Who Cracked Enigma? The True Story, No B.S. - WW2 Documentary Special
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- čas přidán 5. 03. 2024
- So, you think you know the Enigma Story? The Poles, the French, Bletchley Park, Alan Turing, and daring raids on sinking U-Boats. Well, there’s one figure you may never have heard of. Today, Anna and Astrid tell the story of a German Double Agent named Hans Thilo-Schmidt and his vital but forgotten part in the Enigma story.
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Hosted by: Astrid Deinhard and Anna Deinhard
Director: Astrid Deinhard
Producers: Astrid Deinhard and Spartacus Olsson
Executive Producers: Astrid Deinhard, Indy Neidell, Spartacus Olsson
Creative Producer: Marek Kamiński
Community Management: Ian Sowden
Research: Iryna Dulka and James Newman
Writing: James Newman and Iryna Dulka
Map animations by: Daniel Weiss
Map research by: Sietse Kenter
Edited by: Iryna Dulka
Artwork and color grading by: Mikołaj Uchman
Sound design by: Marek Kamiński
Colorizations by:
Mikołaj Uchman
Source literature list: bit.ly/SourcesWW2
Archive footage: Screenocean/Reuters - www.screenocean.com
Image sources:
Aleksandra Pędzich
Soundtracks from Epidemic Sound:
The Scam - Wendy Marcini
Saved Souls - Elliot Holmes
52nd Street - Ch@ntarelle
The Mole - Christoffer Moe Ditlevsen
With Tenacity - Christoffer Moe Ditlevsen
The Final Act - Howard Harper-Barnes
Aspire to Inspire - Howard Harper-Barnes
A TimeGhost chronological documentary produced by OnLion Entertainment GmbH.
Are there any forgotten spies from this war or beyond that you think deserve their due credit?
Yeah, Charles Huntziger and Maxime Weygand 😂 I want to know if they deserve more infamy. Probably more of an appealing fanfic though. As the saying goes, "Don't attribute to malice that which can be attributed to stupidity".
American Civil War rather than this one, but: Elizabeth Van Lew and Mary Bowser. Really ought to be a movie.
SS officer Kurt Gerstein should get more credit for trying to report on the Holocaust.
SOE chief Nicholas Bodington's three weeks stay in Paris during summer 1943, with SS Sturmbahnführer Karl Boemelburg at his heels. The stuff of legends.
Sanzō Nosaka, a Japanse professor who spied for the Chinese during & possibly after WW2. He was also a founding member of both the British communist party. For this he was exiled from Britain. He would than go to become a founding member of the Japanese communist party and eventually a spy for the USSR (in the US) and later for China (from 1940 onward). He was a rather successful politician in Japan post-war despite being a spy. He lived to be 101 years old. He was on personal basis with both Stalin & Mao.
A lot of his activities remain shrouded in mystery
His letter to his children really got me. He and so many others died for the free world we all enjoy
No. He was in it for the money, way before the Nazis took power.
Not sure if it's because of the end of the war or the sheer length of time I've been watching this, but Astrid's "hello, darlings" felt quite warm and fuzzy today.
That kind of consistency is nice, I agree.
Me? I enjoy noticing the similarities in Anna's gestures and facial expressions.
It's almost like these two gorgeous ladies have known each other for a long time, right?
@@richardtalbott6215here’s an astonishing fact… Astrid has known Anna longer than Anna has known Astrid.
@@spartacus-olsson That's quite the relationship. They must feel like family. Oh, and they have the same last name! What are the odds?!
@@spartacus-olssonBy the way, thank you for your service. There aren't many people who have both the historical knowledge and the ability to talk about how our in-group bias breaks our insticts for justice, and you do it in a way that is so personal, yet analytical and persuasive. I'm not exaggerating when I say it is a public service to our own humanity and to humanity itself.
I feel that understanding this dysfunction that causes us to feel strongly that things that aren't fair are in fact fair is a necessary step to overriding certain evolutionary insticts that lead everyday people to support and commit atrocities.
@@dr.victorvs thank you 😊
Astrid looks a little like Edna Mode from the Incredibles, I want to hear Astrid say "No capes!"
I like how Astrid made that pen appear out of thin air at 3:02. She truly is a magician!!!
A classic sleight of hand trick!
