The encrypted German telegram that could save Britain in its darkest hour... But can a team of eccentric geniuses decode the message in time? This is the code that won The Great War: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-B-XgqA8lO9Y.html
Alan Turing was not "persecuted as a security risk because he was homosexual"(1.50.15 onwards). He was persecuted by certain neanderthal totally thick police officers of the Lancashire Constabulary >>>>>> BECAUSE HE WAS HOMOSEXUAL
I've been there about 10 times over the years and finally did an organised tour. I asked what do your German visitors say ? The guide said that they just shrug their shoulders and say yeah you got us on that one. The Japanese turn around and walk away.
@@ptgigg The Japanese teach their own version of WW2 , and it goes like this, we were doing absolutely nothing wrong and then one day the Americans dropped two atomic bombs on us. The true events of WW2 are deleted from any of their history books.
How about Tommy Flowers? He actually used some of his own money to build colossus, ended the war in debt because of it. When he applied for a loan to build another computer after the war he was refused because the banks didn't believe it could be done. And of course he couldn't say that he has already done it. Because the nature of their work was so secret, after the war all these people remained in obscurity until much later.
It was so secret that no one knew that Colossus was the first computer. As a result, IBM claimed credit for building the first computer. All the plans were destroyed after the war. When the British set up a computer museum at Bletchley Park around ten years ago, they didn't have an easy time building replicas of these machines, including the Bombe machine that Turing developed.
I appreciate this documentary mentioning and giving credit to the Polish codebreakers, many accounts of cracking the Enigma barely mention or forget about them entirely despite their enormous importance to future British and Allied success. They deserve their own doc, the Polish contribution to the war effort as a whole doesn't get enough media representation in the west as it is. For anyone interested, the series World on Fire is a good start in that regard, the scenes set in Poland are in Polish which is the first time I've seen that in a UK show
I must pause the video, but I was also looking for the mention of the Poles. This summer I visited the Enigma Museum in Poznan and I recommend other to do the same.
The first account was in R.V. Jones The Secret War in 1975, 30 years after the war. Differing accounts always dog history, I was under the impression that an Enigma machine was wrongly delivered to an address next door to the German embassy in Warsaw. The Poles made a copy in wood and sent it to London, before re-routing the machine to the embassy.
I did hear that because he was a homosexual he had been chemically castrated hence he took his life, how true this I dont know but if it was the truth then this was an infamous act against a brilliant man.
Turing suffering then is little different from the general level of animosity stirred up by extremist politicians right here in the US today toward the lgbt+ community. So sad.
@@tryreadingmore4440 "extremist politicians", like many of us "extremist" right wingers, believe in God's design: male and female, man and woman. Homosexuality is sin. If you choose to ignore that, fine, go ahead. But don't expect or demand us to accept it. Live your lives and let us live ours.
I've read about Enigma and Bletchley Park, but this documentary explained more of the "how" the Enigma machine and its operators had weaknesses and how the codebreakers were able to exploit those. At one time, I worked for IBM, and of course the company told us employees that it had invented computers. The information about Mr Flowers and Colossus was very interesting.
IBM had until Colossus secrets came out in 1975 and history had to be rewritten. Saying that IBM were brilliant in development of the Computer and is without doubt not only a World Class company but way out there in ingenuity.
I first programmed in 1969 as a student at Drexel University, literally across the street from the University of Pennsylvania where the ENIAC was invented. All of our textbooks listed the ENIAC as the first electronic digital computer. Then Bletchley was declassified in the 1970s and computer history had to be revised. I still have those textbooks.
@@GerrygamboneLike a lot of other things, to say that one person or one company "invented" computers is a long and twisted story. Certainly IBM had a hand in the Mark I and Mark Il computers at Harvard, but those were also designed by Howard Aiken, and were not "Turing Complete". Then you also had various machines built at Manchester, England and by Konrad Zuse, and way before that Babbage. While Babbage never finished his machine, Aiken used some of his ideas in the Mark I.
Turing opened the door to the possibility of early signals intelligence. Flowers made the information into intelligence which could be used in a timely fashion. Flowers contributed as least as much as anyone else in the winning of the war and he received what in return?
