Original WWII Enigma machine for sale on eBay

In the same way that serial killer memorabilia has found a macabre secondary market online, artifacts from World World II era Nazi Germany also hold great value to certain collectors. One of the most famous elements of the Nazi war effort was the Enigma electrical cryptography machine, which was adopted by the Germans in 1925 after they discovered how easily the British cracked their codes in World War I, and a rare example of which is now for sale on eBay for almost $16,000 as of this writing. The Enigma improved on older monoalphabetic ciphers (where letters are exchanged in a one-to-one fashion throughout a piece of text) by altering the cipher each time a new letter was encoded, giving the machine over 10,000,000,000,000,000 possible keys. Recently two out of three Enigma-encrypted Nazi communications that surfaced in 1995 were cracked within weeks of each other using Folding@Home-style volunteer distributed computing to examine the billions of possible iterations.

[TIMMAH! @ Mar 30th 2006 12:08PM]

Wouldn't this come under the prohibited category of "Nazi Memorabilia" which is not allowed to be sold on EBay.

[dp @ Mar 30th 2006 12:19PM]

49h6s7 gRjh5%2JJJfGDS Krn5lasv^ #SLx7&... Go figure

[Richard @ Mar 30th 2006 12:30PM]

Actually the Enigma machine was in use before the Nazis were in power. Just because something is German, doesn't mean it has anything to do with Nazis.

It was an amazing piece of technology for the time.

[TIMMAH! @ Mar 30th 2006 12:36PM]

I thought it was Hitler who had commissioned it's use in the war for secured field communications?

[Jason @ Mar 30th 2006 12:39PM]

Polish codebreakers cracked the code, not the British.

http://www.armyradio.com/publish/Articles/The_Enigma_Code_Breach/The_Enigma_Code_Breach.htm

[Adam @ Mar 30th 2006 12:46PM]

Wow, this had better go for at least deep into six figures!!

[furtim @ Mar 30th 2006 12:47PM]

If I recall, it was a Pole who invented the Enigma machine, as well. =)

It's not even remotely "Nazi memorabilia", it's a piece of cryptographic history.

[Gwen @ Mar 30th 2006 12:50PM]

Richard, obviously not everything German has anything to do with the Nazis, but _this_ Engima machine, according to the ebay listing, was made in 1941, and used in WWII. You really think it wasn't a Nazi tool?

[John Alexander @ Jan 13th 2008 3:47AM]

Hi, I spotted your comment but well after you originally made it. You mention the Enigma as a NAZI tool but its early history goes back to 1919, works out to have been a Dutch idea and, although used by German forces up to the end of WWII, it was then taken up by the Israeli's, Norwegians and others - used long after WWII. One of the UK's own systems (Typex) is VERY close to the Enigma in design. It is (just) possible that Enigma is still in use today. Just for added interest (?) Germany sold commercial versions of the Enigma as late as 1940 so it was in use by Spanish, Italian and Swiss military and diplomatic bodies.

[jeff @ Mar 30th 2006 12:53PM]

Does it really matter if it was German/Nazi or not? Really does it matter? Technology is technology and this technology at the time was cutting edge. Just because something was used by a military government that did horrible things, doesn't make the device horrible.

[PodMonkeys @ Mar 30th 2006 12:54PM]

I really wish stuff like this was in Museums and not on eBay.

[Frangible @ Mar 30th 2006 1:16PM]

The Enigma had nothing to do with Nazi Germany and was invented in the 1920s, and was adopted by the German military prior to the NSDAP gaining power. Commercial interests, and Italian, Spanish and Swiss militaries at the time also used the Enigma. Yes, the German military continued to use it after the NSDAP rose to power, but that's a poor argument for it being "Nazi memorabilia". You might as well call your XM satellite radio reciever Nazi memorabilia in light of the V2 rocket, Werner von Braun, and NASA.

It's an important part of history and remarkable piece of technology, unfortunately anti-German prejudice and hate still makes people associate anything German with Nazi. Yes, the Nazis were bad, but let's not condemn anything German-related forever, mkay?

[E71 @ Mar 30th 2006 1:23PM]

I agree with #5, it wasn't the Limeys but the Polish.

[Andy @ Jan 2nd 2007 7:45PM]

No,quite right it was not the Limeys who cracked the code.I would like to add that it was not the Yanks who captured it from a U-boat either.

[mkl @ Mar 30th 2006 1:41PM]

hmm, not much use to just buy one crypto set...

/anyone have two?

