Inside Britain's Top Secret Codebreaking Organisation That Cracked Enigma | Station X | Timeline
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During WWII, the fate of the world depended on the codebreakers at Bletchley Park, Britain's super-secret headquarters for cracking the "unbreakable* Enigma machine. Against the odds, these schoolboys, academics, and crossword fanatics turned Germany's greatest weapon into its greatest liability. This fascinating documentary offers first-hand accounts of "Station X" and how they cracked the code.
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A couple notes: - The documentary is definitely very old, that's why you have so many people telling of their own work, they were still alive! I guess it was made in film, something that I thank sooo much! That is also why they only had a mockup of the Bombe, instead of the beautiful machines they have today at Bletchley. - As others have said, the Poles deserved much more credit, they did break several versions of Enigma, and they had the knowledge to keep breaking it at the very start of the war. They had build 2 different machines types called "bomba" (from there the British named their machine "Bombe") to execute their exploit electromechanically. These were specific to the double repetition of the key exploit, which was not in itself a failure of the machine but a procedural issue of the Germans. For those who minimize their contribution, nothing relevant would have shown up in Bletchley without their kickstart. I attribute the lack of mention to the age of the documentary, at that point at Bletchley they were still trying to get recognition themselves. The Polish only started get more recognition in the last decades. Until the Polish Bomba everything was done with pen and paper, using a machine was a huge breakthrough. - There were other machines not mentioned in Bletchley, before the Bombe and before Colossus. - Late in the war, the US was building hundreds of Bombes on their side of the pond, based on the same principle, but an entirely homemade design. They would receive the "program" from Britain, that is how to wire the back of the machine, and the switches, all this created based on some messages and the expected crib, the would process it and send the list of possible keys back. I believe one of them survived and is in display in the Smithsonian. They somehow invented remote computing ;) - The Bombe did not produce a single set of keys, but many sets of probable keys, which had to be tried, the shorter the crib the more false keys it would produce, that's why they loved those very long cribs they mentioned in the interviews. - The way to build the "program" is very involved, with math graphs, this is not procedural programming or anything like that. - In here narrator incorrectly calls "fish" to the Lorenz traffic. In reality they called "fish" in general, to all the encrypted traffic that they had "fished" from the air, regardless of encoding/encryption. They would give different names to the different codes, for example they mentioned here "Shark" for the uboats, "Tunny" was for the Lorenz, and there were others obviously. - Wherever they mention "modulo 2" in here, that's just another name for XOR. - The teleprinter traffic (the Lorenz) was recorded by the Y listening stations with a paper oscillograph, I always find that funny, as it literally shows the electric signal. - The engineer Bill Tutte was an absolute master, he was given an example message both encrypted and plaintext from the Lorenz, and with that he correctly deduced the entire machine design, number of rotors, rotor mappings, rotor skipping, etc All this by seeking for repetitions in patterns with pencil and paper mostly by aligning it in a square. That was a humongous task. - Another quite relevant part of Bletchley was how they managed the archiving, the messages both encrypted and plaintext as well as the information gathered from them, was monstrous, most of the traffic was low level tactical traffic, making sense of that is no easy feat. - It was a pleasure seeing Tony Sale telling us the history here, he himself deserves an entire documentary. - If I keep adding notes, I will end up writing a new documentary ;) BTW, that movie "The Imitation Game" is a whole piece of s***.
Thanks for your excellent and detailed comment.
great, although I am not enough informed to comment on topic I will just say thank you and maybe you should make a updated documentary!
I could talk to you about this for days. A lot of it may be you dumbing down some of this for me, but I am so interested in this. Any book recommendations?
@@spanglelime LOL, you probably need to get out more then ;) This whole thing is a true epic part of history that involves so many people from so many different backgrounds under pressure trying to achieve what was considered impossible. It definitely is not the "single genius mind" that Hollywood always simplifies everything to. And if you are interested in any of: * HAM radio equipment (yes, at the start of the war commercial HAM radio equipment was used, not military) * early electronics and valves * hardcore maths and statistics * electronics engineering * airwave interceptions * cryptography itself * early computers (there are direct ramifications into first generation computers, Manchester & Ferranti) * and of course war history and good old moustache and honeytrap espionage ... this story will touch you. There have been many books over time (almost all of which I have never read ;) ), I'd probably recommend "The Bletchley Park Codebreakers" by Erskine & Smith as it is comprehensive. If you are instead interested in hardcore tech details, wikipedia is the source no doubts. And last but not least, you have CryptoMuseum dot com and colossus-computer dot com PS: I once had in my hands for a project an original pristine enigma captured from a uboat, I felt like Indiana Jones...
“The documentary is definitely very old…” The documentary first aired as _Station X_ on 19 January 1999 on Britain’s Channel 4. (It would be better if those posting these old documentaries would supply their provenance in the description.)
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?
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 am very proud of my father who helped end World War II and never got to tell me about it.
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?
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."
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.
