January 2020 80 years ago, in January 1940, British and French troops were freezing in their dugouts awaiting a German attack which would not come for several months yet; the so-called ‘Phony war’. Bletchley Park, by contrast was a hive of activity as efforts were made to break into German codes and ciphers, including the Enigma system, before the land war began in earnest. In this ‘It Happened Here’ episode we are guided by Bletchley Park’s Research Historian Dr David Kenyon through the evoluti...
Jan 22, 2020•1 hr 26 min
December 2019 During World War Two, 34 alumnae of St Hugh’s College Oxford ended up working at Bletchley Park and its Outstations and In March 2020 the college will be holding a symposium to celebrate them. In this, the last of three episodes this month, our Oral History Officer Jonathan Byrne tells us how this has opened up a potential new source for us to discover more of our Veterans and to hopefully capture more stories before it is too late. The rest of this episode is given over to the fas...
Dec 28, 2019•58 min
December 2019 After nearly 6 months of fighting from the beaches of Normandy, by early December 1944 the Allies’ front line stretched for 600 miles from the North Sea coast to the borders of Switzerland. The Scheldt estuary had finally been cleared, allowing the port of Antwerp to be opened and to start to ease their supply problems. With one of the coldest winters on record taking hold and Christmas approaching many of the front line troops probably expected a respite for at least a few weeks. ...
Dec 17, 2019•1 hr 4 min
December 2019 At the end of each year we like to focus on the important work that our Oral History Officer Jonathan Byrne and his team of staff and volunteers carry out. The interviews they record not only help to build a better picture of the vital work carried out here during World War Two but also help us develop new ways to share those stories with our visitors, such as exhibitions, family activities and online resources. In this, the first of three episodes this month, we catch up with Jona...
Dec 12, 2019•1 hr 11 min
November 2019 In this month’s 2nd episode celebrating the anniversary of the creation of GCHQ, where better to learn more about those 100 years than in the heart of its current Headquarters. We were given special permission to record within the walls of the famous ‘Doughnut’ building in Cheltenham. Our guide to those top secret corridors is GCHQ’s new official Historian David Abrutat. With a century of codebreaking behind them, there is a rich history to dive into and it’s not just about Bletchl...
Nov 21, 2019•59 min
November 2019 During WW1 the United Kingdom had two separate cryptographic organisations, the Navy’s Room 40 & the Army’s MI1(b). Both had major codebreaking success during the conflict but it was decided that after the war that they should merge. On the 1st of November 1919 the Government Code & Cypher School or GC&CS was created. Best known for its work during WW2 at Bletchley Park, after the war its name was changed to one more familiar to us today GCHQ. To mark the anniversary, a...
Nov 11, 2019•43 min
October 2019 “Gas masks are to be taken” so ends what seems a rather mundane government memo dated the 2nd of August 1939. It importance becomes apparent when you discover this was the Move Order sent to the staff of the Government Code and Cypher School. As Hitler threatened Poland it seemed another war in Europe was inevitable, so it was decided the staff of GC&CS should move to their War Station in the Buckinghamshire countryside. With hindsight we now know that over the next 6 long years...
Oct 10, 2019•1 hr 13 min
September 2019 By early September 1944, with the Normandy Campaign behind them, 6 Allied Armies were racing across Northern France and into the Low Countries. Ahead of them the remnants of the German Army were retreating to the borders of the Fatherland. To many on the Allied side it seemed that a bold action was all that was needed to finish the war by Christmas. The plan called for a carpet of paratroopers to capture and hold bridges along a 64 mile road, allowing an armoured spearhead to reac...
Sep 17, 2019•1 hr 2 min
September 2019 Each year, to mark the arrival of the first Codebreakers at Station X in 1939 we hold our Veterans Reunion. This year it was made more poignant as the date fell on the 80th anniversary of the invasion of Poland. The Reunion is always a very special day for us at Bletchley Park as it gives us the chance to thank our Veterans for their service. For the Veterans it is a chance to meet old friends, reminisce and tell stories of their time here. This is the podcasts 8th reunion and thi...
Sep 10, 2019•52 min
August 2019 In earlier episodes this year we have concentrated on the preparations for, and the events of D-Day itself, the 6th of June. However D-Day was only the beginning of the Normandy Campaign. The Allies had to face an enemy determined to throw them back in to the sea and it led to some of the bitterest fighting that Western Europe saw in WW2. It would eventually, after three months, end in a massive victory for the Allies and the liberation of Paris at the end of August 1944. In this “It...
