Are there any forgotten spies from this war or beyond that you think deserve their due credit?

@DrVictorVasconcelos

3 ай бұрын

Yeah, Charles Huntziger and Maxime Weygand 😂 I want to know if they deserve more infamy. Probably more of an appealing fanfic though. As the saying goes, "Don't attribute to malice that which can be attributed to stupidity".

@paultapner2769

3 ай бұрын

American Civil War rather than this one, but: Elizabeth Van Lew and Mary Bowser. Really ought to be a movie.

@alexamerling79

3 ай бұрын

SS officer Kurt Gerstein should get more credit for trying to report on the Holocaust.

@tremendousbaguette9680

3 ай бұрын

SOE chief Nicholas Bodington's three weeks stay in Paris during summer 1943, with SS Sturmbahnführer Karl Boemelburg at his heels. The stuff of legends.

@Josep_Hernandez_Lujan

3 ай бұрын

Sanzō Nosaka, a Japanse professor who spied for the Chinese during & possibly after WW2. He was also a founding member of both the British communist party. For this he was exiled from Britain. He would than go to become a founding member of the Japanese communist party and eventually a spy for the USSR (in the US) and later for China (from 1940 onward). He was a rather successful politician in Japan post-war despite being a spy. He lived to be 101 years old. He was on personal basis with both Stalin & Mao. A lot of his activities remain shrouded in mystery

His letter to his children really got me. He and so many others died for the free world we all enjoy

@sergiojuanmembiela6223

3 ай бұрын

No. He was in it for the money, way before the Nazis took power.

Not sure if it's because of the end of the war or the sheer length of time I've been watching this, but Astrid's "hello, darlings" felt quite warm and fuzzy today.

@richardtalbott6215

3 ай бұрын

That kind of consistency is nice, I agree. Me? I enjoy noticing the similarities in Anna's gestures and facial expressions. It's almost like these two gorgeous ladies have known each other for a long time, right?

@spartacus-olsson

3 ай бұрын

@@richardtalbott6215here’s an astonishing fact… Astrid has known Anna longer than Anna has known Astrid.

@DrVictorVasconcelos

3 ай бұрын

​@@spartacus-olsson That's quite the relationship. They must feel like family. Oh, and they have the same last name! What are the odds?!

@DrVictorVasconcelos

3 ай бұрын

​​​​​@@spartacus-olssonBy the way, thank you for your service. There aren't many people who have both the historical knowledge and the ability to talk about how our in-group bias breaks our insticts for justice, and you do it in a way that is so personal, yet analytical and persuasive. I'm not exaggerating when I say it is a public service to our own humanity and to humanity itself. I feel that understanding this dysfunction that causes us to feel strongly that things that aren't fair are in fact fair is a necessary step to overriding certain evolutionary insticts that lead everyday people to support and commit atrocities.

@spartacus-olsson

3 ай бұрын

@@DrVictorVasconcelos thank you 😊

I like how Astrid made that pen appear out of thin air at 3:02. She truly is a magician!!!

@WorldWarTwo

3 ай бұрын

A classic sleight of hand trick! Good spot and made me laugh, thanks for watching. - Jake

Astrid looks a little like Edna Mode from the Incredibles, I want to hear Astrid say "No capes!"

Quite a lot of this was first "released" in a 1977 series by the BBC called "The Secret War." Episode 6, the last proper episode called "Still Secret." including references to Hans Thilo-Schmidt, they interviewed Gordon Welchman and others from Bletchley Park. It also tells how the Poles got hold of the early Enigma machine.

Astrid and Anna. You two are developing into a truly quality double act. Fabulaous presentation, darlings.

@WorldWarTwo

3 ай бұрын

Glad you enjoyed, thanks for watching! - Jake

@astriddeinhard433

3 ай бұрын

thank you darling :))

On a Viking Cruise last year we had a presentation on the Enigma, and they actually let us look and touch one!

I don't know if you have done an episode on the breaking of the German high command's Lorenz code. It was arguably a greater feat of codebreaking then Enigma. Not only was the code more difficult but all the codebreakers had to go on was the messages themselves, they never saw a coding machine. The genius who broke the code was Bill Tutte and the person who mechanised the process was a post office engineer, Tommy Flowers who built from scratch the worlds first semi-programmable computer Colossus.

@johnstandley4333

3 ай бұрын

Sadly, they never get the credit they deserve.

That Turing meme thumbnail is glorious.

