Jun 26, 2026 · 52 min · 12 segments
June 2026 The story of the vital contribution of Polish codebreakers to the cracking of Enigma before World War Two is well known, but what happened to those codebreakers after the invasion of Poland…
David KenyonGuest
Erica MunroHost
David, can you tell us what happened to the Polish codebreakers after Nazi Germany invaded Poland in 1939?
The Polish codebreakers have to evacuate Warsaw fairly hastily because the Polish resistance to both the German invasion and the subsequent Soviet invasion was relatively short-lived.
So the Polish Cipher Bureau, the Bureau Schifrow, which is based in Warsaw, packed up and they evacuated from Poland to France.
As we've heard previously, they were already in touch with Gustav Bertrand and the French cryptographic service, as well as with GCNCS in the UK.
And Bertrand was able to arrange for most of the Polish team to relocate to Paris.
Belgium? The reason they went to France was this tripartite, code-breaking relationship between the UK, France and Poland had already been established during the summer of 1939.
And so it made sense for them to go to one of the other two countries that they were already working with and where there were people they already knew.
Gustave Bertrand set them up in a place called the Chateau de Vignoles, which is in a village about 40 kilometres south of Paris.
They set up an operation that was called, codenamed Bruno, PC Bruno, which stands for Poste de Commandement in French.
Bertrand ran it, but it included 15 Polish codebreakers, 50 French codebreakers, and another seven anti-fascist Spanish who were exiles because of the Spanish Civil War.
And they all worked on both German and Russian, but also Spanish and Italian ciphers at the Chateau de Vignoles near Paris.
The boss of this organization was the same man who'd been running the show in Warsaw, which is Guido Langer, who was the lieutenant colonel who had originally been in charge of the Second Bureau, which was the intelligence code-breaking part of the Polish intelligence service.
David, can you tell us what happened to the Polish codebreakers after Nazi Germany invaded Poland in 1939?
The Polish codebreakers have to evacuate Warsaw fairly hastily because the Polish resistance to both the German invasion and the subsequent Soviet invasion was relatively short-lived.
So the Polish Cipher Bureau, the Bureau Schifrow, which is based in Warsaw, packed up and they evacuated from Poland to France.
As we've heard previously, they were already in touch with Gustav Bertrand and the French cryptographic service, as well as with GCNCS in the UK.
And Bertrand was able to arrange for most of the Polish team to relocate to Paris.
Belgium? The reason they went to France was this tripartite, code-breaking relationship between the UK, France and Poland had already been established during the summer of 1939.
And so it made sense for them to go to one of the other two countries that they were already working with and where there were people they already knew.
Gustave Bertrand set them up in a place called the Chateau de Vignoles, which is in a village about 40 kilometres south of Paris.
They set up an operation that was called, codenamed Bruno, PC Bruno, which stands for Poste de Commandement in French.
Bertrand ran it, but it included 15 Polish codebreakers, 50 French codebreakers, and another seven anti-fascist Spanish who were exiles because of the Spanish Civil War.
And they all worked on both German and Russian, but also Spanish and Italian ciphers at the Chateau de Vignoles near Paris.
The boss of this organization was the same man who'd been running the show in Warsaw, which is Guido Langer, who was the lieutenant colonel who had originally been in charge of the Second Bureau, which was the intelligence code-breaking part of the Polish intelligence service.
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