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Seventy Years Ago This Month at Bletchley ParkSeptember 1939
Germany Invades Poland. Using 1.5 million men in five armies Germany invaded Poland on three fronts early on the morning of 1st September, an attack planned for that day some six months before. After the slow moving campaigns of the Great War, little more than 20 years before, “Blitzkrieg” – lightning war - came as a great surprise. Much of the Polish air force was destroyed on the ground that morning, though what survived fought bravely against overwhelming odds throughout the campaign. German bombers then struck at road and rail communications, and at civilian centres to cause confusion and panic. Motorised infantry, light tanks and motor-drawn artillery drove through the frontier defensive zone, followed by heavy tanks, bypassing defensive points and cities. The Poles had assembled an army of 1 million men during the previous six weeks since it had become obvious that the Germans intended to invade. The Poles were fanatical fighters, but lightly armed and totally overwhelmed by the fast moving German armies, and then from 17th September by the Russians invading from the East. The Poles attempted to defend the frontier zone, but soon found themselves isolated in huge pockets, the main one being around Warsaw which finally fell on 27th September after withstanding ferocious bombing and shelling. On 5th October the last Polish soldiers were forced to surrender. More than 60,000 Polish soldiers had been killed, for German losses of 14,000 men. Some 700,000 Polish troops had been captured, but eventually 100,000 Poles escaped to France and elsewhere to continue the fight with the Allies, including some of the battle-experienced pilots who were soon to play a crucial role in the Battle of Britain.
For Hitler, the campaign was the most dramatic vindication of his strategies for war. His generals had largely opposed the campaign but were won over by its overwhelming success. Thereafter Hitler’s authority was not to be challenged for five years. For the world, it was the first time it had seen the new warfare of “Blitzkrieg”. But it was also the first time the world had seen clearly the evil face of Nazism with the burning of whole villages by the SS Death’s Head regiments, the slaughters of the Polish civilian population, and the rounding up and execution of the Jews.
Britain and France Declare War. The French had had a long standing treaty of mutual support with the Poles dating back to 1923, and Britain had signed and announced a similar treaty on 25th August 1939 with a view to preventing Germany achieving another bloodless victory like Czechoslovakia. Britain tried desperately to prevent the outbreak of war by putting pressure on Poland to accede to certain of the German demands. Germany invaded on 1st September, using a trumped up story about Polish provocation as an excuse. Britain and France each issued an ultimatum to Germany to stop the hostilities, but when these expired Britain declared war at mid-day on Sunday 3rd September, with the French following a few hours later. That evening the USA declared its neutrality, despite the sinking of the passenger liner Athenia by a German submarine, U-boat U-30, with the loss of many American lives.
Morale in Poland had been sapped by the easy way the German Panzer divisions had scythed through their frontier defences, but was raised by the Allied entry on their side. However, the expected British and French bombing raids on Germany did not materialise, though the RAF did drop five million leaflets on German cities on the first night of the war. Next day, 4th September, the RAF did bomb German warships in the Kiel Canal. Three bombs actually hit a German heavy cruiser, the Admiral Scheer – but failed to explode. The British losses were severe. A French offensive in the Saar halted when they reached the Siegfried line.
The British Expeditionary Force crossed to France in mid September, and deployed along the Belgian frontier. But it was felt in Whitehall that little could be done to help the Poles directly, and it was better to give the British and French armies time to rearm, safe behind the Maginot line – where it actually existed, for parts of the much publicised defensive fortifications had never been completed. The Poles believed that the Germans had so weakened their front in France by transferring their best forces to Poland that France and Britain should attack without delay. In Britain it was the almost universally held belief that we had first to build up our rearmament before we could seriously challenge the far better armed German foe. The Poles felt bitterly betrayed by their Allies.