@WorldWarTwo

3 ай бұрын

The thumbnail team did great on this one for sure!

A most remarkable historical gem of a story, told by a most remarkable pair of ladies. Many thanks, Astrid and Anna! 👍❤👍❤

@WorldWarTwo

3 ай бұрын

Thanks for watching!

Hi Anna and Astrid. Awesome spy story about Hans Schmitt. Thanks for sharing.

@WorldWarTwo

3 ай бұрын

Thanks for the lovely comment! I'll pass it along to them. - Jake

"Show me a hero and I'll show you a bum." - Pappy Boyington

@WhiteCamry

3 ай бұрын

That should be in a superhero flick.

Actually, if you had read Simon Singh's book "The Code book" you will find on page 144 how Schmidt decided to give away the Enigma secrets. Published in 1999.

Can I say I LOVE the picture for this video?? Turing: "Am I a jest to you?"

@WorldWarTwo

3 ай бұрын

A joint effort from some of the team! Marek, James and Mikołaj. I'll let them know, thanks for watching! - Jake

An added element to the Enigma story I knew nothing about. Thank you Astrid, Anna and the TimeGhost team.

@WorldWarTwo

3 ай бұрын

Thanks for watching!

Reconstucting the machine is not the secret to cracking the cypher, though it does help. The trick to reading the message traffic in real time, i.e., within 24 hours before the cypher changes, was computational power and slack radio procedure (sending the same message twice with the same cypher). This why post war such cyphers changed to be truely one-time, which is the standard for all standard electronic message encryption today. The big problem for France in WWII is their high-command didn’t trust any radio traffic as genuine.

The French clearly understood the advice of Sun Tzu that "to remain in ignorance of the enemy's condition simply because one grudges the outlay of a hundred ounces of silver in honours and emoluments, is the height of inhumanity."

I've read a book by a certain Peter Jackson (no relation) detailing the apalling apathy of the French intelligence services during the pre-war years (the diplomatic side being forbidden to develop covert sources for example), and it fits perfectly with the "meh" attitude of the Deuxième Bureau when presented with that early opportunity to crack Enigma.

@bwarre2884

3 ай бұрын

At least they shared their intel with the Polish. And what to think about them, not returning the favour?

I knew nothing of Hans Thilo Schmidt. Thanks yet again for the education.

Another fabulous S&T by the queen and princess. Thank you to everyone who pulls this series off week after week!

Hey, love your series and watch it immediately after getting the notification that it dropped. However, as a Pole I need to jump in and say that pronunciation of M. Ciężki surname is a bit different. But given that all the phonetic units in this name are uniquely Polish I would be surprised if it was told perfectly.

@stevekaczynski3793

3 ай бұрын

At a tangent but the name also means "heavy" in Polish.

@astriddeinhard433

3 ай бұрын

we tried so hard for at least 10 minutes , I am so sorry :))

Many thanks, ladies and crew. I saw one of the enigma code breaking machines in a museum. I did not expect it to be the size of a bookcase.

I never knew about this, I thought I knew how Enigma was broken. But it does answer some questions I had, like where did the name "bombe" come from, and how did the code breakers get hold of the initial set of dials they would have needed to start understanding the machine and how it was used. Thanks! And may I say that the presentation of this story was top-notch? Excellent writing as well.

I really like where this series has gone lately. The major characters in the intelligence war have been mostly done long ago by now, so it's getting to characters that do not get brought up. It's honor to what they've done to keep their actions alive. And a reminder that history is not made by a handful of men, but a large large collective of people acting for various reasons.

Oh by gods! They called "bomba" Bombi, because plural of "bomba" is "bomby"! "Bombee" IMHO would be better pronunciation of "bomby", but "bombi" is just so freaking sweet name that I don't want them to change it!

@DrVictorVasconcelos

3 ай бұрын

Yeah, English has very confused vowels, in that nearly every vowel grapheme has evolved to sound like schwa (uh). Compare Bergman, Burgman, Birgman. I wish more people knew about their Great Vowel Shift. It would help native English speakers learn Euroasian languages quite a lot if they knew to stop imagining they can transfer their vowels.

