The Nazis' secret weapon: Extra powerful Enigma machine built AFTER Alan Turing's Bletchley Park experts cracked original code
An incredibly rare four rotor Enigma machine used by the Nazis during the Second World War has emerged for sale for £300,000.
The Nazis sent coded messages through the cipher machines to their ships and U-boats to plan devastating attacks on Allied shipping.
The British codebreakers at Bletchley Park, led by Alan Turing, cracked the original three rotor Enigma machines in 1941.
A subsequent dramatic fall in the number of Allied ships being sunk led the Germans to suspect the Enigma had been compromised.
As a result, in February 1942, they introduced a new fourth rotor wheel which multiplied the number of available settings another 26 times.
But the codebreakers at Bletchley were again able to crack it, enabling them to decipher a staggering 84,000 German messages a month.
Some experts believe their work may have shortened the war by up to two years.
Since the Nazi high command ordered the Enigma machines be destroyed towards the end of the war to prevent them falling into enemy hands, surviving examples are extremely scarce.
An incredibly rare four rotor Enigma machine used by the Nazis during the Second World War has emerged for sale for £300,000
The rare surviving example of the improved M4 cipher machine is going under the hammer at auctioneers Bonhams, of Knightsbridge, London.
The machine - which measures 6ins by 11ins by 14ins - has three moving wired rotors, a fixed reflector and a plug board located behind a wooden flap at the front.
A Bonhams spokesperson said: 'The M4 differs from other models in that it has a fourth, additional but non-rotating and non-interchangeable rotor that increased the complexity of the enciphering process.
'It was the fourth naval model and was particularly intended for use by the U-boat division.
'Production of this model began in late 1941 and it was introduced early into 1942.
'With the increased complexity introduced by this model, the M4 came as a shock to Allied codebreakers and went unbroken for nine months, until the capture of important key sheets aboard the U-559 by British sailors in October 1942.
The rare surviving example of the improved M4 cipher machine is going under the hammer at auctioneers Bonhams, of Knightsbridge, London
The machine - which measures 6 inches by 11 inches by 14 inches - has three moving wired rotors, a fixed reflector and a plug board located behind a wooden flap at the front
The machine in its original wooden box. It was developed after the Germans suspected that Britain had cracked the Enigma code
Parts of the machine. The sale takes place on September 9
Alan Turing remains the most high-profile of the Bletchley Park codebreakers, in large part because of his incredible intellectual feats and subsequent tragic fate
'Traffic enciphered by the M4 was codenamed SHARK by Allied codebreakers and this eventual breach of this communications channel played an important role in the Battle of the Atlantic.
'The German High Command ordered that Enigma machines be destroyed in the event that capture by Allied forces was imminent, so few survive today.
'The M4 is rarer than its Army counterpart, the Enigma I, with just 70-80 surviving examples of the M4 recorded worldwide, of which only about half are in private hands.
'The M4 offered by Bonhams is a very fine, well-preserved example.'
The sale takes place on September 9.
Turing remains the most high-profile of the Bletchley Park codebreakers, in large part because of his incredible feats and subsequent tragic fate.
The genius, who was gay at a time when homosexual relations were illegal, was convicted of gross indecency with a man in 1952.
He chose to be chemically castrated over going to prison and took his life just two years later aged 41.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-15010197/Nazi-Enigma-machine-rare-Bletchley-Park.html
Kriegsmarine commander-in-chief Karl Donitz, in charge of the German navy, ordered the development of the so-called M4 after suffering repeated defeats at the hands of the Allies early in the war.
So confident was Donitz in the M4 Enigma that, in his trial at Nuremberg, he claimed the Allies could not possibly have deciphered its messages.
Instead he attributed the destruction wreaked upon his fleet to advanced radar and direction-finding alone.
Bletchley Park was the British forces' intelligence centre during WWII, where cryptographers deciphered top-secret military communiques between Hitler and his armed forces. Pictured are codebreakers using the British Typex cipher machines in Hut 6
Endless battle: The Germans changed the encryption on the Enigma machines every day, which the British would have to crack again
German U-boat
Bletchley Park
By 1944 British and American commanders knew the location of 58 out of the 60 German divisions across the Western Front.
Colossus at Bletchley Park: The first electronic computer, used to crack Enigma
Women working at the Bletchley Listening Center, operating the computers used for breaking the codes.
A team of staff helped to decipher top-secret military communiques between Hitler and his armed forces. The intelligence gathered at Bletchley Park is believed by some to have shortened the war by two years or so.
A great deal of information was decrypted about General Erwin Rommel's forces in North Africa.
The German commander enjoyed a great deal of success against the British but with the help of intelligence from the codebreakers General Bernard Montgomery's British forces were able to drive him back in 1942.
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