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True Stories


THE SECRET CRYPTOGRAPHER

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True Stories


THE SECRET CRYPTOGRAPHER

By Jack Doyle

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Joan Clarke


WHY YOU SHOULD CARE

Because World War II history is still leaving out some of its most important
female movers and shakers.

By Jack Doyle

November 15, 2014

No puzzle was too complex for Joan Clarke. So when war gripped Europe in 1939
and she found herself trapped in a world of contradiction, Clarke found a way
out. 

She had just graduated with top marks in mathematics from Cambridge University,
but she couldn’t get her degree. Britain was mobilizing for war, but she
couldn’t join the fight. So while her male colleagues collected their diplomas
and uniforms — Cambridge didn’t award degrees to women until 1948 — Clarke
decided to head underground. 

The native Londoner would become a combatant in World War II’s biggest
clandestine battle: the race to break the Nazis’ impenetrable code. During the
war, Clarke would join the world’s greatest minds, with mathematician and father
of the modern computer Alan Turing asking for her advice and relying on her
input. She would go on to help turn the tide of war by literally doing the
“impossible.” But today, very few know her name.

> Knowing how dangerous Enigma was, the British put a call out for the nation’s
> best and brightest.

The Enigma code, invented in Germany shortly after World War I, represented one
of the Allies’ biggest challenges. Using small, portable electrical machines
with rotating wheels, the Nazis scrambled messages via a complex system of
letter substitution. To an untrained eye, Enigma-coded messages appeared to be a
meaningless jumble of letters. But with the help of an Enigma machine, U-boat
commanders, spies, pilots and Nazi government officials could effortlessly
communicate crucial information about military movements and plans of attack.

Knowing how dangerous Enigma was, the British put a call out for the nation’s
best and brightest. Modern code-breaking was still an uncertain art, so the
Government Code and Cypher School discriminated less when recruiting, pooling
from chess champions, foreign nationals and — perhaps most boldly — young women.

And so Clarke entered the mysterious world of Bletchley Park, the British
government’s secret headquarters dedicated to cracking the uncrackable code.
When Cambridge mathematics don Gordon Welchman was asked who might fit the bill
for the formidable task of cracking Enigma, he didn’t hesitate. His best student
was 23-year-old Clarke.

 
        

During World War II, Allied cryptographers at Bletchley Park broke a large
number of Axis codes and ciphers, including that of the German Enigma machine.

Clarke’s obvious gift for logic helped her stand out. Struggling with low pay,
discrimination and exclusion from Bletchley’s darkest secrets, she nevertheless
earned a promotion that put her in the line of fire. Bletchley Park was, by all
accounts, a strange and intimidating place. For Clarke, a shy middle-class girl
used to keeping her head down around rowdy Cambridge boys, it was a bit of a
culture shock. Bletchley employed eight women for every one man, but the men
made significantly more money and worked more closely on cracking the code,
leaving the women to smaller, less secretive clerical tasks.



She began a new job at Hut 8 cracking the naval Enigma, the key to the deadly
U-boat force’s movements and plans. Joining her were some of the finest minds of
the century, including Turing. As they worked frantically to crack the code,
often staying well past working hours, Clarke and Turing developed a powerful
bond. 

Sadly, this is the part history remembers most — Clarke was briefly Turing’s
fiancée, doomed to rejection when he revealed his homosexuality shortly after
proposing. But in reality, Turing fiercely depended upon Clarke as a friend and
esteemed colleague. During work hours, they struggled with the same data and
bounced ideas off each other; off-duty, they played chess and talked over the
day’s problems.

 
        

Joan Clarke

Clarke’s quiet exit from wartime life also, in part, explains her relative lack
of renown. Though she was decorated for her services in cracking Enigma, the
public would not learn of her achievements for decades. In 1954, few people knew
about her connection to the famed Turing, when he committed suicide after
undergoing court-ordered chemical castration for his homosexuality.

Clarke seems to have been happy to settle down into a quiet married life working
on mathematics and history. She became an expert in rare Scottish coinage and
later returned to work for the Government Communication Headquarters in the
1960s. Secrecy laws prevented her from divulging details of her wartime
accomplishments, but they don’t explain why she’s been edited out of
fictionalized portrayals of Bletchley Park.

This will soon change with Keira Knightley’s portrayal of her in the upcoming
Bletchley film The Imitation Game. But the Hollywood star has warned that it
isn’t a true-to-life documentary — meaning Clarke’s personality has been altered
to appeal to a modern audience.

Clarke, who died in 1996, deserves more recognition in her own right as a woman
who helped defeat the Nazis.

 * Jack Doyle Contact Jack Doyle


November 15, 2014

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