@Error_404-F.cks_Not_Found

3 ай бұрын

I imagine that American English native speakers are even worse ? lol

@Medytacjusz

3 ай бұрын

idk, I'd prefer people not associate bombs with anything cute and sweet :P tbf, English doesn't have the polish "y" sound at all. If you ever met English learners of Polish they're usually fascinated by it (or, since learning Russian is more common, by its Russian relative ы)

Swedish code breakers in WWII are often forgotten, here is some info: One of the greatest accomplishments in the history of cryptography occurred in 1940 when a Swedish mathematician broke the German code used for strategic military communications. This story has all the elements of a classic thriller: a desperate wartime situation; a moody and secretive mathematical genius with a talent for cryptography; and a stunning mathematical feat, mysterious to this day. Arne Beurling, the man who inherited Einstein's office at Princeton's Institute for Advanced Study, was the figure who played this role at a crucial moment in world history. Though the cracking of the code from the Geheimschreiber (G-Schreiber) device is every bit as impressive as the breaking of the Enigma code by the Poles and English, this secret has been kept for over 50 years.

Another great segment. Thank You. Fascinating information which ties into many elements of history that I have come across over the decades and so you find your understanding and perspective changed. Thank You.

Thank you for this insightful content. It makes one wonder what may have been different had the Poles honoured their partnership and shared the details of their success...

How many more people like Schmidt will never be known to us that resisted for whatever motive in the hope of avoiding another war. Great video, thank you.

Skillfully done in less than 30 minutes! Post script: Love the sartorial style!!

Astrid's style is imposing, I'm always dazzled by all the colours she wears

That is a fantastic thumbnail. Great work Ana, Astrid, & team!

This is such a fascinating story full of twists and turns! Thank you for sharing it!

@WorldWarTwo

3 ай бұрын

And thanks for watching!

My grandmother worked as a wren at Bletchley. the work of her and her colleagues was not recognized until much later in her lifetime because of the secrecy of it all. So much of this story has gone untold for so long, but their work was as important as that of the soldiers, airmen, sailors, and generals on the Allied side. thanks for sharing some more of the figures behind this endeavor ... or for solving the enigma if you will.

Brava, ladies! How I love the two of you together, Astrid and Anna. You form a magical duo, erudite and beautiful. Please continue. 😍❤

This answers many questions and finally explains how the uncrackable was cracked. Amazing. Thank you so much.

"Gentlemen don’t read each other’s mail” - Secretary of State Henry Stimson Boy, was he wrong.

@stevekaczynski3793

3 ай бұрын

I would say he was right, but WW2 had nothing to do with gentlemen.

@Lonovavir

3 ай бұрын

Mid century Germans and Imperial Japan weren't gentlemen.

@srenkoch6127

3 ай бұрын

@@stevekaczynski3793 Or statecraft in general for that matter as proven by the last 3000+ years of written history.... As the saying goes unfortunately: Nations don't have friends, only interests.

One of the ideas in the British view of this secret war is that Germany never knew the Enigma was broken. After your great documentary I would say the Abwehr must have been able to work that out

It's always good to see and hear of forgotten individuals who played a big role in world history. And this guy was one of them. Loved the video Astrid n Anna. You two are awesome.

Listening to these two, I feel like I'm being interrogated! Can't tell who is "good cop" and who is "bad cop"!! 😂😂

@Lonovavir

3 ай бұрын

They totally don't work for the Abwehr 🤫😏.

Germany purchased and then modified a commercially available, electro-mechanical coding machine first sold for banking use about 1922. It is amazing to think that while chemistry, atomic energy, internal combustion engine technology, computing, math, physics and so on were in an era of rapid development, Germany was using Enigma machines right through to 1945. The insane part is that the Germans may have actually believed Enigma was still unbreakable. Let's not forget that the British were using the nearly identical Typex machine at the same time Germany was using Enigma.

@vksasdgaming9472

3 ай бұрын

Improper use broke Enigma. If every message ends with"heil Hitler" it is easier to crack. If weather report is always sent at 0600 Berlin Time and starts with that word (Wetterbürette) it is easier to crack.

your coverage is wonderful....thank you so much....

It Really bothers me that the whole family is just overflowing with charm and Swagger. From granny Astrid to uncle Indy right down to baby Anna, everyone is absolutely fabulous at presenting content.

Thanks again Astrid and Anna for a fascinating story beautifully told!

Hans Heidtmann of U 559 was lucky that the machine itself went down with the U Boat but it didn't prevent the cryptographic materials from being captured. Great stuff like always Astrid!

Thank you for the lesson.

Charlton Heston told about Th. Schmidt, at "Secrets of War". So he has been long discovered.

