Is Alan Turing's effort code-breaking effort to the war exaggerated?

From Roman Töppel "Die Offensive gegen Kursk Legenden "

P 15
"Im Operationsbefehl Nr 6 heisst es ,der früheste Angriffstermin sei der 3. May " Operational order nr 6 mentioned that the earliest attack date was 3 may .

5 16 : " Gegen 18 Uhr geht ... die fernschriftliche Mitteilung ein,dass der Führer über die Durchführung von Zitadelle entschieden habe " (Diary of the 9th Army of 20 june 1943) At 06 PM there was a telex message that Hitler had decided to execute Citadel.

Thus the decision was made on 20 june ,2 months after the Weichs paper .

 

Just my final words about the comparison of treatment of homosexuals in Germany vs. England:

If I were given the choice between castration and a cyanide capsule, I would have certainly chosen the cyanide capsule. Is a life of castrate worth living?

Perhaps Turing was a genius, but he made a wrong choice - he first has decided for castration as a seemingly better option and then took a capsule after testing the life of a castrate. A genius should have decided for a cyanide capsule without any consideration whatsoever. So he died miserably, without the bollocks.

In short, the country he has protected fiercely during the war has treated him indecently and made his life so miserable that he has decided to commit a suicide. Period.

Finally, Germans and Britons behaved barbarically with homosexuals - it is impossible to say: we were less barbarian. That is like if a whore claims that she is a better woman because she takes just six clients per day while the average whore has 8 1/2 clients in the same period of time.

 

Again you are letting your own fantasies about the subject get completely out of hand.

1. Chemical castration does not leave a person without testes.

2. He was never, as you imply, offered a choice between cyanide or chemical castration.

The verdict, was guilty (Turing himself admitted to the deeds he was accused of).

The sentence was 12 months probation and to submit to a duly qualified medical practitioner at Manchester Royal Infirmary.


The incidence rate of suicide due to social pressures and feelings of self-loathing are much higher in homosexuals in most western cultures.

Consider the remarkable story of Botho Laserstein, a straight German Jew Attorney that fought against Germany's §175 (the law that criminalised homosexuality) in post war Germany.

Forced into early retirement at the ripe old age of 54, he too, ended up killing himself.

So while post war Germany may be considered equally "barabaric" (to use your terminology) as the United Kingdom, Nazi Germany was so far worse, there really is no comparison.

Therein lies the problem; your repeated attempts to re-label Nazi German crimes against humanity, by pointing out flaws in other western societies. We admit the flaws, but Nazi Germany was well beyond "flawed", with forced incarceration, castration, brutalization, and experimentation.

Any attempt to apply your analogy to Nazi Germany is desperately flawed.

 

Churchill acquired and sent information about Barbarossa to Stalin, though he refused to accept it. SInce this is true, I see no reason that Churchill would not do the same later in the war. It was in his interest to keep the soviets in the war. I know the allies gathered information and due to the above evidence I see no reason why relevant info would not be sent again. The issue was more what would Stalin trust, since he normally only relied on raw intel and except in rare occasions like Sorge would not trust reports
As far as the one source you quoted, until we actually can see what in the archives to state that nothing was received is not supportable

 

That Churchill acquired and sent information about Barbarossa to Stalin does not mean that this information was relevant and that it was useful for Stalin.It was not :it was even worthless . For Barbarossa and for Citadel .

The only indication for a nearing German attack was the arrival of the 25 German mobile divisions on the border with the SU;they arrived at the border only during the last days and neither the GRU neither BP were able to detect this arrival ,and if it was detected, it would have made no difference,given the bad situation of the Red Army .

About Sorge : Stalin did not believe him, and he was right . What Sorge was saying was worthless .

 

Alan Turing is probably following this debate from on high and wondering what he and his colleagues have unleashed. From the basic principle of breaking codes to obtain information to aid the allies. They met their part part of the deal, so to answer the question at the top of this thread the answer must be no. He was given a task and delivered.

How this information was used is another story, about other people and nothing to do with Alan Turing and colleagues. If there are concerns on how useful the information proved to be it is perhaps against their names the question marks need to be put.

As for dragging his sexuality in to this debate shows the gutter press lives even within these pages, relevant to his life, yes, relevant to the topic, no.

