I'm sure this has been discussed before my time here, but.....oh well I thought I'd ask.

Something this small could of pro longed the war by months maybe years!!

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Facta non verba. "Deeds, not words"

I think we need to differentiate between the breaking of the codes and access to the Enigma machine. If I remember rightly, the codes that the Poles broke, using a pilfered and copied Enigma machine, was changed just before the invasion of Poland. Thus, the Poles lost their advantage just as they needed it.

However, they had managed to figure out some of the workings of the machine, which they shared with the French and the British before the war, and if this hadn't happened, then yes, the possibilities of the war being extended are true.

But then again, the use of the intelligence by the Allies was so haphazard that one could say that if it had been used properly then the war may have been shortened. Monty and Patton were two who were cr*p at accepting and using intel.

So swings and roundabouts - as per usual in the war

Other copies of the Enigma machine were capture later by the British and US. I'd guess the Soviet intel services capture some copies as well, although it is not clear if the unraveled the encryption system enough to use it.

Even with a machine in hand and operators manual (thanks to the French) it still took the Poles many years to unravel exactly how to get inside the system. Furthermore the Poles were using a realtively new approach. The leader of the analytical team was trained in arcturial mathmatics for insurance risk analysis. He & his peers adapted these methods to understand mathmaticlly how the system worked. This approach proved more effcient than traditional lingustic based decoding & decryption methods for comprehending the overall system & breaking it.

The advantage the British would have brought would have been the application of large scale manpower and resources. Still under the best circumstance it would have taken them a extra year to effctively comprehend the Enigma system and begain building practical decryption machines (usually called Bombes). Since the Brits did not capture their first encryption machine until 1940 this could set back the effort through 1941.

After the Brits historically accquired the Enigma system & Polish methods in 1939 it took them two full years to set up a system for effectively using it . The Germans sent literally thousands of Enigma encrypted messages each day. Sorting through all that and decrypting the critical messages required building a vast organization. The best case for the Allies is the effective use of the Enigma compromise and Ultra distribution system is delayed a full year if the Poles do not break it first. But that is best case. It is possible the Allies are not able to effectively use the Enigma/Ultra systems for two or three years later than historically.

A long delay has: 1. Bad implications for the Battle of the Atlantic vs the submarines, and some critical diadvantages in analayzing German strategy and operational decisions on the land & in the air. 2. Forces the Allies to better develop other intel sources faster & more completely than they did.