electrical companies in Germany and Switzerland before founding
his own firm—Scherbius and Ritter—in 1918. His design for a new
cipher machine based on rotating wired wheels was submitted to the
patent office on 23 February 1918 (thus predating a similar design
by Dutch inventor Hugo Koch filed the following year). Scherbius
approached both the imperial navy and the Foreign Office with his
multi-rotor machine but was rebuffed.
His next step was to enter the commercial market through a new
corporation—Chiffriermachinen Aktien Gesellschaft (Cipher Ma-
chines Stock Corporation)—with himself and Ritter on the board of
directors. Launched in 1923, the corporation gave wide publicity to
the Enigma machine, as it was now called. In addition to illustrated
advertisements that appeared in trade publications, it was exhibited
at the congress of the International Postal Union. Soon the German
navy, recognizing a more secure cryptosystem was necessary, turned
to Scherbius, and a somewhat different version than the commercial
one was in production by 1925. Nevertheless, the corporation contin-
ued to struggle for profitability. The commercial market failed to ma-
terialize, and the German army and navy had only purchased several
hundred machines each by the end of the decade. Meanwhile Scher-
bius, whose inventions (such as the asynchronous motor) had never
ceased, became the victim of a fatal accident involving his horse-drawn
carriage, and he died on 13 May 1929. The corporation, however,
survived, and by 1935—owing to Hitler’s rearmament program—
full-scale manufacture of the Enigma machine was under way to sup-
ply the German armed services.SCHERHORN. A major deception scheme organized by Soviet coun-
terintelligence, Operation scherhorn (also known as berezino
and bennstrecke) began in the late summer of 1944. Acting on the
orders of Joseph Stalin, the Soviet General Staff sought to persuade
its German counterpart to divert scarce resources to units trapped
behind Soviet lines. Presumably these units would be able to inflict
considerable damage on the rear of the Red Army and then be able
to rejoin the main body of the Wehrmacht.
The scheme centered on the commander of an obscure unit, Ger-
hard Scherhorn, who had been captured outside Minsk on 9 July
1944 (his unit was part of a larger force of 1,800 German soldiers
SCHERHORN • 395