Original Item: Only One Available. This is a very nice German manufactured 1934 dated Morse Code key which reads on the bakelite cover: Vor dem offnen stecker herausziehen (Unplug before opening). This is a Baumuster Type T1. It is complete with cord and functional plunger.
German code breaking in World War II achieved some notable successes cracking British Naval ciphers until well into the fourth year of the war, but also suffered from a problem typical of the German armed forces of the time: numerous branches and institutions maintained their own cryptographic departments, working on their own without collaboration or sharing results with equivalent units. This led to duplicated effort, to a fragmentation of potential, and to lower efficiency than might have been achieved. There was no central German cryptography agency comparable to Britain’s Government Code and Cypher School (GC&CS), based at Bletchley Park.