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COMMENT PAGE FOR: | |
Interview with Marian Rejewski, the first person to crack Enigma (1974) [vide… | |
Cosi1125 wrote 9 hours 19 min ago: | |
I can't recommend the book X, Y & Z enough. Written by Dermot Turing | |
(Alan's nephew), it's a fascinating story, almost like a spy novel. | |
RachelF wrote 19 hours 10 min ago: | |
Probably the best summary of the breaking of Enigma and Lorentz is the | |
1977 BBC series "Most Secret War". Watch the "Still secret" episode, it | |
is on Youtube. | |
I've seen and read a lot of stories about it, this is by far the best. | |
robinzfc wrote 10 hours 9 min ago: | |
The NSA publication [Solving the ENIGMA: History of the Cryptanalytic | |
Bombe]( [1] ) is the best written account of the history of breaking | |
ENIGMA I know about. | |
[1]: https://media.defense.gov/2022/Sep/29/2003087366/-1/-1/0/SOL... | |
effie wrote 16 hours 52 min ago: | |
Thanks for the reference. The BBC series is actually called "The | |
Secret War": [1] There is also a related book "Most Secret War": | |
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Secret_War_(TV_series) | |
[2]: https://archive.org/details/mostsecretwar0000jone_z9k2 | |
7373737373 wrote 14 hours 33 min ago: | |
For anyone else searching for the episode: | |
[1]: https://youtu.be/GJCF-Ufapu8?t=14843 | |
RachelF wrote 16 hours 17 min ago: | |
Thanks for the correction in the name. | |
The book accompanying the TV series is also brilliant: [1] It goes | |
into more detail about many things that didn't make it into the TV | |
series. | |
RV Jones' book is great, if you enjoyed it, his follow up book, | |
"Reflections on Intelligence", covers a lot of secrets that he | |
couldn't mention at the time of publishing his original book. | |
[1]: https://archive.org/details/secretwar0000john | |
willvarfar wrote 11 hours 41 min ago: | |
thx I had read the Most Secret War book, but hadn't realised he | |
had published others! Looking forward to devouring them. | |
A quick googling lead me down a path that found out that the CIA | |
has an award in his honour! | |
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R._V._Jones_Intelligence_A... | |
hermitcrab wrote 19 hours 17 min ago: | |
>which the British rarely, if ever, gave proper credit to Poland | |
I'm not sure that is fair. The Polish mathematicians certainly get | |
credit at the Bletchley museum. | |
astrodust wrote 2 hours 16 min ago: | |
Credit was on display down in the cellar in the bottom of a locked | |
filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door | |
saying âBeware of the Leopard'. | |
p_l wrote 8 hours 23 min ago: | |
A lot of material in Bletchley museum could be considered to be | |
bottom-up effort of people either directly involved, related, or | |
passionate about the topics. | |
Which is a completely separate thing from government direction, | |
especially considering how Attlee government resulted in British | |
military commanders leaning on or outright breaking the law to help | |
polish and other central european soldiers who served on western | |
front when the official guidance was "get rid of them and who cares | |
if NKVD will murder them". | |
mbarti wrote 20 hours 54 min ago: | |
So the Polish intelligence selected 3 smartest mathematicians in 1929 | |
and assigned them to the task of understanding the German encryptions. | |
The team (Rejewski) had a breakthrough in 1932 and managed to break the | |
Enigma codes. By 1939 they've broken many subsequent versions of the | |
constantly upgraded ciphers. | |
In 1939 they gave the British: a working Enigma machine, the broken | |
encryption, a full description of how the encryption works, how to use | |
a machine to speed up the process (the "bomba" appliance), and what | |
automation is needed for the following versions. | |
The British (Turing et al) then contributed a machine-based automation | |
which allowed to break the following upgrades to the Enigma ciphers, | |
which would be impractical to manual calculations. | |
As a side note, the Polish codebreaking bureau started with a | |
breakthrough around 1917, when some smart soldiers managed to break | |
Bolshevik radio communication ciphers, which allowed Poland to stop the | |
Russian revolution's expansion by 1920 (the decisive Battle of Warsaw). | |
lo_zamoyski wrote 12 hours 31 min ago: | |
> So the Polish intelligence selected 3 smartest mathematicians | |
The interwar period in general saw an extraordinary flowering of top | |
notch mathematicians and mathematical logicians in Poland [0][1], | |
including Tarski and Banach. So the conditions in the country were | |
