Enigma
saski
palace
palace
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About
About
Zespół specjalnych serwisów internetowych Polskiego Radia – Izabella Mazurek, Bartłomiej Makowski, Jacek Puciato
Prof. Zbigniew Wawer, Joanna Borowska, Maria Wardzyńska, Zasław Adamaszek
Grzegorz Lipiński , Paweł Woźniak, Anna Szmida, Aleksandra Zając
Scenariusz: Bartłomiej Makowski Animacja: Bartosz Tytus Trojanowski Montaż i udźwiękowienie: Grzegorz Lipiński Lektorzy: Mateusz Drozd, Mathew Farell
Damian Luje Ponce, Alan Krawczyk, Marcin Kieruzel, Łukasz Kowalski, Paula Karolak, Mateusz Orłowski, Rozalia Przeworska, Michał Romańczuk, Marcin Żabicki
Grzegorz Kowalski
Krzysztof Kossowski, Katarzyna Milanowska, Marcin Rembacz, Dominik Szewczyk
Dział produkcji multimedialnych Polskiego Radia
Barry Keane, Mariya Shahuri, Piotr Siemiński, Irina Zawisza
Archiwum Polskiego Radia, Archiwum Radia Wolna Europa
Narodowe Archiwum Cyfrowe (NAC), Polska Agencja Prasowa (PAP), Forum, East News, Muzeum Powstania Warszawskiego (Ryszard Witkowski „Romuald”, „Orliński”; Józef Jerzy Karpiński „Jerzy”), Muzeum Warszawy, Biblioteka Narodowa w Warszawie, Biblioteka Narodowa w Krakowie, Biblioteka Naukowa Polskiej Akademii Nauk Polskiej Akademii Umiejętności (PAN PAU), Biblioteka Politechniki Warszawskiej, Mazowiecka Biblioteka Cyfrowa, Biblioteka Kongresu USA, Muzeum Narodowe w Warszawie, Muzeum Narodowe w Krakowie, Muzeum Narodowe we Wrocławiu, Urząd Miasta Warszawy, Bildarchiv Foto Marburg, Sächsisches Staatsarchiv, Wikimedia Commons (domena publiczna; CC BY-SA 4.0 – Kgbo), Muzeum Fryderyka Chopina w Narodowym Instytucie Fryderyka Chopina (fot. Waldemar Kielichowski)
Filmoteka Narodowa Instytut Audiowizualny (Jan Ordyński, „Sztandar Wolności”), Biblioteka Kongresu USA („On the Firing Line with the Germans”), United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (filmy Juliena Bryena)
Subsidised by the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage
Rebuilding of the Saxon Palace, Brühl Palace and the tenement houses on Królewska Street - preparatory work
Część III
A keeper of secrets
Saski Palace was not only the backdrop for important celebrations. Little did ordinary Polish people know that in the privacy of the offices of the General Staff, top secret works were being carried out, on which the fate of the state and the lives of millions of people often depended.
A state of constant emergency
The sovereignty of the reborn Republic was constantly threatened. Russia and Germany could not come to terms with the defeats they had suffered in World War I.
Soviet Russia, in accordance with the doctrine of carrying a revolution on bayonets, fought with Poland from 1919. Despite the Polish victory in the Battle of Warsaw in 1920, the threat posed by Russia and its successor, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, did not ease.
Criticism of the Treaty of Versailles which had ended the First World War and led to the restoration of Poland to the map of Europe, proved to be a festering sore for Germany during the interwar period. Once Adolf Hitler came to power, Germany determinedly set itself on a course for war.
The young Polish Republic had fewer military capabilities than its neighbours. This weakness could only be compensated for by creating one of the best intelligence services in the world.
1919-1921: the war of codes
At the end of August and beginning of September, 1919, in the Cipher Section of the II Information Division of the General Staff, in the northern wing of Saski Palace, Bolshevik codes were broken for the first time. The breakthrough proved decisive both for the course of the Battle of Warsaw in 1920 and the entire Polish-Bolshevik war.
Jan Kowalewski
1892-1965
Jan Kowalewski broke the Bolshevik codes by running a “toothless” comb through the fragment of a coded message, looking for a sequence, in which a pair of numbers (relating to a letter) would be repeated at equal intervals. In this way Kowaleski found the Russian word for division (дивизия), by knowing that the letter “i” appeared in this word in equal intervals.
Kowalewski’s took the idea for a comb from Edgar Allan Poe’s novel The Gold-Bug.
Try to break the Bolshevik code in a similar way, by running the comb along the coded message, find the sequence so that the same marks appear in the gap between the teeth of the comb.
No one understood why, but this certainty of victory was based not on hope but on facts. All the reports and orders of the Soviet army were intercepted and decrypted immediately. As a result, the Polish staff office was better informed about the enemy’s movements, the size of its forces and the overall plans than the commanders of individual Soviet units.
E-10 Radio station
There, on the first floor, in the left wing, next to the non-existent colonnade of Saski Palace, but with windows looking onto the inner courtyard, there was the BS-4 office; and there, at the end of 1932, the three of us uncovered the secrets of Enigma.
The event that changed the course of the war
Due to the fact that Polish Intelligence had handed over the secrets of Enigma to its allies, from the beginning of the war it was possible to improve on the methods developed by the Poles and to read German dispatches. It is estimated that breaking the Enigma code shortened the war by three years and saved the lives of 30 million people. Information about the contribution of Polish cryptologists to victory in World War II came to light only several decades after ending of the war.
Piłsudski's “Laboratory”
The growing threat from both neighbours prompted Marshal Józef Piłsudski to establish in 1934 a secret Bureau of Strategic Studies called “Laboratory” in the General Inspectorate of the Armed Forces. The new cell was designed to collect and analyse intelligence data obtained from various, independent sources. The “Laboratory” was dissolved after the death of Józef Piłsudski. Four years later, Germany and the USSR invaded Poland.
We sit on two stools – this cannot last forever. We need to know which one we shall fall from first, and when.
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