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Bletchley Park
There
could never be another war like the Great War of 1914-1919
with hundreds of thousands of men bogged down unable to move
in thousands of miles of trenches, so when the Third Reich
of Nazi Germany set about annexing most of continental
Europe they used a new kind of warfare called the Lightning
War or Blitzkrieg.
This
was an astonishingly effective tactic of using speed and
surprise. Attributed to Hans Guderian, A German army
officer, he wrote a pamphlet called 'Achtung Panzer' which
got into the hands of Hitler. The pamphlet described how
light tank units should be supported by foot soldiers and
planes could work together.
The
Blitzkrieg also relied on field decisions being made by
those commanders on the ground as an autonomous unit so the
unit could and should have an amount of autonomy as long as
it fitted into the overall plan of the direction of the
attack. Targets of Opportunity were always sought.
The
Blitzkrieg relied immensely on communication and since one
of it's main cornerstones was surprise, the communications
had to be secure. Because of the out and out speed of the
Blitzkrieg, laying telephone wires was not an option and
using any existing communication infrastructure was also not
an option as most of this would be destroyed by Stuka Dive
Bombers which were deployed to 'soften up' the target.
Secure
and timely communication has been a problem since Julius
Ceaser was wrapping bits of paper around his sceptres.
Luckily Nazi Germany had an infallible solution.
Cyphers and Codes are different things :
ci·pher also
cy·pher (s  f r)
n.
A cryptographic system in which units of plain
text of regular length, usually letters, are
arbitrarily transposed or substituted according to a
predetermined code.
The key to such a system.
A message written or transmitted in such a
system. |
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code (k d)
n.
A system of signals used to
represent letters or numbers in transmitting messages.
A system of symbols, letters, or words given certain
arbitrary meanings, used for transmitting messages
requiring secrecy or brevity.
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