Sir, Bletchley Park Trust has long recognised the crucial importance of the Polish contribution to the successful outcome of the Second World War (letter, Sept 1). In particular, we acknowledge the huge debt this country and all the Allies owe to the Polish Cypher Bureau, whose young staff broke what was considered in Britain to be an almost unbreakable cypher: the Enigma machine.
Although an early version of what was essentially a commercial version of Enigma was broken during the Spanish Civil War (1936-39), no progress had been made by the Government Code & Cypher School before the outbreak of war in September 1939 in breaking into the German armed forces’ Enigma keys, despite the best efforts of GC&CS cryptanalysts.
In the knowledge that Germany was determined to recover the port of Danzig, handed over to the Poles after the First World War to give them a route to the sea (via the Danzig Corridor), since 1932 the Polish Cypher Bureau had been interested in the German five-letter cypher messages transmitted in Morse by their armed forces. After an introductory course in codes and cyphers, the Cypher Bureau handed the problem over to three young Polish mathematicians, Jerry Rozycki (not yet 20 years of age), Marian Rejewski and Henryk Zygalski. Rejewski was given some information about Enigma, gleaned from a manual handed to the Poles by the French Deuxième Bureau who ran a German agent with access to Enigma material. Despite many setbacks, in late 1932 the three young Polish mathematicians broke into the three-rotor Enigma system. All this was unknown to the British and French crytpanalysts. The crisis came in 1938 when the Germans introduced two more rotors, reducing the output of decrypts considerably.
Once the Poles realised that it was a case of not if but when the Germans would invade their country, in July 1939 they invited Alastair Denniston, acting head of Bletchley Park, and Dilywn (Dilly) Knox, a brilliant cryptanlayst, and two members of the French Deuxieme Bureau to Warsaw, where they demonstrated how they had broken into the Enigma keys — and described their current problems. They also gave both visiting teams replicas of an Enigma machine. This was not only an intelligence gift of the highest order — it also actually broke through the psychological barrier within GC&CS of not expecting to break into Enigma for several years — if at all. Events moved quickly, and in January 1940, the first Enigma message of the war was broken in Bletchley Park.
Several years ago contributions from the Polish community enabled a bronze memorial to the three young Polish mathematicians to be erected in Bletchley Park. It stands just to the right of Bungalow Number 3, where the first Enigma message of the Second World War was broken, thanks to their brilliant deductions. Red and white flowers, the colours of the Polish national flag, are displayed permanently in front of the memorial.
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Peter Wescombe
Bletchley Park Trust
Sir, Your splendid supplement (“Poland: first to fight”, Sept 1) should have mentioned their naval operations in the Second World War. Polish destroyers Grom, Blyskawica, Krakowiak, Burza and Garland fought in practically every big battle in Atlantic, European and Mediterranean waters — for example, Garland escorted more than 40 convoys, some to Murmansk, while Krakowiak supported North African, Salerno and Normandy landings. Polish MTBs fought in the battle of the narrow seas between Britain and Europe. Among many decorations three captains of Polish submarines — the Orzel, Sokol and Wilk — were awarded the DSO.
The gunnery officer of Garland, Jozef Bartosik, won the DSC, transferred to the Royal Navy and after a colourful career retired as assistant chief of naval staff in the rank of rear-admiral (obituary, Jan 22, 2008).
Rear-Admiral Guy Liardet
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Meonstoke, Hants