80 years since the Landings: how the Allies fooled the Nazi defense on June 6, 1944

80 years ago, on June 6, 1944, the Allies managed to deceive the Nazi defense. It all begins in a corner of the countryside north of London. Bletchley Park, a Victorian mansion, was transformed during the war into the headquarters of British intelligence and communications. “This place is then run like a factory, people work there 24 hours a day”, reports historian Thomas Cheetham. 8,000 Britons, mainly women, devote themselves to decryption. They all uncover the secret of Enigma, the German coding machine.

Several thousand messages are decrypted daily. The English now read enemy communications like an open book. The success of operations relies on secrecy. At Bletchley Park, a poster warns: “Thousands of lives have been lost due to careless conversations”others say “keep the secret”. According to some historians, Winston Churchill writes of the staff at Bletchley Park as “geese that lay golden eggs and never cackle.”