The Polish Cryptographers come to France. When it mattered to their country, the Polish cryptographers were able to do little to help. This was partly because of the changes the Germans had introduced, such as the increase in the number of code-wheels, making it very difficult to decypher their Enigma keys. And it was partly because of the rapid loss of the Polish radio interception ‘Y’ stations as the Germans overran them. On September 5th the Polish cryptographers were ordered to leave their centre at Pyry, near Warsaw. They escaped by train and then in one battered lorry to Rumania, reaching Bucharest on 17th September. They happened to arrive at the British Embassy just at the time the staff was distracted by the arrival of the entire British embassy staff from Warsaw, and so the Polish cryptographers went on to the French embassy, whose staff arranged for them to come to France. Travelling by train via Belgrade, Zagreb, and Turin, the three key cryptographers arrived in Paris on 25th September. On the 30th General Sikorski set up the Polish Government-in-Exile in Paris, and the cryptographers were soon at work again under French auspices, based in the Chateau de Vignolles at Gretz-Armainvillers to the East of Paris, but now working in close collaboration with the British at Bletchley Park. At team of French naval cryptographers came to work with the British at BP until the collapse of France.
The British Cryptographers at Bletchley Park were beginning to sort themselves out after the move from London initiated early in August. The Secret Intelligence Service at first occupied the upper floors of the Mansion. The Government Code & Cypher School occupied the ground floor, bringing 186 people from London, of whom 49 belonged to the Construction Section, the team that constructed the British codes, who soon moved on to Mansfield College, Oxford, it is said to be close to the Oxford University Press of which they made much use (as did their colleagues at BP). Of the 137 at BP, 131 were civilians (Foreign Office staff) and six were Service officers. As well as code-breaking, the staff carried out related Intelligence activities. The numbers were growing fast as the staff previously recruited for wartime service from Cambridge and Oxford joined up. (Nigel de Grey, of Zimmerman telegram fame, described the new recruits as “..dropping in with the slightly unexpected effect of carrier pigeons”). Both Alan Turing and Gordon Welchman arrived from Cambridge on September 4th, probably coming together in Gordon’s little car. Gordon, like many others, had spent the previous night under the stairs in his house expecting an air-raid that never came, though the air-raid sirens did sound. During these early days the Mansion was full to overflowing, with trestle tables set up in the corridors as the teams established their permanent locations. Some of the key cryptographers, in what came to be called the Research Section under Dilly Knox, moved to Cottage No.3 in the Stable Yard to find a bit of peace and quiet, where soon they were to carry out the work that changed the course of history. The first five huts were probably already up, but they needed partitioning and fitting out to meet the requirements of the particular teams allocated to them. The Air Section moved into the dining room (at the front of the Mansion) and then in January into the first Hut 3 (on what is now the Mansion car park), and the Naval section into the Library soon expanding into Hut 4. Military Section was the temporary first occupant of Hut 3, moving to Hut 5 in January 1940. The telephone exchange and the teleprinter room also had to be fitted in, taking over the ball-room of the mansion. There was no room for the Diplomatic & Commercial sections who went to the nearby, hastily requisitioned, Elmers School and to an outstation at near-by Wavendon.
No Enigma keys had yet been broken at Bletchley Park. A Japanese Fleet cypher was broken this month. Some minor hand-codes were being read, and some diplomatic codes following on from pre-war GC&CS achievements. But the information was of little value, if only because the Intelligence organisations in Whitehall were in chaos. Referring to the Secret Intelligence Service and to the Government Code & Cypher School, the Official Historian states “Nor was it long before they made use of the greater opportunities of wartime to lay the foundations for the immense contributions of intelligence to the course of the war. But in this first stage of the war the intelligence produced by these sources continued to be fragmentary and irregular”. In any case in Whitehall “… the expanding departmental intelligence branches often overlooked the significance of such reliable intelligence as was available”.
