A story about the little things that make up victories and defeats in a war.

Almost immediately after the start of the First World War, the German light cruiser Magdeburg received an order to start fighting against the Russians in the Baltic Sea. He starts laying mines near Libava (Liepaja). Then he receives an order to move to the Gulf of Finland. And there he runs aground in the fog ...

The destroyer V-26 and the cruiser Amazon are sent to rescue the cruiser, but the Russian cruisers Bogatyr and Pallada quickly approach the Magdeburg. The Germans are trying to organize the evacuation of personnel under Russian fire, but panic begins. According to the charter of the German fleet, it is required to burn the Signalbuch der Kaiserlichen Marine (SKM) signal books in the firebox, but it is flooded with outboard water. And books with codes are just thrown overboard. The Russians send divers to look for them, and they find the books next to the side of the ship, along with other documents and the current encryption key. The ship's commander, Richard Habenicht, seeing the divers, realizes that the signal books are in the hands of the Russians. But he is kept under heavy guard - in order to exclude the possibility of conveying the news of the seizure of books to his homeland.

One of the three signal books captured is handed over to the British Admiralty, which plays a crucial role in breaking the German naval cipher. The British manage this book much smarter than the Russians. They create a special cryptographic department - Room 40. In this department they collect all information about German ciphers.

In October 1914, the British also receive the Handelsschiffsverkehrsbuch, which belonged to the German navy. This is the code book used by the German sea ​​ships, merchant ships, airships and submarines: The Royal Australian Navy obtained a copy of this book from the German-Australian steamer Hobart.

On November 30, a British trawler nets and lifts a safe from the sunken German destroyer S-119, which contains the Verkehrsbuch, the code used by the Germans to communicate with German attachés, embassies and warships abroad.

It must be added that back in 1911, the communications department of the Imperial Defense Committee concluded that in the event of a war with Germany, German submarine communications should be destroyed. On the night of August 3/4, 1914, the Alert cable ship locates and cuts five German transatlantic cables that reach the English Channel. As a result, the number of messages transmitted by radio is increasing.

Signal books "Magdeburg" help to break the German cipher. The encryption was a simple table of substituting one letter for another in all messages. The intercepted messages turned out to be intelligence reports on the whereabouts of allied ships. It was noticed that such coded messages were transmitted on a short wave and were not intercepted due to a lack of receivers. It was ordered to control shortwave transmissions. The result was information about the movements of the German fleet.

The British Intercept Services begin experimenting with radio direction-finding equipment in early 1915. The first DF station was at Lowestoft, later stations were built at Lerwick, Aberdeen, York, Flamborough Head and Birchington, and by May 1915 the Admiralty could track German submarines crossing the North Sea. Some of these stations were in the mode of collecting German messages, a new section was created in Room 40 to determine the position of ships from decoded messages.

Room 40 played an important role in several naval battles during the war, especially in the discovery of German activities in the North Sea, which led to the Battle of Dogger Bank (1915) and the Battle of Jutland (1916), when british navy was sent to intercept the German ships.

Over the course of its history, Room 40 employees have deciphered about 15,000 German messages. However, the most significant contribution was the decoding of the Zimmermann Telegram, a message from the German Foreign Office transmitted in 1917 via Washington to the German ambassador to Mexico, Heinrich von Eckardt. In it, the Germans offered financial assistance to the Mexicans and promised that at the end of the war she would get back the territories of Texas, New Mexico and Arizona she had lost. The telegram was transmitted to the USA and on March 1 was published in the press. In response, America went to war with Germany and quickly defeated her.

Weird things happen sometimes. Right now I was listening to children's poems by English poets translated by S. Marshak and performed by Sergei Yursky. I got to the poem "The Nail and the Horseshoe". Here it is, everyone knows it:
"There was no nail -
The horseshoe is gone
There was no horseshoe -
The horse was lame
The horse was lame
The commander is killed
The cavalry is broken
The army is running!
The enemy enters the city
Sparing no prisoners
Because in the forge
There was no nail!"

And I remembered that this poem had a very specific historical basis. So, anyway, they say. During the Battle of Watrloo (1815), the French had every chance of winning. Moreover, they even confidently won it. The French cavalry under the command of Murat, having launched an attack that was dizzying in audacity and courage, captured the English batteries. The French began to gain the upper hand on all fronts. But the British threw back the cavalry, the battery resumed fire, the course of the battle was turned, and Napoleon suffered a well-known defeat. After Waterloo, many wondered why the French, having mastered the British battery, did not put it out of action. And everything turned out to be simple. In those days, in order to disable the gun, cavalrymen hammered an ordinary nail into the hole to ignite the gunpowder. Then they knocked off the hat - and that's it, for all the outward integrity, the gun was sky-ready. And everything would be fine, but the cavalrymen really did not like to carry nails with them. An inconvenient thing in a horse attack ... Everyone strove to get rid of his nails, and if necessary, ask a dozen or two from his comrades. In the case of the English battery, everyone hoped, and at the decisive moment no one had nails. So the British got a completely combat-ready battery, which changed the course of the battle.
Like this. And you say - "nails" ...

