Secret documents on Enigma collected by Gustave Bertrand

Bertrand receives documents from a spy

In October 1931, Hans Thilo Schmidt offered to sell top secret documents to the French. As an employee of the section of the German cipher, he begins by proposing two notices concerning the Enigma cipher machine which the year before (1930) commissioning started.

He gave these documents to agent Lemoine of French SR (Service de renseignements) at their first meeting (November 1st 1931). Lemoine became the case officer (under the code name Rex) of Schmidt who chose the code name "Asche" (ashes). Gustave Bertrand as head of section D, (under the code name Barsac) was present to subsequent meetings with Asche as cipher is concerned.

Read the documents

In 2016, the documents managed by Bertrand have been declassified and have since been available to the SHD, that is to say, the archives of the French army located in Vincennes near PARIS. Among them, all originals of the documents listed below (SHD - DE 2016 ZB 25/5 1949). I provide a copy on this site (below: follow links). The French Enigma specialist Gilbert Bloch thought they had been destroyed.

The list of the main documents recovered

Let Bertrand describe, the booty he withdrew

There were exactly 19 (meetings), in Belgium, Switzerland, Denmark, Czechoslovakia, - not in Holland, because other agents of Section D were treated, from 1931 to 1939 and, among the 303 documents delivered, there were 10 on the "Enigma" cipher Machine type WEHRMACHT -, namely:

(248) – GEBRAUCHSANWEITSUNG für die CHIFFRIERMASCHINE "ENIGMA" (1930) - The Enigma user manual, 1930.
(249) - SCHLÜSSELLANLEITUNG für die CHIFFRIERMASCHINE "ENIGMA" (1930). The Enigma encryption notice, 1930.
(250) - DECKBLATT zur SCHLÜSSELLANLEITUNG für die CHIFFRIERMASCHINE "ENIGMA" (1930). 
(251) - SCHLÜSSELLANLEITUNG für die CHIFFRIERMASCHINE "ENIGMA I" (1930). Update of the encryption notice.
(252) - Encrypted text of December 2, 1931, - with the exactly matching plaintext and the encryption keys used.
(253) - HEERES-M. SCHLÜSSEL for December 1931, as well as those of the years 1932, 1933, 1934 / 1st semester. Army key tables.
(254) - INFORMATION giving the result of the keyboard keys of the CHIFFRIERMASCHINE "ENIGMA I" according to certain characteristics specified.
(255) - LIST of WORKERS working on the making of the "ENIGMA" encryption machine, - as well as their personal address.
(256) – GEBRAUCHSANWEITSUNG für die CHIFFRIERMASCHINE "ENIGMA" (1937) (H. Dv. g. 13) (L. Dv. g. 13). The Enigma user manual , 1937.
(257) - SCHLÜSSELLANLEITUNG für die CHIFFRIERMASCHINE "ENIGMA" (1937) (H. Dv. g. 14) ((L. Dv. g. 14). The Enigma encryption manual, 1937.