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: th-cam.com/video/B-XgqA8lO9Y/w-d-xo.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
@@oldschoolcane NO ! He was persecuted and prosecuted by thicko neanderthals of the Lancashire Constabulary BECAUSE HE WAS HOMOSEXUAL AND ONLY BECAUSE HE WAS HOMOSEXUAL. The last thing the security services wanted was any trouble for Alan . He was still doing valuable work for them. You must understand that there was a general disgust for homosexuality at that time which was at its most extreme in the armed forces and above all, IN THE POLICE. In general, "queers" did not become police officers. The Home Secretary of the time, Sir David Maxwell Fyfe, had a thing about homosexuality. Driven by his religious beliefs of the dark Scottish variety, in his time as Home Secretary, he engineered a multiplication of the prosecutions of homosexuals and policemen always looking for a minority to persecute rubbed their hand with glee. Homosexuals of the artistic variety often escaped prosecution because they came under the protection of the Queen Mother who quietly ran her own campaign to protect artistic homosexuals of the time, I give you, among the notables under her protection, the composer Benjamin Britten and the singer Peter Pears. Several Investigations into THAT couple were quietly dropped after words were had with certain people. "Not wise, Old chap". She couldn't say anything publicly but people not a thousand miles from her had words with people who advised certain police officers that gaining the disapproval of "a very important person" (no names, you understand)"could cause them all sorts of problems in the future. The Queen Mother actively employed homosexuals in her household, the most outrageous being her long time butler, William Tallon. There are the oft quoted telephone calls to the butler's pantry, "When you two queens have finished down there, THIS Queen wants her tea". Detractors use this to imply that the Queen Mother was a stuck up cow. She may have had politics in many respects to the right of Genghis Khan, but within her household, this was just playful badinage. Behind the scenes, her influence was one of forces that lead to the legalisation of homosexuality. The problem for Alan was that he did not move in the same circles. I have no doubt that if appraised of the circumstances in time, the influence of the Queen Mother would have persuaded certain police officers that they had made a mistake. Unfortunately for Alan, he kept quiet, and it was all done and dusted with a single appearance in court and a column inch on the inside pages of some newspapers. ALAN WAS PERSECUTED BY STUPID NEANDERTHAL POLICE THICKOS BECAUSE HE WAS HOMOSEXUAL ... nothing more nothing less and the Country lost out as a result. Other than being concerned that police officers had been trying to find out about Alan's wartime work ..... which was countered with a quiet raspberry, desperate to protect there own activities and privately despising Alan for his homosexuality, the security services hung him out to dry. I have no doubt that there were worried conversations about trying to rescue Alan, his continued work so valuable, but the risk of other arms of the state poking their noses into matters that didn't concern them, and believing that Alan wouldn't spill the beans lead the security services to behave like Pontius Pilate .... ABSOLUTELY DISGRACEFUL. Go to th-cam.com/video/IjqVjN5SbZU/w-d-xo.html In the comments, I have written in more detail about Benjamin Britten and Peter Pears, the latter having a reputation for "going after anything in trousers" and compared their lifestyle under the protection of the Queen Mother with what happened to Alan, NOT under the protection of the Queen Mother. Alan just didn't know the right people. The Queen Mother moved in artistic circles, not dingy labs in Manchester University.
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.
52:05 - "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."
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".
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.
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.
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 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 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.
@@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 " ... 👌👌🇦🇷🇦🇷
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.
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?
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!
Allen Turing gave his heart and soul to break the enigma and just look how the British treated him and basically cost him his life. It was a total disgrace and Britain should be totally ashamed.
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.
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.
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.
These human beings helped to save humanity. Their good efforts cannot be praised enough. Long Live The Greatest Generation in our hearts. Let them be remembered in our deeds today!!! Carry Strength Brothers and Sisters.
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
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.
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.
The original version of this was Broadcast by Channel 4 in 1999 in the UK. It originally had FOUR Part of 50mins each (making 200 mins with Commercials removed). so this is a edited down version. But is very good quality at 1080p. Hopefully, one day the FULL series will be released in this quality. However , this is still the best documentary on Enigma. I visited Bletchley Park in 2016 and can assure everyone , its well worth the visit. You really feel you are gripped by history when you step onto its grounds..
I think that history is what appeals to most visitors to the U.K. I’m a dual national U.K./US and spent equal time in both places. I find that Americans don’t have that sense of history found in the U.K. It’s not always a bad thing but it does lend itself to a sort of disconnect. When people ask me how I know such detailed information about the last century I have to explain to them that I heard it from my grandparents and great grandparents.
