No more improbable a set of heroes was ever assembled than the men and women brought together at Bletchley Park in 1938, but their work was to change the face of modern warfare. At its peak in January 1945, 10,000 people worked at the secluded rural complex, reading 4000 messages a day, decrypting German and Japanese communications. But while we know that Bletchley was the center of Britain’s World War II code-breaking effort, how did its work actually change the course of the war? Enigma Code Breakers tells the story of Bletchley’s role in outwitting the U-boat threat in the Battle of the Atlantic; helping the Allies to victory in the Mediterranean by identifying Axis naval and air movements; understanding German plans and troop dispositions before the Normandy landings; and helping sink the German battleship Scharnhorst off the coast of Norway. In tracing these events, the book also delves into the stories of major Bletchley characters: “boffins” such as Alan Turing, who built the Bombe decryption machine and was highly influential in the development of computer science and artificial intelligence; Gordon Welchman, an early metadata analysis expert; and “Debs” such as Mavis Batey, who decyphered the Italian naval Enigma code and gave the British Royal Navy a crucial advantage at the Battle of Cape Matapan in March 1941. Illustrated with 180 photographs, artworks, and maps, Enigma Code Breakers explains the vital work of code breakers in helping the Allies win many key battles and campaigns in World War II.
