Why was Bletchley Park able to break the German Enigma Codes?

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Why was Bletchley Park able to break the German Enigma?

During the Second World War, Station X revolved around cracking the German Enigma codes. This was possible due to many important reasons.

Firstly, the Poles were the first to work on the German Enigma and the first to understand its mechanism. A German spy had over the years before the war, collected documents on how the machine worked. In 1938 the Poles struck a deal and the documents were sold to them. In July 1939 the Poles passed on their knowledge and their collected information to the British. This enabled Station X to understand more of how the Enigma machine worked. The machine was equipped with three wheels (later on in the war more were added) each one printed with the letters of the alphabet in order. The rotors contained one of the central secrets of the Enigma machine, which was the cross wiring inside the wheels. The enigma also had a plug board in which letters would be joined together into pairs. When a key was pressed an other would light up thereby coding the message. The Germans thought the Enigma codes unbreakable and they were not far from the truth as the machine was extremely complex. There were around 150 million, million, million different combinations.

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The Poles’ help was vital and the staff of Bletchley Park worked in collaboration with the three Polish mathematicians, Zygalski, Rozycki and Rejewski who cracked the first Enigma codes. Dilly Knox met the Poles in 1939 when the information was handed over, as he had worked on the Italian Enigma key previously and was one of the most experienced members of Station X. He was quick to guide Bletchley Park on what needed to be done to break the German codes. Another important reason was that everyone who worked at Bletchley Park was very intelligent. Most of the men ...

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