21 October 199: Add response.
20 October 1999: Add responses.
19 October 1999
Figure 9.9 from Code Breaking: A History and Exploration, Rudolf Kippenhahn, The Overlook Press, New York, 1999. Page 169. Original from Photo archive Preussischer Kulturbesitz. | Figure 43 from The Code Book: The Evolution of Secrecy from Mary Queen of Scots to Quantum Cryptography, Simon Singh, Doubleday, New York, 1999. Page 159. Original from Imperial War Museum, London. |
Comments:
These photos appear to have been shot moments apart (but could be separated by hours). The reason for recording what was then a top secret encoding machine is intriguing. Why would General Guderian allow photography of the machine? Probably not likely but could the photos have been taken by a spy?
The scene behind General Guderian changes from one photo to the other, although in both instances the command post looks to be stationary. Is it trapped in traffic, inching forward? The personnel in the command post appear to be the same, though an object at General Guderian's right has been removed in the right photo.
There are ridged cylinders in both photos: at the left it (or they) is above the Enigma machine; at the right it is on a ledge behind the head of the lowest soldier. Would these contain Enigma rotors, or are they an unrelated device?
The Enigma machine has three rotors -- which may indicate its early use in the war -- rather than the five or six rotors of later machines. Or the general and his operators preferred a well-tested machine. Maybe it was faster; or perhaps it could communicate only with more ubiquitous machines in the field like itself -- the more complicated being reserved for exchanges among superior offices.
Would anyone have more information on these photos, the date, the location? Send to jy@jya.com.
Date: Wed, 20 Oct 1999 07:15:02 +0100
To: jy@jya.com
Subject: Guderian Photos
The Photos are almost certainly early war years as Guderian was dismissed by Hitler and spent the later war years away from the front with no real command for many years.
The object referred to in bottom left on shelf looks to be a strapped in "potato masher" handgrenade case which was general issue through out the war.
I doubt they are moving if the enigma is being operated, it and the wireless systems in use at the time were not very robust being valves (tubes) rather than solid state, so they are probably parked up.
As to location it is hard to tell, but assuming it is on campaign it must be either the Polish, French or early Russian, as after the failure before Moscow he was removed.
The Photo also appears in the Generals Memoirs "Panzer Leader" (a good read), and was almost certainly an official photo, the operators being busy, The General, Generalling, and it would have been at the cenosorship phase it would have been noticed that something very special was included.
I believe there is a very similar picture of Rommel in North Africa which suggests it may have been a standard propaganda pose.
If you want the ISBN no. of the memoirs I can get it for you from home.
Donald Ramsbottom LL.B, BA (Hons).
RAMSBOTTOM & Co. Solicitors
Internet Law & Global Cryptology Law Specialists
Date: Wed, 20 Oct 1999 14:32:10 +0100
To: jy@jya.com
Subject: Guderian
Just checked in Guderian's biography, he was dimissed by Hitler as Panzer army group centre commander in December 1941.
He was given a new post of Inspector General of armoured forces in February 1943, but this was not a combat post and more a chief of staff/troubleshooter position.
The enigma machine shown in the photo is likely to be an early one as he was only a "field commander " until December 1941.
The book does not have the photo in it.
Hope this helps.
Donald Ramsbottom
To: 'JYA' <jy@jya.com>
Subject: guderian photos
Date: Wed, 20 Oct 1999 08:28:52 -0500
No more insight on the background to the photos, but the circular tubes are easy:
Gas mask containers
DK
Date: Wed, 20 Oct 1999 15:54:21 +0100 ( )
To: jy@jya.com
Subject: enigma photo
The ridged cylinders referenced to in the photographs at http://cryptome.org/enigma2.htm might also be gas mask canisters. I don't have any reference books handy to compare them to, but the shape does look familiar.
CR
Date: Wed, 20 Oct 1999 21:29:26 +0200 (METDST)
To: jy@jya.com
Subject: Enigma Enigma: Two Views.
The ridged cylinders in both photos that you talk about are some sort of cannisters. I have seen them in other German military vehicles. What they normally contain I really don't know but they are not related to the Enigma. Spare rotors were kept in a small wooden box specially made for this purpose.
I think the photos were taken by the normal Army field photographers. The existence of the Enigma was not secret and there are other photos and even films taken of the use of the Enigma. If these photos and films were released publicly during the war I really don't know. It is clear that a lot of what we see today was found in German archives and holdings after the end of the war. Similarly I have seen photos of the use of the Siemens teleprinter cipher machine T52 which was used a the High Command level. So it was not so unusual to take these sort of photos.
With respect to the number of rotors, the German Army and the German Air Force (Luftwaffe) used the same three rotor machine until the end of the war. The German Navy started to introduce a four rotor Enigma machine towards the end of 1941 and which went into full service in 1942. For the Army/Air Force machine there was a selection of five rotors that could be used while the German Navy added three other special Navy rotors such that their machines had a total of eight rotors at their disposition. The fourth rotor in the Navy machine was of a special type, "Greek rotor", and there were two of these Greek rotors, Beta and Gamma.
