The Enigma Machine Part I Polish Code Breakers

Poles Crack the Enigma (00:03:36m)

Original Logo of Enigma

The fundamental design of what was to become the famous Enigma Machine was in fact developed by four different inventors over a three year period. They all shared one thing in common, the vision of building a cipher machine using rotors to encrypt letters of the alphabet.

The first inventor was an American by the name of Edward H. Hebern (1917) who made the first patent claim, followed by Arthur Scherbius (Germany -1918), Hugo Koch (Netherlands-1919) and Arvid Gerhard Damm (Sweden -1919). Among the four only Scherbius found financial success with his machine.

Enigma Machine

Koch sought to promote his version of the Enigma for civilian, and commercial applications by which large companies could preserve their trade secrets in code.  Conversely,  Arthur Scherbius, a Berlin engineer envisaged military applications for his design and started a company to manufacture and sell  what he called the Enigma. By 1926 every German army division, ship, and submarine had an Enigma, and through the next twenty years its design was improved many times over and its function made much more complex. By the end of World War II, there was estimated to have been up to 120,000 Enigma machines in use by the German Wermacht.
 
As early as mid 1928, the Poles had been able to purchase a commercial model of the Enigma and began studying its' components.Soon after they began to make their first attempts at breaking the German ciphers. Messages were being intercepted by four Polish ELINT stations, in Warsaw, Starogard near Gdansk (or then Danzig), in Poznan and in Krzeslawice near Cracow.

University of Poznan

When their early attempts proved unsuccessful, the Poles realized that the ciphers would be difficult to break. The Ciphers Office (Biuro Szyfrów) of the Polish Army's General Staff sought the help of mathematicians, and in January 1929 they approached the Dean of the Department of Mathematics, Professor Zdzislaw Krygowski at the University of Poznan. The Dean submitted a list recommending some of his highest graduating students and twenty of them began working at the Ciphers Office,later graduating from a cryptography course that was also offered by that Office.

The students were sworn to secrecy concerning the plans of the course and their involvement in it. Overseeing all activities were two officers from the Polish General Staff in Warsaw, Major Franciszek Pokorny and Lt. Maksymilian Ciezki.

The best graduates were: Marian Rejewski, Jerzy Rozycki and Henryk Zygalski who worked at the University as well as secretly working for the General Staff's Ciphers Office. Rejewski himself spent about twelve hours each week huddled in a secret underground vault that was referred to as the "Black Chamber".

Marian Rejewski

In 1930, the German military introduced innovations to its design - a commutator or plugboard which consisted of 26 connections as well as the addition of three spinning rotors. It gave the Enigma an enormous range of cipher combinations, a total number that could only be expressed by 34 digits followed by 51 zeros. The Germans believed that it was virtually impossible for an enemy to even chance upon the right setting. Their arrogance, and ultimate carelessness proved them wrong. Despite efforts by many of the Allies, Polish cryptologists were the first to achieve success. They made significant and rapid progress during the years preceding World War II, and had already been deciphering and reading secret German transmissions.

Jerzy Rozycki

Of the original team of Polish mathematicians, by 1930, only eight students remained, working under the direction of Rejewski. Through an elaborate series of mathematical calculations Rejewski was able to arrive at a partial and quick solution to the Enigma Code, however, it only applied to the commercial model. A new branch of the Cipher's Office opened in Poznan, an operation shrouded in the utmost secrecy and one in which Rejewski, and his colleagues were immediately assigned to work. Two years later the team was relocated to Warsaw to begin work on the Enigma, where they successfully decoded a German Navy four letter cipher.

Rejewski, the leading cryptologist of the group, was searching for a new way of breaking the German code and developed a system of decryption based on mathematical equations. Polish Intelligence had in it's possession a genuine Enigma machine, albeit the commercial model, but nevertheless still an invaluable resource. The military Enigma was much more complicated and produced an infinite number of computations and permutations.

Henryk Zygalski

The Enigma was an extremely complicated electro-mechanical system based on drums or rotors for encoding. The machine very much resembles a typewriter with the addition of a panel built into its lid in which were inserted 26 small glass windows indicating each letter of the alphabet and on the underside of the panel was an equal number of tiny lamps. Inside the machine, mounted on one axle were 3 rotating drums and a reflector connected by an elaborate system of wiring which was powered by either electricity or battery. At the stroke of a key, two things occurred: one or more of the rotors would revolve, and the glow lamps would simultaneously light up next to the letter above it. So by typing a plain text in ordinary language, the keys made the appropriate windows illuminate.

But for the purpose of conducting a secret communication, sender and receiver had to possess a cipher, or "key ", a device which encrypted each letter through the manipulation of numerous levers and knobs.