Aug 10, 2019•1 hr 5 min
July 2019 Most people now know of the work carried out by Tommy Flowers and his team that ultimately led to the design and construction of ‘Colossus’, the world’s first large-scale electronic digital computer. Flowers worked for the General Post Office at their Research Station at Dollis Hill but that work was just one part of the connection between the GPO and the Codebreakers at Bletchley Park. With the opening this year of our new exhibition, D-Day: Interception, Intelligence, Invasion, that ...
Jul 23, 2019•1 hr 1 min
July 2019 In this It Happened Here episode we leave the invasion of Western Europe and return to the hard fought battles of the Italian Campaign. Since first invading in September 1943, Italy had been anything but the “soft underbelly” that Churchill had called it. Finally in the spring and summer of 1944, after months of being held back by German forces defending Italy, things started to move. With the eyes of the world on Normandy the men fighting their way up the boot of Italy felt they had b...
Jul 09, 2019•1 hr 2 min
June 2019 On June the 6th 2019, Bletchley Park ran a number of events to mark the 75th anniversary of D-Day. Never before seen handwritten decrypts were release to the public and we took over Twitter for the day to Tweet those very messages in real time, as if it was 1944. You can now find these messages on our website at www.bletchleypark.org.uk/news/bletchley-park-and-d-day In this episode we take you to the dining room of the iconic mansion and bring you the talk that our research historian D...
Jun 20, 2019•48 min
June 2019 75 years ago today, more than 150,000 allied troops were boarding planes, gliders and landing craft as they prepared to invade Fortress Europe in Operation Overlord, the Normandy Invasion. Meanwhile, 200 miles away in the Buckinghamshire countryside the Codebreakers of GC&CS were also ready and waiting. A special section, known as NSV(X), spent the day decrypting German messages and forwarding that vital intelligence to allied commanders. In many cases only two hours after the Germ...
Jun 05, 2019•54 min
May 2019 With the opening of D-Day: Interception, Intelligence, Invasion, the key role that Bletchley Park played in the success of the Normandy campaign is finally being told. Now, a new book written by our very own research historian, Dr David Kenyon adds even more depth to that story. Using previously classified documents, David casts the work of Bletchley Park in a new light, as not just a codebreaking establishment, but as a fully developed intelligence agency. This account reveals the true...
May 23, 2019•24 min
May 2019 It Happened Here this month takes us to a Britain who’s south coast in May 1944 resembled one huge army camp as over 2 million men waited for D-Day. In the Buckinghamshire countryside the staff at GC&CS carried on feeding detailed and crucial intelligence to the Allied forces that would play an integral part in the success of the upcoming Operation Overlord. The Western Front Committee was established at Bletchley Park in October 1942 and for the next 18 months built up a comprehens...
May 09, 2019•58 min
April 2019 In this month’s episode we take you to the preview opening of a major new exhibition, D-Day: Interception, Intelligence, Invasion. For 18 months prior to the launch of Overlord the staff at GC&CS produced intelligence that was integral to the invasion plans. The detailed picture that the codebreakers created of German forces in France made sure that as the troops hit the beaches on the 6th of June 1944, they knew almost as well as the Germans what to expect. Based on recently decl...
Apr 15, 2019•56 min
March 2019 In this It Happened Here episode we go back to the spring of 1944 when much of Europe, and indeed the world held its breath awaiting the ‘Second Front’ in Europe. This would be realised in June when Operation OVERLORD; the D-Day landings, began in France. During that spring, however British and Allied troops were involved in some of the fiercest fighting of the war, in Italy and in the Far East as the tide finally turned against the Japanese in Burma. The codebreakers at Bletchley Par...
Mar 10, 2019•58 min
February 2019 This month we leave the code breaking behind and focus on what became an important part of the Off-Duty time for many of the staff at GC&CS during World War 2. Working long shifts and being far from the bright lights of London and other major towns, the staff of Bletchley Park organised much of their own entertainment. As early as 1940 the management recognised that the staff needed diversions to fill their down time and encouraged the organisation of many of these. With a staf...
Feb 10, 2019•53 min
January 2019 1943 had been a year of Turning Points in World War 2, but 75 years ago few people could have known for certain the monumental events that would unfold in 1944. In this It Happened Here episode we take stock and look at the year ahead. The Big Three, Churchill, Roosevelt and Stalin met together for the first time and took decisions that would ultimately lead to the 6th of June, D-Day. In the wider war the Germans had bogged the Allies down on the Italian Front, while at sea Bletchle...
