# Were the German codes broken by the Enigma machine coherent German? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [December 3, 2025, 2:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/were-the-german-codes-broken-by-the-enigma-machine-coherent-german/1025367 "2025-12-03T14:58:08Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Humbagger](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/db5fbb/32.png) [@Humbagger](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Humbagger)\ **Post date:** [December 3, 2025, 9:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/were-the-german-codes-broken-by-the-enigma-machine-coherent-german/1025367/21 "2025-12-03T21:52:24Z")
Referring back to the OP, there apparently were more than 400 Navajo code talkers serving everywhere in the Pacific. ---
**Author:** ![EinsteinsHund](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/einsteinshund/32/8400_2.png) [@EinsteinsHund](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/EinsteinsHund)\ **Post date:** [December 3, 2025, 9:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/were-the-german-codes-broken-by-the-enigma-machine-coherent-german/1025367/22 "2025-12-03T21:58:44Z")
> [@Pleonast](#): > > And replace “w” with “uu”, “j” with “i”, “q” with “k”, etc. Those are all relatively new letters, not really _necessary_. 😉 Or ‘u’ with ‘v’. I still can easily read ancient Roman inscriptions (read, not translate though). ---
**Author:** ![HeyHomie](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/heyhomie/32/207_2.png) [@HeyHomie](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/HeyHomie)\ **Post date:** [December 3, 2025, 9:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/were-the-german-codes-broken-by-the-enigma-machine-coherent-german/1025367/23 "2025-12-03T21:59:46Z")
> [@Little\_Nemo](#): > > If I’m understanding the OP correctly, he’s asking about the use of code words not slang. Yeah, the Navajos used code words in addition to the communications themselves being in Navajo. So for example, a codetalker would refer to a shoe as a [the Navajo words for] “gofaster” or a grenade as a [the Navajo word for] “potato.” Which is why Joe Kieyoomia couldn’t make heads or tales of that Navajo code, despite speaking Navajo. I was wondering if the Germans did the same thing. ---
**Author:** ![glee](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/b5a626/32.png) [@glee](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/glee)\ **Post date:** [December 3, 2025, 10:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/were-the-german-codes-broken-by-the-enigma-machine-coherent-german/1025367/24 "2025-12-03T22:04:02Z")
I’ve visited [Bletchley Park | Home](https://www.bletchleypark.org.uk/) where the Enigma codebreaking took place. Well worth a visit. One helpful point was that apparently one German operator used to start his messages with the same greeting each time - which helps decoding considerably… ---
**Author:** ![Great\_Antibob](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/e47c2d/32.png) [@Great\_Antibob](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Great_Antibob)\ **Post date:** [December 3, 2025, 10:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/were-the-german-codes-broken-by-the-enigma-machine-coherent-german/1025367/25 "2025-12-03T22:07:12Z")
> [@Humbagger](#): > > Referring back to the OP, there apparently were more than 400 Navajo code talkers serving everywhere in the Pacific. Absolutely, and they were well aware of the security risk of having so many of them and each had to undergo rigorous training to memorize the codebook. Later in the war, they were also assigned a personal bodyguard to protect them (sometimes being mistaken for Japanese by less knowledgeable Americans) but also, secretly, to kill them if there was a risk they’d be captured. Fortunately, that did not occur. Germany produce an order of magnitude more machines than that. It soon becomes unrealistic to rely on large numbers of human beings not only memorizing large codebooks but also avoiding capture. ---
**Author:** ![EinsteinsHund](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/einsteinshund/32/8400_2.png) [@EinsteinsHund](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/EinsteinsHund)\ **Post date:** [December 3, 2025, 10:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/were-the-german-codes-broken-by-the-enigma-machine-coherent-german/1025367/26 "2025-12-03T22:07:13Z")
> [@glee](#): > > One helpful point was that apparently one German operator used to start his messages with the same greeting each time - which helps decoding considerably… That’s just face slappingly stupid. ---