I remember that! I was wondering if this was part of it. Where can we find the whole thing? I really loved that. It was when I first learned about Bletchley Park.
@@eileendover3938 The Original 4 part version is still on TH-cam , but the quality is so very poor compared to this "shortened" version. I actually brought A VHS version off Ebay a while ago. But even though I used good equipment to transfer it to digital , the original VHS tape was not too good (very dark). I wonder why the cut it down for this version? , maybe the source that Channel 4 holds is also bad?. Hopefully one day we will see a better full version.
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.😎.
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.)
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 TH-cam 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. 🙏👍
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??
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.
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..
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.
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!
At 1:34 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
51:17 - "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]"
I was a cypher tech during the Cold War. I think it taught me how to talk about other things besides work, I guess . Working inside a vault sucked, but there were worse jobs in the green.
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.
At (52:14) 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.
A most interesting and well-presented documentary telling the story of Bletchley and the breaking of the Enigma coding system but, sadly, we still don't know how many souls were sacrificed to give the Germans the impression that we were not aware of their plans and most likely that was why Churcihil had all the records burned.
As explained at the end of this video , other countries and possibly the Soviet Union were using Enigma based coding . Britain and the US were laced with Soviet spies , hence the reason why the Attlee gov would have had everything at Bletchly Park destroyed . There were other decoding techniques not mentioned in this video . .
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 🤗
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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!
This is an outstanding documentary. I, despite a general antipathy to nationalism, feel very stirred to be British and see what people of my parent's generation accomplished. It is rare that I write such a tribute.
Your grandparents generation of British soldiers were literally commiting multiple genocides around the world, so yeah be really proud to be part of the British empire. Not like you guys slaughtered to extinction MULTITUDES of unique Native tribes in countries around the world or committed Systemic genocide against Native children, the last one in my country being closed in 1996. Your grandparents proud generation proudly wiped out 80% of my people. You starved us to death and took us from our homes. I mean you killed one million Kenyans in the ‘50s and one million Indians in ‘47, but they aren’t white or British so who cares right ? Don’t bother saying that’s not a reflection of what your country does today without doing your research or at least asking questions , otherwise it’s just nationalism.
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.
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.
1:38:00 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.
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.
As an American who doesn't speak German I feel like I'm losing a lot of the punch behind the former German militaries input because I don't know what they're saying because somebody forgot to put subtitles
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!
Imagine being that person (Tommy Flowers)who invents the first, world's first programmable computer. Now don't get me wrong here, Alan Turing was indispensable in his role in developing the first actual computer, but without that, would Flowers have been able to have 'added', 'modified,' or whatever adjective you wish to use, to go ahead and raise the barre so that this computer is 'programmable'? Personally, I think that the whole team worked so well together that despite such indescribable advances they were able to, after the war's end, burn and erase all wonder of their ever being there and working as they did which, as said before in another post, shortened the war and advanced our society so greatly it really cannot be adequately measured.
I’ve sat on the AlanTuring bench on Sackville Park in Manchester. What we did to him was a true disgrace. I’m a straight white male but I am extremely sad about what they did to him after what he did for us. Disgusting. He just preferred men, so what!!? He kept it to himself and didn’t get a T Shirt printed with a rainbow on it. He was just like that and a genius at the same time. Also, Tommy Flowers. The most underrated man of the war. The best thing Jeremy Clarkson ever did was to make documentary about Tommy Flowers. It is superb. Check it out.
It’s mind blowing that they were able to do this with all the data required to break the code. Physically handling all that information must have been quite cumbersome and slow.
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.
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
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.
@@AverageWagie2024 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."
@@AverageWagie2024 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.
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.
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)
Visited the farm last Sunday in proper dreadful weather but they were more than happy to spend time with us explaining the journey so far,hopefully we'll have our own project up an running soon....
