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Recommended: World War 1
During the world wars, the biggest wars in modern history, it was important for countries to send their messages to allies and armies without being detected by other countries. The information transported by secret message, or codes, was usually about tactics, military orders or top secrets. So for the enemies, it was also very crucial for them to break the code and know what their enemy was thinking about. Although code breaking was done in the hidden place that Breaking code was one of the important actions done during the world war in order to reduce the danger but increase the probability of winning. In 1915, when World War I just occurred, RMS Lusitania was sunk at the coastline near Ireland. Total of 1,960 people were on board and more …show more content…
The German code was based on the machine called ‘Enigma’. The Enigma story began in the 1920s, when German started to use ‘Enigma’ machine for developing business market and communicated in coded messages (“Code Breaking”). The people who actively helped allies for cracking the Enigma code were the Polish. In 1939, September 1st, Germany attacked Poland in early morning that Poland could not even resist (much of the attack done within hours). Within few days Poland falls. Although they lost the battle, Polish endeavored secretly to crack the Enigma code and this could be performed because of the close links between German and Polish engineering industries. A widely known person for working on breaking code is Polish Cipher Bureau. He shared information with British where began to crack Enigma code with the help of early models of computers in Bletchley Park, a place where is established as the purpose of Government Code and Cipher School. Since Germany thought their code was undecipherable, they used Enigma codes for all sorts of communication. British referred Enigma codes as Ultra, treated it as top secret and put effort on making decoding machine, bombe. Around 1940, the allies finally succeeded to decode German Enigma codes. Later, German made changes in indicating procedure for code but allies have anticipated this and figured out. By the second half of 1941, 30,000 Enigma messages were decoded a month and later 90,000 a month. Here are some works done by Ultra intelligence, or decoding: In April 1930, Ultra information provided detailed picture of location of German forces, their orders and attacking route for attack on Low Countries prior to the Battle of France in May. (Winterbotham 31) Ultra was crucial in the preparation for the Allied invasion of Sicily. It provided information like where the enemy’s forces were strongest and with elaborate
One of Great Britain’s most important naval developments was the founding of the top-secret Office of Naval Intelligence, better known as Room 40. Specializing in cryptography, “the science of writing in secret code” in order to hide sensitive information, Room 40’s cryptanalysts worked around the clock to break the secret code. Decryption is vital in secret transmissions concerning strategic war movements, as the enemy will be looking to intercept information concerning movements and positioning. Great Britain was aided in that the German Navy started the war with three primary codes, and within four months the British Admiralty possessed physical copies of all three of them.
Coding and encryption were two very important elements in the use of espionage. Enigmas were cipher machines that were based mainly on a wired code wheel. The wired code wheel, known more commonly as a rotor, would be shaped similar to a hockey puck made of non-conductive material, such as rubber, and have two sides, an input plate and an output plate and around the circumference are 26 evenly spaced electrical contacts. The 26 contacts on the input plate would be connected by wired through the body of the rotor to the 26 contacts on the output plate. An alphabet ring would then be placed around the rotors 26 contacts therefore creating a cipher alphabet.
The sinking of the Lusitania was a tragic event. It occurred on May 7th, 1915 in the North Atlantic ocean. The famous British ocean liner had departed from New York City and was off the coast of Ireland when a German submarine fired torpedoes. The ship had roughly 1,900 passengers on board, most of which were American citizens. The ship was meant for passengers and not for cargo but as lots of reporters have stated there was in fact a handful of war materials aboard the ship which was kept secret from its passengers.Prior to the sinking the Germans had declared that the waters around the British Isles were considered to be a war zone.1 This war zone idea was backed by the fact that the Germans admitted to enforce unrestricted submarine warfare; meaning if you were in the water you were getting blown up with or without prior knowledge. It took a total of eighteen minutes for the Lusitania, in its entirety, to disappear beneath the waves of the North Atlantic ocean.2 After the ship had sunk the American press had openly and with lots of determination and passion deemed the event uncivilized. However, the Lusitania was not the only ship that was torpedoed. A year later in 1916 the Sussex, an unarmed French passenger ship was sunk by another German submarine. 3
1,522 people died. Only 705 lives saved by the ship that found them, called the Carpathia
" Many memos and other letters were carelessly stored away, instead of being destroyed after their use. After much studying of all the confiscated letters of the KGB, including the new sheets, the ciphers were now able to elucidate some of the codebook they had found earlier. In 1949, a report by Klaus Fuchs was deciphered. This was America's first solid evidence that there was a spy ring operating within the US. borders.
