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White to move and mate in two #564 -- Seizing The Enigma [1]

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Date: 2024-09-19  

The Race to Break the German U-Boat Codes, 1939-1943

Thus the Germans stayed with the Enigma. But explaining why they did so does not tell why the Allies proved superior to the Germans in codebreaking.

Perhaps the most important reason was that the Allies, as Poland was before the war, were on the defensive at first. And the defense requires intelligence. Clausewitz defined the characteristic feature of defense as “awaiting the blow.” An army awaits a blow only if it believes that a blow is planned, and such a belief exists only through information about the enemy. The offense, on the other hand, is “complete in itself,” Clausewitz said. An attacking army need not even know where the enemy force is: it can march about, imposing its will, until it meets its foe. An aggressor nation will put more of its energy into men, tanks, ships, planes, and guns and less into intelligence, one form of which is codebreaking.

A nation that believes it will be attacked will learn what it can about the enemy’s intention. Thus Poland’s fear in the 1920s of German revanche, touching Poland’s very existence as a state, spurred her efforts to solve the Enigma. She established courses in cryptology. Rejewski, perhaps driven by the same patriotic concern, exerted the extra effort that produced his magnificent solution. This is what the Pole Langer meant when, seeking to ease the embarrassment of Bertrand, who had to admit that France had not been able to crack Enigma, he said courteously, “You don’t have the same motivation as we do.”

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