Adapted by: Jane Rollason

Publisher: Jacquie Bloese

Editor: Sarah Silver

Designer: Mo Choy

Picture research: Pupak Navabpour

Photo credits: Page 4 & 5: D. Goodwin, A. Gallery/Alamy.Pages 6 & 7: W. Stoneman, Keystone, Fox Photos/Getty Images.Pages 58 & 59: Imango, J. Sullivan/Getty Images; gremlin, D. Marchal/iStockphoto.

© BBP Imitation, LLC

Published by Scholastic Ltd. 2015

Mary Glasgow Magazines (Scholastic Ltd.)Euston House24 Eversholt StreetLondon NW1 1DB

All rights reserved.

Printed in Singapore

Contents Page

The Imitation Game 4–57

People & Places 4–5

The Second World War 6–7

Chapter 1 War 8

Chapter 2 Enigma 12

Chapter 3 ‘Lunch, Alan?’ 16

Chapter 4 Machine against machine 19

Chapter 5 The crossword puzzle 22

Chapter 6 Getting nowhere 25

Chapter 7 People code 31

Chapter 8 ‘You’re fired’ 34

Chapter 9 ‘Will you marry me?’ 38

Chapter 10 ‘Heil Hitler’ 40

Chapter 11 ‘You’re not God’ 44

Chapter 12 A spy in Hut 8 48

Chapter 13 ‘You have won!’ 52

Chapter 14 Manchester 55

Epilogue 57

Fact File: Breaking codes 58–59

Self-Study Activities 60–63

New Words 64

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PEOPLE AND PLACES

4 5

Places

alan Turing is a brilliant mathematician.

He is a professor at Cambridge and very good at code breaking.

Joan clarke is also a brilliant mathematician.

She works in a university.

commander dennisTon is an important officer in charge

of the country’s warships.

sTewarT menzies is the head of MI6. ‘MI’ means Military

Intelligence, which means spies. The people at MI6 were Britain’s spies.

HugH alexander becomes head of the team of code

breakers at Bletchley Park.

JoHn cairncross and PeTer HilTon are also

in the Bletchley team.

BleTcHley Park is a country house near the town of Milton Keynes, north-west of London. During the Second World War, it was Britain’s code breaking centre.

There were several huts, or long, low buildings, around the main house at Bletchley. Each hut had a number. The Enigma team works in Hut 8 and has a workshop in Hut 11. The workers go to the Beer Hut to drink beer, dance and spend their free time.

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The Second World War

THe war in THe aTlanTic The Germans knew the Americans were helping the Allies by sending food and equipment across the Atlantic Ocean. They believed that Britain would lose the war if the ships did not arrive. There were hundreds of German U-boats in the Atlantic Ocean. A U-boat was a warship that could hide underwater for several hours. The Allies did not know where the U-boats were until they attacked.

The Second World War started on September the 1st, 1939 when Adolf Hitler ordered the German army into Poland. It ended in Europe on May the 25th, 1945 and in Japan three months later.

Wartime leaders

Adolf Hitler, Chancellor of Nazi Germany

Josef Stalin, General Secretary of the Soviet Union

Winston Churchill, Prime Minister of Britain

Europe in 1940

More than 100 countries took part in the war, so it really was a ‘world’ war. Over 60 million people died, which was 3% of everyone alive in 1939. There were two sides.

Great Britain

France

Italy

Spain

Soviet Union (Russia)

AtlAntIc OceAn

Germany Poland

AlliesAxis and occupied* countriesneutral (not on either side)

* Areas where the Germans took control during the war.

The Allies The main countries fighting against Hitler’s Nazis were Great Britain, Russia (then called the Soviet Union) and France. When the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor in the Unites States in December 1941, America joined the war on the Allied side. Until then, they had sent food and equipment to Europe in ships to help the Allies.

The Axis countries The main countries on the Axis side were Germany, Italy and Japan. Other countries joined later. The Germans sent all their messages through the Enigma machine. This machine turned the messages into a code, so that enemies could not read them. At the beginning of the war, everyone believed this code was impossible to break.

Ships from the US bringing goods to the Allies

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A young man of twenty-seven walked through the family groups on Platform 5, where a train waited. He didn’t seem to notice the sea of sadness around him as he climbed onto the train. Like the children, he carried a suitcase. In his pocket was a ticket to a place called Bletchley.

As the man searched for an empty seat, he noticed a boy aged about nine. While the other children around him were shouting and laughing, this boy was quietly doing a crossword puzzle. For the first time that day, the man smiled. ‘Just like me,’ he thought.

An hour later, the man left the train at Bletchley. He walked through the pretty village until he came to some high metal gates and a sign that said, ‘Bletchley Radio Company’. Two men in uniform with guns stepped forward.

The man showed them his letter from the government, and they opened the gates. He walked up a road to a large country house. In the gardens around it were long, low huts, each with a number above the door. The place was busy, with people going in and out of the buildings, many carrying files.

The man went into the house and soon found himself sitting alone in front of a large desk in a large office. He waited.

Suddenly the door opened and an officer came in. He had grey hair and looked unfriendly.

‘What are you doing in my office?’ he asked rudely.‘The secretary told me to wait,’ answered the man.‘In my office?’ said the officer, surprised. He didn’t

believe him. ‘Who are you?’‘Alan Turing.’ ‘Ah, you’re the mathematician.’

