"The work of British codebreakers based at Bletchley Park is now believed to have shortened the duration of the Second World War by up to two years. During the dark days of 1941, as Britain stood almost alone against the might of the Nazis, this remarkable achievement might have been unthinkable. With the help of their Polish counterparts, they had broken the German Enigma machine cipher, but the resources on which they could call were so small that all seemed in vain. In 1941, in response to a warning by Britain's codebreakers that their efforts to break the Enigma code were being hampered by lack of funds, Winston Churchill ordered that they be given everything they needed. This book includes essays by some of Britain's foremost historians and academics - including Christopher Andrew, author of The Defence of the Realm - and tells the full history of Bletchley Park, tracing its legacy from the innovative work which led to the breaking of Enigma and other wartime codes, to the invention of modern computing, and its influence on Cold War codebreaking. Crucially, it also features contributions from former Bletchley Park codebreakers, whose personal reminiscences and very human stories of life and work in wartime Bletchley make The Bletchley Park Codebreakers compulsive reading."--Publisher's description.