Prof. Richard Aldrich
May 10th 2012
GCHQ, Great Britain’s intelligence window on the world, born in the crucible of World War One, where the code breakers of of the Admiralty’s Room 40 broke the Zimmerman telegram that brought America in the war on the allied side. It came of age in 1939, with the breaking of Nazi Germany’s electronic enigma enciphering machines, which helped win World War Two. Located at Bletchley Park, GCHQ built the world’s first programmable analogue computer Colossus and after the war played a vital role in both the cold war against Moscow and the war against terrorism.
Richard Aldrich is Professor of history at Warwick University.