Another breakthrough came in 1931 when Polish Intelligence joined forces with its counterpart, the French Deuxieme Bureau. Their collaboration eventually led to contact with an important agent operating within the Reichswehr Cipher's Office. As a result, Rejewski obtained a description of the militarized version of the Enigma, as well as old key tables. With these new leads, he was able to eliminate many previously unknown variables in the "permutation-like" equation he had originally created. By December 1932 Rejewski reconstructed the Enigma's internal connections.

The Cipher Bureau at Poznan was disbanded by the summer of 1932 and by the following September Rejewski in the capacity of a civilian employee, joined the Cipher Bureau at the General Staff building of Saxon Palace in Warsaw, along with Zygalski and Różycki.

Saxon Palace, Warsaw

In January 1933, two other cryptologists collaborated with Rejewski's work and in the same month decrypted the first German messages. From then on, the General Staff were able to discover secret information transmitted by the German Amy, Navy, Air Force, as well as the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

The Polish Army's General Staff placed an order the very next month at the AVA Radio Workshops in Warsaw to build copies of the military Enigma. At the time however, the General Staff had in its possession only one Enigma which was a commercial model and lacked the front panel auxiliary connectors that made the code stronger.By the middle of 1934, about fifteen "made in Poland" Enigma's had been produced and delivered and by the of August 1939 production had increased to seventy such units. All were produced at the AVA Radio Manufacturing Company located at 34 Nowy Swiat Street in Warsaw under the auspices of its engineer, the brilliant Antoni Palluth.

In his mathematical analysis, Rejewski was able to obtain positive results using group theory. The first break came from the French secret service which possessed some documents on machine ciphers. It didn't contribute to cracking the Enigma code but helped in the process of achieving it. The documents (dated in 1932) provided real coded messages sent at specific times in that year. When the Poles compared the old messages that they had intercepted, to the key settings, and combined it to mathematical analysis - they hit the jackpot.

Kabaty Forest in Winter

The Poles easily figured out its inner wiring. It was not difficult for them to discover that the wiring of the ring was actually in the same alphabetical order as they appeared on the German typewriter, so precise were the Germans for ordung (order)!

The General Staff's Cipher Office, in 1934, established a new site for their German branch (BS-4) in the Kabaty Forest located near Warsaw. It was there that Rejewski and his colleagues worked until the outbreak of World War II. Although the French assisted the Polish team with the Enigma code break, all material was exclusively in the hands of the Poles until July 1939.

Just two weeks before the conference in Munich on September 14, 1938 the Germans had made drastic changes to their methods of Enigma encryption. They developed a new key which seemed to be more complicated, but did not deter the work of the Polish cryptologists. They set about to resolve the problem and invented the first mechanical pseudo-computers to facilitate their decoding. In October 1938, Rejewski designed the machines "bomba kryptologiczna" (cryptologic bomb) as well as a "cyclometer" machine which was immediately put into production at the AVA workshops. The "cyclometer" machine was essential in helping to assess the pattern of the secret key.

At the same time, the Poles invented a new method of a double-key crack, which consisted of a set of 26 sheets of paper, each one perforated by 51 by 51 holes. By this method it was possible to find convergent places for the entire set.

But in December 1938, the Germans upgraded their Enigma again, installing two extra rotors to the existing set of three rotors. The Poles could still read the German messages but the effort required to do so was greatly increased: the Poles needed sixty instead of six cryptologic bombs, and sixty paper sheet sets, making the task laborious and cumbersome.

The major difficulty facing the Polish cryptologists was the exchange of a key system of the German army, which took place on July 1, 1939. Between July 24 and 26, 1939,the Polish team met with their French and British counterparts in Warsaw. War was imminent. With the authorization of Polish General Waclaw Stachiewicz, the Polish team presented perfect working copies of a Polish-made clones of the Enigma machine - to the French and British teams.

On 16 August 1939, General Stewart Menzies was given a copy of an Enigma at the Victoria Station in London. The British began to read Enigma messages in mid-August, 1939. That the Allies knew about Germany's position and strength along Polands borders was entirely attributed to the Polish success in decryptment of German Enigma messages.

German Army in Warsaw

When the German armies invaded Poland on September 1st, 1939, they advanced rapidly towards Warsaw. Before they were even able to reach the capital city, all personnel of the Ciphers Office and ELINT surveillance stations, including Rajewski and his colleagues had already fled and escaped to Romania. Rejewski, Rozycki and Zygalski managed to avoid being forced into a refugee camp. Upon reaching Bucharest, they made an attempt to obtain assistance from the British Embassy but it proved unsuccessful. The French Embassy however did provide the Poles with assistance, and they were evacuated, reaching Paris by the end of September.

Soviet Infantry Invading Poland

When the Soviet Union invaded Poland on the 17th of September, 1939, the Ciphers Office received an order from Polish Command to immediately destroy all documentation on the Enigma, and equipment.

