German code breaking in World War II German code breaking in World War II German code breaking in World War II achieved some notable successes cracking British Naval ciphers until well into the fourth year of the war, but also suffered from a problem typical of the German armed forces of the time: numerous branches and institutions maintained their own cryptographic departments, working on their own without collaboration or sharing results with equivalent units. This led to duplicated effort, to a fragmentation of potential, and to lower efficiency than might have been achieved. There was no central German cryptography agency comparable to the British Bletchley Park facility.
Cryptanalysis of the Enigma current on the way out to the lamp panel. To decipher German military Enigma messages, the following information would need to be known. Logical structure of the machine (unchanging) Internal settings (usually changed less frequently than external settings) External settings (usually changed more frequently than internal settings) Discovering the logical structure of the machine may be called "breaking" it, a one-off process except when changes or additions were made to the machines. Finding the internal and external settings for one or more messages may be called "solving" - although breaking is often used for this process as well. The various