Sincerely yours,
Evelyn
Author’s Notes
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1. Replica Enigma Machine. In 1939, six days before Germany invaded Poland, a British Military mission (MM-4) arrived in Poland posing as civilians. Their aim was to get a team of Polish code-breakers out of the country, along with their replica Engima machine. The team made contact with Gwido Langer, Marian Rejewski, Jerzy Różycki and Henryk Zygalski and escaped with them when Poland was invaded. They went across the border into Romania, and from there onward to Western Europe, where they passed their decryption techniques on to the French and British. It was only because of the advanced work performed by these men, and the successful extraction by the British team, that Alan Turing was able to complete his extraordinary work and ultimately crack the Enigma code. One of the members of the British team was a woman named Vera Atkins. She went on to become the assistant to section head Col Maurice Buckmaster of the SOE (Special Operations Executive), and was responsible for the recruitment and deployment of female British agents into occupied France. (Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vera_Atkins)
2. Government Code and Cypher School (GC&CS). This was the organization responsible for intercepting, decoding, and distributing foreign cyphers and intelligence. During WW2, they were located at Bletchley Park, a country mansion north of London. Bletchley was purchased by Hugh Sinclair in 1938 to be used as the wartime base for SIS and GC&CS. However, SIS, now renamed MI6, ultimately moved back to London before the outbreak of war, leaving Bletchley to the codebreakers. The GC&CS was renamed to GCHQ after the war in 1946. They are, of course, most well-known for the work of Alan Turing and others in breaking both the German Engima and Lorenz codes, which some argue shortened the war by several years. There were several sections of the GC&CS during the war, including the Air Section, Naval Section and Army Section. For the purposes of this series, when referring the GC&CS, it is in relation to the codebreaking activities that occurred at Bletchley Park.
3. Mechelen Incident (aka Mechelen Affair). January 10th, 1940. A German aircraft with two officers on board crashed in Belgium, near the town of Mechelen-sur-Meuse. One of the officers, Major Helmut Reinberger, had the operational plans for the airborne attack on Belgium in his briefcase. When they realized they were in Belgium and not Germany, Major Reinberger revealed to his pilot that he had secret documents that must be destroyed. He went behind a thicket to burn the documents, but two Belgian border guards had arrived on bicycles and saw the smoke coming from the bushes. One of them rushed over to save the documents from being destroyed. The Germans were then taken to the border guardhouse, where they were interrogated. During the interrogation, Reinberger once again attempted to burn the documents by stuffing them into a burning stove. He yelled with pain while doing so, however, and the documents were once again saved from the fire. Much of the content was illegible after two attempts to burn the plans, but that which remained was enough to give the British a clear snapshot of what Hitler had planned for the low countries in the coming weeks. (The Second World War, Martin Gilbert, p 38) (HistoryNet: https://www.historynet.com/the-mechelen-affair.htm) (Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mechelen_incident)
- When Hitler was told of the crash, he said, “It is things like this that can lose us the war!” Yet, he still intended to proceed with the invasion as planned on January 17th. Due to weather, the invasion was postponed for three days to Jan. 20th. By that time, it had become clear that the Belgian and Dutch forces had begun to mobilize, most likely because of the leak of information from the crash. Despite this, it appears that it was only the bad weather that finally caused Hitler to postpone the invasion of France until the spring. (The Second World War, Martin Gilbert, p 38)
4. Altmark Incident. On February 16th, 1940, sailors from the British destroyer Cossack boarded the German supply ship Altmark in Norwegian waters, rescuing 299 British soldiers and merchant seamen who had been taken prisoner by the Germans in the South Atlantic. Prior to engaging the Altmark, the British, believing the prisoners-of-war to be onboard, demanded that the vessel be searched by the Norwegians. Afraid to risk their neutral status with England and France, they reluctantly agreed. However, the prisoners were concealed below the hatches and they were missed in three separate searches. Not finding any prisoners-of-war, the Almark was released. However, British aircraft located the Altmark on February 15th and the Cossack was sent in pursuit. They found the German ship being escorted by Norwegian ships, who warned that they would open fire if the Cossack made any attempt to board the Altmark. Upon seeking instruction from the admiralty, First Lord of the Admiralty, Winston Churchill, instructed them to board the ship if the Norwegians refused to escort it to Bergen in cooperation with the Royal Navy, where they could then inspect the ship themselves. It was at this point that the Altmark ended up being most helpful to the British. They tried to ram the Cossack, but only succeeded in running aground, whereupon the British promptly boarded her. In doing so, they violated Norwegian neutrality. After a short fight that left four German sailors dead, the British prisoners-of-war were located and released, and the Cossack made a dash to the Baltic sea before any retaliation could be made by either the Norwegians or the Germans.
-The entire affair was a much-needed moral victory for the British, but it ended up having very severe repercussions for Norway. Because of the incident, Hitler became convinced that Norway was not neutral and that the British would take over bases in Norway in an effort to prevent him from accessing the Atlantic and the much needed iron ore from Sweden. While the planning for the invasion of Norway, codenamed Operation Weserübung, was already