A joint Polish-French Intelligence Center was established in October 1939 at the Chateau de Vignolles,in Gretz-Armainvillers, 40 kilometers north-east of Paris, and given the code name "Bruno". The center monitored and intercepted German radio transmissions and was equipped with a teletype link to the Government Code and Ciphers School in England. In addition, Spanish code breakers were also employed at Bruno to decipher Spanish and Italian codes. All messages were relayed to London's Bletchley Center. The information gathered by "Bruno" provided the Allies with invaluable details concerning German operations and communications systems, reports about German agents and the instructions that were given to them, as well as intelligence reports that the Germans were collecting about Allied operations. Also discovered were the orders of battle. Over 287 radio transmissions were intercepted in a matter of a few months, deciphered and relayed to counter-intelligence.

Amid the volume of messages, the Poles were able assess the routine of the German Army Signals Corps that was transmitted every day, just prior to 2400 hours. It provided vital information such as German call signs, wavelengths, and hours of operation. The Germans were systematic and transmitted situation reports in the morning, noon, afternoons, and evenings in addition to intelligence reports, logistic reports, orders, and other official business. Amid those transmissions the Poles also assessed false messages designed by the Germans to deceive the Allies efforts'.

The Polish team kept frequent communication with the Polish Commander-in-Chief in London. Assignments were received and reports sent, sometimes even using the Enigma machine, and ending with the message “Heil Hitler!" (the Poles enjoyed secretly mocking the enemy).

The most important work of the Center was in alerting the Allies about the impending invasion of France by German forces. In May 1940, Germany invaded France and by mid-June had entered Paris. On June 10th, the Bruno unit was ordered to evacuate. France surrendered on June 22nd, and within 48 hours Rejewski and his colleagues had fled and were on their way to Algeria.

Henryk Zygalski en route to Algeria

 The Cadix unit opened a secret branch in the Kouba Villa, a suburb of Algiers, that was headed by Major (later Maj-Gen) M.Z. Rygor-Slowiskowski, the Polish II Directorate's officer. By mid-July the unit was already in full operation decoding secret German messages. A large proportion of intelligence gathered by his unit were instrumental to the Allies, in particular to the Allies "Operation Torch" (North Africa landing).

Incidentally, the Kouba branch (otherwise known as the PO-1 branch) encrypted their messages using a Polish-made LCD enciphering machine (aka "Lacida") which consisted of a modified Remington typewriter with enciphering rotors.

The Polish cyrptologists had enlisted into the Polish Armed Forces Branch "300" of the II Directorate and were soon to make a hazardous journey back into Nazi-occupied France. According to a secret agreement between the Polish and Free French governments, the Poles were to continue their decoding work underground, in the town of Fouzes, near Nimes, France. To alleviate any suspicion, Rejewski posed himself as a mathematics professor from a lycee in Nantes. He worked at the secret intelligence base at Chateau des Fouzes, along with his colleagues decoding German messages.

By October 1940, the new secret unit was dubbed, "Cadix" and it succeeded the Bruno center. The secret German messages they deciphered included the following:

German military orders to their troops throughout Europe and in Libya.
SS and Police messages from Europe.

Spy radio communications among German field agents in Europe or in Libya and 
Abwehr HQ in Stuttgart.

Diplomatic communications and German Armistice

Commission communications in Wiesbaden and their branches in France and in North Africa.

Add captionPolish-French-Spanish Cadix center. From left: 1. Henri Braquenié. 2. Piotr Smoleński. 3. Edward Fokczyński. 5. Maksymilian Ciężki. 7. Gwido Langer. 8. Mary Bertrand, wife of: 9. Gustave Bertrand. 13. Henryk Zygalski (in back, wearing glasses). 14. Jan Graliński. 18. Jerzy Różycki. 20. Marian Rejewski.

Unfortunately, on January 9th, 1942, Jerzy Rozycki died  in tragic circumstances when the M/S "Lamoriciere" he was traveling in, sunk near the Balearic Isles.

In November of the same year, while the Allies launched their invasion of North Africa, the German troops had already occupied Vichy France. The secret undercover unit at the Château des Fouzes was in imminent danger and had to be evacuated. All personnel managed to escape on November 9th just in time. Three days later the Germans discovered the secret operation.

Rejewski and Zygalski embarked on a perilous journey through many cities in southern France and thereby were able to evade capture. Eventually they decided to cross the Pyrenees to reach Spain but en route, they were robbed at gunpoint by their guide. Subsequently, the Poles were arrested and detained at the prison at Seo de Urgel from January to March 1943, then transferred to a prison in Lerida. Finally on May 24, they were released and sent to Madrid from where they continued their journey towards to Portugal and then to Gibraltar by Royal Navy ship. From there they were flown to Britain and landed safely on August 3rd, 1943. Rejewski enlisted in the Polish Army in Britain and remained there for the remainder of the war years, continuing his work on decoding.