Outstanding episode Darlings ❤

Are you planning on covering the "pinch raids" that the allies ran in order to obtain the monthly dispatches detailing the wheel and plugboard settings? These raids resulted in at least one apparent disaster, but kept things going. Although David Kohnen from the Naval College disagrees, my research suggests that the capture of the German U-Boat U-505 was, in fact, planned to seize the latest codes from a boat that was notorious for its poor morale.

Alan Turing's heroic actions were rewarded with one the exact same rights violations that the Nazis perpetrated

I loved the chaotic clip on IG when Indie talks to the girls and Astrid answers in loud german while Sparty steps in as well lol

Interesting revelation. First I lean it is Alan Turing Then I learn Poles laid the ground work. Now this. Learning is fun.

Fantastic story, and well told

Gotta love the mom & daughter team. Expressions and gestures are entertaining.

amazing story

Anna looks amazing. The story is great (as always) thank you!!

A good video, ver informative. Thanks

@WorldWarTwo

3 ай бұрын

Thanks a lot for watching! -TimeGhost Ambassador

i like these 2. keep up the good work.

Thank you.

I think i heard of this story in look and learn magazine in the70s if i am not mistaken😮

Biggest problem the Germans were too arrogant to believe Enigma was cracked. Although Dönitz had an inkling someting was happening when he started to lose the U-boot war. But still couldn't comprehend or believe it was cracked.

May Sarton: "One must think like a hero in order to behave like a merely decent human being."

The thumbnail: *chefs kiss*

Great story like always ladies 😊 I would love to hear more about cracking the Lorenz Cipher used on the "Geheimschreiber" by Nazi high command. Bill Tutte and his Colossus are always overlooked but he made the first step in the digital revolution we still live in today.....

7:06 I don't blame you for mispronouncing this one and the following names. ;-) How difficult is it to have Polish, French, English and German names all in one episode?

I so love the accent of these ladies.

Gosh, Anna sounds almost like Astrid.

Good details. Ultra was ok but not for...Kriegsmarine's codes: e.g., the disastrous raid in Dieppe on Aug.19,1942 to capture codes from Headquarters there. What could be the other goals of such a dangerous operation? Not just..."pleasing" Stalin''s cry for help then.

@krzysztofciuba271

3 ай бұрын

I checked again on wikipedia@it confirms "Why was Dieppe raid?". A Candian historian revealed it earlier: Ultra intelligence made a very significant contribution in the Battle of the Atlantic. Winston Churchill wrote "The only thing that ever really frightened me during the war was the U-boat peril."[60] The decryption of Enigma signals to the U-boats was much more difficult than those of the Luftwaffe. It was not until June 1941 that Bletchley Park was able to read a significant amount of this traffic currently.[61] Transatlantic convoys were then diverted away from the U-boat "wolfpacks", and the U-boat supply vessels were sunk. On 1 February 1942, Enigma U-boat traffic became unreadable because of the introduction of a different 4-rotor Enigma machine. This situation persisted until December 1942, although other German naval Enigma messages were still being deciphered, such as those of the U-boat training command at Kiel.[62] From December 1942 to the end of the war, Ultra allowed Allied convoys to evade U-boat patrol lines, and guided Allied anti-submarine forces to the location of U-boats at sea.

@givenfirstnamefamilyfirstn3935

3 ай бұрын

It was from the exclusive British class system awarding a prominent role in the war to the royal but talentless paedophile prince *Dickie Mountbatten* who was assigned to run _Combined Operations._ He later mucked up the independence of India, another incompetent shambolic blood bath.

Cool tie Anna.

A complicated story , wonderfully and entertainingly presented, thank you.

I'll never overlook Gretz-Armainvilliers again.

Love the thumbnail

Félicitations pour votre accent, mademoiselle Deinhard !

Did you ever discuss Herbert Yardley in you between the wars stuff?

Love the earrings Astrid!

Those eyes.

I knew about most of the Polish part of this story for some 20 years now, when I read it in a book by US historians, and the way the British mass culture memory of Enigma totally ignores it always bugged me. I never knew about the French and the German double agent part of it. I suspect this story is also tied to another common misconception about the run-up to WWII: the notion that Neville Chamberlain & Éduard Daladier were simply naive when they agreed to the Munich Agreement. The backstory I remember from reading another history article is that British & French assessment of the intel on the size of the German military (the other intel Hans-Thilo Schmidt was tasked with) was faulty: they thought several phantom divisions only being set up are real, thus they thought they need time to re-arm themselves to stand a chance in a war.

