When the marine biologist Michael ßwat descended to the seabed of the Bay of Gelting on the western edge of the Baltic Sea, he noticed a contraption tangled up in the fishing line the crew had headed down to collect. The device, which at first seemed like an old typewriter sitting under at least 30 feet of water, was a Nazi Enigma machine, likely one of hundreds abandoned and thrown overboard in the dying days of the German war effort. The project that found ßwat at the bottom of the…
