World War II Enigma Machine Auctioned by Christie's

An actual Second World War Enigma machine, used by Germany to encode its communications, was auctioned by Christie's on September 29, 2011. An electro-mechanical rotor cipher machine used to encrpyt and decrypt messages the Enigma was thought to be unbreakable, but of course it was not.

One of the great Allied advantages of the war was their ability to regularly intercept and read otherwise encoded German communications. Though this capability was not comprehensive, with changes to the German code settings throwing the Allies off at repeated times during the war, it would prove of significant assistance to the Allied war effort.