The Battle of Britain however was not the only nor even the main event of the war to benefit from the intelligence gained at Bletchley Park. There were many occasions that may have been disastrous were it not for being one step ahead of the enemy. One of the areas that benefited the most was warfare at sea. In 1940 German U boats were very illusive and were proving very detrimental to Britain, they were depriving the it of vital goods and supplies needed for the war effort by attacking the British supply ships in the Atlantic. With very basic knowledge, Britain managed to intercept a German U boat and destroy it with the HMS Bulldog. They managed to board the boat before it went down and take books and an enigma machine which helped further the work of Bletchley Park. After gaining this knowledge Bletchley Park was extremely successful at preventing U boat attacks by letting the Navy know prior to any ships setting off whether to avoid certain areas or to take escort ships and planes to protect them. This technique proved crucial to the war effort from 1940 up until the end of the war.
In 1942 the Bletchley Park team gained a new skill; the ability to crack the German army codes. This gave Britain the upper hand in land warfare in general but particularly in North Africa in the same year where a brilliant strategist and tank commander General Rommer was using the codes. Unbeknownst to him the British, led by Field Marshall Montgomery, were receiving de-coded information. This led to a famous defeat of the Germans at The Battle of El Alamein.
By 1944 morale was up massively for the British mostly due to the string of defeats of Germans particularly of theirs submarines leading to an increase in goods and supplies reaching Great Britain. On the 6th of June that year D Day began. D Day was an invasion of Normandy that is considered by a lot of people to be the decisive battle of the Second World War. Before D Day the Nazi Government had control of a large area of Western Europe and access to its resources. Germany also firmly occupied France. There was some local resistance to the Germans before D Day or ‘operation OVERLORD’ as it was then known but it was often disorganised and non effective. In an extremely well organised and heavily armed operation the allies managed to access France via the beaches. From here they launched a huge attack on the German Military from which they would never recover. D Day was carried out with a lot of help from the people working at Bletchley Park. They achieved the successful operation only by knowing where to attack and preparing a large enough force to rival Germany in terms of both men and artillery. To know this they first had to establish the level of the German forces and its position. To do this they used the information from and entirely relied upon Bletchley Park. They deciphered the exact location and extent of the German forces from 1942 up until and during the OVERLORD operation.
So it would seem from these major war events and strategies that Bletchley Park was vital to the results of the war, however this may be a slight misconception. It was extremely important and some believe it may have taken 3 or more years off the possible duration of the war but it is still probable that the allies would have won the war. It is worth considering, for example, that the success of D Day was not wholly down to Bletchley Park. The attack at Normandy only happened after Russia had begun to tilt the war into the allies’ favour and started the defeat of the German Army. They did this without the help of Bletchley Park or any other interception form to gain intelligence. As well as the Soviet involvement in the war there were other events and battles unaffected by Bletchley Park such as the Involvement of the USA in the war due to the attack on them by the Japanese at Pearl Harbour, Hawaii. Many say that without the USA the allies would have been defeated so this factor alone could have been almost, if not equally as important to the defeat of Germany in 1945 as the research at Bletchley Park was. As well as the positive factors for the Allies, there were also failed plans and bad organisation on the part of the enemy such as the over expansion of the German forces which led to the failure to defeat the Soviet Union.
In conclusion I think that Bletchley Park was a very important factor which contributed to the war ending with Germany’s defeat in 1945 though there are many other factors, some equally important, that did not involve code breaking, which helped to do this too.
