Cadix (Secret Service)

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Cadiz (actually: PC Cadiz ) was the code name of a secret intelligence unit of the Allies who are successful with the deciphering of the German Wehrmacht using the rotor cipher machine Enigma encrypted dealt message traffic. (The abbreviation PC stands for the French expression poste de commandement , German: "Kommandoposten" or " Gefechtsstand ".)

Cadix existed during the Second World War in the period after the defeat of France from September 1940 and the associated dissolution of the forerunner organization " PC Bruno " near Paris. Its location was the Château des Fouzes (German: Schloss Fouzes) near the southern French community of Uzès . It housed the Polish cryptanalysts of the Biuro Szyfrów (BS) (German: "Chiffrenbüro") who fled after the Pyry meeting and the German attack on Poland that followed shortly afterwards . This included Marian Rejewski , Jerzy Różycki , Henryk Zygalski , their bosses Gwido Langer and Maksymilian Ciężki , as well as other employees of the BS and the AVA plant , such as Antoni Palluth and Edward Fokczyński . With the complete occupation of the previously free southern zone of France in November 1942, Cadix had to be given up.

prehistory

After the German Wehrmacht had occupied the Netherlands , Belgium and Luxembourg ( "Fall Gelb" ), the offensive against France began in June 1940 ( "Fall Rot" ). This put the French capital and thus also the PC Bruno base, which is only a few kilometers away, in acute danger. Shortly after midnight on June 10th, the head of the facility , Gustave Bertrand , decided to evacuate and flew with his staff to Oran in Algeria . Shortly thereafter , France surrendered and was divided . While the northern and western parts came under German occupation , the southern part remained unoccupied and was declared Zone libre (German: "Free Zone"). In September, Bertrand and his team secretly returned to France.

history

On October 1, 1940, they chose the Château des Fouzes near the southern French municipality of Uzès in the zone libre as the new location and gave it the cover name “Cadix”, the French-speaking name for the southern Spanish city of Cádiz . The fifteen BS employees who had fled Poland were reinforced by nine French and seven Spanish experts. They resumed their cryptanalytic work against the Enigma, whereby, unlike before in the PC Bruno , the Poles now formed their own section , called the Ekspozytura No. 300 (German: "Branch No. 300"). While the Poles continued to work on the cryptanalysis of German radio communications, their Spanish colleagues concentrated on Italian and Spanish radio messages. Like the German armed forces, the German allies, such as fascist Italy and also Francoist Spain , used the German machine for their secret communications.

The collaboration with the British Codebreakers in Bletchley Park (BP) in England was also continued, but it cooled noticeably. The reason was fears of the head of the GC & CS ( Government Code and Cypher School ; German for example: "Staatliche Code- und Chiffrenschule") in BP , Commander Alastair Denniston , regarding the secrecy of the Allied ability to decipher the Enigma ( code name " Ultra " ). From the British point of view, Cadix was “only” an outpost, which they classified as being just outside the reach of the Germans and at any time very vulnerable to access. In fact, the British were hiding increasingly important information and their own deciphering successes from their allies on mainland Europe. Cadix also received no machine support from them, especially none of their ultra-modern and particularly efficient “cracking machines”, called bombes . Also for reasons of confidentiality, none of the highly talented and extremely experienced Polish cryptanalysts was invited to BP , although they could probably have been of great use there. None of them learned of British methodologies and results during the war.

In July 1941, the Polish specialists Rejewski and Zygalski received a very special assignment, namely to check the safety of their own Polish machine. This was invented by their bosses Gwido Langer (“La”) and Maksymilian Ciężki (“Ci”) or colleagues Leonard Danilewicz and his brother Ludomir Danilewicz (“Da”) and was named “ Lacida ” after the first letters of their surnames . Rejewski and Zygalski were given some radio messages encrypted with the Lacida, which they had to analyze for “unbreakability” . To the shock of those responsible, the two experienced code breakers needed less than two hours to read the proverbs. As a result, further use of the Lacida was immediately prohibited and cryptographic improvements were sought.

Jerzy Różycki (around 1928) † 1942

Cadix had a branch in Algeria which Ciężki ran. From time to time, some of his employees moved between France and Algeria. On January 9, 1942, on one of the ship's passages, the liner Lamoricière sank in an unexplained and tragic way and dragged some of the Polish code breakers to their death, among them the young family man and cryptanalyst Jerzy Różycki.

After the British-American invasion of French North Africa, which began on November 8, 1942 (code name: Operation Torch ; German: "Operation Fackel"), the Wehrmacht occupied the previously free southern zone of France ( Operation Anton ), whereupon Bertrand was forced to evacuate his crew and disband Cadix .

