AJune 14 2015
The Boston Globe, Boston, Massachusetts, Sunday, June 14, 2015
Chess Notes
By Harold Dondis and Chris Chase
A view of the film “The Imitation Game”—which depicts the life and tragic persecution of Alan Turing, whose code-breaking machine was instrumental in decoding the German Enigma code gave us a sensation of deja vu. It awakened the remembrance of the remarkable contribution of British chess players to the miracle of decodification.
At the outbreak of World War II, British chess players, Hugh Alexander (also known as C.H.O'D. Alexander), Stuart Milner-Barry, and Harry Golombek were on the British team competing in the 1939 Olympiad in Argentina. Braving German submarines, they immediately left the tournament and returned to England.
Milner-Barry was asked to join a group known as the Government Code and Cypher School at Bletchley Park to aid in intelligence work known as Ultra. He in turn solicited Alexander to join the group.
Alexander and Milner-Barry were part of the team working on cracking the Germans' supposedly unbreakable Enigma code. They had made some progress but were limited in their resources.
They joined Turing and another in writing a direct appeal to Winston Churchill, delivered by Milner-Barry. Churchill reacted immediately. He wrote to subordinates: “Action this day: Make sure they have all they want on extreme priority and report to me that this has been done.”
Churchill checked monthly on Ultra. Milner-Barry was in charge of finding “cribs,” partial replications of the machine that aided in identification of words. These were useful in Turing's machine. Alexander, second to Turing, took administrative control of the work at Bletchley. Enigma was solved temporarily, though not fully, and its information was critical in the sea, air, and land war effort.
Alexander was twice British chess champion and won a famous victory against world champion Mikhail Botvinnik. Milner-Barry has three chess opening variations named for him.
The tale of the chess players' contributions to the war effort should be remembered.
