Enigma(2002)- User Reviews

If beckett (31st August 2006) is going to review this film then he/she should get their facts correct!

Firstly, Robert Harris's book, on which the film was based, is pure FICTION and has no relevance as to what the true facts were. The only parts of the film that related to fact were how the cribs and Bombe menus were created and how Enigma and the Bombe machine worked. One of the staff at Bletchley Park acted as Technical Adviser on the film in order to ensure accuracy on these points. In fact the film wasn't even shot at the Park, Chicheley Hall was used for the exteriors - which was rather disappointing!

Secondly, the Poles did not break Enigma in either 1926 or 1928, they broke it in December 1932. The Reichsmarine (later to become the Kriegsmarine) were the first of the German military to use it and didn't actually start until 1928, Enigma was rolled out to the rest of the military in 1938. At this point the design had been changed and that locked the Poles out completely. Their work had been done with an early commercial Enigma, which they managed to procure, and that didn't have the plugboard and was only supplied with 3 rotors - unlike the final 1938 version which had the plugboard and was supplied with 5 rotors. So they then decided to share what they had learned with British and French Intelligence, which they did at a meeting in Pyrie, Poland, in July 1939.

What primarily helped the Poles to break it (particularly Rejewski's work on the wiring for the rotors and, eventually, the Entry Disc) was not only the commercial Enigma they got hold of but also information that had been passed to them, for several years, by a German spy called Hans Thilo Schmidt (code named Asch� or Source D), via the Deuxi�me Bureau in France. Schmidt worked at the German Cryptographic Headquarters and his handler, at the Deuxi�me Bureau, was Gustav Bertrand who gave all of Schmidt's information to the Poles on the understanding that they would tell him when they had broken Enigma - which they failed to do until July 1939, much to the chagrin of both French and British Intelligence!! They developed their own machinery and charts (Zygalski Sheets etc) in order to fully utilise Schmidt's information.

Dilly Knox, one of the great British code breakers from WWI, had already done much work on Enigma before the war and the info the Poles supplied was just one more piece in the puzzle, albeit an important one; in this case the contribution by the Poles should not be underestimated.

Whilst the Poles used machines such as the Bomba and Cyclometer, it was Turing that conceived the Bombe machine and it was Harold Keene of the British Tabulating Machine Company that actually designed it, with no input from the Poles. Our Bombe machine was, at the very least, 6 times more powerful than the Polish machine and was somewhat different in concept.

This film was never designed to be a true account of the facts, as I said before, it was purely a work of fiction, in which anything can be devised. The film itself was good but would have been even better if Bletchley Park had been used for the exterior shots.

One final point, I actually work at Bletchley Park, just in case you think any of the above is inaccurate!! The best place to go for factual information is Bletchley Park's own website.