After British forces cracked Enigma and could anticipate and prepare for German attacks, did that ever change or did they have this upper hand throughout the entire war? Did Germans remain negligent about their machine being cracked all the time constantly thinking their machine is infallible and could never be cracked? This was never mentioned in the episode about Enigma and I’m not sure if this topic will be further touched upon in future episodes. Thank you. Best documentary show ever. And just as you guys are covering both world wars 100 years later, another 100 years from now future generations will be watching this documentaries and think how awesome it is that someone did such a feat.
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Some higher ups like U-Boat Fleet commander (and after 1942 Commander in Chief of German Navy) Karl Doenitz suspected something was afoul but each time Doenitz initiated an internal investigation whether Enigma was cracked , German Navy technical departments (in an effort to save face and tell what they assumed higher ups wished to hear) summarised in their reports that Enigma was impossible to brute force cracked. German Navy updated thair four rotor Enigma machine to five rotor version in February 1942 for a regular security update (which they were supposed to do for regular security procedures in the beginning of 1941 but constantly delayed due to cost of wireless procedure update and delays not mention confusion it would cause initially) that led a ten month blackout in decyphering of German naval Enigma by Allies but that naval Enigma version (codenamed Triton) was also cracked and decyphered by Bletchley Park December 1942 after capture of short signal and weather codebooks of a German submarine in October 1942. After that Germans did not think about their wireless security at all. German Navy was assured by their own technical departments that Enigma was inpenetrable and heavy U-boat losses were due to Allied airborne and shipborne radar technology (which was mostly true) German Army and especially Luftwaffe Enigma versions three and four rotor types were both simpler and easier to crack and decyphered and especially Luftwaffe radio operators had notoriously lax security procedures and habits , using same Enigma keys and rotor much longer than ordered even if when new keys were available. None of these latter two services suspected a thing.
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Thank you. I wonder if this played a major part in Germans losing the war. I mean, allies being able to know their enemy’s every move.
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