Marian Rejewski (1905 - 1980), Henryk Zygalski (1907 - 1978), and Jerzy Różycki (1909 - 1942) solved the German Enigma cipher machine and broke Enigma messages.
This hand-over-mouth gesture by Keira Knightley/Joan Clarke covers the impact of the moment perfectly. Everyone thinks that this bunch of adrenalin-soaked people in this dark room may just have been witness to THE most important event to win and end this war. But noone dares to say it.
Alan turing saved millions of lives ,and shortened the war by years by breaking enigma...strange fact was he was gay and had to undergo chemical sterilization after the war when it was discovered, ( it was against the law) ,which left his brain scrambled.Being homosexaual was illegal you see so you be the judge of this action taken against a national hero..
It’s possible some high ranking Germans suspected the Allies were deciphering their code but realised it would shorten a war they were inevitably going to lose and so kept quiet.
Actually, Germany thought after a while that their codes where intercepted and interpreted. And instead of getting a better code, they just continued to add wheels on the Enigma. Thanks to that most if not all intercepted messages were interpreted. Basically Germany due to laziness lost the war
@@andmos1001 Actually the armed forces that used the extra wheel were only broken much later. The others were broken and used sporadically as a the film actually conveys quite well when they discuss how to disseminate the breakthrough. Churchill was informed of a massive attack on Coventry that was planned by the germans in a departure fron them normally attacking London and it's dock and industry in Silvertown. He held back and allowed Coventry to be bombed as it would have given away that we had broken the German code. Thousands of allied lives were saved in the long run and the war was unarguably shortened due to his sacrifice of english lives. How much steel did he have to make that decision and condemn hundreds to save thousands. A great man indeed. I for one could not have even have to contemplate the turmoil that he must have gone through.
@@michaelsmith7425 In his 1974 book The Ultra Secret, Group Captain F. W. Winterbotham asserted that the British government had advance warning of the attack from Ultra; intercepted German radio messages encrypted with the Enigma cipher machine and decoded by British cryptanalysts at Bletchley Park. He further claimed that Winston Churchill ordered that no defensive measures be taken to protect Coventry, lest the Germans suspect their cipher had been broken. Winterbotham was a key figure for Ultra and supervised the "Special Liaison Officers" who delivered Ultra material to field commanders. Winterbotham's claim has been rejected by other Ultra participants and by historians. They state that while Churchill was indeed aware that a major bombing raid would take place, no one knew what the target would be.
I was lucky enough to have met the great Hugh Alexander once in 1972 - he presented me with a chess prize at the Dragon school in Oxford - I was nine years old. At the time I could not understand why my parents were in such awe of him. When I was much older I read a couple of chess books he wrote on chess openings - on reading them I could feel his genius - to explain such a complex subject so simply and clearly showed me that Hugh Alexander had incredible clarity of thought:))
You missed the point then because they did use it to win the war. They had to use it in a way that did not inform the germans that enigma was compromised. That means always having an alternate explanation for the origin of the intel. You dont just react to an enemy tank column moving toward you for instance. You dispatch a seemingly random scouting unit to find it and then act.
That scene didn't play out that way in real life though. This group passed EVERYTHING up to command, and command made the decisions to act or not act. They had to find a way to simplify that explanation to the audience, but the way the movie portrays it is an act of treason. Lol
Not exactly they could only use it on selected occasions otherwise the German high command, especially the subs would know that Enigma had been broken.
Some brilliant men & women helped win this battle for the allies, and then many were screwed by the governments they helped. It's a travesty, and I suspect one that is repeated far too frequently.
This scene really dumbed down and over simplified the process. Unfortunately it is a necessary evil that must be adhered to so the audience can pretend they understand what is going on. My biggest criticism about this movie is that it was all about Turing and not the Ultra program. Absolutely no mention of Thomas Flowers and his "Colossus" computer and his and Turing's success in breaking the German Lorenz encryption machine. Enigma was child's play compared to Lorenz and Bletchley broke both of them.