very conducive. Others besides Rejewski, Rozycki, and Zygalski also | |
worked on deciphering enemy messages years before WWII, such as | |
Lesniewski, Mazurkiewicz, and Sierpinski [2]. | |
[0] [1] [2] | |
[1]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polish_School_of_Mathematics | |
[2]: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/lvov-warsaw/ | |
[3]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jan_Kowalewski | |
avodonosov wrote 19 hours 24 min ago: | |
Little more precize about Soviet cipher braking. It was a group of | |
mathematicians, not just smart soldiers. | |
[1]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polish%E2%80%93Soviet_War#Po... | |
atmosx wrote 19 hours 53 min ago: | |
It's unfortunate that in pop culture, Turing gets all the credit. | |
Even the fairly recent movie doesn't do the justice. | |
twelvechairs wrote 17 hours 52 min ago: | |
Turing wasn't a publicly known figure for many years until a | |
campaign to give him some prominence and highlight the injustices | |
done to him started to get some ground. There was a strong gay | |
rights thread to this, which obviously didn't apply to others. | |
While I agree others should no doubt get credit (Turing's coworkers | |
also), the Computer History Museum and Bletchley Park do a good job | |
(last time I visited) at describing everything relatively | |
impartially. Media (screen and print) could often do a better job | |
though. | |
sologoub wrote 16 hours 24 min ago: | |
Iâm quite interested in the subject, but literally never heard | |
of Rejewski until now and it feels pretty terrible. A lot gets | |
said about other biases, but Poles seem to not get a lot of | |
credit pretty consistently and often get appropriated by the host | |
countries they had to work for. Hope thatâs all in the past | |
now⦠| |
bodelecta wrote 7 hours 10 min ago: | |
Have a read of the Charge at Krojanty for an example of Nazi | |
propaganda. | |
A myth that perpetuates till very recent. | |
p_l wrote 8 hours 28 min ago: | |
Because cold war propaganda, and even some propaganda issues | |
during the war. | |
Bad enough that despite half a million army on the western | |
front, it was effectively banned to take part in London victory | |
parade. | |
comeonbro wrote 19 hours 46 min ago: | |
Don't even bring that movie into this discussion, it's a historical | |
atrocity. | |
andrewflnr wrote 19 hours 47 min ago: | |
The Imitation Game doesn't do justice to Turing himself, either. | |
Pretty dreadful all around. | |
Upvoter33 wrote 2 hours 47 min ago: | |
This movie was terrible and I thought hugely offensive to the | |
memory of Turing and all involved. Awful awful awful. | |
hermitcrab wrote 19 hours 20 min ago: | |
It is disgraceful that they used Turing's name in that film, was | |
was almost completely fiction. Everyone involved in it should | |
feel ashamed. | |
formerly_proven wrote 19 hours 32 min ago: | |
Pretty bold to write Turing as a socially inept autist loner with | |
a temper problem when thereâs zero historical evidence for any | |
part of that characterization, only evidence suggesting the | |
opposite. | |
elteto wrote 12 hours 56 min ago: | |
And IIRC with a female romantic interest... that to me was the | |
worst offense. It was an awful movie all around. | |
kitd wrote 7 hours 51 min ago: | |
I've not seen the movie, but Turing was engaged briefly to | |
Joan Clark, a fellow cryptanalyst, and they were close | |
friends. She knew about his homosexuality though so it would | |
have been literally a marriage of convenience, probably not | |
uncommon at that time. | |
andrewflnr wrote 11 hours 38 min ago: | |
As I recall it was pretty clear what he was actually | |
interested in, and it wasn't her, so it at least wasn't | |
completely wrong on that particular point. I think it was | |
explicitly sort of a show/cover relationship. But of course I | |
saw it once a long time ago... | |
kadoban wrote 12 hours 44 min ago: | |
I suspect it was pretty good if you don't know or care about | |
Turing. But yeah, it pissed me off pretty bad. | |
jonahx wrote 20 hours 13 min ago: | |
Was the automation the more difficult of the two problems? | |
Why did the Polish mathematicians not undertake that step themselves | |
between 1932 and 1939? | |
lo_zamoyski wrote 12 hours 0 min ago: | |
That's what the Bomba [0][1] was about. The Brits worked off those | |
developments and continued the work that the Poles had started but | |
were unable to continue themselves because of the "deteriorating | |
political situation". | |
[0] [1] | |
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bomba_(cryptography) | |