Just when you think you must have seen every documentary out there on this, another one pops up, and I think this one is one of, if not, the best. Many thanks for sharing.
Many would concur. Churchill's overwhelming desire for total denial of colossus etc could have been realistically explained away and left Britain as the world leader in the field. It's only in recent decades that talk of signals intelligence has reached the public domain. I was involved in the 70's/early 80's and it was something one never mentioned even to those you worked alongside. Outside of work it did not form any part of any conversation or acknowledgement of capabilities. We were always just involved communications and there it stopped. How times have changed!
I think Tommy Flowers went on to work on System X which may be the the first leap of telephony using computers before VOIP. Maybe someone in BT knows better. Save to say BT still has a big research campus near Ipswich which has helped develop broadband modem technology - ADSL.
Long ago, when I first learnt of Turin’s involvement and how he was subsequently treated by the country he served with utmost love and reverence , I was disgusted, utterly shocked and bewildered. The whole team at Bletchley gave so much, we, as British people, owe them so much
Disgraceful that a man who saved millions of lives and shortened the war was treated so badly. I agree with you 100% as to the whole Bletchley team and what they did. Those guys and girls deserved more recognition.
The film missed out Tommy Flowers and Max Newman who did what Alan Turing is credited for in the film the imitation game. Turing never designed or built the machine! He should not have been chemically castrated you can blame the church for that, but he did not do quite as much as the Film states.
<a href="#" class="seekto" data-time="3125">52:05</a> - "Wir unten im Boot hatten keine Ahnung davon, wie es da oben aussah, aber der Kommandant oben auf der Brücke, der rief dann ständig 'raus, raus, raus'. Wir haben gefragt was soll denn geschehen mit den Geheimsachen? Bekam den Order alles liegen zu lassen und nur danach (something that I don't understand), ich weiß nicht, daran kann wohl keine Kritik geübt werden, kein Mesch kann sich die Situation vorstellen der nicht selebst dabei war" = Us people at the bottom of the boat had no idea what was happening above, but the commander up on the bridge just kept shouting "[get] out, [get] out, [get] out!". We asked what we should do with the secret documents? They ordered us to leave everything and afterwards (didn't understand this part). I don't know, no one can imagine the situation without being in it themselves."
I wholeheartedly concur, Laurie. I actually went to Bletchley College of Further Education to do my A Level exams, spent three years studying there; the college sits in front of Bletchley Park, & during my lunchbreaks, would often walk to the rear of the property - then, still guarded by the Ministry Of Defence. As a young man, I was unaware of the appellation, 'Station X', & only subsequent (when studying to become a doctor in Oxford) did I appreciate the magnitude of their efforts in terms of WW II. Of course, my attendance at the college was happenstance, but I am filled with immeasurable pride of that association to the forerunner of modern code breaking, & the advent of the first programmable computer. To me, Turing, Flowers, & all the other unsung heroes/heroines of that time, are owed an enormous debt of gratitude - a debt we may never be able to fully repay; such greatness, unbound. Thank you.
The man who does not get enough credit (In this video) is Anthony Edgar "Tony" Sale, FBCS (30 January 1931 - 28 August 2011). Just goes to show you how old this documentary is. Tony helped get Bletchley Park recognised as the place where secrets were broken and was essential in coordinating the COLOSSUS rebuild and more besides.
@@nightshadehelis9821 No ... Sin SECRETOS DE ESTADO, la SEGURIDAD DE LA NACION depende en gran medida de ello. Fíjate cómo les fue a los alemanes, tan confiados que estaban con su Enigma ... Felicito a los británicos por " callarse la boca " ... 👌👌🇦🇷🇦🇷
My grandfather served on the British merchant ships and he made many crossings across the Atantic during WWII. I never realised how much he must have gone through before seeing documentaries such as this. Now I know why he recieved quite a few medals.
A retired RN officer, was approached to determine why so many merchant ships were being sunk. He realised that look outs hardly ever looked back and when a ship was attacked,the RN went OUTWARDS to find the uboats. He found thaT THE UBOATS CAME IN FROM BEHIND AND TORPEDOED A SHIP AND WENT STRAIGHT DOWN, while the navy went outwards, this is when the Germans started to lose their uboats. The officer laid out convoys on his floor to work all this out and the game warship came from this.
