The M4 Enigma machine was ordered by Admiral Doenitz in 1941 when he surmised that the M3 Enigma machines of all German U-boats had been compromised by the capture of U-570 in August 1941. You will find “Hitler’s Naval War” on Amazon if you click here. It is a fascinating book that is long out of print but copies can still be found on Amazon at delightfully low prices. A good source of information on the cat and mouse game between the German Kriegsmarine and the Allied navies from the German perspective can be found in Cajus Bekker’s book “Hitler’s Naval War”. Germany’s Kriegsmarine were acutely aware of the dangers of communications and did their level best to minimise the need for radio communications. So the source of the transmission could be located and the U-boat attacked. In order to transmit a signal a U-boat would have to use radio transmission, and that radio transmission could be detected by use of direction finding apparatus on enemy ships (two being necessary to triangulate and locate the transmitting ship). Secure communications were a basic essential though not enough in themselves. In the Battle of the Atlantic and in the North Sea the German U-boats had developed the Wolf Pack strategy to maximise their destructive impact on Allied shipping and to protect themselves from detection and destruction. Surviving Enigma machines are a rarity and amongst the most rare is the Kriegsmarine (Reich’s Navy) model M4 of 1942. GERMAN ENIGMA MACHINE CRACKThe World War II German Enigma encryption machine and the successful Allied effort to crack it are fascinating pieces of modern history.
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