There were other Enigma variants both with three and four rotors where the fourth rotor usually was the reflector (Umkehrwalze) which normally was only setable and did not move during enciphering. One exception to this rule was the 11-15-17 machine usually called the Abwehr Enigma where the reflector would move as well during enciphering.
To my knowledge there were no five or six rotor Enigma machines that were in use by the German forces during the Second World War.
Frode
Weierud Phone
: +41 22 7674794
CERN,
SL,
Fax : +41 22 7679185
CH-1211 Geneva
23, E-mail : Frode.Weierud@cern.ch
Switzerland
WWW :
http://home.cern.ch/~frode
JYA comment on number of rotors: Simon Singh writes (page 157 ff.) that up to five rotors were in use in later Enigma machines; Rudolph Kippenhahn writes (page 167) "at the beginning of World War II there were eight rotors available" (he provides a photo described as showing rotor 1 and rotor 8 - Plate 4 opposite page 129). There may be disagreement on what constitutes a "rotor," a "scrambler," a "reflector" or other type of disk on the armature. According to David Kahn in The Codebreakers there were other variations with even more "disks," some so complicated to use that communications clerks bypassed them to send cleartext. Clarification welcomed.
Date: Thu, 21 Oct 1999 14:31:24 +0200 (METDST)
To: jy@jya.com
Subject: Comment on rotors
I have seen your comment on the rotors and this reflects the usual confusion about the number of rotors available and the number of rotor that can be mounted in the machine. Even if a machine can only be equipped with three or four rotors it can have a larger set of rotors to select from.
In the case of the German Army and German Air Force machine, which is a three rotor machine, the total set of rotors is five. The German Navy, which had both a three rotor machine (M1, M2 and M3 - different models) and a four rotor machine (M4), would select their rotors from a set of eight. In the case of the M1 to M3 machines these rotors could be used in any of the three rotor positions, while on M4 they could only be used in the three rightmost rotor positions. In fourth, leftmost, rotor position was reserved for the Greek rotor, which could be selected from a set of two such rotors, Beta and Gamma.
The terminology is yet another area open to confusion. A rotor as used in a rotor cipher machine like the Enigma is understood to be a wired wheel. Among experts in this field the term "wired wheel" is usually preferred to rotor, which does not in itself indicate any electrical connections and therefore easily can be confused with other code wheels like those used in mechanical Hagelin machines and code wheels as used in the teleprinter cipher machine made by Siemens (T52 series) and Lorenz (SZ40 and SZ42).
Scrambler is a more descriptive term in the sense that it indicates that there is some sort of maze involved, in this case changing electrical connections. However, scrambler is not always used only for a single wired wheel, but is also sometimes used to describe a whole bank of rotors.
At Bletchley Park they used the term "wired wheels" for the rotors and the reflector they called the Umkehrwalze. On the other hand rotor and reflector was used by the American cryptological services who also seem to have largely invented these terms. Umkehrwalze is of course the proper German term for the reflector and the wheels they call Walzen. The term Umkehrwalze therefore indicate that it in many respects it is similar to a wired wheel. In the Service machines (Wehrmacht and Navy Enigmas) the Umkehrwalze was stationary but it nevertheless had some physical resemblance to the wired wheels.
In the commercial Enigma models the Umkehrwalze is constructed exactly like a normal Enigma wheel but with contacts only on the right-hand side. It also has a letter ring and a adjustment ring like the other wheels. These machine appear to be four rotor machines, however, the leftmost "rotor" is indeed the Umkehrwalze. The Umkehrwalze has no stepping lever such that it will not move during normal ciphering, but it is setable to any of it 26 positions.
One special version of the commercial Enigma machine, the machine that usually is called 11-15-17 after the number of notches on the wheels or also known as the Abwehr Enigma, had a moving Umkehrwalze. Unfortunately the Germans made one serious error in the design of this machine and that is they allowed all wheels to step at once. When all the wheel move together the whole wired maze will stay the same, the total scrambler connections are the same. Therefore it represents the same enciphering alphabet only shifted one position along the input permutation, the fixed wiring between the key/lamps and the input wheel or stator of the machine. This anomaly was detected by Dillwyn Knox and he called it a Lobster, which was his entry point for breaking the Abwehr Enigma.
There are more details like this and the Enigma should not be regarded as a single machine but rather a family of machines. We have treated some members of this family in our Cryptologia paper:
David H. Hamer, Geoff Sullivan and Frode Weierud, "Enigma Variations: An Extended Family of Machines", Cryptologia, 22(3), July 1998, pp. 211-229.
Frode
Weierud Phone
: +41 22 7674794
CERN,
SL,
Fax : +41 22
7679185
CH-1211 Geneva
23, E-mail :
Frode.Weierud@cern.ch
Switzerland
WWW :
http://home.cern.ch/~frode