The Diverse Team of Code-breaking Heroes during WWII

The house at Bletchley Park.

Bletchley Park is an English country house in Milton Keynes which was once the top-secret home of the World War II Codebreakers. By embracing what Matthew Syed calls cognitive diversity in his book Rebel Ideas – the ability to bring together teams of rebels (crossword-solvers and others) rather than clones (yet more mathematicians) – Bletchley Park became home to teams who could draw on multiple perspectives to create a powerful collective intelligence. It has been estimated that the intelligence recovered at Bletchley Park shortened World War II by over a year and saved millions of lives. The team at Bletchley Park was recruited to  crack the Enigma Code which was used to encrypt German messages. Enigma was considered unbreakable by the German high command, but the success at Bletchley Park is history.

At the onset of the team recruitment, the policy was to look for ‘Men and women of a professor type’ through contacts at Oxford and Cambridge universities. Alan Turing a 27 years old Mathematician Fellow at King’s College, Cambridge and Peter Twinn, a 23 years old from Brasenose College, Oxford were recruited this way. We are all very familiar with Benedict Cumberbatch’s excellent performance of Alan Turin in the Imitation Game. Alan Turin’s work on artificial intelligence formed the foundation of CAPTCHA technology which is a familiar part of our day-to-day cyber security. However, as the tasks got more complex and multi-levelled, it became clear to Alastair Denniston, the Scot in charge of the team, that he needed a larger coverage across the problem space, in other words cognitive diversity. Rather peculiar recruitment practices were developed for this purpose. One notable example was the use of a crossword puzzle competition organized through the newspaper, The Daily Telegram. Interestingly, crosswords and code breaking are about getting inside the mind of your opponent, or enemy in this case. Some of the winners ultimately made it to the team.

The new recruits also included Leonard Foster, a German and the Renaissance Scholar, Norman Brooke Jopson, a comparative philosophy professor, Hugh Last, the famous historian and A. H. Campbell a legal philosopher. J.R.R. Tolkien, an Anglo-Saxon professor at Oxford University at the time, was also recruited but he eventually declined the offer, which was literature’s gain as instead he wrote the bulk of Lord of the Rings during the war years. The team was diverse across multiple dimensions. Different intellectual as well as demographic backgrounds were recruited. Furthermore, Turing was gay at a time where homosexuality was illegal. The majority of the staff were women. Jewish cryptanalysts and people of different religious and social backgrounds were also part of the team.

Why did any of this matter when cracking German codes? You are probably thinking, isn’t it just about logic and number crunching? Well, like all complex tasks, the challenge hinged on multiple layers of insight. Code breaking is not just about understanding the data but also the psychology of the people having to write a code in the heat of battle. For example, the women of Bletchley Park realized that the German operators would use the initials or abbreviations of their girlfriends names for the three-letter codes, such as CIL for Cillie, a German female name. Mavis Batey, who cracked the Italian Enigma ensuring a win for the British at the battle of Matapan, worked out that two of the German operators had girlfriends with the name Rosa.

The country house is now a heritage attraction site and one of the exhibition reads:

“Bletchley’s codebreaking success came not in spite of people’s differences, but because of them. It’s a compelling role model for the power of diversity that resonates still today.”

 In normal conditions, during a normal time period, prejudice and discrimination are highly unethical. At war time, however, prejudice is detrimental and potentially lethal. Sexism, antisemitism, and similar prejudices had to be overcome, as the most brilliant cryptographers could have been hidden in any one of these minority groups. Unfortunately, none of these factors were eliminated entirely. Joan Clarke, for instance, still experienced some degree of sexism, and Alan Turing was forced to stay in the closet as his very identity risked both his job and his life. Therefore, cognitive diversity does not necessarily mean the elimination of prejudice, but it is a start!