Jan 10, 2019•53 min
December 2018 In this second of our two episodes this month we bring you two more interviews from our Oral History Archive. Our Oral History Officer Jonathan Byrne and his team have collected over 450 interviews in the last 7 years with our Veterans’. Now with the support of Milton Keynes Council the project is being extended to include local people with connections to the wartime Bletchley Park. Judith Wainer couldn’t have been a closer neighbour to Station X as she lived on Wilton Avenue. Her ...
Dec 19, 2018•59 min
December 2018 In the first of two episodes this month we bring you three interviews of Veterans and local people from our Oral History Archive. Our Oral History Officer Jonathan Byrne and his team have collected over 450 interviews in the last 7 years. He tells us about a new project, being run with the support of Milton Keynes Council, to extend our archive to include local people with connections to the wartime Bletchley Park. At the outbreak of World War 2 Val Pinker was a teenager living in ...
Dec 10, 2018•1 hr
November 2018 In this exclusive additional episode, podcast producer Mark Cotton was given special permission to record inside the normally top secret walls of GCHQ in Cheltenham. There he met GCHQ’s Departmental Historian Tony Comer to talk about the life of a modern GCHQ insider, how it has changed over the last 3 decades and was given a guided tour of their own secret museum. Tony also gives us some sneak peeks into how their upcoming Centenary in 2019 will be celebrated. Grateful thanks to G...
Nov 23, 2018•31 min
November 2018 In this month’s ‘It Happened Here’ we are marking 75 years since the establishment of the Eastcote Outstation, the site at which Bombe machines were operated from the autumn of 1943. By 1945 over 100 machines were at Eastcote along with over 800 Wrens and RAF technicians, and a small group of American GIs. How did it start and what was life there really like? Bletchley Park’s research historian Dr David Kenyon tells us the complete story with help from our Archivist Guy Revell and ...
Nov 10, 2018•53 min
October 2018 In this It Happened Here episode we are going back to the autumn of 1943 and the invasion of Italy. British Prime Minister Winston Churchill saw it as strike at the Germans via the “soft underbelly of Europe”, while our American allies saw it as a “tough old gut”. At a strategic level the allies may have had differing opinions but in the Intelligence War the cooperation grew closer with the increasing involvement of American personnel in the code breaking operations at GC&CS. Bl...
Oct 09, 2018•55 min
September 2018 During World War Two more than 10,000 people worked for GC&CS either at Bletchley Park, it’s Outstations or connected branches both Civilian and Military. This gives us a wealth of different stories to be able to tell and in this second visit to this year’s Reunion we will bring you 3 more exclusive interviews with our Veterans. Sergeant Stanley Clegg served from 1943 till 1945 in the RAF and with Special Liaison Unit 8 in North Africa, Italy and France. His fascinating story ...
Sep 23, 2018•52 min
September 2018 Every year, close to the anniversary of GC&CS staff first arriving at Bletchley Park in 1939 we invite our Veterans and their families back to celebrate their vital war work. It’s our favourite day of the year at the Museum and it allows us to share their amazing stories with our listeners. This year also coincides with the 80th anniversary of the formation of the Auxiliary Territorial Service or ATS, the woman’s branch of the British Army during World War 2. To celebrate, our...
Sep 09, 2018•48 min
August 2018 This is the second of two episodes this month. In this It Happened Here episode we’ll be taking you further back than our normal 75 years, this time to September 1938. Twenty years after The Great War, the clouds of conflict were once again looming across Europe. Hitler threatened Czechoslovakia and British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain flew to Germany to try to avert war. At the same time in Buckinghamshire, at an unassuming, recently purchased country house, activity was stepp...
Aug 26, 2018•50 min
August 2018 This is the first of two episodes this month. In August 1943 at the Quebec Conference the Allies began the initial discussions for what would ultimate become Operation Overlord, the invasion of France in 1944. So it seems fitting that 75 years later Bletchley Park have released the plans for what will be an exciting new exhibition opening in spring 2019. D-DAY: Interception, Intelligence, Invasion will tell the story of the vital role that GC&CS played in informing the D-Day inva...
Aug 09, 2018•25 min
July 2018 This month we swing a shoe, meet the artist exploring the layers and fragmentation of the Bletchley Park story and hear from a Foreign Office clerk who thought she was going to be a spy. Hear what happened when Bletchley Park played host to a Guinness World Record attempt at the largest swing dance lesson. The swing dance club, JiveSwing, led the couples, many of whom who’d turned out in their best vintage gear, in a half hour lesson followed by a three minute dance, to take a crack at...
Jul 09, 2018•58 min
