Comment by Sophira
5 hours ago
Is it possible that the key is incorrect but still decoded to a valid message? I realise it's possible when you're using keys that are the same length as the message, but I don't know exactly how the Enigma machine works and if this was something that they would do or not.
I might be wrong but I was under the impression that these were one time pads and only cracked because of bad key hygiene when it came to generating them. If that's true, it's entirely possible
Enigma wasn't one time pad based (although these were used a lot during the war), enigma does have known weaknesses such as letters never being decrypted to itself. Enigma was based off daily settings (rotor positions, plugboard settings etc), which could be mostly recovered by the end of the war, unlike actual one time pads which are only crackable by bad key hygiene/brute force.
You cannot crack OTP, even by brute force.