Irish voters 'hostile' to poppy symbol

Hotblack Desiato

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123968808#Comment_123968808

I don't think the fact that there are hardly any WWII veterans left is a coincidence.

Back in the day anyone seeking to make political capital out of the sacrifices of millions would have been told where to get off and vigorously so.

saabsaab

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123968801#Comment_123968801

"the Polish were the first to break its code through a groundbreaking mathematical approach. They built a replica of the machine and developed the "bomba," a cryptanalytic machine to help with code-breaking, and shared their intelligence with the British and French before World War II. This information became the crucial foundation for the code-breaking efforts at Bletchley Park"

itsacoolday

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123983178#Comment_123983178

And in 1939 nobody could break the Enigma codes due to changes in German procedures and extra security layers the Germans built in to the machines. Thanks to the work in Bletchley park, England the codes began to be broken in volume in the early forties. After heavy losses to u boats in the battle of the Atlantic in the first few years of the war, it enabled the British to direct convoys away from u boat packs more. This was all kept very secret, not even the Americans knew. There are books on it, very interesting.

 

jmcc

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123984210#Comment_123984210

The reason that the Enigma messages were decrypted in high volumes was due to the US industrialisation of the process. The UK simply didn't have the resources to build the number of bombes necessary because Enigma was such a widely used system. It was very different from the book codes that had been commonly used previously. Those replaced words with number groups and the codebooks were distributed. Typically, if one codebook fell into enemy hands, the entire system was compromised. Enigma was a "game changer" because it was an electro-mechanical system where the keys and settings could be changed. Adding an extra rotor increased the complexity of the system.

The Battle of The Atlantic also had inputs from mathematical analysis of convoys and u-boat wolfpacks. Stephen Budiansky's "Blackett's War" covers a lot of that.

If you want an accessible book on crypto in WW2, read Stephen Budiansky's "A Battle Of Wits". In technical terms, Enigma itself was not broken. It was the key system and key handling that were successfully attacked and these attacks allowed the Enigma messages to be decrypted. If you want some reasonably accurate fiction, watch the movie "Enigma". It is based on Robert Harris' book "Enigma".

csirl

So we all have to decode an enigma machine while wearing a poppy???

itsacoolday

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123984223#Comment_123984223

There are numerous books on the Enigma, any I have read have been very good and all are consistent, and totally different to the Hollywood movie you mention.

The British captured an enigma machine in May 1941. The Americans did not capture one until late 1944. The film gives the impression it was the Americans who first captured an enigma and who were able to break enigma messages in volume. In reality, as all the books say, it was the British at Bletchley Park were the primary force in breaking Enigma, with help of course from those early Polish people etc. The Germans did not realise so many enigma messages had been intercepted and deciphered until after the war.

jmcc

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123984334#Comment_123984334

I am not sure that you have read many books on Enigma. The "Hollywood" movie to which you refer is "U-571". The movie based on the Robert Harris book "Enigma" is also called "Enigma" and is, for fiction, quite accurate in places. The Harris book even has a comprehensive appendix on Enigma and how it worked. A number of Enigma machines had been captured by the British in 1940.

The UK simply did not have the resources to build enough bombes.The Americans provided the industrial might to build more bombes so that Enigma messages could be decrypted at scale. At one stage, there was even a shortage of coloured pencils used in mapping the various Enigma senders. This was what would become known as Traffic Analysis. The US and the UK were cooperating on cryptanalysis before the US officially entered the war.

The decryption of Enigma messages was a closely held secret for many years after the war and it was not until the late 1960s and early 1970s that more information began to emerge. The Germans had suspicions about Enigma having been compromised. You simply do not understand the sheer complexity of what the Allies and Bletchley Park did in decrypting Enigma messages.

Possessing an Enigma machine did not mean that every message encrypted with that machine could be decrypted. Decryption needed the settings and plugboard connections. The most useful thing that the Allies had was the poor procedure (reusing plugboard connection settings and easily guessed message text) by the Germans. If the Germans had enforced proper procedures, it would have been much more difficult to decrypt Enigma messages.

jmcc

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123984266#Comment_123984266

That might take some time.:) People don't have to wear a poppy and certainly not in Ireland. Some people might wear one to commemtorate relatives. Many in Ireland who wear them are just looking for a reaction.

Tony EH

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123985661#Comment_123985661

The most useful thing that the Allies had was the poor procedure

Going against type, the Gerries were actually quite lax in many ways. Amongst the Wehrmacht, it was the Luftwaffe who were the worst offenders in that regard. It was their codes that proved the easiest to break, although it was the Heer's "green" key that was first broken in 1940. Of course, I say "easiest", but there was an immense amount of work put into it.

The "Hollywood" movie to which you refer is "U-571". The movie based on the Robert Harris book "Enigma" is also called "Enigma" and is, for fiction, quite accurate in places.

Yes 'Enigma' is a British film with Dougray Scott and Kate Winslet. Apart from a pretty poor romance story, it's quite an entertaining picture, and far more accurate than the abomination that was 'U-571'. Which reminds me, I must actually sit down to 'The Imitation Game' at some point.

itsacoolday

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123985824#Comment_123985824

Most people related to the hundreds of thousands of Irish people who volunteered to serve in ŵw1 and ww2 are proud of them and the sacrifices they made. It is not political because they were all treated equally and with respect by the British.

jmcc

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123986381#Comment_123986381

Some of it is simplified for drama. It is quite a good movie.

There is a lot of focus on Enigma as most people have heard of it. An important achievement was developing a system (Collossus) to deal with Tunny (the Lorenz cipher used for German command level messages). It was an electronic machine using valves rather than the electro-mechanical bombe used for Enigma. With Enigma, machines were acquired. BP effectively reverse-engineered the Tunny machine without ever having seen it. That system was a magnitude beyond Enigma and even used automated teletype transmission rather than Morse Code. Being able to read German command level traffic was important. That was only declassified in the 1980s and there was a lot of speculation about the Allies having a spy in Hitler's HQ.

On the procedures, a German admiral sent a message in Tunny and then sent the same message in Enigma enquiring about his son's posting. It wasn' just the operators of Enigma who screwed up. The Germans had their successes too. They had broken some of the early UK naval codes and the British lost a lot of ships as a result of that. The problem was that the German cryptanalysis effort was not centralised. Otherwise, things could have turned out very differently.