Alan Turing: The Scientist Who Saved The Allies | Man Who Cracked The Nazi Code | Timeline

During the Second World War, the allies' key objective was to crack the German army's encrypted communications code. Without a doubt, the key player in this game was Alan Turing, an interdisciplinary scientist and a long-forgotten hero.

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[pqrs]

This man was a genius who saved millions of lives. Wish the world had been kinder to him

[dafyddthomas]

One of the world's intelligent man who saved millions - extremely unhappy how he was treated in the end - RIP Genius, what work could he achieved if he lived longer

[Tawny]

The fact that they waited until 2013 to grant him a posthumous pardon is even more disgraceful! The mind truly boggles when you think what this man did for the world never mind Britain!

[marjoriejohnson]

Can you imagine if people just kept their nose out of his private life how many things this man might have discovered, invented or the problems he might have solved.

[thespin]

This drove me to tears at the very end. Alan Turing did not deserve what was done to him. And frankly, we don't deserve him and his brilliance.

[ericlitts]

I read the book that covered Turing and the brilliant scientists, engineers, physicists, and mathematicians that made the first computer and what it took to run the calculations to win the war. Dense. Really dense. I never felt so insignificant in my life. This guy was incredible.

[jazzflute]

Alan Turing should have been awarded a Knight Hood at the very least, absolute legend.

[misterbeach]

It is perhaps worth mentioning that the Polish intelligence developed a cryptographic machine called "Bomba" (which is why Turing called his machine "bombe") in 1938 already, under the lead of Rejewski, a mathematician. Rejewski worked on Enigma since 1933, and solved earlier Enigma versions with simpler machines, for years. At that time, Poland was leading in cryptography. Eventually, due to the difficult political situation, Rejewski and the Polish government decided to share their research with the British in July 1939. Turing met with the Polish codebreakers in July 1939 for the first time. The brilliance of Turing's improvement was his general purpose and an electro-mechanical solution to that cipher machine, but his work was based on the shoulders of those Polish mathematicians, of course, who not just supplied the British with a few Enigma machines but their research and functional "bomba" of their own designs. Unsure why this important detail is frequently left out, not only in Hollywood; but cryptography computer science students usually know about this.

[Ana-bntw]

So sad that we can't treat people as equal no matter what their private lives are. We should be proud to have such an individual who contributed so much. All people are worthy of their dignity and respected for their contributions

[antonplotnikov]

What an exciting history, and how sad its final is. The brilliant mind was bulled and killed by unknown nonentities. I am a Russian, and I am so grateful to Alan Turing for his contribution in the Allies’ victory in 1945.

[tedc.]

Bletchley was full of top minds in related disciplines, but Turing was at the top of the field. While Bill Tutte led the team who amazingly figured out how the Lorenz machine was constructed and Tommy Flowers was primarily responsible for building Colossus, that only gave them the possible cipher keys (wheel settings) that were being used. Alan Turing saw how to apply statistical methods and other mathematic logic to use Colossus efficiently and actually allow the ciphers to be read. Alan Turing was completely responsible for creating the Bombes, with one significant improvement suggested by Welchman. Turing created the methods applied to decrease the Bombe run time necessary to find the wheel and plug board settings for Enigma. Neither one of the machines spit out the decoded message. They just gave them the possible settings that met criteria Turing established. It still took a tremendous amount of human work to choose the appropriate settings and to correctly decode and read the messages and interpret what they meant. He was obviously the intellectual leader of Bletchley since he was the one sent to the US when Britain began collaborating with the US on Enigma and other decipherments. Who knows what Turing could have accomplished after the war had he been allowed to continue his work in developing computers and in his other theoretical work in math and science rather than being hounded and killed by a homophobic society. What a crime to destroy such a brilliant mind and gentle soul. I am an avid Turing fan, if you could not tell.

[bobdinitto]

This story teaches us that A: No good deed goes unpunished. ...and that B: Those most responsible for the success of technical projects are not the ones who reap the rewards.

[paulkeith]

An Uncle of mine served as an Army Signal Corps Officer and he landed with the U. S. Forces at Normandy. I wish that I had known more about Turing while my Uncle was alive so I could have asked him what he knew, if anything, about Turing's work during that time and how it might have affected his own experience during the invasion. Like my Dad, a Pearl Harbor Survivor who served throughout the Pacific after that, my Uncle rarely spoke about the war. I am grateful for documentaries like this one for filling in for me what so many in the "Greatest Generation" could never speak about. One thing my Dad and my Uncle did say, however, will always be part of my life: "Never Forget Us." I won't.

[davebarrowcliffe]

None of the 10, 000 people who worked at Bletchley spoke a word about the work they did there.
The very existence of the place was a state secret well into the 1980s.
Quite remarkable.

[NiceRage]

Wow, it’s amazing how poorly one’s own government treated this hero. He obviously saved countless thousands of lives, yet was unable to live his the way he desired too. What a shame smh😕

[johnmorsley]

I shed a tear every single time I hear about Alan's ending. Such a great guy that we owe a tremendous amount treated in such a vile way... :'(

[jakemoeller]

Great Britain commemorated Turing with the £50 note of 2021, a small yet tangible gesture of respect. ❤🧡💛💚💙💜

[tamjacobite]

The only good thing to emerge since is pardon is that now more people know about what a brilliant man he was and how much we all owe him.

[camrenwick]

It's a shame that he didn't get the respect he deserved.

[LTSTUDIOSONE]

Alan Turing played a crucial part in securing the Allied victory during World War II. His successful decoding of the Enigma code at Bletchley Park was a game-changer that significantly impacted the outcome of the war. Despite not receiving adequate recognition during his lifetime, Turing's groundbreaking work has become legendary in the field of computer science. His innovative ideas and techniques have left an indelible mark on the field and continue to inspire and shape it to this day.