**Author:** ![Great\_Antibob](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/e47c2d/32.png) [@Great\_Antibob](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Great_Antibob)\ **Post date:** [December 3, 2025, 10:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/were-the-german-codes-broken-by-the-enigma-machine-coherent-german/1025367/27 "2025-12-03T22:09:08Z")
Sort of. A more or less standard procedure would have Engima operators (not just one) repeat the first 3 characters twice as a form of error correction. So, if a message started “PRL”, they would write “PRLPRL”. Good for getting messages through cleanly. Not so great for security. They later stopped this practice for obvious security reasons ---
**Author:** ![EinsteinsHund](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/einsteinshund/32/8400_2.png) [@EinsteinsHund](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/EinsteinsHund)\ **Post date:** [December 3, 2025, 10:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/were-the-german-codes-broken-by-the-enigma-machine-coherent-german/1025367/28 "2025-12-03T22:14:55Z")
Yeah, but that’s still better than starting every time with “Hey y’all, this is a message from Fritz” (exaggerating here of course). ---
**Author:** ![Pardel-Lux](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pardel-lux/32/20182_2.png) [@Pardel-Lux](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Pardel-Lux)\ **Post date:** [December 3, 2025, 10:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/were-the-german-codes-broken-by-the-enigma-machine-coherent-german/1025367/29 "2025-12-03T22:26:59Z")
> [@EinsteinsHund](#): > > > [@glee](#): > > > > One helpful point was that apparently one German operator used to start his messages with the same greeting each time - which helps decoding considerably… > > That’s just face slappingly stupid. What I read is that they were so sure the cypher was unbreakable that they did not care. And the words that were always repeated were _Heil Hitler_, where three letters repeat: H, e and i. Yep, dumb beyond measure. Half-nit-pick: I read that the words were always at the end of the message. May be wrong, but it makes more sense at the end. ---
**Author:** ![hajario](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hajario/32/171_2.png) [@hajario](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/hajario)\ **Post date:** [December 3, 2025, 10:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/were-the-german-codes-broken-by-the-enigma-machine-coherent-german/1025367/30 "2025-12-03T22:27:27Z")
It was more along the lines of one remote station often saying “nothing to report” ---
**Author:** ![OttoDaFe](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ottodafe/32/356_2.png) [@OttoDaFe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/OttoDaFe)\ **Post date:** [December 3, 2025, 10:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/were-the-german-codes-broken-by-the-enigma-machine-coherent-german/1025367/31 "2025-12-03T22:27:59Z")
At least (as far as I’m aware) somebody figured out that starting every message with “Heil Hitler” — which was, strictly speaking, required of all good Germans — would also be, as @EinsteinsHund so elequently put it, “face slappingly stupid.” ---
**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:** [December 3, 2025, 10:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/were-the-german-codes-broken-by-the-enigma-machine-coherent-german/1025367/32 "2025-12-03T22:39:28Z")
> [@Pardel-Lux](#): > > And the words that were always repeated were _Heil Hitler_, where three letters repeat: H, e and i. That, in itself, wasn’t a problem, because the Enigma machine didn’t always turn the same plain letter into the same code letter. It would have been just as bad if every message contained “Frau Hitler”. And the code that the Navajo code-talkers used was actually phenomenally stupid. They started with something with near-perfect security, a complex, living language that (almost) nobody in Japan could speak, and “improved” it to the point that a hobbyist could have cracked the messages in a few minutes. What they did was have actual Navajo words stand in for English letters, like the Navajo word for “apple” to mean “A”, and the Navajo word for “dog” to mean “D”. But the problem with this is that you don’t need to know Navajo to crack it: It becomes a simple direct-substitution cipher. ---
