{"id":5815,"date":"2016-04-11T09:56:38","date_gmt":"2016-04-11T13:56:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.explorica.com\/blog\/?p=5815"},"modified":"2016-04-08T12:09:53","modified_gmt":"2016-04-08T16:09:53","slug":"math-won-war","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.explorica.com\/blog\/math-won-war","title":{"rendered":"The math that won the war"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Bletchley<\/a>In most cinematic renditions of World War II, the main events are illustrated with explosions and guns and soldiers bunkered down on the Western front. Movies portray war heroes like General Patton, MI6 spies like James Bond. Yet not all of the Allied achievements were action-packed and explosive enough to grace the silver screen with the likes of Daniel Craig. Some of the most important developments of the war were orchestrated behind the scenes, by the least likely of heroes.<\/p>\n

In reality, one of the greatest military feats of World War II took place not on a battlefield, but on a secluded estate 40 miles out of London, strategically located just between Oxford and Cambridge universities. And the enlistees were not rugged soldiers or dashing spies, but a motley crew of chess champions, math professors, and crossword lovers, more akin to Stephen Hawking than the archetypal war hero. Thus began the military legacy of Bletchley Park, the brains behind many of the most important strategic maneuvers of World War II.
\nBletchley Park\u2019s enigmatic military legacy began in August 1938, when it was visited by \u201cCaptain Ridley\u2019s Shooting Party.\u201d Seemingly on holiday, the party actually consisted of members of MI6 and the Government Code and Cypher School (GC&CS), who were scoping out the location for a large-scale wartime government intelligence operation. By September 1939, the Nazi invasion was in full swing, and so was Bletchley Park.<\/p>\n

The mission: to crack all Nazi codes and cyphers. The means: a number of England\u2019s most brilliant cryptologists, linguists, and mathematicians. The cipher: the Enigma Code. Just before the German invasion, the Polish had enlisted help from Britain to crack this seemingly impossible cipher made by Germany\u2019s Enigma Machine, which changed at least once a day and had 159 million million million settings.<\/p>\n

In order to infiltrate Nazi communications\u00a0made via the Enigma Machine, the British secret service knew they would\u00a0have to use every resource they could\u00a0find. So they summoned the best, most renowned puzzle-solving geniuses from\u00a0Oxford and Cambridge and stationed\u00a0them in wooden huts around the estate,\u00a0referring to each division by hut number\u00a0for the sake of security. A hodgepodge\u00a0medley of eccentrics, the code-breakers\u00a0became known as \u201cBoffins and Debs,\u201d\u00a0and the GC&CS was nicknamed the\u00a0\u201cGolf, Cheese & Chess Society.\u201d Even\u00a0Winston Churchill, on a visit to Bletchley,\u00a0said to Denniston, “I told you to\u00a0leave no stone unturned to get staff, but\u00a0I had no idea you had taken me so literally.”\u00a0Yet despite the jokes they inspired,\u00a0the unique minds at Bletchley proved\u00a0invaluable before long.<\/p>\n

It has now been estimated that the war\u00a0was reduced by two years due to the\u00a0work at Bletchley Park. Kept secret for\u00a0years after World War II, Bletchley Park\u00a0is now a full-fledged historical attraction\u00a0open to visitors across the world.<\/p>\n

Want to visit Bletchley Park? Add a visit to any of the London Itineraries like\u00a0the London Theater<\/a><\/strong> tour.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In most cinematic renditions of World War II, the main events are illustrated with explosions and guns and soldiers bunkered down on the Western front. Movies portray war heroes like General Patton, MI6 spies like James Bond. Yet not all of the Allied achievements were action-packed and explosive enough to grace the silver screen with Read More …<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[345,58,453,63203,128,86,425,12,63204],"class_list":["post-5815","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-explorica-news","tag-educational-tours","tag-educational-travel","tag-london","tag-stem","tag-student-travel","tag-student-trips","tag-travel","tag-travel-tips","tag-wwii"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.explorica.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5815","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.explorica.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.explorica.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.explorica.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.explorica.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5815"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.explorica.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5815\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6157,"href":"https:\/\/www.explorica.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5815\/revisions\/6157"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.explorica.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5815"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.explorica.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5815"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.explorica.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5815"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}