What went wrong with the ENIGMA?

A German ENIGMA machine

No code can be made completely unbreakable. Since cryptography is essentially based on mathematics, anyone with enough patience, time and resources would eventually be able to crack any code. The ENIGMA however, was very hard to crack as it used a rotor system. What allowed the Allies to crack the German ENIGMA code relatively easily was the capture of multiple German code books, in addition to German pride and the laziness of the German operators.

The Allies were able to capture a significant amount of code books which German sailors failed to destroy when their U-boats were captured. These code books, coupled with a large amount of help from the Poles, helped them to decipher pretty much of the communications going on between German forces. If the Allies had not had such luck on their side, they would have had a much harder time cracking the code.

Another main flaw of the ENIGMA system was that it required human operators to run. These people eventually became cocky and put too much faith into their system. This led to their laziness to change the encryption each time they used the system. Later on, they refused to believe that their system had been cracked and this led to the allies being able to extract such a large amount of information from the Germans.

As such, although the German ENIGMA was a very strong system, it would not have been completely unbreakable. However, if it was used with proper discipline by its operators, I would say that it would have been virtually unbreakable by the Allies, at least throughout the course of the war.

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