# 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:** 5
**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 4, 2025, 10:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/were-the-german-codes-broken-by-the-enigma-machine-coherent-german/1025367/81 "2025-12-04T22:42:23Z")
Not every message used any given crib, and not every message even used any crib at all. But they didn’t need to. If they could crack even one message each day, they knew the settings for that day, and hence could crack every message on that day, even the ones that didn’t use cribs. Did every message include “Heil Hitler”? Almost certainly not. Was there always at least one message a day that did? Probably. ---
**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 4, 2025, 10:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/were-the-german-codes-broken-by-the-enigma-machine-coherent-german/1025367/82 "2025-12-04T22:44:41Z")
> [@Great\_Antibob](#): > > Evil and stupid are not synonymous. No, but evil tends to feed on adulation (thus the HHs and the congratulations on his birthday) and breed corruption, which is seldom competent. I can think of many examples, some quite recent. In the case of the nazis the allies exploited those weaknesses. Good. ---
**Author:** ![Melbourne](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/b5e925/32.png) [@Melbourne](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Melbourne)\ **Post date:** [December 4, 2025, 11:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/were-the-german-codes-broken-by-the-enigma-machine-coherent-german/1025367/83 "2025-12-04T23:15:18Z")
> [@EinsteinsHund](#): > > I didn’t know that, and I think that’s a blatant flaw of the machine. Was it too complex to add number keys? I don’t know if it was important, but numerals were a notorious source of errors in commercial transactions: hence, numbers were spelled out, or encoded (with check digits or characters), in commercial communications. AFAIK, telegraph charged digits as words, so “500” cost more to send than “five hundred”, as well as being more error prone. Enigma was a general-purpose coding system - commercial, diplomatic, military. They seem to have felt that numerals didn’t fit their target markets. ---
**Author:** ![Peter\_Morris](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/peter_morris/32/359_2.png) [@Peter\_Morris](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Peter_Morris)\ **Post date:** [December 4, 2025, 11:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/were-the-german-codes-broken-by-the-enigma-machine-coherent-german/1025367/84 "2025-12-04T23:45:25Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > Except with the Enigma, if you garble any single character, no matter what it is, the entire rest of the message will be garbled. I don’t think that’s correct. Every character was encoded separately. One character does not affect the others. ---
**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 5, 2025, 12:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/were-the-german-codes-broken-by-the-enigma-machine-coherent-german/1025367/85 "2025-12-05T00:02:33Z")
It is a sequence: you have to start at the beginning, go on till the end, and then stop. How could this work if one step did not influence the next one, and this one the next one in turn, and so 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:** [December 5, 2025, 12:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/were-the-german-codes-broken-by-the-enigma-machine-coherent-german/1025367/86 "2025-12-05T00:03:14Z")
Hm, yes, I think you’re right… If every keystroke cycles the rotors one step. then it won’t matter if that one keystroke were wrong. A system which cycled different amounts for different keys would probably be more secure, but also more unreliable. EDIT: As long as the mistake didn’t involve changing the number of keystrokes, like accidentally missing a letter, or double-tapping a letter. ---
**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 5, 2025, 12:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/were-the-german-codes-broken-by-the-enigma-machine-coherent-german/1025367/87 "2025-12-05T00:20:27Z")
If one letter was missing, you’d have a problem - but it would be pretty obvious where the message became nonsense, and you might be able to use trial and error to figure out which missing letter to add in. > [@Chronos](#): > > Did every message include “Heil Hitler”? Almost certainly not. Was there always at least one message a day that did? Probably. This brief article about [cribs](https://www.tnmoc.org/bh-16-menus-and-cribs) calls out “Weather Report” as a particularly reliable crib. This paper indicates that the [crib](https://cryptocellar.org/enigma/files/rodding.pdf) that was the first break for analysts was using a different crib entirely: > In the absence of anything more specific, Dilly Knox instructed his assistants (a group of young women known as ‘Dilly’s girls’) to use ‘PERX’ as a crib for the first four characters of each intercepted signal (= ‘FOR’ followed by a ‘space’), and for those cases when this did not lead to any consistencies between the crib and the first four letters of a cipher message, to record any other letters that could be found by the rods in the hope that these might provide some clues about the plain text. > These assistants worked continuously for three months at this task without having any success > until September 1940, when one of them, Mavis Lever, a nineteen-year-old student whose University course had been interrupted by the war, achieved a remarkable break. > With the message on which she was then working, for a particular starting position for the ‘green’ > rotor (i.e. rotor I), the rods had given the letter ‘S’ in the 4th place, which clashed with the letter ‘X’ in the crib (i.e. resulting in the letter sequence ‘PERS’ instead of ‘PERX’ as was anticipated). > If Miss Lever had obeyed her instructions, she would have rejected this rotor starting position, and > gone on to try the next one. However in a moment of inspiration she decided to assume that the > crib ‘PERX’ was in fact wrong and guessed that it was ‘PERSONALE’. After making this > assumption and continuing with the ‘rodding’ process, she was gratified to find that the additional > letters of plain-text then given by the rods made good sense, so that the first part of the message > turned out to be:- PERSONALEXPERXSIGNORX… If hailing that bastard (sorry - tired of typing that phrase) was particularly (rather than occasionally - and memorably) useful, I think Dilly and his team would have hit upon it. ---