Bletchley Park & the Y Stations are my #1 reason for wanting to visit the UK. Along with RAF museums and HMS Victory. So much to see so little money to spend.
The Imperial War Museum sites over here are a real treat. We were at RAF Duxford, near Cambridge, for the 60th anniversary of D-Day in 2004. It was amazing to talk to those who were there and also see some Spitfires and Hurricanes flying about. The sound is something you never forget.
I recommend HMS Victory and the Mary Rose in Portsmouth. RAF Hendon in N London is good but personally I like Duxford it has lots of aircraft, displays and an armoured vehicle section at one end just after the American Hangar with most of the famous US aircraft including the SR71, U2, B29 and B52. RAF Cosford is good too although I think they are changing displays and some aircraft atm.
Mary Refuse ... I started my trip in Krakow rented a car and went to Auschwitz then drove from Auschwitz to Berlin and ended up at checkpoint Charlie toured every mess in the old GDR then hopped a flight to London then Bletchley park ... The most informative trip I will ever take
You really believe that destroying some paperwork stopped the British? Clue x 4: Leaving only ashes keeps secret secrets secret. WTFH do you think the deep state come from? Secretly secreting secrets secretes secret secret, secreted.
Fantastic documentary! Very rarely do you hear a mechanical breakdown of *how* coding or algorithmic processing works. (To be clear, I'm not a coder myself, but the analysis of the method[s] by which coding was processed in its "primitive" age was very fascinating and enlightening.)
In the 1920s Alan Turing proved that any problem that could be solved by mathematics could be solved by a machine that could read, write, and perform logical operations AND, OR, and NOT. That was his PhD thesis. That is the philosophical underpinning of all modern computers. US code breaking of Japanese signals was independent of Station X, and the product of the US breaking of Japanese ciphers was called "MAGIC".
Tommy Flowers used his own savings to build some of Colossus. The first version had 1500 valves and the subsequent ones 2300 valves. Two were moved to GCHQ but the destruction of the rest really set the country back post war. Had Flowers been able to take one to the GPO Research Station and reveal it as a post war invention a few months later, Britain would have led the world in computing and telephony technology. As Tommy Flowers tried to build an electronic exchange but was told that machines with hundreds of valves didn't work. He couldn't argue that he had built them with thousands of valves because it was secret.
A woman in Turkey also handed on another copy. The millitery attache at the Cairo US office made, extensive, detailed and frequent reports to Washington. These went by radio beaming directly over Rommel's interception centre and he received decrypts within several hours. When the attache was recalled, there were no further leaks. Many men died and ships sunk because of his work.
His name was Bonnie Fellers. He later became MacArthur's postwar deputy during the Occupation of Japan. In 1942, Bletchley Park intercepted Afrika Korps and Italian messages which indicated that the US embassy had been the source of leaks related to the British Eighth Army.
Kinda like the Brits Klaus Fuchs giving atomic secrets to the Soviets ol' sport.😎 I mean if we're gonna point fingers, seems cricket to me don't ye know.😎.
These brilliant codebreakers are 100% responsible for the allies winning the war. the lack of gratitude and recognition is breathtaking. they deserve much more recognition than they ever received. and every schoolchild should be taught about this.
There's another famous X called camp X in Canada, check it out. It was in the spy business as well and played an important and largely forgotten role in the war.
yes i heard story from horses mouth ..hehehe how Canadians informed Yankees about coming pearl harbor attack ...hehehe just saying it was known ahead..
As brilliant as Alan Turing was, it is nice to see a Bletchley Park/Station X documentary that shows the whole scope of what was done there, and not just a doco on Turing's input.
Yup, it was a massive cooperation of many of those who saw no codes before and had to come up with a way to stop the war spreading.. something like we have here right now in 2023.. 🤖
@@Gabcikovo yeah arm the Ukrainians so that all your weapons are tested without losing your own population, kill as many as possible, make ukraine able to pay, then give the weapons bill plus interest to hold them at your mercy for decades to come. Bits only paid off the U.S. lend/lease for all thier old ww1 old tat In 2020...
