MetaFilter posts tagged with england and Germany

Just remember to obey the red man and get some qualifications…

acb — Sat, 11 May 2013 16:09:49 -0800

How to be German in 20 easy steps; also, from the same author: how to be English. Elsewhere: how to be a really hip German.

You eat too fast, and I understand why your antidyspeptic pill-makers cover your walls, your forests even, with their advertisements.

The Whelk — Sat, 07 Jul 2012 09:36:40 -0800

In 1891 author and lecturer ”Max O’Rell” (being the pen name of one Léon Paul Blouet) published an amusing account of his travels through the States and Eastern Canada - "A Frenchman In America" - that, along with the charming illustrations, reflect on then popular national stereotypes and character and is presented on Project Gutenberg in its entirely. (via)

Animated Histories of European Football

hoyland — Wed, 06 Jun 2012 06:03:21 -0800

In advance of Euro 2012, the Guardian has made animated histories of six of the competitors: England, Spain, the Republic of Ireland, Italy, Germany and France. (Autoplay video in last six links.)

Bletchley Park WWII Code-breaking Machines Rebuilt from Memories

filthy light thief — Mon, 30 May 2011 13:55:15 -0800

Early 1940: British police listening for radio transmissions from German spies within the UK pick up weird signals, and pass them to Bletchley Park, the United Kingdom's main decryption establishment in WWII. The source of these German messages is an unknown machine, which the Brits dub Tunny (10 minute video with Tony Sale describing the Tunny). August 30, 1941: German operators send two very similar messages with the same key, providing insight into the encryption scheme. By January 1942, British cryptographers deduced the workings of the German code machines, sight unseen. The British were able to create their own Tunny emulators to decrypt messages sent by German High Command. After the war, these and other British code-breaking and emulating machines were demolished and/or recycled for parts and their blueprints destroyed, leaving a hole in the history of the British WWII code breaking. Efforts to rebuild the British Tunny emulator started in the 1990s, and quite recently a Tunny emulator replica was completed. The German military had a number of different encrypted communications systems, from the relatively simple modified German military version of the commercially-available Enigma machine (Google Quickview / PDF). The more complex systems were based on teleprinters (wiki). The Germans had three different types of teleprinter cipher machines (Google Quickview / PDF) : three models of the Lorenz system, dubbed Tunny by the British; various models of the Siemens & Halske Schlüsselfernschreibmaschine (SFM), named Sturgen by the British; and the Siemens T43, which may have been the unbroken system nicknamed Thrasher. Tunny was used by the German army, while Sturgen was used by the navy and air force. The German nickname for the special teleprinter equipment was Sägefisch (sawfish), which is the source of the Fish nickname in England, and the subsequent fish-related nicknames for specific systems. When the British first found the "fish" messages, they realized these communications were quite important messages. The first break in Tunny came on August 30, 1941, when a German operator missed a message on first transmission and asked, in plaintext, that the message be re-sent. The key setting was the same and the message was largely similar, allowing British cryptographers to figure out the operations of the cipher machine without seeing it. About five months later, the Tunny emulator was built, allowing cipher text to be decrypted, once the decoding settings were figured out by hand. The first attempt to speed up the process was Heath Robinson, a mechanical method of figuring out the decoder settings. The second is the world's first programmable electronic computer, Colossus, and made by Thomas Harold Flowers (MBE) at the Dollis Hill Post Office Research Station. A number of Colossi were built, and all of these machines were dismantled at the end of the war, to guard against their secrets becoming known. By finding scraps of information and picking the memories of those who made and worked with the machines With the re-creation of the Tunny emulator, Bletchley Park once again has a complete set of re-created decrypting machines (photos of the exhibit at The National Museum of Computing, itself located at Bletchley Park). More interesting details and rabbit trails: * The Fish and I, Professor William T. Tutte's paper on FISH, as presented at the opening ceremony of Centre for Applied Cryptographic Research at the University of Waterloo. This paper is just one of the many fascinating features at Frode Weierud's CryptoCellar. * WW II Codes and Ciphers, Tony Sale's website on the Colossus and Tunny rebuild efforts, Enigma, and other related topics. * An introduction to Bletchley Park, a 2008 MetaFilter post.

Englandspiel - or 'Germany Game'

goodnewsfortheinsane — Sun, 06 Aug 2006 15:46:23 -0800

Secret agent Huub Lauwers was parachuted into occupied Holland in 1941 to relay intelligence back to London. His capture by the Germans marked the beginning of the Englandspiel, a deadly game of cat-and-mouse intelligence that cost the lives of over fifty agents. Lauwers frantically tried to inform the SOE that he had been caught, but the Baker Street Irregulars just didn't get it. Or did they? [more inside]

Johannes Matthaeus Koelz: A Life Divided

plep — Fri, 12 Dec 2003 12:33:41 -0800

Johannes Matthaeus Koelz: A Life Divided. An artist who escaped to England from Nazi Germany. From the exhibition :-
'Koelz, a painter, was living in a small cottage in the Bavarian forest estate of Hohenbrunn. One morning he travelled to nearby Munich on a routine visit to police headquarters to renew his exit visa for a planned trip to Italy.'
'At some point during the following night Koelz instructed a young man from the local woodmill to take his major work - a triptych which had occupied him since the early 1930s and cut it into pieces. He left Hohenbrunn at dawn, arranging for his family to follow ... It was the first stop on a journey that would take them to England. '
'Meanwhile the state police had raided their home and interrogated family members left behind. They were searching for the painter and his triptych, a massive anti-war painting which not only questioned the horrors of war but also the rising power of the Nationalist Socialist Party and by implication, its leader, Adolf Hitler.'
'Thou Shalt Not Kill', Koelz's tryptych.
Timeline and artworks.

England 5 Germany 1

quarsan — Sat, 01 Sep 2001 12:59:56 -0800

England 5 Germany 1 there is a god, and his name is Michael Owen