Codes, on their surface, reveal little. While they may take the form of numbers, letters, bytes, or symbols, the primary goal of most codes is either to conceal or condense information. In the context of codebreaking, the codes that pique the most interest are, of course, the ones that hide a message from unauthorized eavesdroppers. The role of the codebreaker is not always the honest one, for it is his/her job to undo the careful manipulations of the sender to uncover, without the key for the lock, what the message contains. To do this, he/she must rely on intuition, on reasoning, and sometimes on “luck,” to get his/her way.
Many of us can remember playing childhood games when we were younger. One of my personal favorites was hide and seek. My favorite part of the game was when I was hiding and tried to watch where the seeker looked while he or she searched. Of course I could have been caught, but it wasn't a big deal at the time. What would happen though if the seeker didn't know who he was looking for, but knew someone was hiding? How would he go about finding the person? Further more how much more could the person accomplish if they were hiding right in front of them, but the seeker did not know? Well it may sound a little off, but that was basically the game of espionage. Spies would try to conceal themselves by gathering information at the same time. During times of war it was critical to keep your movements, plans, and technology secret so that enemies could not be prepared or be one-step ahead. Therefore spies would be a very influential on outcomes of wars. One of the wars that the USA needed espionage help was in WWII. Not only did they need to get information but have counter intelligence to keep secrets away from Germany and their allies. Espionage helped the US during WWII in the defeat of Germany and their allies.
The boat was experiencing mechanical failure so the captain was going at 12 knots. This was against the advice given to him telling him to drive at 15 knots as to avoid and out speed russian submarines. Then at 9:16 the Wilhelm Gustloff was hit by 3 torpedoes. The ship had life rafts for 5000 people but most of the safety equipment was frozen and 9000 people died making it the largest maritime disaster in history beating out the titanic at 1500 people. Although most of the passengers were civilians it is not recognized as a war crime as 1000
During the early stages of the war, most of Germany’s victories were because of the success of blitzkrieg, or lightening war. Blitzkrieg tactics emphasised mobility and the concentrated use of armour and air power to overwhelm an enemy. Blitzkrieg was especially successful in flat, open countryside and was supremely suited for the Polish campaign in 1939. It was with blitzkrieg, as well as Germany’s superior tactics, effective use of armour, airpower and modern equipment, plus with the support of the USSR that the Germans used to overwhelm Poland in only 5 weeks. Two days after the German troops entered Poland, Britain and France declared war on Germany. Hitler did not want this because it was a distraction from his main aim, to attack the USSR.
sent to find how far the Germans had come in the building of the atomic
On May the 7th 1915 the Lusitania sank, taking with it the lives of one thousand, two hundred and one people including ninety-one children and thirty-one infants. Despite the fact that it was the largest and fastest ship at that time, the German torpedo still found its mark off the South Coast of Ireland while the ship was travelling between the United States and England. The failure to prevent the tragedy despite the warnings given, the actions (or lack thereof) of the Admiralty and the neglect in ensuring that the lifeboat system and the ship itself would offer maximum protection; puts the primary blame unto the British Admiralty and the Cunard Company.
the Titanic set sail, and two years before World War I began. It was a
Codes have been around for centuries ranging from wax, invisible ink, Morse code, the Enigma used by the Germans during World War II and now steganographic. Steganography is the latest form to insidiously hide information over the Internet without a trace of a file being altered. You are able to hide messages within images, voice or music. Steganography is an ancient method of hiding messages. Today messages are hidden in images and music. Steganography can be traced back to the ancient Greek who would write messages on tablets and cover them in wax. This made the tablets look blank and unsuspicious (Kolata, F4). Citizens of ancient civilizations would tattoo messages on their shaved heads. They would then let their hair grown in and travel across enemy lines to deliver the message (Seper, G1). During World War II the Allies placed a ban on flower deliveries with dates, crossword puzzles and even report cards (Kolata, F4) for fear of a message being hidden with in. Steganographers first alter their data by using encryption and then place the image into a pre-select image. Steganographers look for a piece of code that would be the least significant and look the least altered to the human eye (Kolata, F4), being as inconspicuousness and random as possible. This makes the messages undetectable unless you knew that there is a message hidden and you were able to crack the code.
Computer science is a vast field that includes nearly everything relating to computers. Everyday there is information transmitted all over the Internet. Pictures are uploaded, transactions are made on thousands of online retail websites, and banking transactions take place everyday on the Internet. All of these transactions have created a need for secure communications. People wish to keep things like banking, medical, and political information from the eyes of unwelcome parties. This has created a need for cryptography. Cryptography is the science or study of the techniques of secret writing, especially code and cipher systems, and is used by everyone from the average citizen to the government and military.
It was only by chance that the polish government was able to break the enigma code the first time. A man working at the Head Quarters in Berlin contacted a French operative in hopes of exchanging sensitive information for money. The French agreed and after exchanging money and information several times they found it of little use and then forwarded it to the Polish who you might say found the Holy Grail of information.