**Author:** ![Peter\_Morris](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/peter_morris/32/359_2.png) [@Peter\_Morris](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Peter_Morris)\ **Post date:** [December 5, 2025, 12:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/were-the-german-codes-broken-by-the-enigma-machine-coherent-german/1025367/88 "2025-12-05T00:39:58Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > EDIT: As long as the mistake didn’t involve changing the number of keystrokes, like accidentally missing a letter, or double-tapping a letter. Even then it wouldn’t matter very much. Sending, if you miss a letter, they would receive a “weather repot storm coming ” which is still understandable. Receiving, if they miss a letter they would receive a “weather repofghrhtckt” and quickly realize they made a mistake. Just start again and get it right. ---
**Author:** ![Peter\_Morris](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/peter_morris/32/359_2.png) [@Peter\_Morris](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Peter_Morris)\ **Post date:** [December 5, 2025, 12:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/were-the-german-codes-broken-by-the-enigma-machine-coherent-german/1025367/89 "2025-12-05T00:56:08Z")
> [@Melbourne](#): > > I don’t know if it was important, but numerals were a notorious source of errors in commercial transactions: hence, numbers were spelled out, or encoded (with check digits or characters), in commercial communications. Some models of Enigma had numerals on the letter keys. I’m supposing that if you needed to send a number you substituted Q for 1, and so on. [![](https://www.cryptomuseum.com/crypto/enigma/k/img/301443/078/full.jpg) ](https://www.cryptomuseum.com/crypto/enigma/k/img/301443/078/full.jpg) Here’s a nice list of all the various models. The picture is Enigma K > **[Enigma Cipher Machine](https://www.cryptomuseum.com/crypto/enigma/index.htm)** ---
**Author:** ![TokyoBayer](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tokyobayer/32/13989_2.png) [@TokyoBayer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TokyoBayer)\ **Post date:** [December 5, 2025, 6:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/were-the-german-codes-broken-by-the-enigma-machine-coherent-german/1025367/90 "2025-12-05T06:45:55Z")
> [@Wendell\_Wagner](#): > > The Navajo codetalker replied, “I’m not a goddamned Jap. I’m a Navajo.” Do you have a cite for that? I’ve been trying to hunt down the answer but haven’t found any cites yet. I’ve seen some speculation such as they gathered this fact from captured Marines, which seems reasonable. There would be a number of people on the US side who would have known that there were Navajo code talkers. > [@Elmer\_J.Fudd](#): > > One was even bayonetted by fellow Marines. Do you have a cite for this? I’ve read accounts of a code talker who was held at bayonet but not ones of any getting killed or bayonetted. ---
**Author:** ![Elmer\_J.Fudd](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/elmer_j.fudd/32/1211_2.png) [@Elmer\_J.Fudd](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Elmer_J.Fudd)\ **Post date:** [December 5, 2025, 7:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/were-the-german-codes-broken-by-the-enigma-machine-coherent-german/1025367/91 "2025-12-05T07:00:28Z")
> [@TokyoBayer](#): > > > [@Elmer\_J.Fudd](#): > > > > One was even bayonetted by fellow Marines. > > Do you have a cite for this? I failed to find where I once read this. It was probably an exaggerated account of what happened to Samuel T. Holiday on Saipan where he was “poked” in the back by a bayonet after being “captured” by fellow Marines. > **[The Code Talkers' Legacy: Native Languages Helped Turn the Tides in Both...](https://www.americanindianmagazine.org/story/code-talkers-legacy-native-languages-helped-turn-tides-both-world-wars)** > > Native languages helped the Allies alter the course of both World Wars. ---
**Author:** ![JacobSwan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/a6a055/32.png) [@JacobSwan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JacobSwan)\ **Post date:** [December 5, 2025, 10:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/were-the-german-codes-broken-by-the-enigma-machine-coherent-german/1025367/92 "2025-12-05T10:35:53Z")
> [@DETXL](#): > > I feel like the overlap between “stupidity” and “hubris” was a recurring theme in Nazi intelligence generally. There’s the apocryphal case of a German officer reading about the Allied conference being held in Casablanca and ignoring it as he translated it as White House and thought it was being held in Washington DC. If they’d realised the truth they could probably have taken out the entire Allied leadership with one bombing run. Snopes says it’s unlikely to be true, but it’s so easy to believe. ---
**Author:** ![DPRK](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/4491bb/32.png) [@DPRK](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DPRK)\ **Post date:** [December 5, 2025, 11:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/were-the-german-codes-broken-by-the-enigma-machine-coherent-german/1025367/93 "2025-12-05T11:57:55Z")
With the Enigma, if you mis-type a single letter, the plaintext/cyphertext at that position will be screwed up, but the rest of the message will be OK. If you omit a letter, the rest of the message will be garbled. Same as with a One-Time Pad, and that is known to be completely secure (for a certain definition of secure). The messages are often displayed as groups (e.g., of five letters) to help debug this sort of problem. ---
