Cryptanalysis of the Enigma immense problem and it gave a great deal of trouble. Work on a high speed machine had been started by Wynn-Williams of the TRE late in 1941 and some nine months later Harold Keen of BTM started work independently. Early in 1942, Bletchley Park were a long way from possessing a high speed machine of any sort. Eventually, after a long period of being unable to decipher U-boat messages, a source of cribs was found. This was the Kurzsignale (short signals), a code which the German navy used to minimize the duration of transmissions, thereby reducing the risk of being
The Man That Was Used Up story seems to suggest that the war hero has nothing left but the injuries he has received in battle to make up his identity. According to Shawn James Rosenheim, Poe also is questioning technology, suggesting that it will soon be difficult to distinguish man from machine. The story also has minor critiques of racism; the war hero was taken apart by Indians but is put together by his "old negro valet" named Pompey (a name Poe also uses in "A Predicament"), arguably undermining the power of white male dominance. Poe may also have been reacting to the popular "subversive" humor