
Many of the girls were grateful for the opportunity to be at Bletchley Park doing what they were doing and support the war effort. The consequences of doing so cost them their jobs and endanger the whole operation. Many women never knew what the women in the next hut just a few yards away were doing, and work was never discussed when the girls were off duty. It was not just family, friends and boyfriends kept in the dark, or lied to, but colleagues as well. Secrecy would come to dictate their lives even during the war. The Act required all-out secrecy of what the girls were doing at Bletchley Park for the next thirty years. Clarke first arrived at Bletchley Park on 17 June 1940.
#ENIGMA CODE BREAKER CODE#
The Enigma machine was used by the Germans to encrypt their messages they strongly believed their code was unbreakable. Those who arrived at the large mansion in the middle of nowhere had little knowledge of what they were going to be doing and each person was made to sign the Official Secrets Act immediately upon arrival. The GCCS started up in 1939 with a single purpose: that of breaking the German Enigma Code. The Bletchley Girls stayed with local families whilst at Bletchley, or slept in bunks within the small huts on the park grounds. All were brilliant problem-solvers or mathematicians. Most of the women hired were young and straight out of college or university. Working at Bletchley Park was well-paid with food, accommodation and uniform provided. Dilly Knox with his all-female team gave the Allies the military advantage and helped win the war. The Allies were now able to feed misinformation back to Germany on military movements, such as the attack on D-Day. It was this all-female team who would break the Abwher Engima Machine between October and December 1941 and give the Allies control over the German spy network in Britain. These ladies would soon receive the nickname “Dilly’s girls”. The story starts with eccentric lead male codebreaker Dillwyn “Dilly” Knox, who requested an all-female team to work with. It is believed that the efforts of both Alun Turing and these women helped to shorten the war by at least two years and saved millions of lives.
#ENIGMA CODE BREAKER CRACK#
These women were clever in their own right, and worked just as tirelessly to crack the German Enigma codes. Yet, it seems to have gone largely unnoticed that 80% of the 9,000 staff working at Bletchley Park were, in fact, women. Without him, the ‘bombe’ machine would not exist and the Allies would have remained unable to read German Naval messages. The most famous figure is the great Alan Turing.

For years, the efforts of thousands of codebreakers working in small huts in the grounds of a large mansion somewhere in Buckinghamshire was kept as one of the biggest secrets of the Second World War.
