A Visit to Bletchley Park, Now Famous for the Codebreakers Whose Genius Saved Us During World War 2 – and Was Kept Secret for 30 Years

On a recent visit to Bletchley Park I learned many new things about exactly how an elite group of mathematicians, chess- playing and crossword puzzle solving experts, numbering ten thousand in all, came together here during the Second World War to break seemingly impenetrable codes and ciphers – all under the veil of great secrecy.

The Nazis didn’t even know of Bletchley Park’s existence – and never realised their ingenious codes were being broken.

On the surface, this is a lovely Victorian manor house in an idyllic park – but it became the centre of an extraordinary community, the site of several huts housing codebreakers and the amazing machines some of them invented. Throughout the war years, those who worked here – many recruited through the medium of a crossword puzzle, whose solution was a job advertisement – undertook painstaking, repetitive, patient work, revealing the messages being passed by Hitler to his commanders, and other messages which gave vital information about Nazi plans and intentions.

It has been estimated by several historians that the work of the codebreakers probably shortened the Second World War by two years.

As we went around the park using the audio tour, and visiting the exhibitions in the various huts and in the manor house itself, I felt humbled and awed by the work of the codebreakers – and in particular I was impressed to stand in the office Alan Turing himself used.

For generations, the true achievement of all those people went unrecognised – because of the Official Secrets Act. But now we know, and since so much is known and understood now about the Second World War, and because there are so many films and books and first-person accounts available, we can comprehend the significance of what was achieved. And we also have the memories of those veterans who, during their twenties, worked at Bletchley Park, using their mathematical and deductive skills, their intuition and their mastery of logic.

It is sobering to reflect upon those who worked so long and hard and so patiently, to great ends. Each of them played a small but vital part in a massive undertaking. Many were modest and self-effacing in their later lives. Those who have seen the film The Imitation Game know of the great tragedy that befell Alan Turing later – a man to whom those who persecuted him, and millions of others, owed their lives. Because of the secrecy that shrouded his war work, the true nature of his achievement then was not widely known.

As I listened to the audio tour I heard accounts given by some of those who had, as young people, worked there in those huts. One of the ladies who spoke of that time said, “everybody here was a bit odd.” And I thought, yes: they would have been eccentrics, single-minded geniuses, those whom we might describe as idiots savant; those with autism and Asperger’s would have been numbered among them, capable of intense focus, of patient and tireless application to a long task with a greater objective in sight.

We owe them all an enormous debt, and their story is an inspiration of the highest order.

SC Skillman

psychological, paranormal, mystery fiction

author of Mystical Circles, a Passionate Spirit and A Perilous Path