Apparently, the British authorities had limited knowledge or understanding of the vast capabilities of Rejewski's genius and did not assign him to Bletchley Park to collaborate on decoding operations. Instead, the Poles were relegated to work at the Radio Battalion at Stanmore Boxmoor, near London, as part of the Polish Army Signals Corps, Polish Armed Forces Branch "300" of the II Directorate. Despite the snub, the Poles continued working and met with success yet again, in cracking the German SS formations cipher.

Cryptanalysts Hut No. 3 Bletchley Park, 1943

The British had initially attempted to break the Enigma code but failed at each attempt. It was only with the collaboration of French and Polish teams, that Britain able to begin cracking codes up to 83% of the codes out of a total of 126 Enigma keys.

From 1940 to 1945 the Polish success rate skyrocketed - from decoding a mere few hundred messages to over 9,000 messages.

During the six years between January 1933 and September 1939, it has been estimated that the Poles were able to decipher approximately 100,000 transmissions, among which dealt with secret information about the remilitarization of the Rhein Province, Anschluss of Austria and seizure of the Sudetenland.

Throughout the war the Polish success at cracking the Enigma Code was kept under the highest degree of security, even within the ranks of the Polish General Staff's II Directorate. Decoded messages were submitted to Polish Officers signed with the code-name "Wicher" ensuring that the source was classified and completely reliable.

After the war, in November 1946 Rejewski returned to Poland, reuniting with his wife and children, and settling in Bydgoszcz with their parents. Rejewski chose not to resume his position as a mathematician at Poznan University though it was his for the taking if he wished to do so. Instead he accepted a job as a supervisor of sales at Polish Cable.

Shortly after his return to Poland, Rejewski suffered the tragic loss of his eleven year old son, from polio. In the ensuing years, their lives became exceedingly difficult by the constant surveillance and enquiries made by the Polish Security Service. Surprisingly, the Security Service was never capable of discovering the role and extent of Rejewski's involvement in deciphering the Enigma Code.

Irregardless,they applied considerable pressure on management officials, and succeeded in getting Rejewski fired from his position in 1950. Thereafter, he worked at a variety of different jobs before finding a bookkeeping position at the Provincial Union of Labour Cooperatives in 1954, where he continued to work until his retirement in 1967.

Two years later, Rejewski and his family relocated to Warsaw. The secret of his work with the Enigma cipher had been carefully safeguarded all these years. In 1973 the truth was finally revealed to the public. It led to a flurry of newspaper articles, radio and television programmes which launched his fame.
He spent the rest of his life writing numerous technical articles on the subject.

He died of a heart attack on February 13, 1980 at the age of 74 and was buried will full military honours.

2005 - Military ceremony commemorating the centennial of Rejewski`s Birth 

Unveiling in 2005 of  Memorial to Rejewski in Bydgoszcz.

2007 Bronze monument erected to honour the three cryptologists, - next to Poznań Castle

Flag of Armia Krajowa (Polish Home Army)

Next:

The Enigma Machine Part 2 The Science of Secrets

N.B. Sources and other references will be provided at the completion of this special series.

SPY WEEK Famous Polish Spies: Conclusion

This concludes the series "SPY Week Famous Polish Spies". In the process of my research I had come across the names of many more Polish spies from the World War II era, but unfortunately due to lack of time I was unable to include them all in my special series.  It would have been a monumental task far exceeding the confines of this blog.

Throughout the week, I have been awestruck by these dynamic and gifted people and their amazing stories. They must never be forgotten because their sacrifices were made not only for the freedom of Poland, but for the freedom of the world.

P.S.
the following was posted on January 14, 2018

In the process of reviewing this blog post, I noticed that the links to You Tube videos I embedded had all been broken.  I had posted seven parts of a series called, "Subversion and control of Western Society which are instructional videos from Yuri Bezmenov, a KGB agent..  You may still find them on You Tube.

But instead of these videos I am posting just one, from Yuri Bezmenov. Even though it was made in the 1980s, I feel that the subject is more relevant than ever today.   The title of this video, is aptly called, "How to Brainwash a Nation".  Please share it with everyone you know. Our best defence is knowledge.





It is quite amazing how little we know know about propaganda, and even less able to recognize it when we see, read, or hear it.  It's the most dangerous threat to our democratic nations, whether the  propaganda is in our homeland, or from foreign sources..  I have already posted some blogs about propaganda, called World War II propaganda - War of Words, which focuses on Nazi and Soviet propaganda. Its worthwhile to read this as a starting point. I'm beginning to think I'll have to write much more on the subject!