[2]: https://www.bcs.org/articles-opinion-and-research/the-enig... | |
H8crilA wrote 19 hours 36 min ago: | |
AFAIK the Germans kept improving both the Enigma itself and the | |
procedures for using it. For example there was some specific | |
weakness that the Polish attacks used, but at some point Germans | |
figured it out and "patched" it. By the end of the war they could | |
change the "encryption key" even more often than once a day, | |
whereas before the war they could reuse the same key for many | |
months. The Poles didn't break all Enigma setups till 1939 because | |
one didn't have to it yet to effectively collect intelligence. Also | |
because they hadn't existed yet :) | |
Enigma was actually pretty good, but it had a major design flaw: | |
insufficient diffusion. The YouTube channel Computerphile made a | |
good video on practical cryptanalysis of the Enigma using modern | |
hardware: [1] . In short, if you know what you're doing you can do | |
ciphertext-only attacks given long enough messages and minimal | |
knowledge about the distribution of the plaintext (their example | |
relies only on the fact that the plaintext is in English). | |
[1]: https://youtu.be/RzWB5jL5RX0 | |
tialaramex wrote 20 hours 39 min ago: | |
There is a small memorial (to the Poles) at Bletchley Park. I went | |
there on purpose once to see it, and unfortunately I didn't have time | |
to go find it again when I was there earlier this year, but it's a | |
memorial so they won't have removed it. | |
The (recreation of the) machine for breaking wartime Enigma is now in | |
the Computer History museum, rather than the main Bletchley Park | |
museum (they're on the same site but open on different days - check | |
before travelling!), which is slightly incongruous as it's just not a | |
computer. The museum also has several machines which are each | |
arguably the first computer or an early computer (it depends on what | |
in your opinion distinguishes a computer and how hard you're willing | |
to squint at your definition) including (again a reconstruction of) | |
Colossus, which was built for Bletchley to attack the actual | |
interesting cryptography of the war, Lorenz - not Engima and | |
W.I.T.C.H (the Harwell computer) but the choice to put the | |
reconstructed Bombe in that museum is a bit weird. | |
jgalt212 wrote 15 hours 1 min ago: | |
I was just there. Easy train ride from London. Enthusiasts can | |
spend 6 hours, or more there. Not a great family destination, | |
though. Sometimes you have to wait hours for your tour start. | |
During that time you've burned all the good will with the family as | |
you've briskly seen all the stuff the tour will now show you. | |
I will go back on my own one day. | |
nickcw wrote 8 hours 0 min ago: | |
Ha, yes this was my experience exactly! | |
There is also the national radio center to visit which I didn't | |
get a chance to visit unfortunately. | |
[1]: http://www.nationalradiocentre.com/ | |
jgalt212 wrote 4 hours 9 min ago: | |
And the National Museum of Computing is there as well. | |
[1]: https://www.tnmoc.org/ | |
cma wrote 19 hours 32 min ago: | |
I think it can still be considered a computer, just not a general | |
purpose programmable computer right? I'd expect adding machines | |
and stuff to be in a computer history museum. | |
tialaramex wrote 17 hours 40 min ago: | |
It's even more primitive than, say, a mechanical calculator of | |
that era, which yes, the NMC does have in a cabinet near the | |
start. The Bombe isn't doing even simple arithmetic. It's | |
essentially an electric motor, plus a lot of very complicated | |
electrical wiring, to verify whether some particular setup (say, | |
rotors I, V and IV in that order, set to JOM initially) could or | |
could not ever cause the crib (a guess at some text an operator | |
intended to send e.g. "Heil Hitler") to be converted into the | |
ciphertext being attacked. | |
Each such setup is tried, very briefly, and if it couldn't be | |
correct, the motor winds to the next, and the next and so on, | |
until one setup which could be "Heil Hitler" is found. This is a | |
"stop" - the machine literally stops until set going again. Women | |
running the machine note down the exact setup which stopped it, | |
and elsewhere very smart people try assuming this stop is correct | |
- it might be, or, maybe the machine will stop again later, or, | |
maybe the crib was wrong, maybe this message has a typo, "Heil | |
Hiter"... | |
It's fantastically complicated but only in the same way that for | |
example the movement of swallows is complicated. There's a | |
relatively simple rule, it's just followed to an extreme degree | |
