Breaking The Codes

English | 6 x 23 minutes

Producer: Bus Red Productions.
Availability: Worldwide all media.



Codebreaking is as old as history itself, but it is really in the 20th Century that codebreakers have come into their own. They have altered the course of world history as much as armies marching across battlefields, and navies embattled at sea. The series straddles the most violent, war-torn periods in man's entire history, between 1900 and 1945, when small groups of brilliant men, working hundreds of miles from the battle zones, were able to penetrate so profoundly the enemy's most closely guarded secrets, that allied commanders were enabled to achieve victory. Often against great odds.

It is still a story shrouded in secrecy, much of it never been told before, particularly the American dimension.

Using rare footage and exclusive interviews, these programmes take you inside Room 40 where the codes of the German Fleet were cracked during World War One, and where deciphered messages helped bring America into the war.

Go behind the doors of once top secret Bletchly Park - Station X - to discover how the British successfully broke the ENIGMA code, a task thought completely impossible. Cracking ENIGMA gave Britain a huge advantage, and the cracking ofs the hardest code of all - NAVAL ENIGMA - allowed the Royal Navy and Coastal Command to finally fight back against the menace of the U-Boat packs that had almost succeeded in bringing the country to her knees.

Codebreaking proved just as vital in winning the war in the Pacific. Discover how the Americans successfully cracked the Japanese PURPLE code - but failed to use their advantage to prevent the attack on Pearl Harbor - and the JN25 Japanese naval code which won the Battle of Midway and turned the tide of war in the Pacific.

Programme One: THE MEN OF ROOM 40 and THE RISE OF ENIGMA
The Men of Room 40, not only played a key role in winning WWI, but penetrated the German plot to bring Mexico into the war and so brought the US into the European conflict. So stunned by their work, the Germans went on and developed Enigma - "the perfect, unbreakable, code making machine".

Programme Two: THE BREAKING OF PURPLE and THE ATTACK ON ENIGMA
The greatest codebreaker of them all, William Friedman duplicates the Japanese code-making machine, Purple. Churchill gathered together the cream of Britain’s brain power; mathematicians and linguists, chess players and philosophers, in Bletchly Park to beat Enigma.

Programme Three: THE BATTLE OF MIDWAY and THE WOLF PACK Cracking the Japanese Naval Code JN25 in the Pacific War and the Germans Naval Enigma used in the Battle of the Atlantic, the toughest code of them all.

Consultant to the series - The eminent historian and writer, DAVID KAHN. Producer - Ex-BBC Producer WILLIAM WOOLLARD produced and wrote the series.

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