Good spot and made me laugh, thanks for watching.
- Jake
Astrid and Anna. You two are developing into a truly quality double act. Fabulaous presentation, darlings.
Glad you enjoyed, thanks for watching!
- Jake
thank you darling :))
Quite a lot of this was first "released" in a 1977 series by the BBC called "The Secret War." Episode 6, the last proper episode called "Still Secret." including references to Hans Thilo-Schmidt, they interviewed Gordon Welchman and others from Bletchley Park. It also tells how the Poles got hold of the early Enigma machine.
A most remarkable historical gem of a story, told by a most remarkable pair of ladies. Many thanks, Astrid and Anna! 👍❤👍❤
Thanks for watching!
"Show me a hero and I'll show you a bum."
- Pappy Boyington
That should be in a superhero flick.
On a Viking Cruise last year we had a presentation on the Enigma, and they actually let us look and touch one!
Hi Anna and Astrid.
Awesome spy story about Hans Schmitt.
Thanks for sharing.
Thanks for the lovely comment! I'll pass it along to them.
- Jake
I don't know if you have done an episode on the breaking of the German high command's Lorenz code. It was arguably a greater feat of codebreaking then Enigma. Not only was the code more difficult but all the codebreakers had to go on was the messages themselves, they never saw a coding machine. The genius who broke the code was Bill Tutte and the person who mechanised the process was a post office engineer, Tommy Flowers who built from scratch the worlds first semi-programmable computer Colossus.
Sadly, they never get the credit they deserve.
That Turing meme thumbnail is glorious.
The thumbnail team did great on this one for sure!
Can I say I LOVE the picture for this video??
Turing: "Am I a jest to you?"
A joint effort from some of the team! Marek, James and Mikołaj.
I'll let them know, thanks for watching!
- Jake
An added element to the Enigma story I knew nothing about. Thank you Astrid, Anna and the TimeGhost team.
Thanks for watching!
Actually, if you had read Simon Singh's book "The Code book" you will find on page 144 how Schmidt decided to give away the Enigma secrets. Published in 1999.
Hey, love your series and watch it immediately after getting the notification that it dropped. However, as a Pole I need to jump in and say that pronunciation of M. Ciężki surname is a bit different. But given that all the phonetic units in this name are uniquely Polish I would be surprised if it was told perfectly.
At a tangent but the name also means "heavy" in Polish.
we tried so hard for at least 10 minutes , I am so sorry :))
Oh by gods! They called "bomba" Bombi, because plural of "bomba" is "bomby"!
"Bombee" IMHO would be better pronunciation of "bomby", but "bombi" is just so freaking sweet name that I don't want them to change it!
Yeah, English has very confused vowels, in that nearly every vowel grapheme has evolved to sound like schwa (uh). Compare Bergman, Burgman, Birgman. I wish more people knew about their Great Vowel Shift. It would help native English speakers learn Euroasian languages quite a lot if they knew to stop imagining they can transfer their vowels.
I imagine that American English native speakers are even worse ? lol
idk, I'd prefer people not associate bombs with anything cute and sweet :P tbf, English doesn't have the polish "y" sound at all. If you ever met English learners of Polish they're usually fascinated by it (or, since learning Russian is more common, by its Russian relative ы)
Skillfully done in less than 30 minutes!
Post script: Love the sartorial style!!
I knew nothing of Hans Thilo Schmidt. Thanks yet again for the education.
Reconstucting the machine is not the secret to cracking the cypher, though it does help. The trick to reading the message traffic in real time, i.e., within 24 hours before the cypher changes, was computational power and slack radio procedure (sending the same message twice with the same cypher). This why post war such cyphers changed to be truely one-time, which is the standard for all standard electronic message encryption today. The big problem for France in WWII is their high-command didn’t trust any radio traffic as genuine.
That is a fantastic thumbnail. Great work Ana, Astrid, & team!
Many thanks, ladies and crew.
I saw one of the enigma code breaking machines in a museum. I did not expect it to be the size of a bookcase.
I've read a book by a certain Peter Jackson (no relation) detailing the apalling apathy of the French intelligence services during the pre-war years (the diplomatic side being forbidden to develop covert sources for example), and it fits perfectly with the "meh" attitude of the Deuxième Bureau when presented with that early opportunity to crack Enigma.
