AHC/WI/PC: German Enigma Code uses Gothic Language

[Mr. BoJangles]

As it says on the tin:

1. Would it be possible for the Enigma code to use the Gothic language to send messages, adding another layer of depth to its complexity (in much the same manner as the Navajo Code Talkers)?
2. What would it take for Gothic to be used in this manner? And what are the odds of persons outside the German military to know Gothic to the point where the code could be completely cracked as Enigma was IOTL?
3. What would be the short term-long term effects of this change be? How would the war end? Who would be victorious? How many more lives would be lost? Who gets the bomb first? What of the Cold War?

Any input would be appreciated.

 

[Deleted member 1487]

That wouldn't be necessary if they just fixed the basic issues of use and holes in the system:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cryptanalysis_of_the_Enigma

 

[Peabody-Martini]

The reason that the Navajo code talkers worked is that no one in the Japanese military or academia knew the syntax. I'm not sure if the same thing could be said about Gothic or German dialects because of the large amount of immigration into the US from Germany.

 

[Tom Colton]

I would love to see the Italians try to reconstruct Etruscan purely as a code language.

 

[Mr. BoJangles]

That wouldn't be necessary if they just fixed the basic issues of use and holes in the system:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cryptanalysis_of_the_Enigma

Even if fixed, the problem is that its a machine, and machines can always be reverse engineered. Languages have to be learned and translated in order to be useful. Native tongues are easy as there is mutual understanding. But with something else, especially something long extinct with the only existing remnants being Bible verses, it would make it much more complex to learn it. Especially if it kept to the Runic alphabet.

The reason that the Navajo code talkers worked is that no one in the Japanese military or academia knew the syntax. I'm not sure if the same thing could be said about Gothic or German dialects because of the large amount of immigration into the US from Germany.

If it was purely taught as a code language, then that would mitigate that issue, though not entirely.

I would love to see the Italians try to reconstruct Etruscan purely as a code language.

oh god.

 

[Alcsentre Calanice]

I would love to see the Italians try to reconstruct Etruscan purely as a code language.

Oh god... This would end in a disaster. Italians and military always end in a disaster.

 

[Tom Colton]

Oh god... This would end in a disaster. Italians and military always end in a disaster.

Generations of linguists would have to put out papers explaining that "Duce-Etruscan" only shares the vocabulary and rudiments of grammar with the actual thing.

 

[Dathi THorfinnsson]

As it says on the tin:

1. Would it be possible for the Enigma code to use the Gothic language to send messages, adding another layer of depth to its complexity (in much the same manner as the Navajo Code Talkers)?
2. What would it take for Gothic to be used in this manner? And what are the odds of persons outside the German military to know Gothic to the point where the code could be completely cracked as Enigma was IOTL?
3. What would be the short term-long term effects of this change be? How would the war end? Who would be victorious? How many more lives would be lost? Who gets the bomb first? What of the Cold War?

Any input would be appreciated.

Where the heck are they going to find fluent Gothic speakers for, e.g. every single submarine in the fleet?

Besides, there's probably almost as many people competent in Gothic in British universities as there are in German ones, and THEY can all be based at Bletchley Park, rather than scattered to every military unit.

 

[Locke01]

The reason that the Navajo code talkers worked is that no one in the Japanese military or academia knew the syntax. I'm not sure if the same thing could be said about Gothic or German dialects because of the large amount of immigration into the US from Germany.

Also, there's bound to be a boatload or two of British academics who will be familiar with Gothic or German dialects. If they haven't already been drafted into the British war effort, they very soon will be.

Draft Board: No, Professor Tolkien, we don't care if you ARE busy writing a sequel to that banal children's book you inflicted on us a few years ago. England needs you.


Note: Our esteemed Professor Tolkien was, OTL, interviewed for a position with the Government Code and Cipher School, shortly before the war, but not taken on for reasons that are unclear. His skill set included considerable command of Gothic language in the medieval period. In this scenario, I wager his talents will be sought out in a bit of a hurry.

 

[Locke01]

And I apologize for being unduly anal, but for the sake of accuracy, I point out that the Enigma Code is most precisely referred to as the Enigma Cipher.

Code replaces a word with another word, or words.

Cipher replaces a word with numbers.

That's the short version, anyhow. Enigma was definitely a Cipher.

 

[Tyr Anazasi]

There is another language one could take, Nehrungskurisch.

https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nehrungskurisch

It is (or better was) a Baltic language with strong German influences. In that time it was spoken by about 245 families on the Curonian Spit.

 

[Anarch King of Dipsodes]

And I apologize for being unduly anal, but for the sake of accuracy, I point out that the Enigma Code is most precisely referred to as the Enigma Cipher.

Code replaces a word with another word, or words.

Cipher replaces a word with numbers.

That's the short version, anyhow. Enigma was definitely a Cipher.

