Social Studies Synopsis The Enigma Machine

While World War two was going on the Allies who had america ship them resources of supply their troops. The Huge american merchant flets had to cross the atlantic ocean (that was packed of german U-boths) to get to great britain. The germans used the (electronic) enigma Machine (invented by the german company Simson in 1935) to encrypt and decrypt messages. A message that had to go from germany to a U-both had to go though certain steps:
1) The real message had to be changed to a code using a secret code book (which had to be renewed every 6 months).
2) The code had to be changed through the enigma machine
3) The new message had to be changed to Morse and then it could be transmitted.
When the U-both received the message it had to go through each of these steps backwards.The enigma Machine was and electronic device that had 40 rotors on its outside. The key to solve a message depended on:
1) Which 3 of the 40 rotors was set into the machine
2) The order of the rotors in the machine and their initial position.
3) The setting of some plugs behind the machine
Practically one message had more the 300,000,000 keys and only one was correct. To decipher these codes the British had stolen an enigma machine and code book, established many radio centers and invented the first computers that could reduce the number of possible combinations