Henri Braquenié

Henri Braquenié (*  1896 ; †  1975 ) was a French secret service employee and cryptanalyst who worked in collaboration with the Polish Biuro Szyfrów (BS) (German: "Chiffrenbüro") and the British Government Code and Cypher School (GC & CS) (German about : "Staatliche Code- und Chiffrenschule") in Bletchley Park (BP) , England, contributed significantly to the early breakage of the German Enigma rotor key machine before and during World War II .

Life

Braquenié worked with the rank of Capitaine (German: "Captain") in the 1930s in the Deuxième Bureau of the French secret service. His boss and head of the Décryptement et Interceptions section was Commandant (German: "Major") Gustave Bertrand . The task was the cryptanalysis of German encryption methods and the interception of material, if necessary also with the help of theft, break-in or betrayal.

In July 1939, shortly before the German invasion of Poland , Braquenié was one of the two French participants in the legendary secret meeting with British and Polish code breakers in the forest of Pyry , about 20 km south of Warsaw, at which the Poles revealed their successful methodologies to their amazed allies with which they succeeded in deciphering the Enigma rotor key machine used by the German Wehrmacht . At the beginning of the war, Braquenié then worked together with the cryptanalysts from the BS who had fled from Poland in the PC Bruno , a newly created secret intelligence service facility of the Allies near Paris, which continued to deal with the breaking of the communications encrypted with the Enigma .

With the successful offensive of the Wehrmacht in June 1940 ( "Fall Rot" ), the French capital and thus also the PC Bruno base, which was only a few kilometers away, were in acute danger. Shortly after midnight on June 10th, Braquenié's boss Bertrand therefore decided to evacuate and flew with him and the other employees to Oran in Algeria . France capitulated shortly afterwards 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 Braquenié secretly returned to France. The joint work was resumed at a new location in the Château de Fouzes (German: Schloss Fouzes) near the southern French municipality of Uzès in the zone libre . The new cover name was "Cadix" .

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 .
• Friedrich L. Bauer: Historical Notes on Computer Science . Springer, Berlin 2009. ISBN 3-540-85789-3 .
• Mavis Batey : Dilly - The man who broke Enigmas . Dialogue, 2011. ISBN 1-906-44715-2 .
• Gustave Bertrand: Énigma ou la plus grande enigme de la guerre 1939–1945 . Librairie Plon, Paris 1973.
• 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 : Seizing the Enigma - The Race to Break the German U-Boat Codes, 1939-1943 . Naval Institute Press, Annapolis, MD, USA, 2012, pp. 92f. ISBN 978-1-59114-807-4 .
• Hugh Sebag-Montefiore : Enigma - The battle for the code . Cassell Military Paperbacks, London 2004, ISBN 0-304-36662-5 .

Web links

• Group photo from Cadix . Henri Braquenié on the far left of the picture. Accessed: May 21, 2015

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Life data at de.billiongraves.com, accessed April 30, 2019.
2. ^ 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
3. ^ Friedrich L. Bauer: Historical Notes on Computer Science . Springer, Berlin 2009, p. 173. ISBN 3-540-85789-3
4. ↑ 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, p. 294
5. ^ Kris Gaj, Arkadiusz Orłowski: Facts and myths of Enigma: breaking stereotypes. Eurocrypt, 2003, p. 9.