On 25-27 July, 1939, the work of Polish codebreakers Marian Rejewski, Jerzy Różycki and Henryk Zygalski - including the copy of the Enigma machine they had constructed, documentation describing its construction and the construction of deciphering machines (the "bomba" machine in Polish because of its ticking like a bomb) - was passed to British and French intelligence in Pyry, near Warsaw. This was a major part of the Allied efforts to crack German codes, which has been estimated by historians to have shortened the war and saved millions of lives (although the original such estimates by British historians diminished the role of Polish cryptographers and focussed on the British mathematician Alan Turing).
"Success has many fathers (but failure is an orphan)"
This Polish phrase sums up the truth that there were many contributions to the international efforts to break German codes before and during the war. The Polish trio of Marian Rejewski, Jerzy Różycki and Henryk Zygalski led the way, however. By the beginning of World War II, they had already cracked the majority of German invasion plans.
However, it was clear that Germany would successfully invade Poland anyway so the priceless code-breaking knowledge had to be passed on to other Allies.
Theoreticians, Experimenters and Engineers
A major injustice in international history has been the forgetting of this foundational work of Polish mathematicians. It can be explained partly by countries seeing the war mainly from their perspective and wanting to exaggerate the extent of their individual contributions to victory. However, another factor is the traditional division of scientific discovery into theory and experiment.
The British media has emphasized the role of Alan Turing who is one of the founding fathers of the modern computer. He certainly played a major role in the second chapter of the development of code-breaking machines - following the "Polish chapter" that to a considerable extent ended with the outbreak of war. It is a true element of the film "Enigma" that Turing reduced the numbers of encryption combinations by identifying phrases such as weather reports or the notorious phrase "Heil Hitler" which would likely appear in German messages. This was combined with innovative work in statistics to make a major contribution to the war effort.
However, the next stage - the development of still more advanced machines like "The Colossus" - was not due to Turing but to the work of General Post Office telephone research engineer Tommy Flowers. Engineers and experimenters have also been forgotten by Hollywood.
Film as post-war propaganda
Two films in recent years contributed to the marginalisation of the Polish contribution (and the contributions of British engineers) to code-breaking - 2001's Enigma and 2014's The Imitation Game.
2001's Enigma did go out of its way to mention that the first copy of the Enigma machine was "courtesy of the Polish Cypher Bureau," however, another plot device caused a stir in Poland: a fictional Polish character betrayed the team at Bletchley Park - because he had found out about the Katyn Massacre and the ensuing British coverup (in the film the coverup was motivated by fears of losing American support.)
2014's The Imitation Game in turn overemphasized the role of Alan Turing, perhaps out of a sense of guilt for the persecution of Alan Turing, a war hero, as a homosexual after the war. The British Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, issued a public apology in 2009 on behalf of the British government.
Sources: history.co.uk, Twitter, IPN, IMDB
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Click on the audio player above for a report by Radio Poland's Michał Owczarek.