Divers Find Nazi WWII Enigma Machine in Baltic Sea

Divers looking for discarded fishing nets in the Baltic Sea recently found much more: an Enigma machine used by Nazis to send and receive coded messages during World War II.

The German diving team, working in Gelting Bay near Flensburg on behalf of the World Wildlife Fund, initially thought it was a typewriter. But underwater archaeologist Dr. Florian Huber quickly recognized the valuable historic object.

“I’ve made many exciting and strange discoveries in the past 20 years,” Huber, who leads underwater scientific research missions for the German company Submaris, tells Reuters. “But I never dreamt that we would one day find one of the legendary Enigma machines.”

During WWII, British cryptographers intercepted and decipher Nazi messages sent using Enigma machines. Such inside information gave the Allies an edge in the Atlantic, shortening the war and saving thousands of lives.

This specific machine likely hit the seafloor near the end of the war.

In May 1945, shortly before Germany surrendered, their armed forces intentionally scuttled 50 submarines in Gelting Bay to prevent them from falling into Allied hands. Huber suspects this is when the newly discovered Enigma machine hit the waves, but historian Jann Witt of the German Naval Association tells DPA news agency the specific model discovered was more commonly found on German warships.

Restoring the machine after seven decades will take “will take about a year,” Dr Ulf Ickerodt, the head of the state archaeological office in Schleswig-Holstein, tells The Guardian. His office will oversee the process, after which it will be donated to the Schleswig archaeology museum.