Stay tuned!

SPY WEEK Famous Polish Spies - Krystyna Skarbek

Krystyna Skarbek

Krystyna Skarbek (1 May 1915 – 15 June 1952) was a Polish Special Operations Executive (SOE) agent who became a legend in her own time for her daring exploits in intelligence and sabotage missions to Nazi-occupied Poland and France.

She was a British agent just months before the SOE was founded in July 1940 and had been the longest serving of all British women agents during World War II.  Skarbek was extremely resourceful and quite persuasive. Because of her influence the SOE began to recruit increasing numbers of women agents into the organization.

In 1941 she chose her began using the nom de guerre Christine Granville, which she ultimately legally adopted after the war. Skarbek was a friend of Ian Fleming, and is said to have been the inspiration for the charachters of Bond girls Tatiana Romanova and Vesper Lynd.

Krystyna Skarbek was born on an estate at Mlodzieszyn, 56 km (35 miles) west of Warsaw, to Count Jerzy Skarbek, a Roman Catholic and Stefania née Goldfeder, the daughter of a wealthy assimilated Jewish banker. It was a marriage of convenience which allowed Jerzy Skarbek the benefit of using Stefania`s dowry to pay his debts and continue his lavish life-style.

The Skarbeks were well connected with notable relations such as the composer Fryderyk Chopin, Chopin's godfather and prison reformer Fryderyk Skarbek, and American Union General Włodzimierz Krzyżanowski.

The couple's first child, Andrzej took after the mother's side of the family while, Krystyna, second born, took after her father. She shared his love for riding horses, which she sat astride, rather than side-saddle. During family visits to Zakopane in the mountains of southern Poland, she developed into an expert skier. From the very beginning, there was a complete rapport between father and daughter and her penchant for being a tomboy developed quite naturally.

Krystyna first met Andrzej Kowerski her childhood playmate, a her family stables, when his father met with her father the Count to discuss agricultural business.  The 1920s financial crisis had left the family in dire financial straits in which they had to give up their country estate and move to Warsaw.  In 1930, when Krystyna was just 22, her father died. The financial empire of the Goldfeder family had almost all but collapsed leaving barely sufficient money to support the widowed Countess Stefania.

Krystyna found work at a Fiat dealership but soon had to quit due to illness incurred as a result of the auto fumes. Initially, a doctor's diagnosis concluded that the shadows on her chest e-rays were that of tuberculosis, since her father had died of the disease.  She received compensation from her employer's insurance company and followed the advice of her physician to spend as much time in the outdoors as possible.  She spent a great deal of time hiking and skiing the Tatra Mountains in southern Poland.

During this time, Krystyna married a young businessman, Karol Getlich but the marriage ended amicably. They were incompatible.  Subsequently, she was involved in a love affair, but it was nipped in the bud, as Karol's mother refused to allow him to marry a penniless divorcee.

One day while skiing at Zakopane, Krystyna lost control on the slopes and was saved in the nick of time  by a giant of a man who stepped into her path and saved her. His name was Jerzy Giżycki - a brilliant, moody, irascible eccentric young man, who came from a wealthy family in Ukraine. At the age of fourteen, he had quarreled with his father, run away from home, and worked in the United States as a cowboy and gold prospector. Eventually he became an author and traveled the world in search of material for his books and articles. He had visited Africa and knew it well. It was his hope to one day return.

On 2 November 1938, Krystyna and Jerzy Giżycki married at the Evangelical Reformed Church in Warsaw. Shortly thereafter Jerzy accepted a diplomatic posting to Ethiopia, where he served as Poland’s consul general until September 1939, when Germany invaded Poland. Skarbek would later refer to Giżycki as having been "my Svengali for so many years that he would never believe that I could ever leave him for good."

LONDON

Frederick Voigt

With the outbreak of World War II, the couple sailed for London, England, where Skarbek offered her services to the British Empire. At first the British authorities had little interest in considering her, but were eventually convinced by Skarbek's acquaintances, including that of journalist Frederick Augustus Voigt, who had previously introduced her to the Secret Intelligence Service (SIS).  In 1940 Voigt was working as advsor for the British in the Department of Propaganda in Enemy Countries.  After World War II, George Orwell described Voigt as a "neo-tory" who expounded on the need to maintain British imperial power as a necessary bulwark against communism and for the maintenance of international peace and political stability.

Skarbek travelled to Hungary and in December 1939 persuaded Polish Olympic skier Jan Marusarz, brother of Stanislaw Marusarz, to escort her across the snow-covered Tatra Mountains into Poland. Having arrived in Warsaw, she pleaded with her mother to leave Nazi-occupied Poland. Tragically, Stefania Skarbek refused to comply and died at the hands of the occupying Germans. In what was a cruel twist of fate, she perished in Warsaw's infamous Pawiak prison The prison had been designed in the mid-19th century by Krystyna Skarbek's great-great-uncle Fryderyk Florian Skarbek, a prison reformer and Frédéric Chopin's godfather, who had been tutored in French language by Chopin's father.

