“Bletchley Park WWII archive to go online” by Dhruti Shah, BBC News, 2:57 GMT, Saturday, 5 June 2010 3:57 UK.

Lemme guess, the class is in the history department and the professor got creative with the syllabus instead of only assigning essays and giving exams? Cool. :)

Claire Ellis, in “Exploring the Enigma,” plus, March 2005, Says:

“…The work at Bletchley Park

“Fortunately for the British codebreakers, in the years running up to the war Poland had worked on various techniques for cracking Enigma. Shortly before the German invasion of Poland, they shared their work with their British allies. Poland’s government was the first to employ mathematicians as code-breakers, and the mathematicians’ logical minds proved to be just what was needed to tackle Enigma.

“This vital headstart from the Polish, coupled with the unique problem-solving and intuitive thinking skills of Bletchley’s recruits, meant that Enigma was cracked in early 1940 a reliable technique for cracking Enigma was established. The British code breakers worked in shifts around the clock for the whole of the war, using paper and pencil as well as newly invented mechanical techniques to work out the particular Enigma machine settings for each and every single day.

“Unwittingly, the Germans themselves helped the British to decipher the Enigma. For example:
* Messages often began with the same opening text – many began with the word Spruchnummer (Message Number), and many Air Force messages began with the phrase An die Gruppe (To the Group).
* Messages often enciphered routine information such as weather reports and phrases such as Keinebesondere Ereignisse (Nothing to report).
* Messages often ended with Heil Hitler!
* The Germans often transmitted the same message more than once, with each version enciphered differently.

“These lapses provided the codebreakers with clues, called cribs, about how the Enigma machines had been set up on that day. These cribs were essential for breaking the ciphers. For example, without a crib it would still take several months today to decipher an A4 page of ciphertext using a modern PC with trial and error methods.

“However, the cribs alone were not enough. The codebreakers at Bletchley Park developed new procedures and algorithms for determining the set-up of the Enigma and also had to develop electronic computing devices to implement these methods.

“Today, historians believe that the work of the code breakers at Bletchley Park shortened the war by two years…”