The Enigma

The equipments displayed in the cases are all versions of the German Enigma, as famous for its insecurities as for the security that it theoretically gave to German ciphers. It was broken, first by the Poles in the 1930s, then by the British in World War II. The British brought the Americans into the picture during the war, and the Americans furnished many of the resources to attack ever more complex versions of the Enigma, especially the naval Enigma, when British resources began to run thin. Information from the decrypted messages was used by the Allies time after time to outmaneuver German armies. Some ask why, if we were reading the Enigma, we did not win the war earlier. One might ask, instead, when, if ever, we would have won the war if we hadn't read it.