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Sekret Enigmy

1979 · Film · 158 min

Directed by Roman Wionczek

HistoryWar

Three Polish mathematicians are the first to crack the sophisticated Enigma code used by the Germans just before the Second World War. They build replicas of the Enigma machines and manage to get two of the machines to the British and French code-breakers before the German invasion of Poland in 1939; they ask that recognition be given to their work at the end of the war. After the invasion, the Polish cipher bureau escapes and continues their decoding in Algeria and unoccupied France.

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2 comments on Hacker News

  1. Neutralavhon1Sep 25, 2018

    > a Polish movie about that story, Sekret Enigmy (1979)

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8_X4DmxCWTc

  2. NeutralyesenadamSep 25, 2018

    After I watched The Imitation Game lately I read about the Polish efforts, almost totally ignored in that movie and everything I'd read, as if the British invented the whole thing, possibly Turing single-handedly. The article says "based partly on an earlier Polish design" but doesn't say

    Up to July 25, 1939, the Poles had been breaking Enigma messages for over six and a half years ...

    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 .. Gordon Welchman, head of Bletchley Park's Hut 6...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."

    ..French and British military intelligence,...had been unable to make any headway against Enigma. This Polish intelligence-and-technology transfer would give the Allies an unprecedented advantage (Ultra) in their ultimately victorious prosecution of World War II.

    Also the name bombe is explained:

    The first machine was built by the Poles and was a hand operated multiple enigma machine. When a possible solution was reached a part would fall off the machine onto the floor with a loud noise. Hence the name "bombe".

    There is a Polish movie about that story, Sekret Enigmy (1979), but I haven't been able to get hold of it yet.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bomba_(cryptography)

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marian_Rejewski

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biuro_Szyfr%C3%B3w

    Sekret Enigmy: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0079878/