Pawiak Prison

An incident in February 1940, illustrates the danger she faced while working as an undercover spy on home turf. At a Warsaw café, she was greeted by a female acquaintance who exclaimed: "Krystyna! Krystyna Skarbek! What are you doing here? We heard that you'd gone abroad!" Skarbek, with cool composure, denied that her name was Krystyna Skarbek, though the woman persisted that the resemblance was such that she could have sworn it was Krystyna Skarbek! After the woman had left, Skarbek remained some time at the cafe before leaving, so as not to arouse suspicion.

Krystyna Skarbek helped to organize a team of Polish couriers that transported intelligence reports from Warsaw to Budapest. Among them, was her cousin Ludwik Popiel who managed to smuggle out the unique Polish anti-tank rifle, model 35, with the stock and barrel sawed off for easier transport but it never saw wartime service with the Allies. Its designs and specifications had to be destroyed upon the outbreak of war and there was no time for reverse engineering. Captured stocks of the rifle were, however, used by the Germans and the Italians. For a period of time Skarbek, had the weapon concealed in her Budapest apartment.

In Hungary, Skarbek met long-lost childhood friend, Andrzej Kowerski, a Polish Army officer, who would later use the British nom de guerre "Andrew Kennedy". Skarbek met him again briefly before the war at Zakopane. Kowerski had lost part of his leg in a pre-war hunting accident, and was now exfiltrating Polish and other Allied military personnel and gathering intelligence.

Skarbek demonstrated her penchant for quick-thinking strategy. When she and Kowerski were arrested by the Gestapo in January 1941 she feigned symptoms of pulmonary tuberculosis by biting her tongue until it bled. She won their release. Skarbek was related to the Hungarian Regent, Admiral Mikos Horthy, though a distant one at that. A cousin from the Lwów side of the family had married a relative of Horthy. The pair made good their escape from Hungary via the Balkans and Turkey.

Cairo

As soon as they arrived at SOE offices in Cairo, Egypt, they were stunned to discover that they were under suspicion.because of Skarbek's contacts with a Polish intelligence organization called the "Musketeers". The organization was formed in October 1939 by Stefan Witkowski, an engineer-inventor  who would be assassinated in October 1941, whose identities have never been determined.  Another source of suspicion was the ease with which she had obtained transit visas through French-mandated Syria and Lebanon from the pro-Vichy French consul in Istanbul, a concession offered only to German spies.

Suspicions also surrounded Kowerski and were addressed in London by General Colin Gubbins, head of the SOE (from September 1943). In a letter dated 17 June 1941 to Polish Commander-in-Chief and Premier Władysław Sikorski, he wrote the following:

General Gubbins

Last year […] a Polish citizen named Kowerski was working with our officials in Budapest on Polish affairs. He is now in Palestine […]. I understand from Major [Peter] Wilkinson [of SOE] that General [Stanisław] Kopański [Kowerski's former commander in Poland] is doubtful about Kowerski's loyalty to the Polish cause [because] Kowerski has not reported to General Kopański for duty with the [Polish Independent Carpathian] Brigade. Major Wilkinson informs me that Kowerski had had instructions from our officials not to report to General Kopański, as he was engaged […] on work of a secret nature which necessitated his remaining apart. It seems therefore that Kowerski's loyalty has only been called into question because of these instructions.

 
Eventually,Kowerski was able to clarify any misunderstandings with General Kopański following which he resumed intelligence work. Similarly, when Skarbek visited Polish military headquarters in her British Royal Air Force uniform, she was treated by the Polish military chiefs with the highest of respect.

Intelligence obtained by Skarbek through her connections with the Musketeers, had accurately predicted the invasion of the Soviet Union (June 22, 1941). Consequently, when Skarbek and Kowerski's services were dispensed with, Jerzy Gizycki took umbrage and abruptly resigned from his own career as British intelligence agent. (It was discovered only later that a number of Allied sources, including Ultra, also had similar advance information about Operation Barbarossa.)

Skarbek informed Jerzy, her husband that the man she loved was Kowerski.  Giżycki left for London, eventually emigrating to Canada. Their divorce became official at the Polish consulate in Berlin on 1 August 1946.

Krystyna Skarbek was sidelined from mainstream action. The assistant to the head of F section, Vera Atkins, described Skarbek as a very brave woman, though very much a loner and a law unto herself.

