Cryptography

In preparation for class on Tuesday, October 26th, please read through page 201 in Chapter 5 of the Singh book and respond to the following questions.

1. As we end our reading on military cryptography, what do you now say to the question of the importance of cryptography in World War Two?  To what extent was cryptography the decisive element of military victories?  Bear in mind Admiral Chester Nimitz’s quote on page 191 and Major General Howard Conner’s quote on page 200.
2. Given the United States’ poor treatment of Native Americans over the years, what might motivate young Navajo men to join the Marines during World War Two?  What social challenges do you think they faced while serving in the Marines?
3. Why have we not read much thus far about contributions of women to cryptography? Why does Singh limit his discussion of women at Bletchley Park to one sentence on page 161?
4. What examples have you seen thus far of the work of cryptographers and cryptanalysts not getting the credit it was perhaps due? Is it important to give accurate credit to groundbreaking work in cryptography, mathematics, or science? Why?

In preparation for class on Thursday, October 21st, please read the fourth chapter in the Singh book and respond to the following questions.

1. Given what you’ve now read about Bletchley Park’s role in World War Two, would you say that “Bletchley Park’s achievements were the decisive factor in the Allied victory”?
2. Why might the Germans increase the number of scramblers and plugboard cables in their Enigma machines to make them more secure, yet also insist that the Enigma cipher could not possibly be broken by the Allies?
3. We’ve seen that the Vigenère cipher was once though unbreakable but later broken.  Given that history, why might the Americans and French conclude that the Enigma cipher was unbreakable prior to the start of the Second World War?
4. Singh writes on page 149 that “the creative codebreaker must ‘perforce commune daily with dark spirits to accomplish his feats of mental ju-jitsu.’”  In light of your own experiences breaking ciphers, which is more important to successful codebreaking-logic or creativity?  Or is an equal balance of both required?
5. The Timeline: Take a look at the crpytography timeline you’ve built as a class. What insights about the history of cryptography occur to you as you examine the timeline? How could the timeline be improved to make it more useful to you, particularly as you think ahead to your “big questions” paper at the end of the course?