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As early as 1931, Gustave Bertrand of the French intelligence services received from the traitor Hans Thilo Schmidt documents concerning the Enigma cipher machine. This machine was intended to equip all the German military forces. This is the beginning of an epic that has probably changed the History. The main documents collected by Bertrand have not been destroyed and are available in the archives of the French Army (SHD). This article describes and analyzes each of these documents, including the evolution of the Enigma and its procedures related in these documents. In conclusion, the article lists the findings that come from reading these originals and first and foremost the impact of having a cipher message with its plaintext on the British attempt to recover Enigma rotors wiring. Oddly enough, it seems that this message was not used by the Poles to break the Enigma. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines Western European socialists' attempt to assert a 'socialist alternative' to a crumbling world order during the long 1970s. In Western Europe, the 1968 uprisings inaugurated a decade of intense social contestation, which coincided with the heyday of social democracy and, arguably, with a new leftward tendency within the socialist milieu. The 'crisis' of the long 1970s – with its multiple economic, energy social, political, international and cultural facets – challenged the foundations of the 'post-war consensus' and to some extent pushed socialists to question their commitment to capitalism. This article explores the period of consolidation and renewal that Western European social democracy experienced during the early 1970s, their increasing confidence that they could use the European Community as a tool to realize democratic socialism, the attempt to formulate a common socialist alternative for Europe, the leftward tendency that was characterizing European socialists at the time and even their hope (at least for some of them) to surpass capitalism. Focusing on the attempt of the socialist parties of the EC to adopt a common European socialist programme in view of the first direct elections of the European Parliament, it argues that despite their divergences, European socialists did thoroughly discuss and envisage an alternative to capitalism at a European and global level during the 1970s, an option that was abandoned by the 1980s. Abbreviation: European Community=EC; European Parliament=EP [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay studies the logic of exception in literature and law, especially as it pertains to heroic literature and American exceptionalism. It studies how in both authority is established, marshaled but in extreme cases urged to transgress its own rules for the benefit of a community whose laws it both confirms and defies. It asks: how can an exception confirm a rule's authority; how daring must it be to disrupt that authority; and why in literature, politics, and ethics can a heroic disruption of law promise to be more just than adherence to an established law? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The author tells how he discovered the name of World War II's greatest spy even though the original source did not want to reveal it. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]