The importance of "civilians" in the war efforts:-
"Ultra" Code Operation
Breaking the Code:-
Years before World War II began, Germany had developed and was using a special system to keep their military communications secret. The army, navy and air force all encoded their messages using a cipher machine that came to be called Enigma. Enigma, a typewriter-like contraption for encoding and decoding messages, had been developed in Germany in 1923. By 1939, 20,000 Enigma machines were in use on German submarines, at army headquarters, on Luftwaffe bases, and in the hands of German spies across Europe.
The Germans thought their codes were unbreakable--and with good reason. The Enigma machine, with its complicated set of changeable rotor wheels and electronic circuitry, could produce a code with trillions of variations! By typing on a keyboard, the sender's message would be so scrambled that only someone with a similar machine fixed to the same predetermined settings could decode it.
The British soon established the Code and Cipher School at Bletchley Park, a Victorian mansion 40 miles outside London. Within its grounds, many of Britain's top mathematicians, scientists, and linguists labored night and day to crack the German's Enigma code. This operation was code-named Ultra. American code breakers soon were working closely with their British counterparts. In all, more than 7,000 men and women worked in utmost secrecy at Bletchley. Security was so tight at this installation that many of their families did not know the nature of their covert work. Their greatest breakthroughs came as a result of the capture an early model Enigma machine from Poland and the recovery of another from a salvaged German submarine. By late 1940, the British were regularly decoding German messages. Ultra became one of the most closely guarded secrets of the war. Only the highest-ranking officers knew of its existence.
The ability to read German military communications gave the Allies an awesome advantage throughout the war. Although the foreknowledge gained from Ultra had to be used by the Allies carefully--so as not to divulge to the Germans that Bletchley was listening--used it was, and often with impressive results. Troop movements were observed and countered, supply columns were tracked and destroyed, and overall Axis strategy and state of mind were all carefully monitored. Along with the brawn on Allied production, the brains of Ultra helped win the war.
History 101 Part IV - Be prepared for a quiz!!!!!
Sgtleo 