@71kimg

3 ай бұрын

They absolutely wanted a 2 front war - and the British public didn’t want to re-arm.

@spartacus-olsson

3 ай бұрын

@@71kimgI’d correct that slightly: they absolutely wanted to avoid war, and thought that appeasing Hitler would achieve that. Rearmament was not only unpopular, it was explicitly a lower priority than the economic recovery efforts. The whole “they were buying time to rearm” is not supported by the records in any way shape or form. It’s a false post construction created to make the French and British policy less inane.

Ah, the Delightful Duo!

In defense of the Poles' reticence to divulge their success w/ Enigma, they may have already suspected how thoroughly compromised British intelligence [& most likely the French too] were by Soviet spies, with whom Poland had been having extensive, uh, "disagreements" throughout the 20s and 30s, comprising a greater threat than Germany did at the time. The Cambridge 5 are still mostly unknown to Americans w/ an interest in WW2, with perhaps the sole exception of Kim Philby...

great video ladies! love the ties! i enjoyed the Benedict Cumberbatch movie about Enigma ,The Imitation Game

@Daneelro

3 ай бұрын

...which, as the video proves, was very far from the historical truth.

@spookerredmenace3950

3 ай бұрын

well ya lol soooooooo very far. @@Daneelro

The timeghost meme division strikes again

You are very good at ciphering polish surnames.

Come for the top-notch history. Stay for Astrid's French accent.

@HistoryTeacherSteve

Ай бұрын

she's German

@AnthonyWhite-pd7rb

Ай бұрын

@@HistoryTeacherSteve Indeed she is. She does a French accent at 6:10 when describing the answer Bertrand got from Paris.

Here is a question I've never been able to find answer to: did Soviets ever break Enigma? If so, when did they break it?

@givenfirstnamefamilyfirstn3935

3 ай бұрын

They had the traitor John Cairncross spying inside ‘Tunny’, the breaking of the far more advanced 7 rotor Lorenz teleprinter based encryption of the Nazi high command. He passed on secrets of much higher importance than the routine Enigma traffic. _Allegedly_ he was known about by the Brits and was secretly used to allow the passing of information to the paranoid Soviets that they trusted more from their spy Cairncross than they did from any official secret information releases from the Brits. That *might be* a false fig-leaf just trying to reduce the Brit’s embarrassment from the communist Cambridge five plus one spy ring. The Soviets didn’t need to break German encryption just like they didn’t need to do all the atomic weapon research, they stole the knowledge.

@givenfirstnamefamilyfirstn3935

3 ай бұрын

A comment from me vanished! There was a communist spy inside ultra, the Soviets didn't need to break Enigma.

I always admire how you try to pronounce polish names.

As usual… reality is so much more complex than the initial stories told in grade school. Always beware the person who wants to create an hero image and worship that persona

Wow, the Poles did it. I always thought it was the Brits.

@agaw225

27 күн бұрын

not only Enigma... other polish scientists and engineers who made contributions to the Allied war effort, most notably Kosacki, who invented the Polish mine detector; Rudolph Gundlach, who designed tanks and armoured cars - but is best known for his invention of the Gundlach Rotary Periscope; Jerzy Dabrowski, the lead aeronautical engineer who designed the famous Polish PZL 37 Los Medium Bomber; Wladyslaw J. Swiatecki, who invented the slip bomb device (which the British claimed to have invented) and many others.

What about Elizebeth Friedman in the US?

The German enigma machine surely does take all the press, but the American Navy cypher machine with 16! rotors shurely does take the cake.

it's said that breaking the enigma code shorten the war by 2 years, i think if the allies had the talents of Astrid and Anna in WW2, the war would have been shortened by another 2 years, your Fabulous Darlings.

Remember in 1930's copying technology was not like that of today. Ashi's presentation of copies of the original manual presents questions.

@spartacus-olsson

3 ай бұрын

I think you might be missing an essential point here: although top secret, this was a document issued in many copies… it was the user’s manual. Literally thousands of users needed one of these in order to use the Enigma.

Enigma balls. There, i said it. I'm sorry.

No b.s. ladies and gentlemen

Zwei geniale Frauen.

Not an infinite number of combinations.

@Amradar123

3 ай бұрын

Luckily that turned out to be the key to cracking it 😊

🇺🇸

Fantastic outfits! 🙂

Astrid and Anna are very cute presenters.

The real person who cracked the enigma was Artur Scherbius. If not for him noone would ever crack enigma.