Nail and horseshoe.
Reads S. Yursky.

http://www.liveinternet.ru/users/2365320/

For want of a nail the shoe was lost,
For want of a shoe the horse was lost,
For want of a horse rider was lost,
For want of a rider the battle was lost,
For want of a battle the kingdom was lost,
And all for the want of horseshoe nail.

Or in Marshak's translation:

There was no nail - the horseshoe was gone.
There was no horseshoe - the horse was lame.
The horse limped - the commander was killed.
The cavalry is broken - the army is running.
The enemy enters the city, not sparing the prisoners,
Because there was no nail in the forge.

You know, once in my childhood, this poem made my heart skip a beat. No kidding. For me, it has always been not just a poem, but a ballad, a poem, and a whole epic. A story about life and death, a historical novel, a philosophical treatise. There is so much to be said for this little poem. Here it is - brevity, which is the sister of talent.
I imagined this one as real medieval city and its inhabitants. The commander of the cavalry, whose young life and brilliant career ended so stupidly and absurdly. And then - a burning city and a young mistress of the castle, who commits suicide so as not to be captured. And a ruthless conqueror who gives up the city for plunder...
Silly, probably in the style of youthful tragic romanticism.
In general, I love these English poems - about the king, about the cat, about Robin-Bobbin, etc. But about the nail and the horseshoe, I still read and listen with bated breath. And I remembered because I watched a cartoon - a playful opera based on this poem: Because there was no nail in the forge. The city in it is good, just the way I imagined as a child. (in the comments there is a link to the same cartoon on YouTube)

Weird things happen sometimes. Right now I was listening to children's poems by English poets translated by S. Marshak and performed by Sergei Yursky. I got to the poem "The Nail and the Horseshoe". Here it is, everyone knows it:
"There was no nail -
The horseshoe is gone
There was no horseshoe -
The horse was lame
The horse was lame
The commander is killed
The cavalry is broken
The army is running!
The enemy enters the city
Sparing no prisoners
Because in the forge
There was no nail!"

And I remembered that this poem had a very specific historical basis. So, anyway, they say. During the Battle of Watrloo (1815), the French had every chance of winning. Moreover, they even confidently won it. The French cavalry under the command of Murat, having launched an attack that was dizzying in audacity and courage, captured the English batteries. The French began to gain the upper hand on all fronts. But the British threw back the cavalry, the battery resumed fire, the course of the battle was turned, and Napoleon suffered a well-known defeat. After Waterloo, many wondered why the French, having mastered the British battery, did not put it out of action. And everything turned out to be simple. In those days, in order to disable the gun, cavalrymen hammered an ordinary nail into the hole to ignite the gunpowder. Then they knocked off the hat - and that's it, for all the outward integrity, the gun was sky-ready. And everything would be fine, but the cavalrymen really did not like to carry nails with them. An inconvenient thing in a horse attack ... Everyone strove to get rid of his nails, and if necessary, ask a dozen or two from his comrades. In the case of the English battery, everyone hoped, and at the decisive moment no one had nails. So the British got a completely combat-ready battery, which changed the course of the battle.
Like this. And you say - "nails" ...

Nail and horseshoe.
Reads S. Yursky.

There was no nail - the horseshoe fell,
the horseshoe fell - the horse lame,
the horse limped - the commander was killed,
the army is defeated, the cavalry is running,
the enemy enters the city, not sparing the prisoners,
BECAUSE THERE WAS NO NAILS IN THE FORGE!

This short English poem translated by Marshak is one of my favorites. For me, it means that any, even the most grandiose business, can be ruined because of one insignificant trifle.
Most recently, Sasha and I conducted an interview and hired one very promising employee. We had a long and detailed conversation about business, management and sales. In the course of our conversation, we learned that before that, our candidate, and now a colleague, was interviewed by our direct competitors. Of course, we were interested in the question of why she did not choose their proposal.
Maybe the salary didn't suit you? Not the same social package? The team didn't like it?
The answer simply struck me and once again made me remember the above poem - " No. And the office is beautiful, and the people are nice, and the financial conditions are decent. It’s just that after the interview ended, they told me: “Well, now let’s go smoke?”, And I didn’t really like that such an offer was received even before I started working there".
That's it. The selling rules apply here as well. Do not relax until the money has been credited to your current account, otherwise the Client may easily change his mind.

So like this - one sloppy question, deprived a competitor of an excellent employee. And he let us take him to work :-)
And you say: the system of motivation, career, education..........

PS By the way, this verse was not written by chance. They say that Napoleon lost the Battle of Waterloo precisely because the soldiers of his army did not have nails for horseshoes at the most crucial moment. All of them were thrown off so as not to carry extra weight with them ....