Why Alan Turing Remains the Unsung Hero of WW2

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Thoughty2 (Arran) is a British YouTuber and gatekeeper of useless facts. Thoughty2 creates mind-blowing factual videos about science, tech, history, opinion and just about everything else.
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Writing: Steven Rix
Editing: Jack Stevens

[lindakay]

My son spent 7 years of his life being a "white hacker." Computer and game security was his life. Coding was his passion. Turing was one of his idols. He passed away at 19 from cardiomyopathy. He would have given huge props to this video. Much love to you for doing Turing's memory justice! 🥰

[cathiehutcheson]

My father, who was a US navy code breaker in the Pacific during WW2, said the world owes Alan Turing so much, but most of all an apology.

[mollyersupermunchable]

Thank you for making this video. Alan Turing is a man with a story that deserves to be known. The thought of this video spreading his story even more, warms my heart.

[dynadd]

Alan Turing is a freakin' legend! I first heard of him when i was a programmer, back in the early 2000s. I learned about his feat with Enigma when i was reading stories about WWII. When his name came up, i immediately stopped and thought : "Hey i know this name!" . I was immediately hooked on his story.

[GIBBO]

The film with Benedict Cumberbatch in about this is worth a watch. Such a shame his life ended the way it did because of society at the time.

[CatinaTheo]

Alan Turing doesn’t get recognized enough. His story is one of tragedy and inspiration I first heard of him in The Imitation Game and became obsessed ever since. Hes a genius and if society wasn’t messed up maybe he would’ve been treated like the hero he was.

[RogueTurban]

one of englands biggest shame is what they did to alan after he saved the entire world

[matthewread]

It really upsets me that this wasn't taught in my school. I feel robbed of history and wish this man had his own holiday so we can celebrate the life of a man who saved all of our lives. Sleep well Alen and thank you for my life 🥺

[psow]

Polish codebreakers were the first to:
- reconstruct the internal wiring of military version of Enigma
- successfully use math instead of linguistics (dominant approach at the time)
- realize many things can be used to reduce the number of combinations to check (Enigma design flaws, German operator errors or laziness, beginning of the message starting the same or similar etc.)
- build machines to speed up codebreaking

Not long before the war Germans upgraded Enigma by adding 2 additional rotors. Previously, Poles could break the daily code in 2 hours, after this change it was still possible, but it took too long. Rejewski later commented that "we quickly found the [wirings] within the [new rotors], but [their] introduction ... raised the number of possible sequences of [rotors] from 6 to 60 ... and hence also raised tenfold the work of finding the keys. Thus the change was not qualitative but quantitative. We would have had to markedly increase the personnel to operate the bombs, to produce the perforated sheets ... and to manipulate the sheets". So the Polish codebreakers didn't have theoretical problems at this point - rather a resource problem (they couldn't reliably decode daily keys fast enough, but the theory and developed methods were still mostly good).
Poles showed the British that with enough resources and correct approach (math + machines) it's entirely possible. So they hired some brilliant people (like Turing) and gave them a lot of resources and all the knowledge the Polish codebreakers gathered in 7 years. And they did an awesome job speeding up / optimizing the code breaking process.
Think about it as a relay race - both participants were important to achieve the end goal, not just the one that run through the finish line.

[trevorbevan]

The Alan Turing story always fills me with sadness and despair. Your presentation, Thoughty2, is a fitting credit to this British Hero who is so often forgotten in our busy daily lives.

I was only 7 when Alan was convicted and I can recall the scandal this case caused in the Press.

Thank goodness the Queen was persuaded to Pardon all those who were cruelly treated by Society in what is now accepted as normal human interactions; where one person shares their affection with another.

Thank you Thoughty2 for your continued interesting stories and all the hard work you go to, in order to bring us such intriguing stories.

[Saint_Wolf_]

Alan Turin was one of the greatest minds to ever live, your video along with Veritasium's video about "the hole at the center of math" and Ahoy's video "Videogames, the nuclear fruit" are some of my favorite ones that tell you how his work influenced our whole lives as a whole.

[ludoviajante]

Thanks for this video! Your channel can make any subject interesting, I love it when you talk about history. You are an inspiration to me.
Much love from Brazil.

[boriss.]

You need to talk about the Bricklayers Son!
Thomas Harold Flowers, BSc, DSc, MBE (22 December 1905 – 28 October 1998) was an English engineer with the British General Post Office. During World War II, Flowers designed and built Colossus, the world's first programmable electronic computer, to help solve encrypted German messages.

[bridgetsclama]

He was absolutely brilliant. It's a shame how his story ended. Thank you for this.

[alexbalfour]

This is by FAR the best documentary on Turing

[Sneaky_]

Always enjoy watching your content! You have a great way of telling these stories and it's always so captivating! Keep up the great work!

[johonybrawo]

You forgot that if Polish mathematicians wouldnt brake first Enigma code then Brithish one wouldnt Breake the Enigma 2.0 code. They just walk a path paved by Rejewski, Różycki and Zygalski ;)

[joz]

I would love you to cover Tommy Flowers, the engineer behind the 1st computers and how he had to pay for parts himself. He is truly the forgotten man of world war two Flowers designed and built Colossus, the world's first programmable electronic computer, to help solve encrypted German messages. The fact that Britain had the lead in computing and the government ignored Flowers and gave away the lead to US companies. Remember this from computer Studies in the late 1970's early 1980's.

[TheJammyboi]

Really is a disgrace how this man was treated after all he did for the world.

[adrianfrr]

As a computer scientist, and someone who did quite a bit of work in post grad crytpo research, I already knew lots about him but watched the video anyway because I knew you would make it very entertaining. Good work, as usual!