At least they shared their intel with the Polish. And what to think about them, not returning the favour?
Another great segment. Thank You. Fascinating information which ties into many elements of history that I have come across over the decades and so you find your understanding and perspective changed.
Thank You.
I never knew about this, I thought I knew how Enigma was broken. But it does answer some questions I had, like where did the name "bombe" come from, and how did the code breakers get hold of the initial set of dials they would have needed to start understanding the machine and how it was used.
Thanks!
And may I say that the presentation of this story was top-notch? Excellent writing as well.
This answers many questions and finally explains how the uncrackable was cracked. Amazing. Thank you so much.
"Gentlemen don’t read each other’s mail” - Secretary of State Henry Stimson
Boy, was he wrong.
I would say he was right, but WW2 had nothing to do with gentlemen.
Mid century Germans and Imperial Japan weren't gentlemen.
@@stevekaczynski3793
Or statecraft in general for that matter as proven by the last 3000+ years of written history....
As the saying goes unfortunately: Nations don't have friends, only interests.
Hans Heidtmann of U 559 was lucky that the machine itself went down with the U Boat but it didn't prevent the cryptographic materials from being captured. Great stuff like always Astrid!
Thank you for this insightful content. It makes one wonder what may have been different had the Poles honoured their partnership and shared the details of their success...
I loved the chaotic clip on IG when Indie talks to the girls and Astrid answers in loud german while Sparty steps in as well lol
Swedish code breakers in WWII are often forgotten, here is some info:
One of the greatest accomplishments in the history of cryptography occurred in 1940 when a Swedish mathematician broke the German code used for strategic military communications. This story has all the elements of a classic thriller: a desperate wartime situation; a moody and secretive mathematical genius with a talent for cryptography; and a stunning mathematical feat, mysterious to this day. Arne Beurling, the man who inherited Einstein's office at Princeton's Institute for Advanced Study, was the figure who played this role at a crucial moment in world history.
Though the cracking of the code from the Geheimschreiber (G-Schreiber) device is every bit as impressive as the breaking of the Enigma code by the Poles and English, this secret has been kept for over 50 years.
your coverage is wonderful....thank you so much....
It's always good to see and hear of forgotten individuals who played a big role in world history. And this guy was one of them. Loved the video Astrid n Anna. You two are awesome.
This is such a fascinating story full of twists and turns! Thank you for sharing it!
And thanks for watching!
Thank you for the lesson.
Another fabulous S&T by the queen and princess. Thank you to everyone who pulls this series off week after week!
Thanks again Astrid and Anna for a fascinating story beautifully told!
Outstanding episode Darlings ❤
Brava, ladies! How I love the two of you together, Astrid and Anna. You form a magical duo, erudite and beautiful. Please continue. 😍❤
My grandmother worked as a wren at Bletchley. the work of her and her colleagues was not recognized until much later in her lifetime because of the secrecy of it all. So much of this story has gone untold for so long, but their work was as important as that of the soldiers, airmen, sailors, and generals on the Allied side. thanks for sharing some more of the figures behind this endeavor ... or for solving the enigma if you will.
Fantastic story, and well told
Anna looks amazing. The story is great (as always) thank you!!
Listening to these two, I feel like I'm being interrogated!
Can't tell who is "good cop" and who is "bad cop"!!
😂😂
They totally don't work for the Abwehr 🤫😏.
I think i heard of this story in look and learn magazine in the70s if i am not mistaken😮
Germany purchased and then modified a commercially available, electro-mechanical coding machine first sold for banking use about 1922. It is amazing to think that while chemistry, atomic energy, internal combustion engine technology, computing, math, physics and so on were in an era of rapid development, Germany was using Enigma machines right through to 1945. The insane part is that the Germans may have actually believed Enigma was still unbreakable. Let's not forget that the British were using the nearly identical Typex machine at the same time Germany was using Enigma.
Improper use broke Enigma. If every message ends with"heil Hitler" it is easier to crack. If weather report is always sent at 0600 Berlin Time and starts with that word (Wetterbürette) it is easier to crack.
Astrid's style is imposing, I'm always dazzled by all the colours she wears
amazing story
I really like where this series has gone lately. The major characters in the intelligence war have been mostly done long ago by now, so it's getting to characters that do not get brought up. It's honor to what they've done to keep their actions alive. And a reminder that history is not made by a handful of men, but a large large collective of people acting for various reasons.
i like these 2. keep up the good work.