Channel 4 in the UK did a great documentary about it in the 1990s called Station X but given the subject never been officially released the only version on RU-vid are from VHS tapes so very low quality
⚠️ I didn't see on this documentary, that the allied forces got one or more enigma machines from U-boats, which is the truth. They talk only about the code book retrieved, but indeed along the war, several enigma machines were also retrieved and studied, and this facilitated a lot of decoding and understanding how the enigma machine worked. 🙏👍
Tak jest! In times when the Brits had no interest in decoding this gibberish, the Poles said bring it on and did it and that blew away the British minds :)) after the Poles reached out to cooperate on more difficult decoding and the Brits eventually learnt the Poles cracked it and that it was so easy (A, B, C, D)
Polacy przed wojną czytali Enigma.! Ale zajmowało to 3 tygodnie pracy.! Zanim zbudowano kopie tej maszyny. Częściowo kupionej przez szpiega, częściowo zbudowanej przez polskich inżynierów.! Oczywiście Niemcy udoskonalali Enigme. Mało tego Polacy czytali w 1920 w wojnie z Bolszewikami ich kodowane rozkazy.! Dzięki temu Polska wygrała bitwę Warszawską.! I wojsko Polskie wiedziało że jest to ważna sprawa złamać kody wroga.!
Not true. You poles are obsessed with taking credit for work you didn't do. You surrendered as quick as you could to Germany and you think you deserve respect? You're worse than France. Poland cracked a version of enigma which wasn't this version. Everyone acknowledges Poland HELPED. But that's not enough for you, you want to strangely take all the credit which is a lie.
Tommy Flowers was rightly mentioned and he helped build the computer off his own back pretty much. It was a team effort not just Flowers or Turing they couldn't have done it themselves. I do wonder why Turing always get the laurel leaf crown and Flowers seems to get ignored ? The people in Bletchley knew it was a team effort anyway.
Sir, without wishing to be disrespectful, I am sure you are perfectly aware why Alan touring receives a disproportionate amount of attention, and why Tommy flowers doesn’t even any longer have a road named after him.
@@casperdog777 To my mind Tommy flowers stands out even amongst this illustrious crowd, truly a modern day Babbage, who would I am sure have been proud of him. The fact that he is not recognised or memorialised is absolutely scandalous, and something really should be done about it.
Imagine being Georg Högel, and subsequently realising that your rescue of the love poems rather than the code book almost single handedly lost the war!
I believe they captured an enigma machine, that was the breakthrough. The rest was work to automate the crunching of the permutations, but without having a machine with the wiring within the reels, it couldn't have been done.
Polish cryptographers like Marian Rejewski did crack Enigma in the early 1930s but the Germans changed Enigma by the time WW2 started. Alan Turing used a completely different approach to crack Enigma that was much, much faster. Alan Turing's bombe computer allowed messages to be decoded in real time which allowed allied commanders to use this intel to their advantage. Intel about German troop or U Boat movements is useless to a military commander if its a week old. The Germans would also change the rotor settings everyday making decoding by hand useless.
Very very sad what they did to Alan. Just a tragedy. He was a true genius that could have given the world so much more. I'd like to say the world is a better place today. But only just. Time and again it's all too clear those values held then are still held by many now.
Why do they never say the original date of these programs??? Tommy Flowers, brilliant , ahead of his time, but forgotten What an awful thing to have to destroy his computer 🙏🏼
My guess is that sections of this were filmed between 1997-1999. It was first shown on channel 4 in the UK in 1999. and released on VHS a short while after. As far as I know , it was never re-broadcast.
I too wish original dates of video productiions were listed -- I feel it should be a requirement. Many programs have historical value but present informatiion that has been superseded by more recent research and discoveries -- particularly in the sciences, but also in historical context.