[John Alexander @ Jan 13th 2008 3:47AM]

Regret I saw your input long after it first appeared. Enigma is available to buy if you really want one. The very best are expensive and one is good enough for most collectors unless you want to buy in several examples. A really good collection would have a Wehrmacht / Luftwaffe three rotor machine, plus a kriegsmarine M4 (M3 would be nice too) as well as Enigma K, Enigma Z, German Railway Enigma ... Then be careful, you may just want to collect Enigma type machines like the Russian Fialka, US KL7, British Typex .. its never ending.

[Mark @ Mar 30th 2006 1:57PM]

I can't find it on Ebay - does anyone have the link?

[matt @ Mar 30th 2006 2:03PM]

click the 'read' link underneath the article.

[Gwen @ Mar 30th 2006 2:04PM]

"The Enigma had nothing to do with Nazi Germany"

I still don't get this, can you explain? This particular machine was made in 1941 for German use in WWII. How can I interpet this as something other than the grandchild of a Nazi making money of a tool that was used in that war?

[G. Snyder @ Mar 30th 2006 2:27PM]

VW bugs are Nazi cars then. Hitler basically comissioned Ferdinand Porsche to build a 'people's car'(translation: Volks Wagen).

[Gwen @ Mar 30th 2006 2:32PM]

A VW Bug produced in the middle of WWII for the express purpose of being used in the Nazi war effort would be a Nazi car, yes. Just like a code-breaking machine produced in the middle of WWII for the express purpose of being used in the Nazi war effort would be a piece of Nazi equipment. There's a fundamental difference between a piece of physical equipment produced and used in the war effort, then something produced in the 21st century from a company that was once related to Hitler!

[Gwen @ Mar 30th 2006 2:35PM]

"Does it really matter if it was German/Nazi or not? Really does it matter?"

Yeah, it does matter. If _this particular machine_ (not the idea of the Enigma, or the Enigma in general, or something made before the war, or after it) was produced and used as part of the war effort towards genocide, then the grandchild of the person who used it shouldn't be making $16,000 off of it. It should be donated to a museum.

[Saluki @ Mar 30th 2006 2:41PM]

10:

There are two on display at Chicago's Mus of Science and indusstry

[Mike @ Mar 30th 2006 2:46PM]

"Polish codebreakers cracked the code, not the British.
"

He didn't say that the British crack Enigma. He said that the Germans adopted Enigma because the British had cracked their WWI ciphers so easily. Unless he edited the post after that comment was made. In which case, I stand corrected.

Who knew that Enigma machines used almost-QWERTY keyboards?

[oshean @ Mar 30th 2006 2:52PM]

# 12 mkl
You don't need a machine. Here is a free decent software solution. Decent as in I wouldn't use it for truly sensitive data.

http://javascript.internet.com/passwords/text-encryption.html

And I agree, the Enigma belongs in a museum.

[danbrown @ Mar 30th 2006 2:52PM]

if you want this machine cracked, just dump it into the TRANSLTR. The only thing it can't crack is the Digital Fortress.

[mykelg @ Mar 30th 2006 3:20PM]

The current bid price appears to be good value. See http://www.eclipse.net/~dhamer/enigma_p.htm for a listing of recent prices achieved when these machines changed hands. The fact that there is a full set of rotors and the unused ones are in a matching box adds considerable value. Some of these devices are on show at various museums and I do hope this one ends up on display too.

[G. Snyder @ Mar 30th 2006 3:35PM]

317 - big prize foe Gwen! Yay!

That was the point.

[B @ Mar 30th 2006 4:00PM]

18. was produced and used as part of the war effort towards genocide, ????
I'm not a history professor, but I'm pretty sure the Nazi's weren't all that concerned about encoding their messages about the concentration camps as much as their battle plans, and the war effort was primarily aimed at increasing German wealth, not genocide. Regardless, maybe the person selling it is a holocaust survivor, how do you know it is a grandchild of a Nazi? We all know what assumption results in.

[Gwen @ Mar 30th 2006 4:27PM]

26: You are saying that the Nazi plans to conquer various countries are separate from their plans to murder various groups? The Nazi sequence of actions was (1) to conquer a country followed immediately by (2) to ship people (from the various targetted groups) from that country to concentration camps so that they could be murdered. So helping them with their "battle plans" was exactly the same thing as participating in genocide.

25: No, the point is that _if_ this machine was used _during WWII for sending Nazi battle plans_ then it is Nazi memorabilia. If it had been produced after the war, then it would not be.

[Matt Hadder @ Mar 30th 2006 4:42PM]

Don't forget that IBM made a tidy profit selling the Nazi's the punch-card machines they needed for processing and compiling the information on the prisoners in the concentration camps.

http://www.ibmandtheholocaust.com/articles/auschwitz.html

Don't forget these guys supported the Nazi war effort too: Ford, General Motors, Chrysler & Coca Cola(Fanta), some of which sucessfully sued the US Government because their factories (making Nazi vehicles) had been bombed.

