Bletchley Park

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Bletchley Park Coursework

1.) What can you learn from Source A about the work of Bletchley Park?

From reading through source A, the reader can analyse that the work done in Bletchley Park was kept extremely confidential, due to the fact that when it came to infiltrating enemy intelligence, organisations had a tendency to keep the knowledge within the vicinity. In addition, the cryptologists and mathematicians that worked there had no idea as to what was happening in the consecutive huts because it was so departmentalized. In times when countries were at war, there was an almost obligatory need for secrecy, because one wrong move could determine the fate of either side. Any decoded messages were passed onto the other huts through narrow wooden tunnels that connected them. However, we only have the opinion of one worker within one hut, making it hard to decide whether or not this evidence is unsubstantiated. We do not know whether the government became lenient with the strict rules they implemented, whether it was towards the end of the war or at the middle.

2.) Does the evidence of Source C support the evidence of Sources A and B about the work of Bletchley Park? Explain your answer. 

In comparison with source C, A and B often convey a sense of perplexion, due to the fact that a significant amount of people weren’t aware of whether war was declared or not. Moreover, you have the continuous notion that people did not know the outcome of their work, or the purpose of the work done within the other huts. In some aspects, what the code breaker in source C has wrote is often similar to what the previous workers also wrote. For example, the source continues to mention the secrecy kept within the huts. Because there was such a crucial need for it, the workers did not know whether their breakthroughs were futile or not, for if the code they cracked had no significant meaning, then it would clearly be a waste of time if they received simultaneous discoveries which were of no value. If they did come across something of importance, it would be for the benefit of the war that they would not be informed, due to the fact that a minority of people would carry out certain acts of espionage. Since they were all written by workers that worked closely within Bletchley Park, I can only say that the sources inevitably have certain similarities, regarding the fact that their work was very covert, and that the groups were all departmentalised.

However, the origin of the sources can cause differences between them. Source A was written in Hut 3, where as Source C was written in Hut 6, meaning that Source C may not support Source A after all because of the different locations that they were written in. This evidently causes problems, as the sources are of different origins. Again it is slightly biased, as they may have been recorded at different dates. Who knows whether they implemented a certain level of secrecy within each of the huts, depending on the necessity of the work they would have done.

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3.) How useful are Sources D and E in helping you to understand how Bletchley Park was able to crack the Enigma codes?

Source E is not exceptionally useful in helping you to understand how the British cracked the enigma code, as it is just a visual source. Nevertheless, you can see that this Machine helped them to interpret the incessant gibberish that they received from the Germans, via wireless stations that they had situated all across Britain. This machine or the “Enigma Machine” as it became known was where their mainstream of information was translated from the German ...

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