Great story like always ladies 😊
I would love to hear more about cracking the Lorenz Cipher used on the "Geheimschreiber" by Nazi high command.
Bill Tutte and his Colossus are always overlooked but he made the first step in the digital revolution we still live in today.....
How many more people like Schmidt will never be known to us that resisted for whatever motive in the hope of avoiding another war. Great video, thank you.
A good video, ver informative. Thanks
Thanks a lot for watching! -TimeGhost Ambassador
Charlton Heston told about Th. Schmidt, at "Secrets of War". So he has been long discovered.
A complicated story , wonderfully and entertainingly presented, thank you.
One of the ideas in the British view of this secret war is that Germany never knew the Enigma was broken. After your great documentary I would say the Abwehr must have been able to work that out
Thank you.
Good details. Ultra was ok but not for...Kriegsmarine's codes: e.g., the disastrous raid in Dieppe on Aug.19,1942 to capture codes from Headquarters there. What could be the other goals of such a dangerous operation? Not just..."pleasing" Stalin''s cry for help then.
I checked again on wikipedia@it confirms "Why was Dieppe raid?". A Candian historian revealed it earlier:
Ultra intelligence made a very significant contribution in the Battle of the Atlantic. Winston Churchill wrote "The only thing that ever really frightened me during the war was the U-boat peril."[60] The decryption of Enigma signals to the U-boats was much more difficult than those of the Luftwaffe. It was not until June 1941 that Bletchley Park was able to read a significant amount of this traffic currently.[61] Transatlantic convoys were then diverted away from the U-boat "wolfpacks", and the U-boat supply vessels were sunk. On 1 February 1942, Enigma U-boat traffic became unreadable because of the introduction of a different 4-rotor Enigma machine. This situation persisted until December 1942, although other German naval Enigma messages were still being deciphered, such as those of the U-boat training command at Kiel.[62] From December 1942 to the end of the war, Ultra allowed Allied convoys to evade U-boat patrol lines, and guided Allied anti-submarine forces to the location of U-boats at sea.
It was from the exclusive British class system awarding a prominent role in the war to the royal but talentless paedophile prince *Dickie Mountbatten* who was assigned to run _Combined Operations._ He later mucked up the independence of India, another incompetent shambolic blood bath.
Are you planning on covering the "pinch raids" that the allies ran in order to obtain the monthly dispatches detailing the wheel and plugboard settings? These raids resulted in at least one apparent disaster, but kept things going. Although David Kohnen from the Naval College disagrees, my research suggests that the capture of the German U-Boat U-505 was, in fact, planned to seize the latest codes from a boat that was notorious for its poor morale.
I'll never overlook Gretz-Armainvilliers again.
Gotta love the mom & daughter team. Expressions and gestures are entertaining.
It Really bothers me that the whole family is just overflowing with charm and Swagger. From granny Astrid to uncle Indy right down to baby Anna, everyone is absolutely fabulous at presenting content.
I knew about most of the Polish part of this story for some 20 years now, when I read it in a book by US historians, and the way the British mass culture memory of Enigma totally ignores it always bugged me. I never knew about the French and the German double agent part of it.
I suspect this story is also tied to another common misconception about the run-up to WWII: the notion that Neville Chamberlain & Éduard Daladier were simply naive when they agreed to the Munich Agreement. The backstory I remember from reading another history article is that British & French assessment of the intel on the size of the German military (the other intel Hans-Thilo Schmidt was tasked with) was faulty: they thought several phantom divisions only being set up are real, thus they thought they need time to re-arm themselves to stand a chance in a war.
They absolutely wanted a 2 front war - and the British public didn’t want to re-arm.
@@71kimgI’d correct that slightly: they absolutely wanted to avoid war, and thought that appeasing Hitler would achieve that. Rearmament was not only unpopular, it was explicitly a lower priority than the economic recovery efforts. The whole “they were buying time to rearm” is not supported by the records in any way shape or form. It’s a false post construction created to make the French and British policy less inane.
Interesting revelation.
First I lean it is Alan Turing
Then I learn Poles laid the ground work.
Now this.
Learning is fun.
