Poles launch campaign for Enigma code-breaking recognition

09 Oct 2012

Poles launch campaign for Enigma code-breaking recognition
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It is hailed as an masterstroke of British code breaking that helped 
defeat Adolf Hitler and save the lives of thousands of Allied soldiers.
Poles launch campaign for Enigma code-breaking recognition

By Matthew Day, Warsaw

However, decades after Nazi Germany's Enigma code was first cracked, 
Poland has gone on the offensive to reclaim the glory of a cryptological 
success it feels has been unjustly claimed by Britain.

Frustrated at watching the achievements of the British wartime code 
breakers at Bletchley Park lauded while those of Poles go overlooked, 
Poland's parliament has launched a campaign to "restore justice" to the 
Polish men and women who first broke the Enigma codes.

As part of the effort the upper house of Poland's parliament is to pass a 
resolution praising Marian Rejewski, Jerzy Rozycki and Henryk Zygalski, 
the three Polish mathematicians who first broke the codes back in 1932.

Hailed as "heroes" in the resolution, Rejewski, Rozycki and Zygalski 
worked at the Polish Cipher Bureau in the early 1930s, and in late 1932 
came up with three methods for breaking the encrypted codes produced on 
the Enigma machine, which the Germans thought were unbreakable.

Historians believe that the Allies' ability to eavesdrop in on German 
coded communications helped shorten the war in Europe. But much to Polish 
frustration the work of British cryptologists at Bletchley Park, including 
Alan Turing who would go on to pioneer early computers, has since 
attracted most of the credit..../snip/ 


http://www.telegraph.co.uk/history/world-war-two/9594403/Poles-launch-campaign-for-Enigma-code-breaking-recognition.html