However, with cryptography historically the best crypto has been invented in the US and it made much more sense for allies to just use ready made solutions than to roll their own. Do countries on the US crypto exports ban lists have their own incompatible crypto? I dont know, they might, but they for sure don't share it as freely available standards.
The Enigma machine was probably the weakest of its kind of machines. It had a critical security flaw in that it could never encipher a letter to itself, and most of its security came from the IV settings, which were communicated in such poor fashion that the Poles cracked it long before WW2 even started.
By contrast, the US and British rotor machines were never cracked by the Axis powers in WW2, and the other two German rotor ciphers were less thoroughly cracked by the Allies.
According to Wikipedia, rotor cyphers were probably invented in the Netherlands, not the US. It says an american tried to commercialize the idea, but went bust. The only patents they mention were issued to Europeans.
They don't seem to mention these spiffy US and UK rotor cyphers; any pointers?
We have plenty of standards in Europe too :-)
However, with cryptography historically the best crypto has been invented in the US and it made much more sense for allies to just use ready made solutions than to roll their own. Do countries on the US crypto exports ban lists have their own incompatible crypto? I dont know, they might, but they for sure don't share it as freely available standards.