Production and Usage
Hagelin built about 140,000 M-209 / C-38s and became quite wealthy. A World War II German cryptographer named Fritz Menzer built cipher machines based on Hagelin's designs, though no doubt Hagelin never received royalties from them. Menzer's "Schlüsselgerät 1941 / Code Device 1941 / SG-41" was a purely mechanical device, with an internal organization along the lines of the M-209 but larger, with a real keyboard. It was actually put into limited production, with about a thousand built for use by the Abwehr, the German intelligence service, which operated them from 1944.
The SG-41 was supposed to have been a standard tactical cipher machine, but the Germans had only limited supplies of lightweight metals such as magnesium and aluminum, and it was simply too heavy for tactical use. Menzer also worked on two other cipher machines based on Hagelin technology, including a follow-on to the Enigma, the "SG-39", and a simple but fairly strong handheld cipher machine, the "Schlüsselkasten (Code Box)". Neither of these machines reached production. Had the Menzer devices been put into service, they would have certainly caused trouble for Allied cryptanalysts, though they were certainly no more uncrackable than the M-209.
After the war, Hagelin came up with an improved model of the M-209, designated the "C-52". The C-52 featured a period of up to 2,756,205,443; wheels that could be removed and reinserted in a different order; and a printwheel with a mixed alphabet. However, the C-52 was one of the last generation of the classic cipher machines, as by that time new digital technology was permitting the development of ciphers that were far more secure.
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