The strong and special relationship between the people of the United States and Great Britain (H.Res.549)

So I'm in the middle of reading this book, Citizens of London: The Americans who Stood with Britain in its Darkest, Finest Hour, which outlines the U.S. government's reluctance to join England in its fight against the Germans during World War II. I was a little surprised by this, considering that I often read and hear about the "special relationship" between the two countries. But apparently, that cooperation only developed within the past century, which of course makes sense, considering the United States ultimately rejected that whole colonization effort on the part of the United Kingdom not too long ago.

In fact, the "special relationship" has its roots in World War II, partially because of some covert collaboration in the office of Cmdr. Alexander Denniston at Bletchley Park on Feb. 8, 1941, when U.S. and U.K. officials met in the dead of night to share secret information about German and Japanese ciphers. At the end of the same year, Japan bombed Pearl Harbor, and by 1942, Americans were posted at the U.K. military installation to help break coded messages created by Germany's Enigma machine.

At Blechley Park, docents explain the parts of an original Enigma machine, a typewriter-like device that used rotors and electrical circuits to create encrypted messages (left). The Bombes ultimately used to crack the Enigma codes were destroyed at the end of the war to preserve the secrecy of the operation, but engineers constructed a rebuilt Bombe for the park's museum (right). Docents go to great lengths to point out that the Bombe is not a computer; it did not calculate codes, per se, but instead verified whether analysts' guesses, or "cribs," about the encryptions were correct.

 

This fine distinction is not made crystal clear in the recent film The Imitation Game, which was partially filmed at the park. The canteen in the movie was re-created in the mansion's ballroom (left). Other props from the film, including a fake Bombe and Alan Turing's desk, are on display in a special exhibit at the other end of the ballroom (right). As stated in explanatory materials, the movie's emphasis reflects the opinion of historians that the contribution of humans, not machines, is what ended the war two years earlier than it would have without Turing and his team.

 

Turing was among the many mathematicians who at some point lived and worked out of the Cottages (left). Now, that area of park is dedicated to remembering the Polish contribution to early code-breaking efforts; in these buildings were mass-produced the Zygalski sheets, the first so-called "cribs" created to outwit the Enigma machine. After the machine was completely defeated, the operation to decode messages was based out of the Mansion, where Women's Auxiliary Air Force employees used teleprinters to type out messages for Winston Churchill and the British government (right).

 

After the war, on March 5, 1946, officials from both sides signed the UKUSA Agreement, a pact to continue sharing intelligence that lasted through the Cold War and continues today as the foundation of the two countries' "special relationship."