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: th-cam.com/video/B-XgqA8lO9Y/w-d-xo.html
Thank you 🙏
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
Why isnt the video on the link available in Kenya
@@terryhoath1983 he knew way to much, in their eyes he needed to be silenced 😢
@@oldschoolcane NO ! He was persecuted and prosecuted by thicko neanderthals of the Lancashire Constabulary BECAUSE HE WAS HOMOSEXUAL AND ONLY BECAUSE HE WAS HOMOSEXUAL. The last thing the security services wanted was any trouble for Alan . He was still doing valuable work for them. You must understand that there was a general disgust for homosexuality at that time which was at its most extreme in the armed forces and above all, IN THE POLICE. In general, "queers" did not become police officers. The Home Secretary of the time, Sir David Maxwell Fyfe, had a thing about homosexuality. Driven by his religious beliefs of the dark Scottish variety, in his time as Home Secretary, he engineered a multiplication of the prosecutions of homosexuals and policemen always looking for a minority to persecute rubbed their hand with glee.
Homosexuals of the artistic variety often escaped prosecution because they came under the protection of the Queen Mother who quietly ran her own campaign to protect artistic homosexuals of the time, I give you, among the notables under her protection, the composer Benjamin Britten and the singer Peter Pears. Several Investigations into THAT couple were quietly dropped after words were had with certain people. "Not wise, Old chap". She couldn't say anything publicly but people not a thousand miles from her had words with people who advised certain police officers that gaining the disapproval of "a very important person" (no names, you understand)"could cause them all sorts of problems in the future. The Queen Mother actively employed homosexuals in her household, the most outrageous being her long time butler, William Tallon. There are the oft quoted telephone calls to the butler's pantry, "When you two queens have finished down there, THIS Queen wants her tea". Detractors use this to imply that the Queen Mother was a stuck up cow. She may have had politics in many respects to the right of Genghis Khan, but within her household, this was just playful badinage.
Behind the scenes, her influence was one of forces that lead to the legalisation of homosexuality. The problem for Alan was that he did not move in the same circles. I have no doubt that if appraised of the circumstances in time, the influence of the Queen Mother would have persuaded certain police officers that they had made a mistake. Unfortunately for Alan, he kept quiet, and it was all done and dusted with a single appearance in court and a column inch on the inside pages of some newspapers. ALAN WAS PERSECUTED BY STUPID NEANDERTHAL POLICE THICKOS BECAUSE HE WAS HOMOSEXUAL ... nothing more nothing less and the Country lost out as a result.
Other than being concerned that police officers had been trying to find out about Alan's wartime work ..... which was countered with a quiet raspberry, desperate to protect there own activities and privately despising Alan for his homosexuality, the security services hung him out to dry. I have no doubt that there were worried conversations about trying to rescue Alan, his continued work so valuable, but the risk of other arms of the state poking their noses into matters that didn't concern them, and believing that Alan wouldn't spill the beans lead the security services to behave like Pontius Pilate .... ABSOLUTELY DISGRACEFUL.
Go to th-cam.com/video/IjqVjN5SbZU/w-d-xo.html In the comments, I have written in more detail about Benjamin Britten and Peter Pears, the latter having a reputation for "going after anything in trousers" and compared their lifestyle under the protection of the Queen Mother with what happened to Alan, NOT under the protection of the Queen Mother. Alan just didn't know the right people. The Queen Mother moved in artistic circles, not dingy labs in Manchester University.
Proud that my aunt served at Bletchley Park, although the Official Secrets Act meant she never spoke of her work.
I visited Bletchley Park and had a tour, absolutely fascinating, these people deserved the highest recognition for their work.
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.
I agree but in those days they found a way to destroy them.
Here in Canada we just let teenagers write graffiti and party at our ww2 historical sites (camp X)
What was the German seaman saying 52 minutes?
52:05 - "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."
Thank you for the translation.
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".
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.
I think you might be surprised by Turin's chosen allegiance during the short period of international friction in the 1940s.
@@MyScubasteve
Turing wasn't chemically castrated haha 🙄
@@barbararice6650 Yes he was!
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.
What they did to Alan Turing after the war was little short of an international outrage.
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.
Did they cancel his Netflix subscription?
@@tryreadingmore4440 that’s a Enigma
@@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 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.
They've been mentioned in all serious accounts I've heard over the years.
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 haven't read so much nonsense in my life. There's plenty of documentaries mentioning Polish involvement
@@jayo3074 Mention, yes, but in depth or magnitude of importance, not so much in my experience
This story should be in every history book in every high school or secondary schools across the west. Why it's not is beyond me.
And also the Mau Mau gulag
Because history is written by white, American men.
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.
Because the way the British government tortured and persecuted Alan TURING. There should be a memorial dedicated to HIM.
Agreed, Mario.
