Image: Pfreundtner
About This Quiz
World War II is often called a “total war,” because many of the countries involved were fighting for their very existence. In an effort to confuse the enemy — or to steal their messages — countries formed special units dedicated to creating or deciphering transmissions that were meant to be secret. Both sides had major successes and failures in cryptography. In this quiz, what do you really know about the use of secret codes during the Second World War?
In the decade before the war began, the Germans began honing multiple cipher systems and machines that would prove their worth. But other European nations, witnessing the rise of Nazism, immediately set about trying to crack those codes long before the first bombs fell. What do you know about the codes that the Third Reich used to protect its nefarious schemes? And how much do you know about the heroes who committed their minds to unraveling the complexities of German ciphers?
The codes of WWII are the stuff of spy movies and epic dramas. The men and women who crunched the numbers and assembled real information from scrambled data became legends in their own right. Take this WWII secret code quiz now!
What was the name of the most famous code making machine of WWII?
PC
Enigma machine
After WWI, a German engineer devised the Enigma machine, a rotary cipher machine that became invaluable to the Nazis in WWII. The Allies expended major time and effort trying to crack Enigma.
Genesis machine
Advertisement
"Cryptanalysis" became very important during WWII. What’s that?
secret pictures
code breaking
As codes became more complicated, so too did the efforts to break those codes. Cryptanalysis is codebreaking, and it became very sophisticated during the war.
grave analysis
Advertisement
Which country devised the famous Lorenz cipher machines?
Japan
Germany
C. Lorenz AG, an electronics company in Berlin, created Lorenz cipher machines that became commonplace in Nazi Germany. The Lorenz machines — and their downfall — are a major part of WWII lore.
United States
Advertisement
At the beginning of the war, Germany sent most of its coded transmissions via what means?
landlines
Early in the war, Germany used physical landlines, which in some ways were more secure than radio. As the Nazi Reich spread, it switched to wireless transmissions that easily reached longer distances ... but were also vulnerable to the Allied codebreakers.
satellite
Bluetooth
Advertisement
True or false: in the mid-1930s, Polish researchers managed to crack the Enigma machine.
true
The Poles were cracking the Engima even before the war began. But in the late ‘30s, the Germans made upgrades to Enigma, and the Poles couldn’t monetarily afford to address the complexities of the upgraded machines.
false
Advertisement
Which country organized the Government Code and Cypher School following World War I?
Canada
Britain
After WWI, Britain started the Government Code and Cypher School (GC&CS), which explored techniques of codebreaking. It was a small unit at first — but when WWII broke out, the group exploded in size and importance.
Australia
Advertisement
What was the Allied code name for high-level intelligence captured from German signals?
Disciples
Ultra
In WWII, "Ultra" was a keyword that denoted high-level information snagged from encrypted German transmissions. This information was "ultra" secret, and thus, the nickname came to life.
MKSuper
Advertisement
By 1940, Britain’s Government Code and Cypher School (GC&CS) was actively trying to break ____ different code systems.
3
17
150
By 1940, war was ravaging Europe and the GC&CS was working to break about 150 different diplomatic codes, all to help give the Allies a advantage in the war.
Advertisement
What was "Bletchley Park"?
spy school
a secret type of code
a codebreaking facility
During the war, the British organized codebreaker teams at Bletchley Park in Buckinghamshire. There, brilliant Allied codebreakers banged their heads against the walls, trying (often in vain) to break Nazi codes.
Advertisement
What was the purpose of the "bombe"?
to damage Germany code machines
to blow up Berlin
to decipher Enigma messages
In an effort to decipher Engima messages, British codebreakers made the "bombe" machine. Famous cryptoanalyst Alan Turing helped to devise the first bombe machine.
Advertisement
How were the Allies finally able to break the Enigma machine during the war?
They overheard Hitler talking about it.
German human error
Enigma was a fantastically complicated machine and virtually unbreakable. But German human error introduced flaws into the code procedure ... and the Allies pounced.
The machines had electrical problems.
Advertisement
In addition to Germany, what nation used Enigma machines in WWII?
Japan
Germany’s ally, Japan, also used Enigma machines in the course of the war. For years, these machines made it much harder for the Allies to fully understand Axis messages.
Ghana
Guatemala
Advertisement
How did the Allies gather most of their Ultra intelligence?
spies
intercepted radio messages
The Allies intercepted countless Axis radio transmissions — and their cipher machines decoded many of those messages. Some historians say these decoded messages turned the tide of the war in favor of the Allies.
tapped phones
Advertisement
Marian Rejewski was a famous cryptologist from which nation?
South Africa
Egypt
Poland
Marian Rejewski was a codebreaker and mathematician from Poland who understood the Enigma machine even before the war began. His insights later helped the Allies decode Engima’s finer points to gather incredibly important information.