and so that's impressive. It's not really very clever, and it's | |
nothing like a computer. | |
Colossus isn't a programmable computer. It's for attacking | |
Lorenz, so the people who built it didn't care that to attack a | |
slightly different cipher the machine must be taken to pieces and | |
re-assembled accordingly, they were here to attack Lorenz. In the | |
rest of the early gallery there are several machines which are, | |
or aren't, depending on how you squint truly programmable, truly | |
electronics, truly storing the program and so on. But the Bombe | |
is to these machines as the Super Bowl is to tennis. It's not | |
that it's a very primitive and strange game of tennis, it's not | |
tennis at all. | |
cma wrote 7 hours 58 min ago: | |
It isn't programmable but neither is an early adding machine. | |
I don't see a problem with either being in a computer museum. | |
Animats wrote 11 hours 49 min ago: | |
Yes. Those machines were key-testers, not general purpose | |
computers. Their modern descendants are Bitcoin miners with | |
custom ASICs. They do one thing, very fast. | |
As with Bitcoin miners, what led to success was mass | |
production. Bombe-type machines were built in quantity by the | |
British Tabulating Machine Company in the UK, and the National | |
Cash Register Company in the US. There was also a Western | |
Electric prototype built from telephone relays. | |
Interestingly, the US cryptanalysis effort against Japan was | |
statistical, rather than brute-force search.[1] Much | |
statistical work was done using IBM tabulating machines. | |
[1]: https://web.archive.org/web/20210828044031/https://cry... | |
antman wrote 19 hours 59 min ago: | |
Polish memorial was in Bletchley Park when I visited in 2019 under | |
some trees: | |
[1]: https://maps.app.goo.gl/1Mot8nCCvS3e6r9SA?g_st=ic | |
self_awareness wrote 39 min ago: | |
"This is where the first break of Enigma by an exclusively | |
British team took place." [1] Lol, some memorial. | |
[1]: https://www.google.com/maps/@51.9971405,-0.7429412,2a,25... | |
triyambakam wrote 21 hours 24 min ago: | |
> For two decades he remained silent about his prewar and wartime work | |
so as to avoid the attention of Poland's Soviet-dominated government | |
[1] Why would he want to hide that fact from the Soviets? | |
[1]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marian_Rejewski | |
ajuc wrote 2 hours 0 min ago: | |
Post-WW2 Poland was a totalitarian state with stalinist terror. | |
Soviets installed their puppet communist government and murdered | |
anybody inconvenient - mostly people who were connected to pre-WW2 | |
government, army, guerilla fighter groups that fought against Germans | |
or Russians during WW2, etc. | |
For example Witold Pilecki, Polish guerilla group (AK) member who | |
voluntered to get captured by Germans and put in Auschwitz camp to | |
see what happens there. Then he wrote a report and escaped from the | |
camp. After the WW2 he was captured by soviets, sentenced to deatch | |
and executed (supposedly for speing for western powers). [1] Leaders | |
of these antinazi partizan groups from WW2 were invited after WW2 to | |
Moscow with the supposed goal being to negotiate. When in Moscow they | |
have been captured and sentenced to death in a show trial, and then | |
executed. [2] Pre-WW2 Polish politician MikoÅajczyk and a leader of | |
one of the biggest parties - PSL (agrarian party) - returned from | |
exile to Poland after WW2 and was allowed to have his party in | |
elections (as an exception to appease Polish farmers - other parties | |
were banned and over 30 000 people were imprisoned and executed just | |
before the elections). The elections were falsified to absurd level, | |
PSL was the most popular party by far, yet they got 10% of votes | |
officially. MikoÅajczyk escaped to London again and later to USA. | |
[3] There's thousand such examples. People were terrorized and kept | |
silent out of fear for their lives. There were whole chapters of | |
history you weren't supposed to talk about (like [4] ). | |
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Witold_Pilecki | |
[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trial_of_the_Sixteen | |
[3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanis%C5%82aw_Miko%C5%82ajczy... | |
[4]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katyn_massacre | |
keiferski wrote 9 hours 22 min ago: | |
Fighting against the Germans unfortunately wasnât much protection | |
against the insanity of the Soviet regime. This guy is a good | |
example: | |
Skalski was a Polish aviator and fighter ace who served with the | |
Polish Air Force and British Royal Air Force during the Second World | |