My mum was a WRNS ans she was a cypher clerk there from 42 till 46. Till the day she died, she would not say much about it
Cómo debe ser, esos " trabajos " no son para ser divulgados a los 4 vientos ... 🤷🇦🇷
lol why? Is being a Cypher clerk traumatic?
@@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 " ... 👌👌🇦🇷🇦🇷
@@nightshadehelis9821 she signed the Official Secrets Act which threatened her with prison for violating it and was enforced for her lifetime.
May God bless your Mother. Respect and gratitude from an American.
This episode is AWESOME!!! What more can I say? The saddest part is the stupid waste of the genius of Turing and Flowers. Such a terrible shame.
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.
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.
@@penguinnhBabbage In Babbage Out
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?
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!
Allen Turing gave his heart and soul to break the enigma and just look how the British treated him and basically cost him his life. It was a total disgrace and Britain should be totally ashamed.
Not enough credit to the Poles, or the Signals Intelligence guy - I forget his name - but he contributed as much as Turing to the War effort
I think you mean Tommy Flowers …worked for post office and built Colossus computer
It’s a film from 1999. The Polish input was ignored back then.
Yeah..the Poles got really shafted after the war as well...throwing them under Stalins evil
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.
Contributed so much you forgot his name 😂
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.
It was the class system.
Same as mine. 3 merchant ships he was on got sunk.
8okpi0ipoo
@@normanchristie4524what was?
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.
Thank you for your input. It lends itself toward something to research later on regarding code breakers.
Totally agree 100%.
plus the poles already broke the codes as well? Maybe not the same machine, as the Navy, Army and Submarines had different machines ?
Amazing Guy… 30 mph optical tape reader
Please don't forget Tommy Flowers.
I am very proud of my father who helped end World War II and never got to tell me about it.
These human beings helped to save humanity. Their good efforts cannot be praised enough.
Long Live The Greatest Generation in our hearts. Let them be remembered in our deeds today!!! Carry Strength Brothers and Sisters.
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.
Portsmouther here. Go see HMS Victory, she's magical.
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.
And also the Mau Mau gulag
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
Good god.The ability to read your enemy's diary in wartime must be absolutely priceless to the military.
This enterprise morphed into GCHQ & NSA. Now they can see our messages too. Everything is a double-edged sword.
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.
He was a telephone engineer with the GPO.
Here is an interesting comment. Not just pointlessly blurting outrage at old laws. No one knew he was a war hero!
Because he was just a cog.
Only he wasn’t was he you know his name and anyone who knows anything does.
The tragedy was that colossus was scrapped.
I hadn’t even seen your flag up I was going to add.
The tech was wrapped up and taken to the U. S.
@@jcrosby4804. Because the research was sent to the US lend lease.
What’s yours is mine and what’s mine me own.
Glad they made a movie about Turing. At least he got honoured now and millions know how much we all are indebted to his genius.
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.
I work at the University Of Manchester an there is an Alan Turing building x
Touring is so famous they made a movie about him. It's Tommy Flowers who was lost in the haze of history.
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.
Thanks. The real heroes often go unsung. He even spent his own money on the project. Why did they destroy the records and machines?
The original version of this was Broadcast by Channel 4 in 1999 in the UK. It originally had FOUR Part of 50mins each (making 200 mins with Commercials removed). so this is a edited down version. But is very good quality at 1080p. Hopefully, one day the FULL series will be released in this quality. However , this is still the best documentary on Enigma. I visited Bletchley Park in 2016 and can assure everyone , its well worth the visit. You really feel you are gripped by history when you step onto its grounds..
I agree the original version is excellent
I think that history is what appeals to most visitors to the U.K. I’m a dual national
U.K./US and spent equal time in both places. I find that Americans don’t have that sense of history found in the U.K. It’s not always a bad thing but it does lend itself to a sort of disconnect.
When people ask me how I know such detailed information about the last century I have to explain to them that I heard it from my grandparents and great grandparents.
I remember that! I was wondering if this was part of it. Where can we find the whole thing? I really loved that. It was when I first learned about Bletchley Park.
@@eileendover3938 just look up station x the 4 part series is still on the tube.
@@eileendover3938 The Original 4 part version is still on TH-cam , but the quality is so very poor compared to this "shortened" version. I actually brought A VHS version off Ebay a while ago. But even though I used good equipment to transfer it to digital , the original VHS tape was not too good (very dark). I wonder why the cut it down for this version? , maybe the source that Channel 4 holds is also bad?. Hopefully one day we will see a better full version.
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.😎.
