The Importance Of The Enigma During WWII

During World War II, in 1939, it was obvious that the Germans had a machine that changed how the war was fought. The enigma machine designed by the Germans was thought to be unbreakable. It was used to send secret messages to the other German military forces. The code changed each day, so the Germans thought they were unstoppable, however, the code was cracked by the British with the help of Alan Turing’s machine, “The bombe”, on January 23rd 1940. The enigma was a very well thought out machine that may have lead to the Germans victory in the war if the British didn't use the fatal flaw to crack the code. This led to the question “To what extent did the flaws of the enigma affect the outcome of World War II?”. Although the machine was extremely well designed, it obviously wasn't unbreakable as the Polish and the British managed …show more content…
Not to mention in the beginning they were trying to steal the code sheets from the Germans, but they were all written in soluble ink, therefore meaning as soon as they got wet, they would destroy themselves. This making it even harder to gain the information that they wanted. Another issue was that although once the Enigma had been broken, they had access to all the information, the allies had to be careful what they used the information for. If they had have saved every person and used all the information gained against the Germans, and then the Germans would have learnt that they had broken their “unbreakable” machine. This would mean that they would have had to create a new setting and the codes would change once again. If that had of happened then the two years spent trying to break the code would have gone to waste and the British would have needed to start from scratch, giving the Germans the biggest advantage on winning the