The Enigma machine , an electromechanical rotor cipher device used by Nazi Germany to protect military communications during WWII. Resembling a typewriter, it used a series of rotating wheels and a plugboard to scramble plaintext into ciphertext. With 103 sextillion possible settings, the Germans believed it unbreakable. However, building on pioneering work by Polish mathematicians, Alan Turing and the team at Bletchley Park developed the "Bombe" to automate decryption. This intelligence, codenamed Ultra, is estimated to have shortened the war by two years and saved millions of lives.

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