This is by far the best coverage of this story I've ever seen. Nice work.
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.)
What a pack of winners the british are , look at the mighty British lands now . Ha Ha Ha
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 Sadly, our wars are from within our own borders.
My grandfather was trained at CampX in Oshawa, Ontario, Canada. It was led by William S. Stevenson(a man called Intrepid)
@@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 TH-cam are from VHS tapes so very low quality
Absolutely the best history/explanation of the code breaking I've ever seen and/or read. Many thanks.
Dont say lie daniel ....you are f...king lier...😕
⚠️ 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. 🙏👍
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.
Ugh 😊
sounds good
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??
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.
@@johnwood1948 ''The Imitation Game'' film was a case in point.
They also served, even those who were straight.
@@johnwood1948 🤓
@@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.
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.
Thank you for the info.
r u talking about Kingston Ontario ..hehehe
yes i heard story from horses mouth ..hehehe how Canadians informed Yankees about coming pearl harbor attack ...hehehe just saying it was known ahead..
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.
pity ??phrase so much owed by many to so few went to the RAF
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!
At 1:34 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.
Some subtitles on the German part of the interview would have been helpful.
It was originally 4:3 and was cropped into widescreen, so the subtitles are cropped out.
One of the greatest true stories in all of history. Never tired of hearing about it.
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.
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.
The world doesn’t revolve around the West .
Your point is?
@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.
@@patryan1375 Well your getting yours back , your women and girls will be flooded with diversity , and you can't do a thing about it.
@@patryan1375 Only the British will punish their heroes inscidiously.
This is one of the most interesting & intriguing war stories I've ever heard! Absolutely fascinating
We can only thank these wonderful talented people for giving us all a tomorrow, god bless them all.
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 🙏🏼
what is the date, about 2000?
Tommy Flowers died in October 1998, so it would have to have been filmed before then.
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.
Destruction may have been the lesser of two evils, the other being to give it to a competitor.
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.
@@MyPronounIsGoddess I cant belive you have to ask...dont you watch the news?
@@MyPronounIsGoddess You cant be that sheltered surely, There is a tidal wave of anti lbgtq legislation steaming across the US.
51:17 - "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]"
I was a cypher tech during the Cold War. I think it taught me how to talk about other things besides work, I guess . Working inside a vault sucked, but there were worse jobs in the green.
Just something we all routinely learned to ignore/deny all knowledge of until back on shift.
"The special relationship with America", You give us all of your inventions and we will claim that WE made them. AND charge you for using them.
52:30 What is the point of interviewing someone in German if you don't even have subtitles?
I am watching the exact moment and was thinking the same.😢
Me too@@TheLoxxxton
I am in so much awe and wonder. Can't thank you all enough for sharing .❤
Fascinating content. Real shame that you did not voice over or subtitle the spoken German interviews into English.
It was originally 4:3 and was cropped into widescreen, so the subtitles are cropped out.
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.
At (52:14) 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.
A most interesting and well-presented documentary telling the story of Bletchley and the breaking of the Enigma coding system but, sadly, we still don't know how many souls were sacrificed to give the Germans the impression that we were not aware of their plans and most likely that was why Churcihil had all the records burned.
As explained at the end of this video , other countries and possibly the Soviet Union were using Enigma based coding . Britain and the US were laced with Soviet spies , hence the reason why the Attlee gov would have had everything at Bletchly Park destroyed . There were other decoding techniques not mentioned in this video .
.
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 🤗
Wonderful video. I’ve been waiting for someone to connect the enigma story using more details; especially its tactical benefit’s. Bravo.
Turing was a Savant, this made me realise I'm basically a chimp with a smartphone
my dad was RAF and a codebreaker at Bletchly Park. He never spoke about his work, my mum knew of his work and told me some things.
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.
Hey 👋 it's a pleasure to meet you here and sorry to ask you are those hair of yours natural?🌹🌹🌹
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.
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.
Agree about the subtitles. The technology is available, so I was surprised.
I was surprised by the untranslated German sections. I can read German OK but was almost totally lost trying to make out the spoken material.
The original doc had subtitles, but this video has been cropped from 4:3 to widescreen
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.
This is the best of the many renditions of the Ultra story that I have seen and read. Thank you very much.
How Turin was treated the country should hang its head in shame. Also destroying Colossus was a crime.
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
Would have been better with translation subtitles, was interested in what the German soldier had to say.
