To this day, the American and British military archives contain classified cryptographic machines developed by German specialists at the end of the war. Those modifications, information about which we managed to find, indicate that even today German encryption machines are of great scientific value: some instructions were made public only in 1996. But most are classified as "most secret". The only thing left for specialists is to study the cars found in the Austrian Toplitz lake: the locals call it the "black pearl".
German point of contact. Left - Enigma encryption machine
Enigma marked the beginning of the creation of the German military cryptographic service. But the German command, planning strategically important operations, no longer trusted Enigma, with the help of which orders were transmitted. Despite the complexity of the design and the difficult algorithm of work, the cipher machine, which was widespread in the Wehrmacht ground forces, was periodically broken by the Polish, English and Russian intelligence services.
Vladimir Lot, candidate of historical sciences, believes that "in 1942, employees of a special decryption group discovered the possibility of decrypting German telegrams, encrypted by the same Enigma, and began to design special mechanisms that accelerate this decryption."
First Polish cryptologists, and then a special group of English scientists at the British decryption center (Code and Cipher School at
Bletchly Park) broke the Enigma cipher code. The final blow was struck with the help of an electromechanical device "Bomb" American Alan Turing, who led one of the five teams in the center of the decryption. Moreover, after the end of the war, all Alan Turing's cars were dismantled, and many of their components were destroyed.
Meteorologists were indirectly to blame for the decryption of the Enigma cipher. The word "weather" became the clue.
Punctual German forecasters transmitted the weather report to the headquarters every day at the same time - six in the morning. English cryptologists, knowing this, were able to establish a pattern: the messages always contained the word wetter (weather - German), which, according to the rules of German grammar, always stood in a certain place in the sentence.
Scientists tried to improve the reliability of the machine - to prevent break-ins, the rotor was periodically replaced (their number reached 5-6 pieces). There were several modifications of Enigma created by the inventor Arthur Scherbius: Enigma A, Enigma B, Enigma C, Enigma C, Enigma-1 and 4.
Realizing what a huge threat arose, the Nazis actively worked on the creation of new encryption machines. It took about four years for the first experimental batch of SchluesselGerae-41 (SG-41) and its modification SG-41Z to appear in 1944. The machine was nicknamed Hitlersmuhle - "Hitler's mill" because on the right side of the machine there was a handle, such as on hand coffee mills. In the future, the mechanical handle, from which the name originated, was planned to be replaced with an engine - drawings were developed, but this project could not be implemented due to the rapid advance of the Soviet Army.
When creating a new machine, German designers took something from the design of the Enigma: encryption and decryption were identical.
But the main difference between "Hitler's mill" from Enigma was the absence of vacuum tubes: SG worked with two thin strips of paper. On one of them, block letters were entered, on the other, information obtained as a result of encryption or decryption was displayed.
But the Germans copied most of the mechanisms. Under the tracing paper, they put the M-209 encryption machine, created by the inventor of Russian origin Boris Hagelin: his father worked as manager of the "Nobel Brothers Oil Production Partnership": Boris Hagelin was born in Baku, whose family moved to St. Petersburg, and in 1904 - to Sweden …
During the war, one of the copies of the M-209 fell into the hands of German designers. They took it apart by cogs, carefully examined every detail and copied them completely. Therefore, the interior of the SG-41 was very similar to the American M-209 encryption machine. For example, both cipher machines had pin wheels for uneven rotation.
Despite the fact that German specialists copied many important details and the very principle of operation of the M-209, they were able to create a more secure modification with a new design: it would be unreasonable and dangerous to completely repeat the enemy's vehicle - the encryption model was more complicated than for the M-209.
A military order for the manufacture of new machines was received by the German company Wonderwerke, located in the small town of Chemnitz (during the GDR the city was renamed Karl-Marx-Stad - German). At that time this company was one of the most famous in Germany, a manufacturer of typewriters and cryptographic machines, including Enigma.
