Cambridge Codebreakers and British Intelligence
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Description
The foundations of Cambridge's contribution to Bletchley Park's extraordinary successes in WWII were laid in the First World War when codebreaking helped both to defeat the U-Boats and bring the United States into the War. The successes of WWII in turn made possible the unprecedented codebreaking alliance between Britain and the US, which still continues. One of the alliance's early Cold War successes was to make the first crucial breakthrough in tracking down the 'Cambridge moles', whom the KGB considered its ablest foreign agents. Christopher Andrew is Professor of Modern and Contemporary History at the University of Cambridge, he is also the Official Historian of MI5, Chair of the British Intelligence Study Group and President of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge. His most recent book is 'The Mitrokhin Archive II: the KGB and the World' (Penguin).
More Episodes
This lecture gives a description of the Enigma machine and how it was used operationally by the Germans, followed by an explanation of the how the Enigma messages were broken with the Turing Bombe. Mr Frank Carter works for the Bletchley Park Trust and is an expert on the methods used to break...
Published 08/12/08
Published 08/12/08
Between 1937 and 1970, computers were difficult to make, difficult to keep running and difficult to use. Since 1970, everything has become progressively easier. Today every academic has at least one computer on his or her desk, and the Computing Service has changed greatly as a result. In 1937...
Published 08/12/08