Polish contribution to World War II: Encyclopedia II - Polish contribution to World War II - Intelligence

Polish contribution to World War II - Intelligence

During a period of over six and a half years, from late December 1932 to the outbreak of World War II, three mathematician-cryptologists (Marian Rejewski, Henryk Zygalski and Jerzy Różycki) at the Polish General Staff's Cipher Bureau in Warsaw had developed a number of techniques and devices — including the "grill" method, Różycki's "clock," Rejewski's "cyclometer" and "card catalog," Zygalski's "perforated sheets," and Rejewski's "cryptologic bomb" (Polish term: bomba, precursor to the later British "Bombe," named after its Polish predecessor) — to facilitate decryption of messages produced on the German "Enigma" cipher machine. A few weeks before the outbreak of World War II, on July 25, 1939, near Pyry in the Kabaty Woods just south of Warsaw, Poland disclosed her achievements to France and the United Kingdom, which had, up to that time, failed in all their own efforts to crack the German military Enigma cipher.

Had Poland not shared her results at Pyry, the United Kingdom would, at the very least, have been delayed by one or two years in reading Enigma, and could well have been unable to read it at all. In the event, intelligence gained from this source, codenamed ULTRA, was extremely valuable in the Allied prosecution of the war, although the exact influence of ULTRA on the course of the war has been a subject of debate. Some have argued that it decided the very outcome of the war itself, but more recently the view that ULTRA hastened the defeat of Germany by a period of time (between 6 months and 4 years) has found widespread acceptance.

As early as 1940, Polish agents (see Witold Pilecki) penetrated German concentration camps, including Auschwitz, and informed the world about Nazi atrocities.

Home Army (Polish: Armia Krajowa) intelligence was vital in locating and destroying (18 August 1943) the German rocket facility at Peenemunde and in gathering information about Germany's V-1 buzzbomb and V-2 rocket. The Home Army delivered to the United Kingdom key V-2 parts, after a V-2 rocket, fired 30 May 1944, crashed near a German test facility at Sarnaki on the Bug River and was recovered by the Home Army. On the night of 25-26 July, 1944, the crucial parts were flown from occupied Poland to the United Kingdom in an RAF plane, along with detailed drawings of parts too large to fit in the plane (see Operation III Most). Analysis of the German rocket became vital to improving Allied anti-V-2 defenses.

Polish intelligence cooperated with the other Allies in every European country and operated one of the largest intelligence networks in Nazi Germany. Many Poles also served in other Allied intelligence services, including the celebrated Krystyna Skarbek ("Christine Granville") in the United Kingdom's Special Operations Executive.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Intelligence", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki