[Congressional Record Volume 147, Number 68 (Thursday, May 17, 2001)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page E841]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                 ENIGMA CODE BROKEN MAINLY BY THE POLES

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                           HON. BARNEY FRANK

                            of massachusetts

                    in the house of representatives

                         Thursday, May 17, 2001

  Mr. FRANK. Mr. Speaker, one of the most significant events in World 
War II other than those which took place on the battlefield was the 
cracking of the Germans' Enigma code. This great contribution to our 
victory in the war against Hitler was recently highlighted because of 
the theft of one of the Enigma machines last year in England. This led 
to some discussion in the newspapers about this event, and there are 
extremely well informed people who believe that the newspaper 
discussions of the event were inaccurate, particularly in not giving 
sufficient credit to the work of brilliant analysts from the University 
of Poznan in Poland in cracking this code. According to Edward 
Piwowarczyk of New Bedford, an authority on this matter, and the 
Program Director of the Polish Happy Time on WNBH radio, ``by 1937, the 
Poles deciphered nearly three-quarters of all intercepted German 
military communications,'' and ``in July 1939, the Poles offered their 
accomplishments to the potential allies.''
  Because it is important for us to get history right, and because the 
brilliant achievements of the Polish analysts who did this work deserve 
recognition now that this matter has once again come to the fore, I 
submit Edward Piwowarczyk's brief discussion of this history to be 
printed here.

       [From the New Bedford (MA) Standard-Times, Oct. 13, 2000]

                 Enigma Code Broken Mainly by the Poles

                       (By Edward L. Piwowarczyk)

       One can say that Poland's most significant contribution to 
     the Allies winning World War II was cracking the masterful 
     German war code Enigma. According to an Associated Press 
     story in the Oct. 11 Standard-Times, ``Historians say the 
     codebreakers' work shortened the war by as much as two 
     years.'' The British contribution was only to improve the 
     Polish analytic machine called Bombe, which would process 
     intercepted Engima-based communications and enable 
     decipherment of them.
       Here's the story. In the late 1920's, Polish radio 
     monitoring stations of German messages started to receive a 
     new type of machine code. The BS-4 section, department of 
     German codes at the Main Staff in Warsaw, were helpless. So, 
     the University of Poznan was chosen as an organizer of a 
     cryptological course for military purposes.
       Through a combination of hard work and brilliance, three 
     members of this class, namely, Marian Rejewski, Jerzy Rozycki 
     and Henry Zygalski, solved the puzzle. The cryptological 
     success was also a scientific success of the Poles. A command 
     of higher mathematics useful for investigation on code 
     systems, especially the so-called permutation and cycle 
     theory, was a prerequisite to master the Enigma Cipher 
     Machine.
       By 1937, the Poles deciphered nearly three-quarters of all 
     intercepted German military communications, a tremendous aid 
     to Allied forces. Major Maksymilian Ciezki, head of the 
     German Department of the Polish Signal Intelligence, along 
     with the group of Polish mathematicians mentioned, were 
     responsible for decoding Hitler's enigma: the code name for 
     their operation Wicher (Gale).
       In July 1939, the Poles offered their accomplishments to 
     the potential allies. Delegations from the French staff, Lt. 
     Col. Gustave Bertrand and Capt. Henri Bracquentie, and the 
     British staff, Commander Dillwyn Knox and Commander Alistair 
     Denniston, arrived at the secret BS-4 Center situated in the 
     Kabacki Forest outside of Warsaw. The Polish specialists 
     acquainted them with the method of breaking the Nazi codes. 
     Each delegation was presented with one Polish-made Enigma 
     coding machine called Bombe.
       Just this further note: Recently in Poland, the Polish 
     government honored Marian Rejewski, Jerzy Rozycki and Henry 
     Zygalski, posthumously, for their outstanding achievements.
       The eminent English historian Ronald Lewin, in his book 
     ``Ultra Goes to War,'' details the indispensable Polish 
     contribution to World War II. The dedication at the beginning 
     of Lewin's book reads: ``To the Poles who sowed the seed and 
     to those who reaped the harvest.''

     

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