**Author:** ![PatrickLondon](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/patricklondon/32/4422_2.png) [@PatrickLondon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PatrickLondon)\ **Post date:** [December 5, 2025, 12:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/were-the-german-codes-broken-by-the-enigma-machine-coherent-german/1025367/94 "2025-12-05T12:05:37Z")
Not quite the same as how lazy messaging helped break Enigma, but it is documented that, by signing off a message to a supposed SOE operator in the Netherlands with “HH” (as was common with German communications), and getting an “HH” in acknowledgement, a [suspicious SOE officer realised that operator, and probably a lot of others, had been taken over or replaced by a German.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Between_Silk_and_Cyanide) (Not that it was easy to persuade the higher-ups of it). ---
**Author:** ![TokyoBayer](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tokyobayer/32/13989_2.png) [@TokyoBayer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TokyoBayer)\ **Post date:** [December 6, 2025, 10:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/were-the-german-codes-broken-by-the-enigma-machine-coherent-german/1025367/95 "2025-12-06T22:32:56Z")
> [@Wendell\_Wagner](#): > > At some point, an American soldier heard the Navajo codetalker say something in a language he was completely unfamiliar with. I had asked for a cite for this story earlier, but looking at it again, it just doesn’t make any sense. First, the Marines would be the first to correct you because they aren’t “soldiers”, they are Marines. Code talkers were Marines and not in the Army. Second, the frequency for the radios would have been used for things such as directing artillery fire and such and the radio operators using the radios would have known about the usage. ---
**Author:** ![Wendell\_Wagner](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/8491ac/32.png) [@Wendell\_Wagner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wendell_Wagner)\ **Post date:** [December 6, 2025, 11:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/were-the-german-codes-broken-by-the-enigma-machine-coherent-german/1025367/96 "2025-12-06T23:51:51Z")
The Navajo codetalkers used the same standard military radios and frequencies as other soldiers/sailors/Marines/etc. It’s entirely possible that an American military person would be on the same frequency as a codetalker. It’s entirely possible that the military person could assume that it was a Japanese person talking. The Japanese did sometimes listen in to American military frequencies. ---
**Author:** ![TokyoBayer](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tokyobayer/32/13989_2.png) [@TokyoBayer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TokyoBayer)\ **Post date:** [December 7, 2025, 2:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/were-the-german-codes-broken-by-the-enigma-machine-coherent-german/1025367/97 "2025-12-07T02:50:18Z")
So no cite? I didn’t think so. I’ve been trying to see if there is any information backing that particular tale and haven’t yet. If you have any cites, please show them. ---
**Author:** ![Elmer\_J.Fudd](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/elmer_j.fudd/32/1211_2.png) [@Elmer\_J.Fudd](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Elmer_J.Fudd)\ **Post date:** [December 7, 2025, 4:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/were-the-german-codes-broken-by-the-enigma-machine-coherent-german/1025367/98 "2025-12-07T04:00:57Z")
Why would an Allied radio operator tell someone they thought was Japanese to get off the channel instead of bringing it to the attention of a translator or intelligence officer? ---
**Author:** ![Atamasama](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/atamasama/32/12961_2.png) [@Atamasama](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Atamasama)\ **Post date:** [December 7, 2025, 4:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/were-the-german-codes-broken-by-the-enigma-machine-coherent-german/1025367/99 "2025-12-07T04:06:30Z")
That’s like finding an enemy infiltrator in their base and kicking them out like a club bouncer. ---
**Author:** ![TokyoBayer](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tokyobayer/32/13989_2.png) [@TokyoBayer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TokyoBayer)\ **Post date:** [December 7, 2025, 1:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/were-the-german-codes-broken-by-the-enigma-machine-coherent-german/1025367/100 "2025-12-07T13:13:03Z")
There are a ton of urban legends associated with the war, of course. The exact quote with a gatcha line reads like an urban legend, especially with inaccuracies. If there is going to be an exact quote, then the facts should be better, such as saying another radio operator instead of just a random “soldier.” If this account were true it should be more widely reported. > [@Wendell\_Wagner](#): > > The Navajo codetalkers used the same standard military radios and frequencies as other soldiers/sailors/Marines/etc. Actually, the problems with communication in WWII and the incompatibility of different branches of even the same service is well known. > [@Elmer\_J.Fudd](#): > > My impression (having visited a museum near Monument Valley) is that the Navaho codetalkers weren’t broadcasting long distance about strategic deployments like the Enigma users were. They were talking to units over the next ridge using short range radio. Yes. The Navy and Marines had codes which were used for long distance communication. The codetalkers were used for short distance for artillery support and troop movement. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/were-the-german-codes-broken-by-the-enigma-machine-coherent-german/1025367.md?page=4) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/were-the-german-codes-broken-by-the-enigma-machine-coherent-german/1025367.md?page=6)