[B @ Mar 30th 2006 4:47PM]

27. The persecution of the Jews and holocaust (as horrible as it was) was Hitler's way to galvanize the German people into a cohesive unit that could conquer Europe and regain German supremacy. Persecution and massacre was the means to achieve that end, not the end itself. Your last comment ducked the point that you are assuming the seller is a Nazi descendant, perhaps it is a GI who grabbed the machine out of a bunker.

[Gwen @ Mar 30th 2006 4:58PM]

29: The motivation doesn't matter, imho. You believe it was a way to 'galvance the German people', many others believe that the Nazis sincerely believed in Aryan supremacy. It's complicated; there are many books about it; and it's not worth arguing here. But what does it matter? You can't separate out their battle plans from their genocide plans, since they were intimately connected: conquer a country, kill the Jews living there.

About the Nazi descendent issue, of course, I can't know that. I was guessing at a possibility which would be particularly grotesque, but anything's possible. We do know from the listing that it belonged to somebody's grandfather who lives/lived in Germany. Chances are as good as not that the machine belonged to this person who used it during WWII.

[Lucifer @ Mar 30th 2006 5:11PM]

It's a piece of history, not a pro-Nazi rant. It's one of the most remarkable bits of technology every created. Gun collectors own Lugers, and sell them freely, so if you can traffic in the sale of WWII german firearms, why not code-breaking tech?

Oh, and Jason, The Poles cracked the 3 wheel version, the Brits cracked the 4 wheel version, and the Yanks cracked the 5 wheel version.

And there's enough of them about that there are already plenty of them in museums.

[Lucifer @ Mar 30th 2006 5:23PM]

Oh, and Gwen, It's much more likely that it is in fact being sold by the grandchild of an American, British, French or Russian soldier or civil servant. This is exactly the sort of thing that was taken home as souvenirs or siezed by the governments of the Allied powers. Nazis trying to get the hell out of the way of several advancing armies were not worried about taking their code machines with them, especially as it's a rather heavy and cumbersome piece of equipment.

[Nazi Hunter @ Mar 30th 2006 5:23PM]

By the "remarkable technology" argument, I guess it would be OK to sell detonators for suicide bombs on Ebay? Parts for IEDs from Iraq? You can argue all day that technology is just a tool for humans, but the ethics of this exchange are hardly black and white. For me, I say no one should profit from the sale of this device.

[Lucifer @ Mar 30th 2006 5:40PM]

Nazi Hunter:

It's a code machine, not an IED. A comunication device. If ebay was selling, say, one of the shower fixtures from belsen, or the fin of a v-2, or a couple of stick grenades, that's a fair comparison, but this is like saying the the walkie-talkie that delivers the message to fire is a guilty in the deaths as the gun, the amunition, and the men who gave the order and pulled the trigger.

What would you say if it was the original wireless set from the Anola Gay?

[mykelg @ Mar 30th 2006 6:07PM]

One version of the Enigma was used heavily by the German railway network. The very same network that plannned and operated the special trains which transported the victims to the death and work camps. And they were also used by the killing squads to report on their ethnic cleansing activities. So, yes, they did play a part in the Holocaust as well as military operations.

[Frangible @ Mar 30th 2006 6:19PM]

Once again the average American's prejudice and hatred against Germany is disgusting. This would have been used by the German military and other governments if the Nazi party never existed. Grow up.

[TIMMAH! @ Mar 30th 2006 6:47PM]

"Once again the average American's prejudice and hatred against Germany is disgusting. This would have been used by the German military and other governments if the Nazi party never existed. Grow up."

I think you're missing the point. I don't see any hatred here of Germany. Yes, the Enigma machine would probably have been used by the German military if there had been no Nazi party, but the fact is that there was a Nazi party and they were guilty of horrible crimes against humanity. People draw a moral/ethical line in the sand when it comes to profiting from instruments of war (whether it be guns, canteens, uniforms, gas chamber showerheads, etc.) that contributed to their rise to power.

[Nazi Hunter @ Mar 30th 2006 6:50PM]

#36 More precisely, the average American Jew's hatred against German historical artifacts related to the Holocaust is "disgusting".
#34 Assuming you are referring to the Enola Gay, then yes the same idea applies. Would you buy a chunk of the destroyed space shuttle off a person from Texas?

[velplin @ Mar 30th 2006 7:12PM]

Many of the arguments here stem from the notion of this device possibly being a form of "Nazi Memorabilia." I'd like to point out that the Wikipedia definition classifies an article of memorabilia as "an object that is treasured for the memories associated with it."