<a href="#" class="seekto" data-time="3077">51:17</a> - "Es fiel sofort das Licht aus, es ist ja kein gutes Gefühl wenn man im Dunkeln sitzt .... und zu überlegen, kommt irgendwo Wasser" = The lights went out immediately, and it's not a good feeling when you are sat in the dark (the rest is in a dialect that I do not understand) .. and to realise that water is coming in[to the ship]"
Now you need to do more concerning the Y Stations, not just in Britain but located throughout the British Empire. The beloved HRO Receivers from America and the whole interesting subject of capturing/receiving code so it could be given to BP. Without the secret listeners sometimes risking injury and disease, language experts, and code literate/expert people, without the radio amateurs, the young people with their fascination for electronics, BP would not have had the raw material to do its work. This is the story of young men literally listening to German signals from a wireless hidden in their parents front room. Truth was more exciting than fiction during these heady days.
Why would people be hiding their radio sets and listening to them covertly in america yer 🥜??, was they gestapo and cripo marching rampantly through the streets of the united states then?, what utter noncence and 64 clueless idiots gave you a thumbs up..gedda life n gedda grip and leave other nations coat tails alone??
I am a student of history, and have heard this story told before, including the movie, "The Imitation Game". This is the best, most comprehensive, and most informative telling of any I have seen previously. This is complete and contextual. Excellent!
The debt the world owes to Turing cannot be quantified. His treatment at the hands of the British state was abominable and a warning to us all about unjust laws and persecution.
@tom5216. ALL COUNTRIES WERE PUNISHING HOMOSEXUALS. BUT OF COURSE IT'S ALL THE FAULT OF THE THE BRITISH. THE DEFAULT POSITION IS ALWAYS TO BLAME THE BRITISH.
Thanks for your wonderful talk about Czech Bata'amen in HKVDF. It gave me and my two sons new information about my father and their grandfather, Alois Jjricek, and added to our heritage knowledge and identity. Helenka Jjricek, Adelaide, South Australia.
While overall this is an excellent source of information it would have been nice to see German translation in the subtitles. Maybe they could be added at a later date. Overall a well done documentary.
These code breaking stuff are very alluring to me. I feel I'm similar to Alan Turing. I find people are often scared or angry at me for my behavior, for I dont make eye contact and other social norms. I'd like to wear a gasmask in public like him! Ow my nose hurts from smells most people dont seem to notice. But so many times I go outside, I find myself being approached by cops again and again because some stranger called them because I was weird or something. P.S. I'm not making a cry for pity. I speak my mind and I wish for acceptance of odd-behaving people. If I creep anyone out, I'd like them to leave me alone so I can carry on with my life.
Hello Mr. Green, I understand just what you mean. I can say that 99.5% of my personal and professional relationships have ended badly for unknown reasons of what I have done or said. Recently, I was diagnosed with Autism, and suddenly, my whole life made sense. Have you considered this possibility for yourself? I mean you no disrespect. The realization has changed my life in many ways. In any case. I sincerely wish you well in your future.
@@krmccarrell Hello there fellow Neurodivergent! Around 2001-ish, I was given official Dx in my 20's of autism, I'm 45 now. (I'm a Miss but I'm not offended, cant tell gender by my username). Congrats to you for finding the key to explain much of the past that didnt make sense. What a relief I felt to have closure on so much that never made any sense whatsoever. I continue to rediscover myself, and everyday is a little bit better and less painful, the more autistic I allow myself to be. Now if only the rest of the world would stop trying to cram us into the wrong places. We deserve to be our unique selves. I hope you find your way in this treacherous world.
Indeed. Jeffreys and Welchman ran Hut 6. They had differing responsibilities. Jeffreys' was Sheet stacking and the Machine room. Welchman's was Registration, Decoding, and liaison with Hut 3 which produced the ULTRA intelligence reports.
If Turing and Flowers had been authorized to set up a company after the war Britain would have been at the forefront of the computor age and who knows what may have come of that meeting of minds with a little governmental finance and absolutely no governmental interference. Tommy Flowers never got the accolades his genius so richly deserved Turing made the idea of a computor but Flowers made the computor of use to mankind.
<a href="#" class="seekto" data-time="3194">53:14</a>, while I’m listening to a man speak German without subtitles I see the same book from Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. Great documentary btw.
