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 in World War II. The strength of the security of the ciphers that were produced by the Enigma machine was a product of the large numbers associated with the scrambling process. However, the way that Enigma was used by the Germans meant that, if the settings for one day (or whatever period was represented by each row of the setting sheet) were established, the rest of the messages for that network on that day could quickly be deciphered. The security of Enigma ciphers did have fundamental weaknesses that proved helpful to cryptanalysts. Enigma featured the major operational convenience of being