I was also trying to decode it myself
Need an Engima machine for that unfortunately 😜
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!
This is an outstanding documentary. I, despite a general antipathy to nationalism, feel very stirred to be British and see what people of my parent's generation accomplished. It is rare that I write such a tribute.
Your grandparents generation of British soldiers were literally commiting multiple genocides around the world, so yeah be really proud to be part of the British empire. Not like you guys slaughtered to extinction MULTITUDES of unique Native tribes in countries around the world or committed Systemic genocide against Native children, the last one in my country being closed in 1996. Your grandparents proud generation proudly wiped out 80% of my people. You starved us to death and took us from our homes.
I mean you killed one million Kenyans in the ‘50s and one million Indians in ‘47, but they aren’t white or British so who cares right ?
Don’t bother saying that’s not a reflection of what your country does today without doing your research or at least asking questions , otherwise it’s just nationalism.
Tommy Flowers and Allan Turing two real British heros that the world should salute 🇬🇧
A most impressive tale of dogged and incredible success.
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.
The moving floor training was surprising…
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.
This was awesome . Great documentary. Thanks for posting
1:38:00 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.
53:14, 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.
Is a shame that I don't speak German. Great documentary regardless of that
Not Geofrey sheets but Zygalski's sheets. They were the idea of Zygalski.
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.
Brilliant documentary. Best I have seen
A wonderful story, well told. Thank you.
As an American who doesn't speak German I feel like I'm losing a lot of the punch behind the former German militaries input because I don't know what they're saying because somebody forgot to put subtitles
Benchly Park could have been Silicone Valley.
They were all heroes
Many of us wouldn't be here if not for Alan Turing and all of his fellow workers
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!
Back in the '70s my old man - a WWII history buff - gave me a book about Enigma. Fascinating and amazing.
Years ago, I had the opportunity to visit GCHQ on business. I saw an enigma machine inside a display case while I was there.
Imagine being that person (Tommy Flowers)who invents the first, world's first programmable computer. Now don't get me wrong here, Alan Turing was indispensable in his role in developing the first actual computer, but without that, would Flowers have been able to have 'added', 'modified,' or whatever adjective you wish to use, to go ahead and raise the barre so that this computer is 'programmable'? Personally, I think that the whole team worked so well together that despite such indescribable advances they were able to, after the war's end, burn and erase all wonder of their ever being there and working as they did which, as said before in another post, shortened the war and advanced our society so greatly it really cannot be adequately measured.
I’ve sat on the AlanTuring bench on Sackville Park in Manchester. What we did to him was a true disgrace. I’m a straight white male but I am extremely sad about what they did to him after what he did for us. Disgusting. He just preferred men, so what!!? He kept it to himself and didn’t get a T Shirt printed with a rainbow on it. He was just like that and a genius at the same time.
Also, Tommy Flowers. The most underrated man of the war. The best thing Jeremy Clarkson ever did was to make documentary about Tommy Flowers. It is superb. Check it out.
It’s mind blowing that they were able to do this with all the data required to break the code. Physically handling all that information must have been quite cumbersome and slow.
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.
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
Enigma was actually cracked by Marian Rejewski in 1932.
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.
@@AverageWagie2024 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."
@@buoazej so my statement is still true lmao. You used an quote that doesn’t add anything to the argument.
@@AverageWagie2024 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.
@@buoazej he’s talking bs. 🇬🇧💪
Great documentary. Just wish the names of those speaking were up on screen.
The Poles made the first breakthrough by understanding the enigma machine.
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.
@PotatoSalad614 REALLY DOES call himself "Obvious Troll" and the English are perhaps, no better than he. "He"? Okay; "It", just listen: 1:29:59
Brilliant and fascinating documentary on breaking the Enigma code !
imagine working on a project that saves millions of lives and then getting driven to death by the same country you helped win, yikes
Absolutely brilliant documentary. Thank you very much.
The radio officer could identify accents from the messages he was receiving. He also said they went mad!
Poland did the heavy lifting on the enigma code breaking
It was Poland that invented the "Bombe". they handed it to the British via the French I believe.
They tell how the Germans change their routines during the war, and old messages are pretty useless, they must be deciphered fast to have value
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)
Mmmm 🧐🤔
That is absolutely false
My cereal box had an Enigma Decoder Ring. They should have just used that
Visited the farm last Sunday in proper dreadful weather but they were more than happy to spend time with us explaining the journey so far,hopefully we'll have our own project up an running soon....