Codebreakers & Spies
The shadowy world of Enigma, Ultra, SOE, and the secret soldiers who changed the war from the shadows.
4 articles
Codebreakers & Spies
The Masonic Code Between Churchill and Roosevelt
Two Freemason leaders used Masonic terminology as a secret communication method during the war
When Winston Churchill traveled to Washington in December 1941 to meet with Franklin Delano Roosevelt, one of the first things the two leaders discovered they h…
Codebreakers & Spies
The Spy Who Smuggled Children Out of a Transit Camp
A French Jewish woman posed as a camp nurse and saved 47 children — including her own two nieces
Simone Weil-Golden, a French Jewish doctor, infiltrated a transit camp in 1943 under a false identity. She used her position to smuggle 47 children out over eig…
Codebreakers & Spies
The Bletchley Park Women Who Broke the Enigma Codes
They were 75% of Bletchley Park staff — and most went to their graves under the Official Secrets Act
While Alan Turing and Gordon Welchman occupy the spotlight of Enigma codebreaking history, the vast majority of the day-to-day cryptanalytic work at Bletchley P…
Codebreakers & Spies
Operation Mincemeat: The Dead Body That Fooled the Wehrmacht
The full story behind the corpse that convinced Hitler the Allies would invade Greece, not Sicily
In April 1943, the body of a Royal Marines officer, Major William Martin, washed ashore near Huelva, Spain. He carried documents in a briefcase chained to his b…