In mid-1944, the German High Command planned to purchase 11,000 SG 41 vehicles from Wonderwerke for the Armed Forces. Also, as part of the military order, 2,000 copies of the machines were supposed to arrive for the meteorological service. Presumably, these were smaller versions of the car, mass production of which had not yet begun. Moreover, for meteorologists, the cars were made with ten-digit encoding - from zero to nine.
The manufacturing firm could not cope with the military order: Soviet troops were advancing in this area. The German command ordered to blow up the secret factory where encryption machines were produced - all technical documentation was also subject to destruction.
Allied aviation also helped hide military secrets: in the spring of 1945, the city of Chemnitz was actively bombed by the Allies, knowing full well that many secrets were hidden in this small town that could fall into the hands of the advancing Soviet soldiers. "We will bomb Germany - one city after another. We will bomb you harder and harder until you stop waging war. This is our goal. We will pursue it mercilessly. City after city: Lubeck, Rostock, Cologne, Emden, Bremen, Wilhelmshaven, Duisburg, Hamburg - and this list will only grow, "- said the leaflets, which were scattered in millions of copies.
History takes amazing twists and turns! In peacetime, it is in Chemnitz that the largest Technical University with a budget of 138.9 million euros (in 2012 prices) will open its doors, where a wide variety of meetings on cryptography will be held, several theses on encryption machines will be defended.
After the end of the Great Patriotic War, individual copies of "Hitler's mill" came to Norway: today it is known about two operating machines, the cost of which reaches 160,000 euros (in 2009 prices). On one of them was preserved the last encryption received from Doenitz with the following content: "The fight will continue."
At the end of the war, German specialists worked on other projects of encryption machines, but little is known about them today.
One of such projects is the Siemens T43 encryption machine, which experts called the ghost of cryptographic history because information about it is still classified. When another secret of the encryption machine will be revealed is unknown.
The T43 was one of the first machines to operate on the principle of a one-time pad. The random numbers required for this operation are fed into the device as a perforated strip that cannot be used twice. The T43 pierced all processed strips and thus made them unusable.
According to experts, about 30 to 50 of these vehicles were built and used by the Germans in the last months of the war in some combat units. Individual copies of the T43 after the war ended up in Norway, Spain and South America.
There is still a lot of unclear around T43. After the war, six of these vehicles were destroyed in the United States. The machines used in Norway were sent to the British Decryption Center at Bletchley Park. It is clear that the allies strictly classified all information about this ultra-modern machine.
Moreover, this veil of secrecy is not lifted today. As before, the British and Americans, having confirmed that they have the T43, refuse to release the archives concerning these vehicles.
Little is known about the post-war fate of a device called the Hellschreiber, invented by the German Rudolf Hell in 1929. This machine became the prototype of the fax.
The first six samples of encryption machines based on the invention of Rudolf Hell arrived on ships and submarines based in the Mediterranean. German expert cryptologist during the Third Reich von Erich Huttenhain points out in his memoirs that “235 different replacement options could be made with the Hellschreiber on the letter.
It is known from various sources that several encryption machines are resting at a depth of 100 meters in the Austrian Toplitz lake, or as it is also called the "Black Pearl", where the Nazis conducted experiments with explosives, tested T-5 homing torpedoes to destroy submarines, " V-1 "," V-2 ".
This area is surrounded by impenetrable mountains and forests for many kilometers - you can get there only on foot. It is dangerous to explore the lake: the Austrian government has banned diving into the water by a special order. Nevertheless, divers dive into the black lake and they see, as a rule, a thick layer of trees - the Nazis deliberately dumped thousands of cubic meters of wood into the lake, made a double bottom out of nets. But this does not scare away historians and treasure hunters - they search and find a lot of interesting things in the lake. One of the recent finds is the Hitler's Mill encryption machine.
The lake is slowly revealing its secrets - the military archives of foreign intelligence services are in no hurry to do this. Perhaps because the inventions made in the field of cryptography by German specialists are still of great scientific and political interest today.
In the photo: Soviet meteorologist Dmitry Groman, transmitting his weather reports with the help of a Soviet encryption machine, did not realize that the word "weather" would become the key for breaking the codes of the German Enigma encryption machine