After the war the British government handed out Enigma machines to embassies around the world so that they could read the dispatches being sent, while the users of the Enigma machines were still under the impression it was impossible to crack.
Only partly true, the patent for Enigma dates back to 1918, by the 1920s they were on commercial sale and the design was taken up by the German Military and improved over time. but in the mid 20s a derivative of the commercial Enigma machine was developed in the UK, post war it was sold under the "Typex" name and of course the UK and US could dechipher the traffic encrypted by it.
@@davehopkin9502 the Heburn automatic writing company; the point about the enigma code and the machines used to actually operate it was that it was genuinely believed to be unbreakable by everybody, including the Germans even when faced with seemingly indisputable evidence that it had been! That is why churches decision to destroy everything connected with ultra intelligence was correct, the system of cryptography was being used well into the 1960s, and Britain was decoding all of it!
Such a well-made documentary about a very complicated time in history. The folks whose minds are outside the proverbial box absolutely changed the world. I couldn't help but think that no wonder every man I ever met that was in WWII drank.
From way back when there were actually great, fascinating and serious historical documentaries on TV with real content and depth, which took their viewers seriously instead of fooling around constantly and even expected them to focus their attention 🤗
My mothers brother worked at Bletchley park along with another Uncle who was from the Navy who was called all over the war footprint to interrogate captured pilots and the like
Attention spans are short these days. Did you watch the whole thing? I skipped some. I like the bots 🤖 for advertising in the comments section and when someone thinks they are real. Lol
@@pkt1213 This is the Channel 4 series first broadcast about 35 years ago and only hinted at in a few books. Since then at least a dozen books have been written on the subject ….and a number of entertaining films with the emphasis on entertainment. I’d recommend “Dilly” by Mavis Batty which gives a good intro to this fascinating story. If my memory is correct, Dilly Knox was a WW1 Admiralty code breaker. You’ll get into the history of this topic without getting bogged down in technicality’s, if you’re interested. Between Silk and Cyanide by Leo Marks is a brilliant read too.
That was amazing. What people can achieve when they work together is fantastic. If only it didn't take a World War to get this level of commitment is truely sad. Think of what could be conquerd if we always had this level of cooperation and commitment. No politics, just a common goal.
Monty didn't chase Rommel down after driving his army out of Egypt because most of the time, Rommel had had long supply lines that were easy target for the RAF. He didn't relish being in the same position and vulnerable to the Luftwaffe.
Montgomery allowed Rommel and the Africa Korp to escape because he was too arrogant to use intelligence to the full. It is one of the reasons that Market Garden was such a disaster he didn't believe the Dutch Intel on the resting panzer units near Arnhem.
At (<a href="#" class="seekto" data-time="3134">52:14</a>) how come there is no captions, translating the German the guy was speaking, into English? I mean the entire documentary was done in English, the title is in English. Like it happened before that as well. Stuff like that should not get past any decent editor. The rest of this documentary was just phonemonal. Thank you. This was an absolute delight to watch and I thought I knew the guts of the story but wow was this covered well. I so eagerly await, and embrace all the content from this channel. God bless all those honorable, brave men from all sides of this horrific war. So many poor people died needlessly. History seems to never learn lessons and just war is always ubiquitous.
At <a href="#" class="seekto" data-time="94">1:34</a> there is an explanation of how a blunder by 2 German code clerks gave the British the clues they needed to crack the Lorenz ciphers. This event is recounted in the book "Codebreaker's Victory" by author Hervie Haufler. (I highly recommend this book!) The explanation in the video is not entirely correct. If the German operators had returned their Lorenz machines to the same initial setting and sent the same message the ciphertext would have been identical the second time and that would have been no help in cracking the code. The real error the Germans made was that the plaintext sent the second time was similar but not IDENTICAL to the first transmission. The transmitting German operator, probably frustrated at having to send the message the second time, started using abbreviations and contractions. Having two only slightly different ciphertexts from the same initial Lorenz encoder settings is what opened the door to cracking the Lorenz cipher.
<a href="#" class="seekto" data-time="98">1:38</a>:00 Translation of British English for Americans: when he says the machine had 150 “valves” he means electronic “tubes” as in an old radio or TV. It’s because the British are describing the function of the electronic tube not just its appearance as Americans do. BTW this is where a “ bug” in the computer came from. Insects were attracted to the heat generated by the tubes so crawled into the electronics and caused breakdowns.