What they did to Alan Turing after the war was little short of an international outrage.
...I wouldn't be surprised if Alan was murdered.
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 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.
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
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 KZhead , 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.
Good god.The ability to read your enemy's diary in wartime must be absolutely priceless to the military.
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
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.
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 KZhead are from VHS tapes so very low quality
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.
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.
@@beverly9 I cant belive you have to ask...dont you watch the news?
@@beverly9 You cant be that sheltered surely, There is a tidal wave of anti lbgtq legislation steaming across the US.
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...😕
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.
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.
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??
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 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.
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.
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.
It is VERY sad that no mention of Poland’s Security service, who initially created the basis of the German code and passed them onto the British.
They ARE mentioned. And their work recognised for its excellence in the initial stages of decoding the Enigma messages. See from 15:00.
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
Did you even watch the documentary or are you just another hater trying to slander the british
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.
Great documentary. Just wish the names of those speaking were up on screen.
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.
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.
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.
⚠️ 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. 🙏👍
We can only thank these wonderful talented people for giving us all a tomorrow, god bless them all.
This is by far the best coverage of this story I've ever seen. Nice work.
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!
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
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
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.
Station X had the first programmable electronic computer in the world. It was kept so secret that UK never had its own electronic computer industry.
This is one of the most interesting & intriguing war stories I've ever heard! Absolutely fascinating
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 🤗
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.
The moving floor training was surprising…
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 . .
Years ago, I had the opportunity to visit GCHQ on business. I saw an enigma machine inside a display case while I was there.
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.
A wonderful story, well told. Thank you.
This is the best of the many renditions of the Ultra story that I have seen and read. Thank you very much.
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!
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]"
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
You guys make phenomenal documentaries! 👏
Rommel was not only losing because of his disruption to logistics, he was also losing because he encountered the Australian 9th Division Infantry who fought the Germans to exhaustion. 🇦🇺
Correct.
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?🌹🌹🌹
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.
We have to read a dozen books to get a picture of how Enigma was broken.
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
One of the greatest true stories in all of history. Never tired of hearing about it.
Absolutely brilliant documentary. Thank you very much.
They were all heroes Many of us wouldn't be here if not for Alan Turing and all of his fellow workers
The radio officer could identify accents from the messages he was receiving. He also said they went mad!
I wish the german sailors words were subtitled into english.
It was originally 4:3 and was cropped into widescreen, so the subtitles are cropped out.
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".
they must be awarded also bcoz of them many lives they save by cracking that code they are the legend hacker at that time..i really love hearing storiesof all veteran and survivor of war at that time..thank you for your service
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.
Very informative and music edited in keeping with this Documentary excellent 👏👍thank you 🤗
Back in the '70s my old man - a WWII history buff - gave me a book about Enigma. Fascinating and amazing.
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.
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.
Brilliant and fascinating documentary on breaking the Enigma code !
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.
Brilliant documentary. Best I have seen
55:29 - 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).
Best way to get people to see and know what we know, is to start them off and smaller conspiracy theories that will maybe open them up to larger facts!
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.
Up the volume!
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.
@@Luke_Sandy_High_Ground 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.
@@Luke_Sandy_High_Ground 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. 🇬🇧💪
The amount of combinations with enigma is lower than the amount of ads.... insane
Thank you to Howard Davidson for the fantastic music behind the documentary. I would enjoy hearing these songs again on their own.
amazing !!! i was enthralled from beginning to end ! tell you what , those Brits are a crafty lot ....ain't they
Did ask them who broke the code first and transfer to UK?
A miracle of intelligence over might !
A fantastic documentary marred by the apparent need to make it look widescreen. The people's names and the German translations are completely missing from my KZhead view. Please don't be afraid to post such fine productions in the original 4x3 aspect ratio.
I love all the comments by people who obviously didn't watch it. 🤣
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
@CourtneylovesYAHofmanyNames I did. I was putting up kids laundry and cleaning the kitchen.
@@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.
@californiadreamin8423 thanks for the recommendations. I loved interviews with the actual people. They really were the greatest generation.
@@pkt1213 HalleluYah 🙌🏽 stay blessed !
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
Amazing documentary!
The real enigma was the roof design at Bletchly Park !!! No one could crack that 😊
It is Station ten, not station ex.
What a fascinating and very moving tribute to such a great woman. Superb content as always Mark
Thank you for a great documentary. ❤
Right on. Thanks for sharing.
Wars bring out both the very best and the very worst in humanity. I'd often heard about the complex 'Enigma' coding machine but was never aware that it's successor was far more complex. These people succeeded in decoding these machines from scratch using inginuity, patience and a little luck. Absolutely amazing. Turin was good enough to play an essential part in the team but designated a security risk because of his sexuality. A tragedy. The telephone technician who effectively designed the world's first programmable computer went back to the post office. Another tragedy. It would appear that the team never really got the acknowledgment and recognition they really deserved.
My brain hurts thinking about how they figured this all out.