This week, Ira spoke with Dermot Turing, author of X, Y & Z: The Real Story of How Enigma Was Broken. In this spyproof episode of Ira’s Everything Bagel, Dermot talks about why it was important to break the Enigma code (used by the German military in World War Two); how Polish codebreakers began solving the mysteries of Enigma and breaking the code, prior to further breakthroughs at Bletchley Park; why the contributions of the Polish codebreakers were missing or underplayed in most histories of the the war; the extent to which the war may have been shortened by cracking the code; why Gustave Bertrand was called the magician, and how he brought the codebreakers from different nations together; and who was World War Two’s greatest spy (a name most people would not know).
Photo by KT Bruce