War. Skalski was the top Polish fighter ace of the war and | |
chronologically the first Allied fighter ace of the war. He returned | |
to Poland after the war but was imprisoned by the communist | |
authorities under the pretext that he was a spy for Great Britain. | |
While in arrest he was tortured and then, in a show trial, sentenced | |
to death on 7 April 1950. Skalski refused to ask for clemency but | |
after his mother's intervention with the president of communist | |
Poland, Boleslaw Bierut, his sentence was commuted to life | |
imprisonment. He remained in prison until 1956 when a court | |
overturned the previous verdict. | |
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanis%C5%82aw_Skalski | |
jjtheblunt wrote 19 hours 6 min ago: | |
[1] was recent memory, with Soviets mass murdering educated Poles, | |
among others. | |
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katyn_massacre | |
throwaway74354 wrote 20 hours 29 min ago: | |
In the USSR, being unreliable (неблагонадÑ�… | |
into Great Terror of the 30s history) and capable of some useful to | |
the regime skills could land you into [1] . Poland in the 40-50s was | |
slightly milder, but not by a lot. | |
Ability to keep quiet is a key survival skill in the authoritarian | |
states. | |
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sharashka | |
playingalong wrote 20 hours 45 min ago: | |
Because people who fought one oppressor, might fight the next one. | |
Even if the oppressors were enemies at some point. | |
mbarti wrote 21 hours 10 min ago: | |
Also because Poland was under Russian de facto occupation 1945-1989 | |
and the Russians mass murdered any possible threats to their power | |
(intellectuals, poets, professors, former army officers - 100s of | |
thousands sent to labour/ death camps in Siberia, never to return). | |
48864w6ui wrote 18 hours 53 min ago: | |
Anyone know why the Russian Formalists got the sparkling repressive | |
power of the state? I had thought they were expressly apolitical, | |
but maybe Stalin was paranoid? | |
throwaway74354 wrote 17 hours 39 min ago: | |
wiki article on the subject isn't bad. | |
1) Formalism was called Bourgeois Formalism by the state critics. | |
Elitist art, opposite of what would become Socialist Realism. | |
2) If you click the names at [1] , some of the biographies will | |
lead you to [2] . Being a Jew in the USSR was an additional risk. | |
3) Slightly later in history, but typical use of | |
formalism-as-a-prejorative : [3] tldr: young authoritarian states | |
need enemies. Both internal and external. Repression of any form | |
of dissent is a way to unite (or scare into submission) the | |
masses. See also: "degenerative art" in Germany. Also being | |
apolitical is a political statement. | |
There's a good timeline of the 20s in Russian: | |
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_formalism | |
[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rootless_cosmopolitan | |
[3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zhdanov_Doctrine | |
[4]: https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%91%D0%BE%D1%80%D1%8C%D... | |
mwbajor wrote 21 hours 16 min ago: | |
Because they would assume he has American and British friends that he | |
still might talk to. | |
ggaughan wrote 21 hours 37 min ago: | |
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marian_Rejewski | |
dang wrote 22 hours 47 min ago: | |
Anybody know the year of the interview? | |
rvnx wrote 22 hours 35 min ago: | |
According to: [1] : | |
"The world learned the truth about the breaking of Enigma and the | |
role of Poles only in 1973", so the interview is after that moment. | |
On 1973-09-23 he disclosed his identity to journalists: [2] so the | |
interview was very very likely filmed after 1973-09-23. | |
+ this is supported by his physical appearance. | |
It could be around 1974 (near the peak of the public popularity of | |
the decryption of Enigma). | |
The video interview was published by TVP, so maybe in their | |
programmes of end of 1973 or 1974 there may be such info. | |
There is also a known interview in 1978: [3] So most likely 1974 (or | |
very close to that). | |
Possibly more info here: | |
[1]: https://web.archive.org/web/20070901043355/http://ww2.tvp.pl... | |
[2]: https://marian-rejewski.pl/pol-wieku-temu-rejewski-ujawnil-s... | |
[3]: https://www.globalspec.com/reference/62853/203279/a-conversa... | |
[4]: https://marian-rejewski.pl/kalendarium-2/ | |
dang wrote 18 hours 39 min ago: | |
Ok thanks! let's go with 1974 and maybe someone else can refine it. | |
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