France

By 1944 events had occurred that would lead to some of Skarbek's most famous of exploits. Due to her fluency in French, her services her offered to SOE teams in France, where she worked under the nom de guerre, "Madame Pauline". The offer was timely one - the SOE was encountering a shortage of trained operatives to meet the increased demands being placed on it in the run-up to the invasion of France. Though new operatives were already in training, the process took time to complete. The could not be posted throughout occupied Europe until they acquired the necessary physical and intellectual skills, otherwise their fate as well as that of other SOE colleagues and that of the French Resistance would be greatly compromised.

Cecily Lefort

Skarbek's track record in courier work was exceptional during her missions in occupied Europe and required only a little "refresher" work and some guidance about working in France. There was one particular incident which required immediate attention: the replacement of SOE agent Cecily Lefort, a courier who was lost on a busy circuit whose mission it was to be the first to meet the proposed Allied landings. Skarbek was chosen to replace Lefort, who had been captured, tortured, and imprisoned by the Gestapo.

The SOE had set up several branches in France. Though most of the women in France reported to F Section in London, Skarbek's mission was launched from Algiers, the base of the AMF Section. This fact, combined with Skarbek's absence from the usual SOE training program, has been the source of mystery to many historians and researchers. The AMF Section was only set up in the wake of the Allied landings in North Africa, 'Operation Torch', comprising of staff from London's F Section and the MO4 from Cairo.

The functions of the  AMF Section were three-fold: it was simpler and safer to run the resupply operations from Allied North Africa acroos German-occupied France, than from London; since the South of France would be liberated by separate Allied landings there ("Operation Dragoon"), SOE units in the area needed to be transferred to have links with those headquarters, not with forces for Normandy; the AMF Section tapped into the skills of the French in North Africa, who did not generally support Charles de Gaulle and who had been linked with opposition in the former "Unoccupied Zone".

After the two invasions, the distinctions became irrelevant; and almost all the SOE Sections in France would be united with the Maquis into the Forces Francaises de l'Interieur (FFI). (There was one exception: the EU/P Section, which was formed by Poles in France and remained part of the trans-European Polish Resistance movement, under Polish command.)

On July 6, 1944, Skarbek, as "Pauline Armand", parachuted into southeastern France and became part of the "Jockey" network directed by a Belgian-British lapsed pacifist, Francis Cammaerts. She assisted Cammaerts by linking Italian partisans and French Maquis for joint operations against the Germans in the Alps and by inducing non-Germans, in particular Poles who had been conscripted in the German occupation forces to defect to the Allies.

On August 13, 1944, just two days before Operation Dragoon landings, Francis  Cammaerts, another SOE operative,Xan Fielding who had been operating in Crete, as well as a French officer, Christian Sorensen, were arrested at a roadblock by the Gestapo.  When Skarbek learned that they were to be executed, she managed to meet with Capt. Albert Schenck, an Alsatian, who was the liaison officer between the local French prefecture and the Gestapo. She introduced herself as a niece of British General Bernard Montgomery and threatened Schenck should any harm come to the prisoners. She reinforced her threat by offering two million francs for the men's release. Schenck in turn introduced her to a Gestapo officer, a Belgian named Max Waem.

For three hours Christine argued and bargained with him and, having turned the full force of her magnetic personality on him... told him that the Allies would be arriving at any moment and that she, a British parachutist, was in constant wireless contact with the British forces. To make her point, she produced some broken... useless W/T crystals.... 'If I were you,' said Christine, 'I should give careful thought to the proposition I have made you. As I told Capitaine Schenck, if anything should happen to my husband [as she falsely described Cammaerts] or to his friends, the reprisals would be swift and terrible, for I don't have to tell you that both you and the Capitaine have an infamous reputation among the locals.'
Increasingly alarmed by the thought of what might befall him when the Allies and the Resistance decided to avenge the many murders he had committed, Waem struck the butt end of his revolver on the table and said, 'If I do get them out of prison, what will you do to protect me?'

Cammaerts and the other two men were released. Capt. Schenck was advised to leave Digne. He did not and was subsequently murdered by a person or persons unknown. His wife kept the bribe money and, after the war, attempted to exchange it for new francs. She was arrested but released after the authorities investigated her story. She managed to exchange the money but received only a tiny portion of its value.

Skarbek's service in France restored her political reputation and greatly enhanced her military reputation. When the SOE teams returned from France some of the British women sought new missions in the Pacific War, however Skarbek, being Polish, was ideally suited to serve as a courier for missions to her homeland during the final missions of the SOE. As the Red Army advanced across Poland, the British government and Polish government-in-exile worked together to establish a network that would report on events in the People's Republic of Poland. Kowerski and Skarbek, fully reconciled with the Polish forces, were preparing to be dropped into Poland in early 1945. However, the mission, Operation Freston, was canceled because the first party to enter Poland were captured by the Red Army (they were released in February 1945).