**Author:** ![Pardel-Lux](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pardel-lux/32/20182_2.png) [@Pardel-Lux](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Pardel-Lux)\ **Post date:** [December 3, 2025, 10:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/were-the-german-codes-broken-by-the-enigma-machine-coherent-german/1025367/33 "2025-12-03T22:45:48Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > That, in itself, wasn’t a problem, because the Enigma machine didn’t always turn the same plain letter into the same code letter. I read about Enigma ages ago, I may be wrong here too, but I believe that Enigma never turned the same plain letter into the same code letter so close to each other in the sequence of the message, which did help marginally. ---
**Author:** ![Andy\_L](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/c67d28/32.png) [@Andy\_L](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Andy_L)\ **Post date:** [December 3, 2025, 10:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/were-the-german-codes-broken-by-the-enigma-machine-coherent-german/1025367/34 "2025-12-03T22:57:53Z")
Almost as bad as XKCD had it > **[Code Talkers](https://xkcd.com/257/)** ---
**Author:** ![EinsteinsHund](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/einsteinshund/32/8400_2.png) [@EinsteinsHund](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/EinsteinsHund)\ **Post date:** [December 3, 2025, 11:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/were-the-german-codes-broken-by-the-enigma-machine-coherent-german/1025367/35 "2025-12-03T23:03:52Z")
> [@Pardel-Lux](#): > > What I read is that they were so sure the cypher was unbreakable that they did not care. Which is not merely stupid, but hubris. But wait, they were nazis, how could I forget, 😉 ---
**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:** [December 3, 2025, 11:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/were-the-german-codes-broken-by-the-enigma-machine-coherent-german/1025367/36 "2025-12-03T23:04:46Z")
I don’t think that was the case, though I’m no expert on Enigma. I do know that it never turned a letter into itself, which turned out to be a major aid to the Bletchley Park team. To use a made-up example, if the code starts with QEJFR, you know that the plaintext wasn’t HELLO, because the second letter couldn’t be E. ---
**Author:** ![Pardel-Lux](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pardel-lux/32/20182_2.png) [@Pardel-Lux](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Pardel-Lux)\ **Post date:** [December 3, 2025, 11:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/were-the-german-codes-broken-by-the-enigma-machine-coherent-german/1025367/37 "2025-12-03T23:06:37Z")
Come to think of it, you may be right. False hazy memories are a bitch. ---
**Author:** ![Andy\_L](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/c67d28/32.png) [@Andy\_L](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Andy_L)\ **Post date:** [December 3, 2025, 11:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/were-the-german-codes-broken-by-the-enigma-machine-coherent-german/1025367/38 "2025-12-03T23:07:55Z")
> [@Pardel-Lux](#): > > What I read is that they were so sure the cypher was unbreakable that they did not care I just (re)read “Alan Turing: The Enigma” - the Germans did have a very hard time imagining that Enigma could be broken - so they kept thinking that they had spies instead. But they did pull things that made life very difficult for the code-breakers (map references were randomized, Enigma was re-complicated during the war, etc.). But without understanding the real vulnerabilities of the system, their attempts to make it more secure often did nothing - or made it easier inadvertantly. I think the Heil Hitler thing is a myth, though ---
**Author:** ![Seanette](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/seanette/32/9139_2.png) [@Seanette](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Seanette)\ **Post date:** [December 3, 2025, 11:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/were-the-german-codes-broken-by-the-enigma-machine-coherent-german/1025367/39 "2025-12-03T23:08:18Z")
> [@Pardel-Lux](#): > > And the words that were always repeated were _Heil Hitler_, where three letters repeat: H, e and i. Er, four repeated letters, since l (that’s lower-case L, to disambiguate) also repeats between words. 😉 Still poor practice to give away several very common letters. Well, common in English, not sure about German. ---
**Author:** ![Pardel-Lux](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pardel-lux/32/20182_2.png) [@Pardel-Lux](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Pardel-Lux)\ **Post date:** [December 3, 2025, 11:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/were-the-german-codes-broken-by-the-enigma-machine-coherent-german/1025367/40 "2025-12-03T23:13:44Z")
> [@Seanette](#): > > Er, four repeated letters Oh, boy, I am really losing my faculties. 🤦‍♂️ [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/were-the-german-codes-broken-by-the-enigma-machine-coherent-german/1025367.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/were-the-german-codes-broken-by-the-enigma-machine-coherent-german/1025367.md?page=3)