Who broke the enigma code first

Marian rejewski vs alan turing
Marian rejewski enigma
The brilliant Polish mathematician Marian Rejewski cracked Enigma by 1938, only to have the unsuspecting Germans add two rotors to the machine.

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3 - The Polish Connection

Three mathematicians from Posnan University – Marian Rejewski, Henryk Zygalski and Jerzy Rozycki – recruited to the Polish Cipher Bureau in the 1920s, were the first to break the Enigma machine. This machine had originally been developed after the First World War for commercial use and was openly available for sale. However, it had no plugboard. This was added in the inter-war years after the German military took over its use and gave the machine the phenomenal 158 million million million possible settings. By some clever mathematics the Poles deduced the wiring of the five common wheels. Among devices developed by the trio was a ‘bomba’ an electro-mechanical machine which found Enigma settings, utilising the much simpler indicator system in use at that time, but it was nothing like the Turing-Welchman Bombe. The outstanding achievement of the Polish team, and the vital information they supplied to Britain and France on the eve of the war led the way to the British successes which played such a vital role in the secret codebreaking activities at Bletch

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Marian Rejewski

Polish mathematician and cryptologist (1905–1980)

Marian Adam Rejewski (Polish:[ˈmarjanrɛˈjɛfskʲi]^ⓘ; 16 August 1905 – 13 February 1980) was a Polishmathematician and cryptologist who in late 1932 reconstructed the sight-unseen German military Enigma cipher machine, aided by limited documents obtained by French military intelligence.

Over the next nearly seven years, Rejewski and fellow mathematician-cryptologists Jerzy Różycki and Henryk Zygalski, working at the Polish General Staff's Cipher Bureau, developed techniques and equipment for decrypting the Enigma ciphers, even as the Germans introduced modifications to their Enigma machines and encryption procedures. Rejewski's contributions included the cryptologic card catalog and the cryptologic bomb.

Five weeks before the outbreak of World War II in Europe, the Poles shared their achievements with French and British counterparts who had made no progress, enabling Britain to begin reading German Enigma ciphers. The intelligence gained by the British from Enigma decrypts formed part of what they c

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A management professor at WSB University in Bydgoszcz, Poland has published an impressive biography of the amazing codebreaker Marian Rejewski. We are very fortunate since Rejewski largely has been completely ignored by Americans and British who have fixated and over-sensationalized another man (Alan Turing).

The First Enigma Codebreaker:
Marian Rejewski Who Passed the Baton to Alan Turing
By Robert Gawlowski
Published: April 15, 2023
ISBN-10: 1399069101
ISBN-13: 9781399069106
Pen and Sword Military

The fact that this book is promoted by the U.S. Naval Institute says to me people who really know codebreaking, and the balance of secrecy with integrity, are trying to get the word out.

The fact that Robert Gawlowski comes from the same hometown as Marian Rejewski… well, you get the idea.

Alan Turing’s story is important. It should be known, not least of all because he was killed by his own government due to ignorance and bias. But telling the sad Turing tale also shouldn’t take away from the fact that Rejewski and many, many others have very importa