BP: Administrative Problems. Alastair Denniston was formally Deputy Director of GC&CS, with the Director being the Head of MI 6, the seriously ill Admiral Sir Hugh Sinclair. But in practice Alastair was recognised as the real Head at BP, with Sinclair and his successor, Colonel Stewart Menzies who had been his deputy before Sinclair died in November 1939, rarely visiting BP. On 16th September, in a letter addressed to ‘The Director’, Hugh Sinclair (who the senior staff often called ‘The Admiral’ behind his back), Alastair makes the heart-felt complaint that his time is all being taken up by administrative difficulties when he is ‘most anxious to take my share of the work on the increasing numbers of cryptographic problems confronting us’. His total salary budget for the financial year 1939, starting in April 1939, is only some £55,000 (but in those days Alastair himself would have only had a salary, at the top of his grade, of £1,450 p.a.), with a compliment of 169. (This figure includes Office Keepers, Cleaners, temporary Clerks who did not move to BP). For professional staff he has been given a compliment for 3 Chief Assistants, 14 Senior Assistants, and 16 Junior Assistants. This total of 33 is clearly inadequate, and Denniston seems to have been driven to the highly irregular expedient of recruiting temporary staff without the official sanction of the Treasury. [There is a letter from the Foreign Office’s finance officer, written on behalf of GC&CS, dated 18th April 1940, to the Lords Commissioners of His Majesty’s Treasury explaining, in very guarded terms, why it had been necessary to engage some 80 temporary junior staff in excess of the authorised establishment, and requesting that ‘Their Lordships may be moved to give their covering sanction’ for a further additional 74 junior staff.] Problems of accommodation, both on site and for living in the Bletchley area, fill his in-tray. He has to cope with demands from the Commercial Section to be allowed to return to London, in order to be close to their principle client, the Ministry of Economic Warfare. The Mansion is unbearably overcrowded, housing the SIS as well as GC&CS. A shelter for 500 people will soon be completed under their old London home at Broadway Buildings. Alastair Denniston is not impressed with these arguments, pointing out the undesirability of the staff spending hours in a crowded public shelter. He also argues that it would be unfortunate to add to the problems of coordination of the ‘scrutiny of the mass of German traffic from all sources’ by separating the Commercial Section away from the Diplomatic and Service Sections. He arranges for Elmers School, close by the Park, to be taken over, with the large school room cleared for the, about 30, staff of the Commercial Section. Two weeks later Denniston reports that the gradually expanding Commercial Section has been working satisfactorily in the school-room for 10 days, and that the completion of the huts, now under construction in the Park, ‘should ensure accommodation for any expansion of the Service Sections’. He feels that then the only remaining internal accommodation problem will arise due to a possible expansion of the Diplomatic Section to meet new demands for code-breaking work from the Foreign Office, ‘e.g. Scandinavian countries and South America (both of which zones may become important)’. [It is ironic that the chronic problems of accommodation, that dogged BP throughout the war, will only begin to ease after Denniston himself in despatched back to London in February 1942 with his Diplomatic & Commercial Sections, when his deputy, Edward Travis, is appointed to take his place as Director at BP; the first brick ‘Block’ is ready for use six months later].
Dilly Knox objects to having to entertain the French. Maybe it is light relief for the Director when his long-term friend and perhaps his most distinguished cryptographer, Dilly Knox, writes to Denniston on the 29th September complaining, in typical Knox style, about having to pay to entertain their senior French partner, Captain Bertrand, who had been with them at the meeting with the Poles: ‘It has been a great pleasure to me, though somewhat testing to my knowledge of French, to bear-lead Captain B. from 8 a.m. to 10 p.m. I have taken the line, though he offered to pay generously, that entertainment is “ une affair de bureau”; that is, from my angle, that I should get a billeting allowance from you, and that you should deal with the French’. [If this letter might be considered somewhat rude coming from a member of staff to his boss, it was to be nothing compared with the various vituperative resignation letters that the irascible Dilly would soon be despatching to his old friend, who became adept at handling his Chief Cryptographer].
The Bletchley Park Trust welcomes the preparation of these notes, but the authors are responsible for the statements and the views expressed.
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