UK-USA episode one - A cautious collaboration | Bletchley Park
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- Опубликовано: 16 июл 2024
- In February 1941, a group of Americans arrived at Bletchley Park, in what marked the beginnings of an extraordinary UK-USA intelligence alliance that continues to this day.
To commemorate the 80th anniversary of this alliance, we've produced an exciting four-part documentary series exploring how this alliance began, and what led to it's remarkable success, with insights from historians and experts on both sides of the Atlantic.
Episode one follows Bletchley Park’s Research Historian, Dr David Kenyon and the National Security Agency’s senior historian, David Hatch, as they explore the tentative first steps taken by the UK and USA in February 1941 to begin sharing their codebreaking secrets. Kenyon and Hatch explore how this relationship developed during 1941 in the months before America formally entered World War Two.
A very interesting program.
Amazing to see such a successful collaboration between 2 countries that had been at war a century before.
Great insight, well done! Thank you.
Glad you enjoyed it Dan!
Wonderfully and clearly presented...thank you!
Thanks Joseph, this project has been a long time in the making so we are glad you enjoyed it!
Fascinating to be able to put faces to voices I know from the podcast.
It is always helpful to be able to do that for sure!
Our virtual events are a good place to see members of the team you'll have heard on the podcast.
Yes Yardley was a cad for revealing the operations of the Black Chamber in his memoir, but you left out the part where Churchill does the same thing for the same reason (lack of money) in his inter-war memoir the "World Crisis." There Sir Winston outlined his role in utilizing a German code book (discovered by the Russians when they sunk the Magdeburg).
You failed to mention in your condemnation of Yardley that Churchill did essentially the same thing, and both achieved similar results: Stunned by Yardley's revelations, the Japanese developed the RED and PURPLE machines (both of which had flaws that allowed the Americans to rather easily break them) while Churchill's revelations prompted the Germans to adopt Enigma which, as you know, was much more difficult to master.
David Kahn (The Code Breakers) wrote the following about the Magdeburg code book find:
"It was officially delivered in London to the First Sea Lord, a position equivalent to the American Secretary of the Navy, then held by a politician named Winston Churchill.
With this codebook, the fledgling organization that the British had set up to read coded
German naval radio messages got its real impetus. Room 40, as it was called for its early quarters in the old building of the Admiralty, was soon revealing the plans of Germany's High Seas Fleet. This knowledge kept the Germans from surprising the Royal Navy, perhaps from defeating it in a great sea battle that would end Britain's dominion of the seas and so in effect winning the war in a day. Instead the British were able to bottle up the Germans in their North Sea ports. This kept the Germans from victory, and the British, French and Americans went on to win the war.
The end of that struggle brought a few hints that the Germans had lost at sea in part
because of codebreaking, but it was not until 1923 that the secret was revealed. Churchill, who had the necessary political clout, received government permission to tell the story in his memoir cum history, The World Crisis.
In his dramatic fashion, and with rather more poetic license than fidelity to facts, he told how the Russians had picked up the body of a German sailor and "clasped in his bosom by arms rigid in death were the cipher and signal books of the German Navy." He disclosed that the Magdeburg codebooks had been given to the British and that with them the British were able to detect every potential and actual sortie of the German High Seas Fleet and so frustrate almost every German naval move. This information surprised and dismayed the Germans. The German Navy realized that it had to have some kind of cipher system that would prevent this ever happening again."
These events prompted the Germans to seek more effective means which led them to adopt Enigma. One must assume you were fully aware of the Churchillian contribution to this history but chose to ignore it. Orwellian, don't you think?
💖🙏🏻🥰🇬🇧🇺🇸
GCNCS?
Found it! Government Code and Cypher School (GC&CS).
GC&CS. Government Code and Cypher School, the forerunner of GCHQ.
The background music is way too intrusive.
Sorry, it was the radio!!!
@@geoffstrowger9759hilarious.
Your issue is something I would experience.
I'm fairly deaf so sometimes I can't identify background sounds or where they're coming from.
Any consideration of UK-USA collaboration during WW2 must not exclude William Stephenson and William Donovan. Stephenson was in every way Churchill's right hand man and so vital to America catching up. Camp X also must at some point be recognized for the training school it was. Stephenson was like the Priest or Minister that brought these nations into full cooperation/union. Donovan and Stephenson had North American commonality, before the war, which was invaluable to Britain in her time of need. Bletchley Park was invaluable to intelligence gathering but this intel had to serve both the obvious and the secret war effort. To be useful it had to be directed to end users. Bletchley Park was a servant under Churchill's command. Stevenson was the true bridge between the final decision makers Churchill and FDR. Collaboration at Bletchley depended on material collaboration, at great risk to FDR, coming from the USA. If America, at the time of neutrality, had not been able to move strategic goods purely at the will of FDR, and secretly, then no basis would have existed for further cooperation in intelligence.
The British were not more advanced than us, Our President wanted them to think they were so they wouldn't feel bad asking us for help!
The Brits were far ahead of the US.
I hear you, Brother