It's a pity no attempt to translate the German dialog into English was made. This documentary was an otherwise wonderful production. Please consider it in future programs.
Britain was so alone, she did not have Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa. Later in the war she did not have America, Gander Airport in Newfoundland and the the thousands of aircraft that departed Newfoundland to supply the allies. Yes, Britain had no friends at all, and she really was all alone. The all alone line is truly annoying and inaccurate!
When Britain stood alone.... means the last one standing in Europe and has nothing to do with not having support outside of Europe. Maybe try to understand the quote instead of jumping straight to your egotistical thoughts 😅
@@dalj4362 Not egotistical thoughts just truth. The point is Britain, because of her commonwealth, had special advantages that other nations did not have. One advantage was not being alone. A lifeline to North America, and other parts of the world. People from all corners of the world risking submarine infested oceans to come to the aid of mother. To fight in the Battle of Britain and the other fights to come. Rationing in the Commonwealth so as to send food to Britain. Industrial production focused on the war effort rather than domestic needs. The all alone bit sounds like self pity, from revisionist British historians. A few generations ago this moaning self pity would have been unthinkable.
@@teviottilehurst If you knew more about these nations you would not have made this generalization. Certainly Quebecers in Canada did not consider themselves British. The Commonwealth nations did their part and then, after the war and forgiveness of loans that could not be paid, concentrated on internal affairs and nation building. Perhaps WW2 washed the Britishness out of the people or it was not as strong within the people as some think?
Even though the cracked the code. it must of been a nightmare deciding who to save and die so not to let the Germans know that the code had been broken
<a href="#" class="seekto" data-time="3329">55:29</a> - Das kann ich jetzt im nachhinein nicht mehr.. ich musste mich drauf verlassen wie die befehle waren, na, und nach dem dem Befehl eindeutig war das drin zu lassen.. und.. nach oben zu steigen oder zu klettern... da gab's keinen anderen Weg. = In retrospect I can't .. I had to rely on what the orders were, well, the order was to leave it [in the boat] .. and.. to get out (literally, to climb).
I must have watched a dozen or more documentaries on the famous Bletchley Park, however this one is by far the most comprehensive and insightful.. brilliant work team
Polish cryptographers like Marian Rejewski did crack Enigma in the early 1930s but the Germans changed Enigma by the time WW2 started. Alan Turing used a completely different approach to crack Enigma that was much, much faster. Alan Turing's bombe computer allowed messages to be decoded in real time which allowed allied commanders to use this intel to their advantage. Intel about German troop or U Boat movements is useless to a military commander if its a week old. The Germans would also change the rotor settings everyday making decoding by hand useless.
My uncle worked with Tommy Flowers at Dollis Hill. He never told me anything about his work! D-Day. The traffic lights were set one way and the convoys never stopped, while overhead, white stripe banded wing aircraft were endless.
Meanwhile, we had the incredible Elizabeth Friedman, her husband and the code breaking group they had created solving the enigma as well. They also broke the Japanese Purple code. And much much more.
The Japanese Naval Codes were broken by an Australian Mathematician and Naval Officer, Captain Eric Nave in 1925. His links to the Japanese language and involvement with the Japanese between WW1 & WW2 as a Naval Attache in Tokyo. In 1929 he was later loaned to the British to work with their code breakers. In 1930 he had again cracked the Japanese Naval Code and Britain was aware of how Japan would carry out an attack on the US if it was to occur. By early 1939 he was in Singapore working On Japan's Naval Code D, that had just been introduced (JN-25) He had made progress at deciphering this when he took ill and was repatriated back to Australia. Considerable work with JN-25 continued before the US even entered the war. It's long been held that Churchill knew the attack on Pearl Harbour was coming because he was asleep, when woken and told of the attack, he simply said 'Thankyou' and went back to sleep. There was great trepidation about sharing the Japanese Naval codes initially with the US because of their history of security leaks, as shown later in Cairo with Ultra and Rommel's intercepts. Nave was later to work with US Naval Intelligence in Australia, but was seen as an enigma (no pun intended) and was disliked by his US Commander in the same manner as Turing. He later left after being deemed a 'Security Leak' and worked with the US Army who saw the Navy's loss as their gain and found him invaluable in deciphering and translating Ground Force messages. The cracking of the JN-25 code was well underway when Joseph Rocheford and Evan Urquhart set up shop in Pearl Harbour in 1942. The full deciphering of JN-25 was a joint effort, even by the time of the Battle of Midway only partial deciphering was available. Same old Americans, always taking credit for the work of others. Like the recent Court Cases where Motorola and Apple tried to take credit for the invention of WiFi, when it was proven in the US Supreme Court an Australian Professor developed it working in the CSIRO. (Commonwealth Scientific Industrial Research Organisation) that was founded by the Australian Government in 1949.