All women SOE operatives were assigned military rank, with honorary commissions in either the Women's Transport Service  - which was an autonomous, though elite part of the Auxiliary Territorial Service (ATS) or the Women's Auxiliary Air Force. Skarbek appears to have been a member of both.

In preparation for service in France, Skarbek worked with the Women's Transport Service, but on her return had transferred to the Women's Auxiliary Air Force as an officer, a rank she held until the end of the war.

Skarbek was one of the few SOE female operatives to have been promoted beyond subaltern rank to that of Captain, or the Air Force equivalent, Flight Officer, the counterpart of the Flight Lieutenant rank for male officers. Skarbek, by the end of the war was Honorary Flight Officer, a title that of Pearl Witherington, the courier who had taken command of a group when the designated commander was captured, and Yvonne Cormeau, considered to be the most successful wireless operator.

Decorations

For her remarkable exploits at Digne, Skarbek was decorated with the George Medal. Years after the Digne incident, in London, she spoke about her experiences to another Pole, also a World War II veteran that, during her negotiations with the Gestapo, she was completely unaware of any danger to herself. Only after she and her comrades had escaped did she realize "What have I done! They could have shot me as well!"

In May 1947, she was made an Officer of the Order of the British Empire (O.B.E.) for her work in conjunction with the British authorities. This award is usually presented to officers about the rank of colonel, and a rank above the "standard" award of Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) given to other women of SOE.

In recognition of Skarbek's contribution to the liberation of France, the French government awarded her the Croix de Guerre.

After the war, Skarbek was left without financial reserves or a country to return to. Xan Fielding, whom she had saved at Digne, wrote in his 1954 book, Hide and Seek, and dedicated "To the memory of Christine Granville":

After the physical hardship and mental strain she had suffered for six years in our service, she needed, probably more than any other agent we had employed, security for life. […] Yet a few weeks after the armistice she was dismissed with a month's salary and left in Cairo to fend for herself ... [Alt]hough she was too proud to ask for any other assistance, she did apply for […] a British passport; for ever since the Anglo-American betrayal of her country at Yalta she had been virtually stateless. But the naturalization papers […] were delayed in the normal bureaucratic manner. Meanwhile, abandoning all hope of security, she deliberately embarked on a life of uncertain travel, as though anxious to reproduce in peace time the hazards she had known during the war; until, finally, in June 1952, in the lobby of a cheap London hotel, the menial existence to which she had been reduced by penury was ended by an assassin's knife.

During the latter part of her life, she had met Ian Fleming, with whom she allegedly had a year-long affair,although there is no proof that this affair ever occurred. The man who made the allegation, Donald McCormick, relied on the word of a woman identified only by the name "Olga Bialoguski"; McCormick always refused to confirm her identify and did not include her in his list of acknowledgments.

Death

Christine Granville met an untimely end at a Kensington Hotel on June 15, 1952 where she was stabbed to death by a man by the name of Dennis Muldowney, an obsessed merchant-marine steward and former colleague whose advances she had rejected. After being tried and convicted of her murder, Muldowney was hanged on the gallows at HMP Pentonville on 30 September 1952.

Krystyna Skarbek / Christine Granville was interred in St. Mary's Roman Catholic Cemetery at Kensal Green, in northwest London.

Following his death in 1988, the ashes of Skarbek's comrade-in-arms and partner, Andrzej Kowerski (aka Andrew Kennedy) were interred at the foot of her grave.

A Legend

Skarbek became a legend during her lifetime and after her death, has become forever after immortalized by popular culture.  In Ian Flemings first James Bond novel, Casino Royale, the character Vesper Lynd is said to have been modeled after Skarbeck.  According to William F. Nolan, Fleming also based Tatiana Romanova, in his 1957 novel From Russia, with Love, on Skarbek.

Four decades later, in 1999, Polish writer Maria Nurowska published a novel, Milosnica (The Lover)—a fictional story about a female journalist's attempt to probe Skarbek's story.

A Polish TV series has been announced by Telewizja Polska (Polish Television) about Skarbek.

The Krakow Post report on February 5, 2009 that Agnieszka Holland will direct a big-budget film about Skarbek—Christine: War My Love.

George Medal

Order of the British Empire

Croix de Guerre (France)

 

Source: Wikipedia 

Suggested Links:

The Spy Who Dazzled Churchill

Editors Note:  FYI:  The images of medals posted here may or may not be the exact version which was awarded to the recipient.There are several classes for each medal depending on various factors such as type of military (or civilian)service, rank of officer (or soldier), class of award, year in which it was awarded, etc. The lack of sufficient information on the web (or omission) has compounded the difficulty in selecting the correct class of medal. I apologize for any inaccuracies.