More precisely:

A code has a specified replacement for each particular message element, usually word by word. The replacements are predefined and fixed.

A cipher replaces individual characters in a message by other characters which are mathematically generated "on the fly".

 

[CalBear]

Unless you are going to make this ASB it is pretty much worthless. Since no one but scholars understand it, it has minimal value.

What made Navajo, along with several other Native American languages, so useful was that it was a living language, with speakers who could walk right into the training system, learn the code terms, which served as a second layer of encryption (to the point that when the Japanese tried to get a non code talker Navajo to translate the messages it made no sense, it was literally gibberish to him), and get the training on the communication systems and head off to the combat zone. The languages also tend to be extremely tonal, a native speaker sounds very different from someone who learned it as an adult so even if someone manages to break into the Net, they would be detected (it also helped that the number of non native speakers who could speak Navajo at the time could be counted on two hands, with a couple fingers to spare and other Native American languages were also rarely understood except by those born into the language).

The British actually used Welsh speakers in the Balkans during the recent NATO operations in the same way.


But using a dead language is not going to work.

 

[CalBear]

Also, there's bound to be a boatload or two of British academics who will be familiar with Gothic or German dialects. If they haven't already been drafted into the British war effort, they very soon will be.

Draft Board: No, Professor Tolkien, we don't care if you ARE busy writing a sequel to that banal children's book you inflicted on us a few years ago. England needs you.


Note: Our esteemed Professor Tolkien was, OTL, interviewed for a position with the Government Code and Cipher School, shortly before the war, but not taken on for reasons that are unclear. His skill set included considerable command of Gothic language in the medieval period. In this scenario, I wager his talents will be sought out in a bit of a hurry.

Can you imagine him and Alan Turing in the same room? They would need MPs with batons.

 

[ennobee]

I would love to see the Italians try to reconstruct Etruscan purely as a code language.

IOTL, there was an embarrassing incident in Germany in the 1990's where the Federal Police Task Force pretty much used the most sophisticated surveillance system to record every phone call ever going in and out of the mansion of a known Maffioso, only to find out that they couldn't do anything with the recordings because all 'business deals' were done not in Italian but in Sicilian, better still, in a Sicilian dialect only spoken in a few villages on the island and virtually uncomprehensable for everyone who did not grow up there, including the best linguists Germany could muster.

 

[jetpack]

I was once fortunate enough to see a presentation given by a Navajo code talker, and then have lunch with him in a small group to interview him. That doesn't give me as much expertise as someone who's read half a book on the subject, but it's something. I tried to grill him as much as I could about the way the code worked, but I didn't feel like we had enough shared expertise to be sure we were communicating.

The Navajo code had a three advantages, as far as I could tell. One is that most of the Navajo speakers were in one country, and other people have commented on that. Another advantage was that the code was easy to memorize for a certain subpopulation. A third advantage was that it was communicated over audio, so the first thing an eavesdropper would have to do is figure out the phonology, word segmentation to write it down. If they could write it down and spell consistently, they could use their standard code-breaking techniques to sort it out.

In Enigma, you don't have any of these advantages. The Germans would have to look up each of the words in a code book, type it up in the Roman alphabet, and run it through their cipher. If it's typed, it's so much cleaner and better-normalized than speech. The Brits would try their decipher program until they see things that look vaguely pronounceable, at which point they will write down that that's a code word, and use standard decoding techniques to interpret the until they hire Dr Tolkien and friends. The Germans would be better off using a code book of random character sequences before inserting it into the Enigma cipher.

 

[Tom Colton]

I suppose an alternative would be Sorbian, but that would require Hitler to recognise the Sorbs.

Fascinating info on Sicillian used as a code language!

 

[Anarch King of Dipsodes]

As it says on the tin:

1. Would it be possible for the Enigma code to use the Gothic language to send messages, adding another layer of depth to its complexity (in much the same manner as the Navajo Code Talkers)?

Possible yes, useful no. The code talkers were useful because they enabled very rapid encryption/decryption of messages that had to be acted on very quickly, i.e. a call for artillery fire on a particular location.

Standard encryption would require the message to be written down, then enciphered with a M-209, then transmitted in Morse code (much slower than voice), and finally deciphered with an M-209. This laborious process was too slow for real-time tactical messages. The code talkers could "encode" a message into Navajo, using specialized jargon as fast as they could talk, and decode it as rapidly.

Navajo was secure because no one in Japan understood it, but it was vulnerable; if Japanese monitors began to recognize bits of it, the entire system would collapse at once.

Enigma messages were another level up. They were rarely of immediate importance. There was no need of rapid transmission; but if read, the damage could be lasting.

"Encoding" in Gothic would add no security, because there were Gothic language experts in Allied countries, and would add a lot of work.

In any case, most Enigma messages were partially encoded using a digram table; that is, common words in in the clear text were replaced with two-letter combinations per a table which changed periodically. A language switch would add very little additional security.