Aussies are like Americans when it comes to claiming credit for the work of others. The Pavlova, for one. This confection was first created in New Zealand, by New Zealanders, in honour of Russian Prima Ballerina Anna Pavlova, who had then recently visited that country. But not only for inventions did they claim credit, for it even extended to claiming Australian nationality for persons, such as New Zealand comedian John Clarke, who had lived and worked in Australia for many years. "Churchill knew the attack on Pearl Harbour was coming " ‽
The Brits are like the yanks in claiming credit for someone elses achievements. The Enigma was cracked by the poles in 1931. The Poms could not make any progress in 8 years until in 1939 the poles handed then the solution on a silver platter
Long time before the World War II began three Polish mathematicians and cryptologists Marian Rejewski, Henryk Zygalski and Jerzy Różycki worked on breaking the enigma code. In 1932 Marian Rejewski managed to break the enigma code and since then Polish Biuro of Codes was able to read German coded messages. Before the War started copies of "polish enigma machines" together with the whole documentations were passed to British and French allies which helped to develop the breaking code system at Bletchley Park. Therefore remember: Poles are the ones who broke the enigma code first!
They did, just English want to take whole glory for them. Poles who broke the code: Marian Rejewski, Jerzy Różycki and Henryk Zygalski. It was Rejewski who first cracked the Enigma code, they were studied in Poznan. Poznan opened the Enigma Museum.
@@mike.5050 Polish cryptographers like Marian Rejewski did crack Enigma in the early 1930s but the Germans changed Enigma by the time WW2 started. Alan Turing used a completely different approach to crack Enigma that was much, much faster. Alan Turing's bombe computer allowed messages to be decoded in real time which allowed allied commanders to use this intel to their advantage. Intel about German troop or U Boat movements is useless to a military commander if its a week old. The Germans would also change the rotor settings everyday making decoding by hand useless.
That is something that I didn’t know, and I’m appalled that the correct authorities did not receive the accolades which they deserved. So much still undercover after all these years. My heart goes out to you all for your bravery and knowledge. I was born fourteen years after the war; not much had changed, and so many of us at school were misinformed.
I'm sorry but I think you are giving the Poles a bit more credit than is due. It's like expecting Dureya to be given credit for the Model T and production line. Everyone had encryption codes back then. Everyone. The Poles were in the most danger and started sooner than others. Their math saved the Brits a ton of work but it's not like the Brits wouldn't have done it themselves. Turing and his "computer" were the irreplaceable components to breaking the enigma. What's sad was his life and how he was treated post war...
Starting on 15:55 they are mentioned and individual Polish mathermaticians are mentioned, the following few minutes are dedicated to their work and progress on this
Yes, but the Germans changed Enigma by the time WW2 started. Alan Turing used a completely different approach to crack Enigma that was much, much faster and was useful to the war effort. Decoding messages in real time is alot better than taking a week to decode a message.
@@obvious-troll Gordon Welchman disagrees with You: "Hut 6 Ultra would never have gotten off the ground if we had not learned from the Poles, in the nick of time, the details both of the German military version of the commercial Enigma machine, and of the operating procedures that were in use."
@@obvious-troll No, Welshman says that UK would not even know where to start without learning from the Poles. There's a difference between an improvement and discovery.