Chapter 1 War

On September the 1st, 1939, Adolf Hitler, leader of Nazi Germany, sent his army into Poland. He received a message from Britain and France. It said: ‘You must order your army to leave Poland.’ Hitler did not order his army to leave Poland.

On September the 3rd, 1939, people all over Britain sat close to their radios as Prime Minister, Neville Chamberlain spoke. ‘I have to tell you now that this country is at war with Germany.’

The Second World War had started.

* * *Euston station in London was crowded with city children. They were carrying small suitcases and soft toys, and saying goodbye to their parents. Britain was at war, and the children were going to safer parts of the country, away from the German planes and their bombs.

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The officer picked up some notes from his desk. ‘You are a professor at Cambridge University,’ he read aloud. ‘It says here you were a young genius in the maths department.’

‘I don’t think I was a genius,’ said Alan. ‘You became a professor at twenty-four, but you weren’t

a genius?’‘Think of other scientists. Isaac Newton made his great

discovery at twenty-two. Albert Einstein changed the world before he was twenty-six. I’m hardly on the same level as them, Mr... er?’

‘Commander Denniston,’ said the older man. ‘And you want to help your country win the war, Mr Turing?’

‘Not really. I don’t know anything about politics,’ said Alan. He always said what he thought, even when it was the wrong thing to say. ‘And I don’t like violence.’

‘Then we’ll say goodbye, Mr Turing,’ replied Commander Denniston angrily.

This wasn’t the answer he wanted to hear. He stood up and walked to the door.

‘Mother says I can be difficult sometimes,’ said Alan. ‘Because I’m the best mathematician in the world.’

Denniston looked back at the young man. ‘Are you?’ he said.

‘Oh yes,’ said Alan. ‘And I’m excellent at crossword puzzles. The German codes are puzzles. Games. Just like any other game.’

‘Crossword puzzles!’ Denniston shook his head. He thought Alan was trying to be funny. ‘Have a nice trip back to Cambridge, professor,’ he said, opening the door.

Then Alan Turing said one word. ‘Enigma.’ Denniston shut the door again.‘Enigma,’ Alan repeated. ‘An ‘enigma’ of course is

a kind of puzzle. It’s also the name of the Nazi coding machine. Here at Bletchley, you’re trying to break the German Enigma machine.’

Denniston was very surprised. How did Turing know what was happening at Bletchley?

‘Tell me what you know,’ said Denniston.Enigma was a code machine, Alan explained. The

Germans used it for all their war messages. The Allies intercepted the messages, but they were in code. If the Allies broke the Enigma code, they could follow every move that their enemy made.

‘Enigma isn’t difficult,’ said Commander Denniston. ‘It’s impossible. It can’t be broken.’

‘Good,’ said Alan. ‘Let me try. Then we’ll know for sure. I like solving problems, Commander. And Enigma is the most difficult problem in the world.’

Denniston looked hard at Alan Turing. He really didn’t like this Cambridge professor, and he didn’t understand him. But he needed him, and they both knew it.

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Chapter 2 Enigma

The machine on the table didn’t look like anything special. It wasn’t much different from an ordinary typewriter. But seven men stood around it, unable to take their eyes off it.

‘Welcome to Enigma,’ said Commander Denniston. ‘The Germans use this machine to turn every message they send into code. Information about every surprise attack on our ships in the Atlantic Ocean by German U-boats goes into that thing and comes out ... as gibberish.’

‘It’s beautiful,’ said Alan, touching the machine.‘Here at Bletchley,’ continued the commander, ‘we

intercept thousands of radio messages every day. But they are all gibberish. You can only understand them when you feed them back into the Enigma machine.’

One of the other men spoke. He was a Scot called John Cairncross, and he was puzzled. ‘But we have an Enigma machine,’ he said.

‘Yes,’ said Denniston. ‘A Polish spy managed to bring it out of Berlin.’

‘So what’s the problem?’ asked John. ‘Just put the messages in ...’

‘It’s not that simple,’ said Alan. ‘You need an Enigma machine. But you also need the settings.’

‘Correct, Mr Turing,’ said Denniston. ‘The Germans change the settings every day, at midnight. And new settings mean a completely new code. We intercept our first message at 6 am. So we have exactly eighteen hours to break the code before it changes, and then we start again.’

The six highly intelligent men looked at the machine’s keys, all trying to work out the number of possible settings.

‘Over 150 million million million,’ said Alan, first with the answer.

‘One hundred and fifty-nine, to be exact,’ said a tall, good-looking man. ‘And if we had ten men checking one setting a minute, twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, it would take twenty million years to break the code. And, as Commander Denniston said, we only have eighteen hours.’

Alan was surprised by the man’s speed.‘Meet Hugh Alexander, a brilliant mathematician and

your team leader,’ said Denniston. Alan looked uncomfortably around the circle of men.‘Are we working together, then?’ Alan asked. ‘I prefer

to have my own office. I don’t have time to explain my work as I go along.’

At this point, a man came out of a dark corner. Nobody had noticed him.

‘If you can’t play together,’ said the new man, ‘then you can’t play at all.’

Everyone turned to look at him. ‘My name is Stewart Fo

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