How The Enigma Machine Was Cracked

Due to The Enigma Machine's complexity, The Allies took a while to crack it. Eventually, Alan Turing found a fatal flaw in the Enigma Machine's encoding mechanism, when a letter is encrypted, it can never output itself (for example the press of the letter "A" will never light up "A" on the lampboard). Then, all Turing needed to do was locate a phrase said in every message sent by the Germans. this message, of course, was "Heil Hitler." This reduced the number of possible states for people to test exponentially, small enough to the point where a machine could do it. The allies then started creating many machines that are known as Bombe machines to be used to decipher all of the German's messages. This might have been a niche part of WW2, but it made the playing field more even between The Axis Powers and The Allies.