There were two sides, so to speak, in WWII. There were the Axis Powers: Nazi Germany, Japan, and Italy. The other side was known as the Allies: USSR, United Kingdom, United States, and France. The war started in 1939 and lasted until 1945. There were many different problems in World War II but the one we will be focused on is Nazi Germany, and their ways of communication to be exact. The Nazi's used the Enigma Machine to send important messages to each other.
Background:
The Machine:
The Enigma Machine was invented by Arthur Scherbius, a German electrical engineer. He invented the machine at the end of World War I. The machine was not intentionally made for the Nazi's. The function of the Enigma is to make cipher text. Here is how it works:
1. Rotors at top left could be rotated to different settings, to generate different codes- more rotors made the code more difficult to crack
2.The message was typed into the machine using typewriter keys at the front
3.Each time a letter was typed a lamp lit up one of the letters in the middle of the machine - this illuminated letter then formed part of the cipher text. Later models, such as the German military machine on the right, had a plugboard at the front (under the operator's hand), which added an additional level of complexity