In the blog post (http://derekbruff.org/blogs/fywscrypto/2017/10/08/the-allies-teamwork-against-the-germans-human-error/), the student proposed an interesting idea that the Allies’ teamwork and creativity outcome the German’s general traits of procedural and rigid. I voted for creativity in the class research on TopHat which asked what trait is more important for figuring out an encrypted message. Cryptography or figuring out encrypted messages should not be like repeating the dull routine of changing letters into encrypted ones. German’s procedure of obeying the rules is probably one of the factors besides their overconfidence that caused their failure in the war against the Allies.
Germans made mistakes when they used too much of repetitive words in their enciphered text. For example, they started every message with the same words to praise their leader. They also used the Enigma machine under some unsuitable circumstances. They even used the encrypting methods for the weather report. Doing this is completely unnecessary at all and is probably just a show-off of their skills. Too many resources are provided to the Allies to decipher the messages. Their compliance made them precise and loyal soldiers, but that’s their disadvantage in the war of ciphers.
In contrast to Germans’ rigidity, the Allies’ teamwork between countries improved their chance to succeed. They also have a born advantage of language. The usage of Navajo language in military encryption was ingenious and made the codes unbreakable. The Allies’ cryptographers can focus more on deciphering German messages rather than worrying about their own message security. Combing German’s disadvantage and the Allies’ advantage, even a machine strong as Enigma will fall.
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