Stolen Enigma machine 'posted' to journalist

The enigma machine was captured from a Nazi U-Boat by British servicemen.

LONDON, England -- A missing Enigma encoding machine, used by the Germans in World War II, has apparently been sent to British journalist Jeremy Paxman.

The period piece used by the Nazis had been stolen from Bletchley Park, a museum based in the wartime headquarters of Britain's code-breakers.

A parcel containing what is thought to be the authentic machine was posted to Paxman, a senior journalist and presenter, at the BBC in London.

"It arrived in a big, big cardboard box," said Paxman. It was triple wrapped in protective bubble wrap. "I thought 'God it's the missing enigma machine.'"

He said it smelt of oil and looked authentic and had the correct identification on it. Officials from Bletchley Park were contacted.

Only three Enigmas exist, and while the missing machine is worth about £100,000 ($143,700), its historical value is impossible to estimate.

Enigma was the name given to the German military coding system used to direct ships, submarines and armies on all fronts of the Third Reich's battle to dominate Europe. It relied on typewriter-like machines at both ends to decode messages.

Two such devices were handed to British intelligence agents in 1939 by the Polish, helping the Allies decipher secret messages and, in the words of then-Prime Minister Winston Churchill, shorten World War II by two years.

Paxman told BBC television that the identification number G312 on the device would appear to confirm that it was genuine.

"It looks like the real thing, it smells like the real thing, it has the right identification number," he said, adding that the head of Bletchley Park, from where the Enigma was stolen, was on her way to the studio to authenticate the find.

Bletchley, an estate near London code-named "Station X" during World War II, was the nerve centre of British decoding efforts and considered so secret that its existence was not revealed until the late 1960s.

It was from Bletchley that the missing machine, which used revolving drums to encrypt messages, was lifted from a display cabinet during an open day in April.

The estate had agreed to pay £25,000 ($36,250) in ransom to get the Enigma back when the author of a ransom note threatened to destroy it if the money was not paid in time.

But police said the author, who claimed to be writing on behalf of "The Master," got back in touch with the museum hours after the deadline. The content of those discussions was not disclosed.

The BBC spokesman said the address from where the package was sent was in Birmingham, consistent with police saying that the ransom notes were from the West Midlands area of England.

"The police will be going to the BBC to check its authenticity and take it away to be examined for any clues," a police spokesman said.

Reuters contributed to this report.

Man questioned in connection with theft of Nazi spy machine
April 4, 2000

See related sites about Europe

Note: Pages will open in a new browser window

External sites are not endorsed by CNN Interactive.