The Bletchley Girls
War, secrecy, love and loss: the women of Bletchley Park tell their story
Tessa Dunlop
Having read it
★★★★☆
A well-composed and interesting book that paints an insightful picture of what life was like at Bletchley Park for the women involved. A good view of a side of Britain’s WWII history that proved pretty amazing for what it achieved then and after the war in helping to lay the groundwork for what we all seem to rely on, more so, now! Without the women involved, it would have struggled.
A good passage
Wireless technology transformed the way Britain communicated in the first half of the twentieth century – at home, at work and at war.
[...]
Across the country families gathered around their living-rooms and ‘listened in’ to evenings of live entertainment. The newly founded British Broadcasting Corporation conducted the nation’s conversation – nothing was left to chance. Working closely with the Government, the BBC aimed to be a Great British unifying force. Cultural, educational and moral standards were set for the majority who could afford to listen to the radio.
A second good passage
On 6 August 1945 America’s new President Harry Truman authorised the use of ‘Little Boy’, the world’s first atomic bomb, on Japan’s Hiroshima. Three days later a second bomb, ‘Fat Man’, was dropped on Nagasaki. Japan surrendered; the war was finally over.
On one side of the Pacific people cheered and ate red meat; on the other there was unimaginable human suffering.
[...]
For some weeks before the atomic bombs were dropped, the Americans knew the Japanese had been extending peace feelers via Russia, courtesy of their own decrypts. In other words there might have been another way to end the war, but the Americans chose not to pursue it. Instead they pressed ahead with atomic attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. In doing so they ended the war with Japan quickly and simultaneously let the world know they had built a lethal new weapon and (just as important) they were prepared to use it. America’s rival new superpower, the Soviet Union, has been warned.
A third good passage
In our contemporary era of WikiLeaks and social media exposés, where the issues of transparency and disclosure controversially posture as the guardians of liberty and democracy, the unquestioning acceptance with which BP’s staff kept their thirty-years’ silence is staggering. It has been described by one veteran as a ‘phenomenon that may be unparalleled in history’. Joanna is quite sure modern girls would not manage to ‘keep their mouths shut’.
In 1941, during his only visit to the Park, Churchill described Bletchley as ‘the goose that laid the golden egg but never cackled’ and significantly, after the war, although the self-evident reason for keeping the Park’s work walled off from public view had disappeared, the Joint Intelligent Committee (JIC) did believe those same well-trainer workers would breach their silence. They were not disappointed.