London/Normandy 2016: Day 4

Bletchley Park

    Today we had the opportunity to go to Bletchley Park, which housed British code-breakers during the Second World War. David Kenyon, lead historian at Bletchley Park, provided us with a thorough overview of the exhibition before we began exploring the various buildings and displays. 

German Enigma Machine

 It was run by the Government Code and Cypher School, which was responsible for breaking codes that were sent by the axis powers. As the war progressed, the size and importance of the operation increased from 130 people working when it started in 1938, to over 9,000 in 1942. The enigma was the machine that the Nazis used to encrypt  their messages, while the British used bombes in order to decrypt these messages.

British Bombe

We each had the opportunity to decode messages on the touch screens that were available, which initially displayed how complex and mind blowing this operation was.

After the Bletchley Park, a group of ten of us went to Kings College in downtown London for a talk by the historian Adam Tooze titled " The Histories of a Machine Gun". In this lecture Tooze argued that when looking at military endeavors we tend to focus on the wider political and social contexts of conflicts instead of the weapons that are used. In his talk, he focused on the German machine gun, the MG42 and its importance during the Second World War. As a history major, this talk was important because it offered a different viewpoint than those we are normally exposed to in class. By putting an object at the center of his analysis, Tooze challenged the conventional narrative of how the war is talked about and understood within academia. After the talk, we went to a pub near Kings College and had delicious food.

The rest of the group decided to explore the Green Park, Princess Diane Memorial Walk, and the Buckingham Palace area. After they explored the city, they decided to go to an Indian restaurant and had fantastic Indian food. After, we met up at the hostel and went to our room to get a good night's sleep to prepare for a fun day ahead of tomorrow.