How do you crack something with 158 million million million possible combinations? Many countries have tried, but ultimately failed to accomplish their goal. The movie The Imitation Game accurately portrays the historical events of the era. It correctly informs the viewer on how the Nazis communicated using a machine called enigma, it also shows an accurate depiction of Bletchley Park and the work of cracking enigma and the things they did to ensure that nobody found out about their work, and it also accurately focuses on Alan Turing and his work on creating a machine to instantly crack messages.
The Nazis used the extremely complex enigma code for communication purposes. The British worked on cracking enigma at Bletchley Park and were very secretive about their work. Alan Turing was one of the most significant figures at Bletchley Park because he built a machine that could automatically crack enigma codes and his work helped Britain defeat the Nazis. In the movie, The Imitation Game, a cryptanalyst named Alan Turing and a team of mathematicians work towards breaking Enigma, a code used by the Nazis. During World War II, Alan Turing is recruited by the government to help with discovering the secrets of Enigma.
While in Bletchley Park, a top secret government building dedicated to cracking Enigma, the team of mathematicians work on breaking each code but Alan Turing works on making a machine capable of immediately breaking any code. However, doing so requires an enormous sum of money due to the equipment necessary. Finally realizing that the reason “Christopher”, the machine built to immediately crack Enigma codes, was not working was because it was searching for every word. He then programs it to search for only words that are used in each code.
The problem in this was that attacks had to be avoided strategically as to keep the Nazis from realizing that Enigma had been cracked. Throughout the movie, moments from Alan Turing’s past are shown to explain his personality, feelings, and talent. At the end of the film, facts about wha at happened after the team of mathematicians solved enigma are shown before the last part, which consists of what happened after the government found out that Alan Turing was a homosexual. His friend that was once his coworker and fiance, Joan Clarke comes to visit one last time.
It is shown also shown in this scene that she is now happily engaged to another man. The Nazis were using a complex code system called enigma to help them win the battles that occurred during World War II. During the course of World War II, which is when the Nazis were using enigma, many countries had tried to crack enigma but failed to do so due its complexity (Axelrod). Enigma was said to be unbreakable due to the failure of the many countries that attempted to crack it. There were 100,000 operators, each checking one key setting every second which would take twice the age of the universe (“The History’).
The Nazis would definitely have won the war if the cracking of enigma did take twice the age of the universe to break, which is over a billion years. 10 plugboard cables were always used, reducing the possible combinations to 150,738,274,937,250 (“The History’). With the 10 plugboard cables, the number of possible combinations is reduced to the hundred trillions. The original amount of possible combinations would have been far greater than a number in the hundred trillions. Even though many countries had already failed to crack enigma, Britain tried to do what the other countries could not by hiring people to work at Bletchley Park.
Bletchley Park was a location set up by the British government dedicated entirely to breaking enigma. However, they were extremely secretive about the work going on within Bletchley Park and went to great security measures to ensure secrecy. When the employees were done for the day, the guards would check to make sure that they were not bringing any papers out of Bletchley Park (“The Imitation”). This shows that they were extremely serious about keeping their work a secret from everyone else in fear of Nazi spies finding out about the work within Bletchley Park.
Nobody outside of the park was allowed to know about the work. Employees had to lie about their job in order to prevent people from finding out about what the government was doing. The intelligence that was produced by the employees in Bletchley was code-named ultra secret (Waskey). The code-name is an example of how deliberate the government was about their work. There were many people the government hired that worked on cracking enigma. However, the changeable settings of the Enigma machine meant that most messages could not be read in real time ( Waskev).
The inability to read the messages in real time would lead to the failure of avoiding the attacks launched by the Nazis. Thus, leading to another victory for the Nazis and a loss for the Allies. Alan Turing had indeed successfully created a machine that was capable of automatically cracking enigma codes. This was incredibly helpful because of its ability to crack codes instantly. The depiction of Alan Turing himself and his work is also quite accurate. He worked on building the machine to break enigma while the rest of his team worked on breaking it another way (Axelrod).
He had come up with the idea for the machine by himself. This shows that his independent nature was correct. His independent nature also led his team to dislike him. He also believed that the team was going about the wrong way in trying to crack enigma, so he convinced their authority to put him in charge (Hodges). He was not pleased with what the group was doing. However, in order to do so, he needed the best minds in the country working together. His thought led him to publish a complex crossword puzzle to find the best of the best (Hodges). He was extremely passionate about what he was helping the government with.
This is the one major thing that kept his team from complaining to their authority about him. It might be argued that the movie does not accurately portray the historical events of the era by saying that one of the characters has a fake name and that the machine was not actually named “Christopher”. The character with a fake name is not a significant character and is on screen for only a short amount of time (“The Imitation”). Due to the fact that the character was on screen for a short amount of time and not significant shows that his name would not change anything.
In addition to an incorrect name of a character, the name of the machine that Alan Turing built would not change the events in history as the only important factor was the machine itself (“Colossus”). Instead of being called “Christopher”, it was actually named “Bombe. ” These incorrect names would not have any effect on the events that happened if the names were to be changed. Thus proving that little things like that have no importance and that the movie is indeed overall accurate. There are many things that were the same in both the movie and the events that occurred in the past.
The movie The Imitation Game accurately depicts the Nazis’ use of enigma, the work at Bletchley Park, and also the accomplishments of Alan Turing. The enigma code was extremely complex and would have taken twice the age of the universe to break. Without the great minds of Britain, it might have never been accomplished. Secrecy also played a major role in cracking enigma and beating the Nazis. Guards at Bletchley Park checked the employees for any papers before they left. The government did this to ensure that spies did not find out about their work and change enigma.
It would have never been broken if it wasn’t for Alan Turing. He successfully built the machine that was programmed to crack enigma. He also strategically informed the government on what to do in order to win some battles but didn’t inform them of some attacks so that the Nazis would not figure out that enigma had been broken. The movie keeps you entertained and also informs you about the events that happened during that era. It is a great movie for anyone that wants to learn about events from the past but also be entertained at the same time.