an intelligence agency established in June 1946 by U.S. occupation authorities in the United States zone of post-war occupied Germany, and consisted of former members of the ...
, which laid the foundation for the subsequent formation of the German Central Office for Encryption (, a unit of the German Federal Intelligence Service ().
His pseudonym in the Gehlen organization was Erich Hammerschmidt. In the first official cryptographic service of the Federal Government, the Unit 114 in the Foreign Ministry, headed by Adolf Paschke
founded in 1950, he was the chair of the Scientific Advisory Board, along with Kurt Selchow, Rudolf Schauffler, and Heinz Kuntze, some of the best cryptologists in Germany.
During 1956–1970 he served as Deputy Director of the Central Office for Encryption where initially Wilhelm Göing and 1972
Otto Leiberich
Otto Leiberich (5 December 1927 in Crailsheim - 23 June 2015) was a German cryptologist and mathematician. Leiberich is most notable for establishing the Bundesamt für Sicherheit in der Informationstechnik in 1991.
Life
Leiberich started his ...
was his successor. One of the objectives of Hüttenhain was that in contrast to his experiences in the
Third Reich
Nazi Germany, officially known as the German Reich and later the Greater German Reich, was the German state between 1933 and 1945, when Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party controlled the country, transforming it into a totalitarian dictat ...
where numerous independent cipher bureaux were spread throughout the Reich, all threads for evaluating cryptographic procedures were now to be integrated into a single office.
In 1926 he was a founding fellow of the Frankfurt
Burschenschaft
A Burschenschaft (; sometimes abbreviated in the German ''Burschenschaft'' jargon; plural: ) is one of the traditional (student associations) of Germany, Austria, and Chile (the latter due to German cultural influence).
Burschenschaften were fo ...
Arminia .
Hüttenhain left a posthumous manuscript he wrote in about 1970 and in which he reports on his experience as a cryptologist.
[Monographs in the field of cryptology. A copy is in the ]Bavarian State Library
The Bavarian State Library (, abbreviated BSB, called ''Bibliotheca Regia Monacensis'' before 1919) in Munich is the central " Landesbibliothek", i. e. the state library of the Free State of Bavaria, the biggest universal and research libra ...
. Friedrich Bauer referenced it in his book Historical notes on computer science, Springer 2009 S. 389ff
Publications
*
*
References
Further reading
*
*
*
* Leiberich, Otto (2001), ''Vom Diplomatischen Code zur Falltürfunktion – 100 Jahre Kryptographie in Deutschland'', Spektrum Dossier ''Kryptographie'' (with a photograph of E. Hüttenhain).
*
*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Huettenhain, Erich
1905 births
1990 deaths
20th-century cryptographers
History of cryptography
History of telecommunications in Germany
Telecommunications in World War II
German cryptographers