 

LJAD, Stalin had plenty of warnings from multiple sources. He had plenty of time to organize his troops and prepare for an attack. I suppose you think the US
should not have used the intel at the battle of Midway

 

That was neither my intention nor my point. What I have addressed was that as soon as interests of plutocracy were saved, Average Tommy became disposable. Alan touring was one of the "Gees That laid the Golden Eggs" for the interests of empire and was crushed like a worm when it was discovered that he privately behaved against the two-faced rules of hypocrite society.

 

"...two-faced rules of hypocrite society"?

Do pray tell...

 

What an absurd statement. One of the most useful things you can get is knowledge of what your opponent thinks the situation is as well as what he expects your actions or reactions to be.

Again your assumptions and logic in no way support your conclusions.

Ditto

 

For the love of all that is holy please don't.

 

Would the US have lost at Midway without the codebreakers ?

 

Thanks Belasar. Now let’s get back to the real subject of this conversation.

Contribution of Alan Turing is much greater than just his crucial contribution to code breaking but he is praised for wrong reason - invention of computer. Even the present day computer would have needed prohibitively long time to solve the Enigma problem by using just »brute force« approach. What Turing really did brilliantly was his »pruning« of solution space by eliminating whole long chains of wrong solutions without actually evaluating them. By the use of Turing’s clever algorithm, even such a weak machine as the Colossus was able to deliver solutions in reasonable time. After the war, Turing developed an algorithm for playing chess even though at that time there were no computers - you had to apply his algorithm with a pencil and a sheet of paper but it worked. Computer, such as it is today was invented later. Turing's machine is a bit different.
So, the answer to the question of the opening post is:
It is impossible to exaggerate Turing's contribution to efforts of code breaking. Without him the Gees would have laid much less Golden Eggs.

 

It would certainly have been a different battle with probably considerably different outcome. The carriers may not even have been engaged. Not sure if this line of discussion is on topic though.

 

Well LJAD, the US would not have been in position to ambush the Japanese with out intel so if you think that's worthless well then you have no understanding of war. As far as Sorge, the fact that he was warning Stalin an attack was coming is not worthless and that the fact that you think shows your complete and utter lack of understanding of what intel is about

 

What Sorge said WAS WORTHLESS, because he had NO PROOFS at all for his claims .And he could have no proofs,because he was on the other side of the globe,where were living only a few Germans, who were cut of from all informations about a German attack on the SU .Hitler had expressively forbidden to inform Japan about Barbarossa .Thus, if no Japanese knew about Barbarossa, why should any German living in Japan know about Barbarossa ?

If during the autumn of 1941 a Japanese working at the Japanese embassy in Rome,but working for the OSS,would tell that Japan would attack the USA,without further informations, NO ONE in Washington would believe him ,and rightly, because this information was worthless .

 

Let me join this interesting of-topic conversation.

Similarly, a German spy Tillo Schmidt has revealed to the Allies on March 10, 1940 that Hitler would attack through the Ardennes towards Sedan. This information was ignored. (1)
This blunder has not received as much attention compared to Sorge information. Such biased approach to historical facts just underlines that the whole Sorge affair is propaganda exaggeration.

(1) Notre espion chez Hitler documentaire de Laurent Bergers et Alain Frerejean, Label Image, 2015

 

The Sorge thing surfaced during the "war" between Stalinists and anti-Stalinists in the SU at the end of the fifties,when people also started to ask questions about the defeats of the Red Army in the summer of 1941: the answer of the army and the Nikita gang was to blame Stalin (otherwise people would blame the army ) :Zhukov and Nikita said that the GRU had warned Stalin ,but that this stupid one had ignored the warnings, and thus that the Stalinists had no right to come back .

It was the same in Germany after the war : the generals said that the Abwehr had warned Hitler for Stalingrad, Bagration, Overlord,for everything but that Der Führer,the Bohemian corporal ignored the warnings .

In both cases, the dead ones (Stalin/Hitler ) were blamed for the defeats,while the survivors (Manstein, Zhukow ) claimed the victories .

About Tillo Schmidt ,the French had already accepted before the war the possibiliy that the Germans would launch an attack through the Ardennes between the Meuse and Sedan, and their conclusion was that they could /had to stop the Germans at the Meuse .

They were not surprised about the attack (which was in fact secundary) but the calculation that they could stop the Germans,was wrong .

 

Tillo was also the younger brother of Rudolph (general of the army) and when the SIPO found some highly critical letters about Adolf from Rudolph, the career of Rudolph was over .

 

Thanks LJAd!

I don't understand why some members talk about your "ignorance". Perhaps because you tell quite frankly the unpleasant truth.