Rejewski and Zygalski managed to escape to the United Kingdom via Spain . Langer, Ciężki, Palluth, Fokczyński and Kazimierz Gaca, on the other hand, were captured while attempting to flee across the border into the Pyrenees on the night of March 10-11 , 1943 . Langer and Ciężki were treated as prisoners of war and with good luck survived the war. Palluth and Fokczyński were less fortunate. They were taken to Sachsenhausen concentration camp and both died there in 1944.

Nobody betrayed the "Enigma secret", so that until the end of the war, and for a long time afterwards, the Germans were of the erroneous belief that their Enigma was "unbreakable".

literature

  • Friedrich L. Bauer : Deciphered Secrets. Methods and maxims of cryptology. 3rd, revised and expanded edition. Springer, Berlin et al. 2000, ISBN 3-540-67931-6 .
  • Gustave Bertrand : Énigma ou la plus grande enigme de la guerre 1939–1945 . Librairie Plon, Paris 1973.
  • Chris Christensen: Review of IEEE Milestone Award to the Polish Cipher Bureau for `` The First Breaking of Enigma Code '' . Cryptologia . Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology. Taylor & Francis, Philadelphia PA 39.2015,2, pp. 178-193. ISSN  0161-1194 .
  • Ralph Erskine : The Poles Reveal their Secrets - Alastair Dennistons's Account of the July 1939 Meeting at Pyry . Cryptologia. Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology. Taylor & Francis, Philadelphia PA 30.2006,4, pp. 294-395. ISSN  0161-1194 .
  • John Gallehawk: Third Person Singular (Warsaw, 1939) . Cryptologia. Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology. Taylor & Francis, Philadelphia PA 3.2006,3, pp. 193-198. ISSN  0161-1194 .
  • Francis Harry Hinsley , Alan Stripp: Codebreakers - The inside story of Bletchley Park . Oxford University Press, Reading, Berkshire 1993, ISBN 0-19-280132-5 .
  • David Kahn : The Code Breakers - The Story of Secret Writing . Macmillan USA, Reissue 1974, ISBN 0-02-560460-0 .
  • David Kahn: Seizing the Enigma - The Race to Break the German U-Boat Codes, 1939-1943 . Naval Institute Press, Annapolis, MD, USA, 2012, ISBN 978-1-59114-807-4 .
  • Władysław Kozaczuk : Enigma - How the German Machine Cipher Was Broken, and How It Was Read by the Allies in World War Two . Edited and translated by Christopher Kasparek, Frederick, MD, University Publications of America, 1984, ISBN 0-89093-547-5 .
  • Władysław Kozaczuk: Enigma - How the German Machine Cipher Was Broken, and How It Was Read by the Allies in World War Two . Edited and translated by Christopher Kasparek, Frederick, MD, University Publications of America, 1984, ISBN 0-89093-547-5 .
  • Władysław Kozaczuk, Jerzy Straszak, Enigma - How the Poles Broke the Nazi Code . Hippocrene Books, 2004, ISBN 0-7818-0941-X .
  • Władysław Kozaczuk: Secret Operation Wicher . Bernard et al. Graefe, Koblenz 1989, Karl Müller, Erlangen 1999, ISBN 3-7637-5868-2 , ISBN 3-86070-803-1 .
  • Władysław Kozaczuk: Under the spell of Enigma . Military publishing house, Berlin 1987, ISBN 3-327-00423-4 .
  • Hugh Sebag-Montefiore : Enigma - The battle for the code . Cassell Military Paperbacks, London 2004, ISBN 0-304-36662-5 .
  • Dermot Turing : X, Y & Z - The Real Story of how Enigma was Broken. The History Press , Stroud 2018, ISBN 978-0-7509-8782-0 .
  • Gordon Welchman : The Hut Six Story - Breaking the Enigma Codes . Allen Lane, London 1982; Cleobury Mortimer M&M, Baldwin Shropshire 2000, ISBN 0-947712-34-8 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Gordon Welchman: The Hut Six Story - Breaking the Enigma Codes . Allen Lane, London 1982; Cleobury Mortimer M&M, Baldwin Shropshire 2000, p. 11. ISBN 0-947712-34-8
  2. ^ Hugh Sebag-Montefiore: Enigma - The battle for the code . Cassell Military Paperbacks, London 2004, p. 330 ISBN 0-304-36662-5

Coordinates: 44 ° 1 ′ 17.8 "  N , 4 ° 26 ′ 2.8"  E