Cool tie Anna.
great video ladies! love the ties! i enjoyed the Benedict Cumberbatch
movie about Enigma ,The Imitation Game
...which, as the video proves, was very far from the historical truth.
well ya lol soooooooo very far. @@Daneelro
Love the thumbnail
The timeghost meme division strikes again
Those eyes.
Did you ever discuss Herbert Yardley in you between the wars stuff?
The French clearly understood the advice of Sun Tzu that "to remain in ignorance of the enemy's condition simply because one grudges the outlay of a hundred ounces of silver in honours and emoluments, is the height of inhumanity."
Ah, the Delightful Duo!
The thumbnail: *chefs kiss*
I so love the accent of these ladies.
Love the earrings Astrid!
May Sarton: "One must think like a hero in order to behave like a merely decent human being."
7:06 I don't blame you for mispronouncing this one and the following names. ;-)
How difficult is it to have Polish, French, English and German names all in one episode?
Félicitations pour votre accent, mademoiselle Deinhard !
Alan Turing's heroic actions were rewarded with one the exact same rights violations that the Nazis perpetrated
I always admire how you try to pronounce polish names.
Thumbnail is very accurate🏏🏏🏏🏏🏏🇵🇰🇵🇰🇵🇰🇵🇰🇵🇰
Here is a question I've never been able to find answer to: did Soviets ever break Enigma? If so, when did they break it?
They had the traitor John Cairncross spying inside ‘Tunny’, the breaking of the far more advanced 7 rotor Lorenz teleprinter based encryption of the Nazi high command. He passed on secrets of much higher importance than the routine Enigma traffic.
_Allegedly_ he was known about by the Brits and was secretly used to allow the passing of information to the paranoid Soviets that they trusted more from their spy Cairncross than they did from any official secret information releases from the Brits. That *might be* a false fig-leaf just trying to reduce the Brit’s embarrassment from the communist Cambridge five plus one spy ring.
The Soviets didn’t need to break German encryption just like they didn’t need to do all the atomic weapon research, they stole the knowledge.
A comment from me vanished! There was a communist spy inside ultra, the Soviets didn't need to break Enigma.
Biggest problem the Germans were too arrogant to believe Enigma was cracked. Although Dönitz had an inkling someting was happening when he started to lose the U-boot war. But still couldn't comprehend or believe it was cracked.
Gosh, Anna sounds almost like Astrid.
it's said that breaking the enigma code shorten the war by 2 years, i think if the allies had the talents of Astrid and Anna in WW2, the war would have been shortened by another 2 years, your Fabulous Darlings.
Come for the top-notch history. Stay for Astrid's French accent.
she's German
@@HistoryTeacherSteve Indeed she is. She does a French accent at 6:10 when describing the answer Bertrand got from Paris.
You are very good at ciphering polish surnames.
In defense of the Poles' reticence to divulge their success w/ Enigma, they may have already suspected how thoroughly compromised British intelligence [& most likely the French too] were by Soviet spies, with whom Poland had been having extensive, uh, "disagreements" throughout the 20s and 30s, comprising a greater threat than Germany did at the time. The Cambridge 5 are still mostly unknown to Americans w/ an interest in WW2, with perhaps the sole exception of Kim Philby...
No b.s. ladies and gentlemen
What about Elizebeth Friedman in the US?
As usual… reality is so much more complex than the initial stories told in grade school. Always beware the person who wants to create an hero image and worship that persona
The German enigma machine surely does take all the press, but the American Navy cypher machine with 16! rotors shurely does take the cake.
Remember in 1930's copying technology was not like that of today. Ashi's presentation of copies of the original manual presents questions.
I think you might be missing an essential point here: although top secret, this was a document issued in many copies… it was the user’s manual. Literally thousands of users needed one of these in order to use the Enigma.
Zwei geniale Frauen.
Enigma balls.
There, i said it. I'm sorry.
ENIGMA BALLS lmao gottem
Not an infinite number of combinations.
Luckily that turned out to be the key to cracking it 😊
Fantastic outfits! 🙂
The real person who cracked the enigma was Artur Scherbius. If not for him noone would ever crack enigma.
A thrilled watching video about ordinary betrayal man against his country for the sake of Cash 💸 💰... ( French, polish, and British also they weren't fulfilled allies during WW2)