Now, what are those memories? If you purchase an enigma machine to cherish fond memories of Hitler, I'd dare say that it's "Nazi Memorabilia" insofar as the intended eBay restrictions are concerned (it would fall in the same basket as Nazi flags, pins, posters, and swastika propeller caps). If you purchase an enigma machine as an artifact of a major stage in the history of computational devices or cryptography, then it is, by no means, "Nazi Memorabilia."

Another strong argument that I detect is that this enigma machine was possibly an instrument of horrible deeds. Perhaps it was, but (factoring in my take on "memorabilia" above) I believe that this simply underscores the historical value of the artifact. If it were a sword that cut off someone's head, I'd call it macabre (and not to my taste), but it shall serve that purpose no longer.

Lastly, some object to the grandchild of a Nazi earning from their grandparent's misdeeds. We cannot always be proud of our heritage. Nathaniel Hawthorne (wrote the Scarlet Letter) descended from John Hathorne, one of the judges from the Salem Witch Trials. Nathaniel Hawthorne was so ashamed of his heritage that he changed his name to the one we know. Apply the same notion to the owner of an enigma machine who (unconfirmed, even unlikely) inherited said machine from a Nazi. If it held the value of "Nazi Memorabilia" to the owner, why would the owner sell it?

In the same vein as regretable heritage, this machine deserves respect for its historical importance--no one here meant pride.

[Frangible @ Mar 30th 2006 7:17PM]

Actually no, it is hate and ignorance, because there's a good deal of posters here clearly ignorant of the history of the Enigma machine, a history predating anything Nazi, it is the myopic prejudiced view that "German=Nazi" that is being used to judge it.

Actual Jewish and Polish groups are quite happy to have these on display at museums to recognize the work of Polish mathematicians in cracking it, and eBay hasn't pulled the listing because it is most certainly not "Nazi memorabilia".

Further, all the Nazi Germany directed military versions of the Enigma were 4 or 5 rotor designs and marked with the military branch; this was not such a unit.

Finally, Germany itself has very stringent anti-Nazi laws, including Nazi memorabilia, if this was considered such the seller would be facing jail time. Somehow though, I doubt the local German police concur with the posts made here.

[El_Kabong @ Mar 30th 2006 9:03PM]

Honestly, as a Jew I'm not offended that this Machine is up on Ebay, Its a piece of History, both in secret and spy, plus military history. If it was one of the machines recovered off a U-Boat after the war, that would be a real prize.

Its not like the seller is offering a can of Zyklon B for sale. Even I own a few Nazi related items and realise, its a piece of history, even the evil side of it. Plus stating its a Nazi item is wrong as well, not all germans were party members. Same with things.

[Luis Perez @ Mar 30th 2006 9:55PM]

With all due respect, it's really funny to see so many tech savy people being so ignorant about history...

The Enigma was military equipment. Period. Just the same way the U Boat was military equipment and it is exhibited today by the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago http://www.msichicago.org/exhibit/U505/index.html Now, do you think this is a Nazi exhibition????????????

Remember, Germany had a army and navy much before nazis existed. The enigma is part of it, and no, it was not used to carry out genocide (In fact, the german navy did not participate in any of that) .

It is called history... And there's nothing wrong whit it.

[Mike @ Mar 31st 2006 12:14AM]

#37 TIMMAH!

"People draw a moral/ethical line in the sand when it comes to profiting from instruments of war "

Right... Haliburton, Boeing, Colt, General Dynamics, etc... .

Typical tunnel-vision hypocrisy.

Why don't these arguments crop up when Soviet era memorabilia goes up for sale? After all, stalinism was far worse than fascism.

[snesds @ Mar 31st 2006 3:18AM]

#23. "if you want this machine cracked, just dump it into the TRANSLTR. The only thing it can't crack is the Digital Fortress." -- maybe it is in some way connected to the Da Vinci Code as well ;) extra value..

[mykelg @ Mar 31st 2006 4:40AM]

Various Enigma machines are on display at Bletchley Park, the WW2 code-cracking location: http://www.bletchleypark.org.uk/content/machines.rhtm

[stingraze @ Mar 31st 2006 4:46AM]

$16,000? Kind of cheap if you ask me, cause think about how much they needed one to win the war!

[en @ Mar 31st 2006 10:12AM]

"37. Once again the average American's prejudice and hatred against Germany is disgusting. This would have been used by the German military and other governments if the Nazi party never existed. Grow up."

Ignoring history is disgusting. Personally, I think this cynicism should be appropriate, if not encouraged.