Women Code Breakers: The Best Kept Secret of WWII

Embedded within military intelligence and communications, wartime cryptography was a man’s world filled with engineers, mathematicians, statisticians, military tacticians, political scientists, and linguists.But women working top-secret desk jobs played an integral role. They helped shorten the length of the war, saving countless lives in the process. Bringing to light the quiet heroism of female code breakers of WWII, learn about these exceptional women who saved lives and changed the tide of the greatest war in human history. Even as they applied themselves to complicated counterintelligence work and labored daily alongside their male colleagues, they fought an uphill battle on many different fronts, inside and outside the office. Their stories and accomplishments have remained firmly under the radar—often missing from official documentation, history books, public lore, and public awareness. The British feat of breaking the German Enigma code at Bletchley Park has been celebrated in popular culture in various books and movies, but the stories of many women who worked to break codes in the complex world of cryptography remain relatively untold. Learn the true stories of female code breakers whose top-secret work helped win World War II, including: ? Elizebeth Friedman, Joan Clarke, Violet MacKenzie and other great minds working for the Allied forces from the US, UK and Australia—all trailblazers in the field of cryptography ? a simple rundown on cryptography as a science, the history of its use, and what it took to break wartime codes ? the legacy of these exceptional women, and the impact of their work. Despite the constant need to prove themselves, these brilliant women never thought of themselves as heroes.