Advertisement
What was the name of a collection of computers that the British used to decipher Lorenz codes?
David
George
Colossus
As the war raged, the British created Colossus, a set of computers meant to tackle German Lorenz machine codes. The Colossus Mark 2 became functional just in time for D-Day.
Advertisement
In the war, what sort of information did British General Montgomery glean from intercepted Germany communications?
that the Germans were switching to kosher foods
that the Germans had a nuclear bomb
that the Germans were low on supplies
During the war, British intercepts determined that the Germans were low on men and supplies. That kind of information allowed General Montgomery to exploit Nazi weaknesses.
Advertisement
Lorenz cipher machines were used for what sort of messages?
daily chatter
high-level strategic messages
Lorenz machines carried some of the most sensitive high-level messages between German commanders. Allied codebreakers snagged very important details in their work to crack the Lorenz.
love letters between Nazi generals
Advertisement
During the war, the United States employed Navajo people and their language to transmit secret messages. They were called ____.
human radios
code talkers
Hundreds of Navajo people used their native language to communicate top-secret messages for America. The "code talkers" are renowned for their wartime contributions.
hieroglyphics managers
Advertisement
The British bombe machine was used to figure out which important bit of information?
Japanese troop food preferences
strength of Germany forces at Normandy
The bombe machine helped codebreakers understand the strength of German forces in Western Europe and Normandy. This information was invaluable in planning the D-Day invasion.
size of German atomic bomb program
Advertisement
How were the Germany navy’s Enigma machines different from those used by the rest of the armed forces?
They were much more secure.
The German navy used a variant of the Enigma machine that had an extra rotor (read: additional complexity) that made its messages incredibly difficult to break. For a while, the Allies were totally stumped.
They were never used.
They were laughably easy to decipher.
Advertisement
What codename did British codebreakers use for German cipher streams?
“Fish"
They all diligently worked to decipher "Fish." British codebreakers were obsessed with pinpointing the details of Fish so that they could figure out what the Germans were saying to each other.
“Salami"
“Happyjacks"
Advertisement
The British created Colossus to break Lorenz ciphers. Colossus is often regarded as the world’s first _____.
programmable computer
Technology historians often call Colossus the first programmable computer in world history. By the time the war ended, the Allies had built 10 of these machines, all in an effort to crack Axis codes.
cloaking device
rotoscope
Advertisement
When did the Allies finally get their hands on a Lorenz cipher machine?
at the very end of the war
The Allies made a lot of logical guesses as to the way the Lorenz machine worked. But thanks to German precautions, the Allies never even saw one of these machines in person until the very end of the conflict.
before the war even began
halfway through the conflict
Advertisement
How did the Germans attempt to thwart the effectiveness of Native American code talkers?
They used computers.
They captured several code talkers
They sent researchers to the U.S.
The Nazis knew America would use Native American code talkers even before war began — so they sent dozens of anthropologists to America to study Native Americans.
Advertisement
Why did German spies mostly fail in their efforts to understand Native American language in advance of WWII?
Native people refused to speak around them
The German spies were captured
Native American languages are dramatically different from European languages
Native American languages are full of nuances and dialects too subtle for non-speakers to grasp on the fly. Thus, code talkers were highly successful in disguising messages during the war.
Advertisement
True or false: the Navajo were the only Native Americans who served as code talkers in WWII.
true
false
The Allies employed people from numerous Native American tribes as code talkers. The relative obscurity of the languages of tribes like the Lakota, Comanche and others to Europeans made it much harder for enemy code breakers to do their jobs.
Advertisement
British cryptanalyst Alan Turing not only played a major role in WWII codebreaking, he is also considered a pioneer of which technology?
hydrogen bomb
superconductors
artificial intelligence
Turing was a brilliant codebreaker, one who also had a dramatic impact on computer science. His innovations are often credited with sparking the artificial intelligence revolution.
Advertisement
During the war, Comanche code talkers used a term for Hitler that roughly translated to _____.
“crazy white man"
Everyone, even many Germans, knew Hitler was nuts. The code talkers incorporated it into regular use — Hitler was "crazy white man."
“bull of the hill"
“exploding goose"
Advertisement
True or false: German cryptanalysts believed that the Allies broke Enigma during the war.
true
false
The Germans knew it was technically possible to break Enigma — but they didn’t believe that Allies would find such matters worth their time and money. They were wrong.
Advertisement
The codebreaking techniques of WWII contributed heavily to the development of which product?
computer
The sciences and computational requirements of cryptography changed the course of electronics — and of computers in general. In the wake of the war, computer technology quickly evolved into the digital revolution of today.
atomic bombs
Play-Doh
Advertisement
You Got:
/30
