# Questions about the Enigma Machine **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [January 20, 2015, 10:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/questions-about-the-enigma-machine/710422 "2015-01-20T22:52:30Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 8\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [January 22, 2015, 4:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/questions-about-the-enigma-machine/710422/41 "2015-01-22T04:00:03Z")
Except they weren’t really deciphering messages one letter at a time. If you’ve got the right key, you get the whole message practically all at once. If you don’t have the right key, then you’ve got gobbledygook. ---
**Author:** ![Mr\_Downtown](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/8e8cbc/32.png) [@Mr\_Downtown](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mr_Downtown)\ **Post date:** [January 22, 2015, 5:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/questions-about-the-enigma-machine/710422/42 "2015-01-22T05:01:11Z")
> [@MrFloppy](#): > > Haven’t seen the movie yet. I hear it is good. It’s an enjoyable movie, but it goes so far beyond the usual composite characters/simplified details/collapsed timeframe that the disclaimer should say “sort of tangentially related to a true story.” ---
**Author:** ![BigT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bigt/32/12044_2.png) [@BigT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BigT)\ **Post date:** [January 22, 2015, 5:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/questions-about-the-enigma-machine/710422/43 "2015-01-22T05:11:09Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > Except they weren’t really deciphering messages one letter at a time. If you’ve got the right key, you get the whole message practically all at once. If you don’t have the right key, then you’ve got gobbledygook. The way I understand it, the machines actually are doing it one letter at a time until they reach a contradiction. My understanding comes from the videos linked in this thread along with the BBC version of the play that _The Immitation Game_ is based on. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [January 22, 2015, 1:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/questions-about-the-enigma-machine/710422/44 "2015-01-22T13:42:34Z")
In a strict sense, it’s one letter at a time, but you go from one letter to the next so quickly that you’d never have a chance to autocomplete “hit” into “hitler”. ---
**Author:** ![Loach](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/loach/32/350_2.png) [@Loach](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Loach)\ **Post date:** [January 22, 2015, 4:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/questions-about-the-enigma-machine/710422/45 "2015-01-22T16:18:23Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > The irony of the code-talkers was that the Navajo language probably was genuinely uncrackable, with the resources any of the Axis had… but they didn’t actually use the Navajo language. To “increase” security, they instead used a code developed based on the Navajo language, but the code was such that, had the Axis realized just how simple it was, they could have solved it in an afternoon. All it was was a letter-substitution cipher, with English-language letters being represented by Navajo words. And you don’t need to know what those words mean to be able to figure out what letter each one represents. As far as I know the code talkers were used for tactical communication not strategic. Unless you had people who could both intercept communications many of which were done by wire and decrypt on the fly it might as well have been an unbreakable code. It doesn’t matter if someone somewhere can decrypt the message if the message is “take Hill 45, time now.” ---
**Author:** ![Malthus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/85f322/32.png) [@Malthus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Malthus)\ **Post date:** [January 22, 2015, 4:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/questions-about-the-enigma-machine/710422/46 "2015-01-22T16:32:20Z")
> [@Loach](#): > > As far as I know the code talkers were used for tactical communication not strategic. Unless you had people who could both intercept communications many of which were done by wire and decrypt on the fly it might as well have been an unbreakable code. It doesn’t matter if someone somewhere can decrypt the message if the message is “take Hill 45, time now.” Apparently, the fact that the code talkers used a code based on their native language, rather than their native language alone, was useful: the Japanese actually captured a Navajo speaker at Bataan, and knew enough to torture him to make him attempt to decipher the code - but he couldn’t, even if he had wanted to. > **[How Effective Was Navajo Code?](http://www.thepeoplespaths.net/articles/navcode.htm)** The guy certainly had it rough! Tortured because the Japanese thought he was Japanese - then, after convincing the Japanese he was Navajo, tortured again to make him decode a code based, improbably enough, on his language - which he couldn’t; then, just to round things out - shipped off to Nagasaki to be nuked! He survived it all, though, to give the above interview at the age of 72. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [January 22, 2015, 4:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/questions-about-the-enigma-machine/710422/47 "2015-01-22T16:58:16Z")
> [@](#): > > Quoth **Loach** : > > As far as I know the code talkers were used for tactical communication not strategic. Unless you had people who could both intercept communications many of which were done by wire and decrypt on the fly it might as well have been an unbreakable code. It doesn’t matter if someone somewhere can decrypt the message if the message is “take Hill 45, time now.” So someone back in Berlin or Tokyo spends an afternoon cracking the code, and then they give their field officers a sheet of paper with the cracked code on it, letting them decode any future transmissions nearly as quickly as the code talkers could. ---
**Author:** ![Malthus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/85f322/32.png) [@Malthus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Malthus)\ **Post date:** [January 22, 2015, 6:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/questions-about-the-enigma-machine/710422/48 "2015-01-22T18:08:28Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > So someone back in Berlin or Tokyo spends an afternoon cracking the code, and then they give their field officers a sheet of paper with the cracked code on it, letting them decode any future transmissions nearly as quickly as the code talkers could. From the accounts, it seems it wasn’t a letter-for-letter substitution - more the use of invented words for modern military terms and suchlike. From the above link: > [@](#): > > “One day two Japanese women visited me,” he says. "They wrote Navajo words in English and asked what they meant. So, I told them: “This means bird, this means turtle, this means water.” > > Kieyoomia says he now thinks the Japanese were baffled after hearing the Navajo Code Talkers speak in their language, which was unwritten at the time. Unable to comprehend the sounds they turned to their captive Navajo. > > The code, used by Navajo Marines to relay information across the Pacific, had the Navajo language as its basis, but developed a secret vocabulary in which armaments were renamed as everyday Navajo words. > > When the Japanese questioned Kieyoomia his translations were useless. > > “I didn’t know about the code,” he says. This made it generally uncrackable - even though the Japanese had a native speaker to torture. Though admittedly, had that speaker been working with a modern cryptographer, it would be no more difficult to crack than any other ‘book code’. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/questions-about-the-enigma-machine/710422.md?page=2)