An Enigma machine was recovered from the Baltic Sea by divers. The German Nazi forces used the Enigma machine during World War II to send messages to their troops.
It was found in Gelting Bay, on Germany's northern coast. MailOnline reported that the divers were only removing abandoned nets in the area when they happen to come across the Nazi machine.
The machine was designed shortly after the First World War by engineer Arthur Scherbius for commercial use but then it was later on adapted as a cipher engine by several national governments and militaries.
The Enigma has become well-known in World War II, having played an important role in the Axis powers to encode military commands, for safe radio transmission, and as part of the Nazi's rapid 'blitzkrieg' strategy.
Understanding the principles of which the Enigma machine worked has been the job of the experts in Bletchley Park, led by Allan Turing to decrypt the radio transmissions that Nazis are sending.
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Extraordinary Find
Gabriele Dederer of the World Wildlife Fund (WWF), who hired divers for marine conservation activities, said that the discovery of the Nazi Enigma machine was an extraordinary find. She added that the WWF has been working for years already in the Baltic Sea to remove dangerous ghost nets.
These are abandoned or lost fishnets that could become deadly traps for the fish, marine animals, and seabirds. Dederer said that the group has been finding large objects that get entangled on the nets, like tree trunks and stones.
By far, the Enigma machine was the most interesting and exciting historical discovery they have found in the Baltic Sea. It was found on the seabed after Submaris have used side-view sonar technology in identifying ghost nets.
Florian Huber, a Submaris diver, suspects that the Enigma machine may have gone outboard in May 1945 when 47 German U-boats scuttled in Gelting Bay. He said that the machine may have been thrown into the Baltic Sea in fear that Allies might get the machine.
Huber noted that there are only a few copies of Enigma machines left and is now considered to be extremely rare with only a few left in the German museum. The one found in the Baltic sea was sent to the Museum of Archaeology in Schleswig to be preserved and studied further.
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Enigma Codebreaker
Alan Turing is credited for making the anti-Enigma machine after understanding how it worked. He was stationed at Bletchley Park together with other codebreakers to decipher the radio transmissions sent by the Enigma machines of the Germans.
The anti-Enigma machine was named Victory and was installed in 1940 which could decipher over 84,000 messages a month or two messages every minute. Turing has pitted machine against machine to win against the Nazis at that time, BBC reported.
His contribution was very crucial during World War II with PM Churchill's advisors saying that Britain might starve if the U-boats continue to target the ships going to the country carrying supplies. Turing's and his group's discovery was just in time so that the English ships could dodge the U-boats in the vast Atlantic Ocean, which ultimately saved many lives.
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