In 1948, the IDF turned down an offer for the Enigma encryption machine from the British ~ Elder Of Ziyon

Sunday, February 23, 2025

In 1948, the IDF turned down an offer for the Enigma encryption machine from the British

Haaretz has a lengthy account of how the British broke the Nazi "Enigma" machine encryption and how the Nazis denied that such a thing was possible even when evidence mounted, shortening World War II.

At the very end of the article, it adds an intriguing detail I had never heard before:

Enigma was also the subject of a brief chapter in the history of the Israel Defense Forces. At the end of the Mandate, the British gave the Jewish state's nascent army a few dozen Enigma machines – naturally, without relating the exploits at Bletchley Park (which is today a historical landmark and museum). According to some reports, the British, who apparently hoped for full access to the secrets of the IDF, didn't know that one of the mathematicians who had worked on breaking Enigma had made aliyah, and, upon hearing of the British gesture, hinted to the relevant authorities here that some gifts are better left unaccepted.

Now, this is interesting! People who worked on the British codebreaking project were famously reticent about telling anyone about what they did during the war. It took decades for the details to be publicized. Who was this Jew who worked in Bletchley Park and recommended against the IDF accepting this Trojan Horse gift from the British in 1947 or 1948?

TheJC published an article about the many Jews who worked on the British codebreaking efforts:

In those early days of the war, the Jewish staff invited to share the Sabbath meal with Rebecca and Philip Bogush and their daughters — the only known Jewish family in Bletchley village, who had been evacuated from Stamford Hill during the Blitz — were as eclectic a group as the rest of “Station X”.

There were established academics at the height of their careers, young servicemen recruited for their mathematical or linguistic skills, clerks and messengers who combined fast typing with languages, including the Bogush daughters, Muriel and Anita. They came from a variety of social backgrounds, the famous names of Anglo-Jewry alongside recent immigrants from Germany and eastern Europe.

Among the academics were great figures in the history of computer science, not least Max Newman, whose lectures Alan Turing attended at Cambridge University. Newman’s work at Bletchley was critical to cracking the “Tunny” code used by the German High Command. Convinced that codebreaking could be mechanised, he was a driving force in the creation of Colossus, the world’s first programmable computer. It was the remarkable technological breakthroughs of Newman, Turing, Welchman and others that the scholar George Steiner had in mind when he described Bletchley as perhaps the greatest achievement of Britain not just in the Second World War but in the 20th Century.

There was also a vibrant group of younger Jewish academics who would meet on Wednesday evenings at the flat of Joe Gillis, a lecturer at the Maths faculty of Queen’s University, Belfast. There they discussed the future, personal and political. Some of Bletchley’s most talented staff were regular attendees: Rolf Noskwith; Morris Hoffman, a young civil servant who had been one of the earliest members of the Federation of Zionist Youth before the war; Jack Good, a gifted mathematician and British chess champion, who was Turing’s statistical assistant; Michael Cohen, a Scot who had been at Glasgow University studying Divinity with a view to becoming a rabbi; and the remarkable Ettinghausen brothers, Walter and Ernest.

Later on we see:

The meetings at Gillis’s flat were more focused on the future than current atrocities. It was there that the Professional and Technical Aliyah Association was founded, to encourage Jewish professionals to emigrate and build a modern, democratic Israel.
Walter Ettinghausen declared at one gathering that he would be on the first boat to Palestine after the war. He left in 1946 and, as Walter Eytan, went on to play a key role in Israeli foreign policy and public service.
Gillis himself became a founder and professor of Applied Mathematics at the Weizmann Institute; by 1948 Michael Cohen was coding messages for the Jewish Agency in Jerusalem and went on to help found the “British Kibbutz” in Upper Galilee.
There were many other Jewish Bletchley veterans who put their skills at the service of the new state; when Noskwith saw Eytan at the UN in 1947 to offer his own expertise in Israel, Eytan responded: “Codebreakers we have plenty of!”

According to the 2023 IDF book "Jewish Warfare in the Second World War" (Hebrew), it was indeed Walter Eytan (Ettinghausen) who advised against the IDF accepting this "gift." They mention this in his brief biography:

Walter Eytan - In 1946, he established the 'Institute for Advanced Studies' (School for Diplomats) within the Political Department of the Jewish Agency. He also served as the liaison officer for the English press and was involved in secret missions. His extensive experience should have made him a valuable asset to the Yishuv's intelligence, but there is no evidence to support this. The British ability to eavesdrop on the Jewish Agency's communications and decipher its codes became widely known long before, after the King David Hotel bombing on July 22, 1946. Therefore, his contribution, if any, to enhancing communication security was probably not significant, except for his objection that prevented the purchase of 'Enigma' machines for the IDF.

The way this is written, Eytan - who didn't even tell his wife what he did during the war - probably just recommended that the IDF not accept the machines without explaining exactly why.

This is a fascinating footnote to the history of the breaking of the Enigma code.