Major Franciszek Pokorny was a Polish Army officer who headed the Polish General Staff's Cipher Bureau before Major (eventually, Lt. Col.) Gwido Langer. Polish Army (Polish Wojsko Polskie) is the name applied to the military forces of Poland. ... A General Staff is a group of professional military officers who act in a staff or administrative role under the command of a general officer. ... The Biuro Szyfrów ( (?), Polish for Cipher Bureau) was the Polish agency concerned with cryptology between World Wars I and II. The Bureau enjoyed notable successes against Soviet cryptography during the Polish-Soviet War, helping to preserve Polands independence. ... Gwido Langer (died March 30, 1948) was chief of the Polish General Staffs Cipher Bureau from at least mid-1931. ...

When the first German military Enigma-enciphered messages were broadcast July 15, 1928, the Cipher Bureau's German section attempted unsuccessfully to decrypt them. Likely due to the successes of leading Polish mathematicians in breaking Russian ciphers during the Polish-Soviet War (1919-1921), a secret cryptology course was conducted in 1929 at Poznań University for selected mathematics students with a knowledge of the German language. Three participants in the course — Marian Rejewski, Jerzy Różycki and Henryk Zygalski — were, three years later, hired by the Cipher Bureau. In the history of cryptography, the Enigma was a portable cipher machine used to encrypt and decrypt secret messages. ... This article is about algorithms for encryption and decryption. ... July 15 is the 196th day (197th in leap years) of the year in the Gregorian Calendar, with 169 days remaining. ... 1928 (MCMXXVIII) was a leap year starting on Sunday (link will take you to calendar). ... This article is about algorithms for encryption and decryption. ... The Polish-Soviet War or Russo-Polish War — in Polish, often called the Bolshevik War (Wojna bolszewicka) — was the war (February 1919 – March 1921) that determined the borders between two nascent states in post-World War I Europe, Soviet Russia and the Second Polish Republic. ... 1919 (MCMXIX) was a common year starting on Wednesday (see link for calendar). ... 1921 (MCMXXI) was a common year starting on Saturday (see link for calendar). ... Cryptography (from Greek kryptós, hidden, and gráphein, to write) is, traditionally, the study of means of converting information from its normal, comprehensible form into an incomprehensible format, rendering it unreadable without secret knowledge — the art of encryption. ... 1929 (MCMXXIX) was a common year starting on Tuesday (link will take you to calendar). ... The University of PoznaÅ„ (Polish: Uniwersytet im. ... Marian Rejewski (probably 1932, the year he broke Enigma). ... Jerzy Różycki, about 1928. ... Henryk Zygalski, about 1930. ... The Biuro Szyfrów ( (?), Polish for Cipher Bureau) was the Polish agency concerned with cryptology between World Wars I and II. The Bureau enjoyed notable successes against Soviet cryptography during the Polish-Soviet War, helping to preserve Polands independence. ...

Pokorny was third to lecture in the course, after engineer Antoni Palluth and then-Capt. Maksymilian Ciężki. Former civilian cryptanalyst with the General Staff Biuro Szyfrów (Cipher Bureau) German Section (BS4). ... Maksymilian Ciężki (1899–November 9, 1951) was the head of the German section of the Polish Cipher Bureau during the 1930s, during which time the organisation was able to decrypt German Enigma messages. ...

References

• Władysław Kozaczuk, Enigma: How the German Machine Cipher Was Broken, and How It Was Read by the Allied in World War Two, edited and translated by Christopher Kasparek, Frederick, MD, University Publications of America, 1984, pp. 230, 246-47.