The Enigma Girls: How Ten Teenagers Broke Ciphers, Kept Secrets, and Helped Win World War II by Candace Fleming is an outstanding contribution to the history of World War II. Fleming tells the true story of the Girls who worked secretly at Bletchley Park, a World War II cryptology center in Britain. “There the team gathered intelligence of the most crucial nature. They strove to outwit the Nazis and break into German codes and ciphers.”
The hundreds of Girls, some of them as young as sixteen, and young women who worked there struggled to decode the messages sent by the Nazi forces. In doing so they made a major impact on the outcome of the war. Some estimates concluded that the work at Bletchley Park shortened the war by two years.
When they went to work at Bletchely Park, each of the workers were told, “You will never mention the name of this place, not to your family, not to your friends, not to anyone you may meet… You will never disclose to anyone the nature of the work you will be doing. Nor will you mention anything about the location of the place.” Each worker had to sign a document. They were told, “This is the Official Secrets Act. It clearly states that if you disclose the slightest information about this place or you work… you will committing TREASON.”
For that reason no one told about their war work or the place where they worked until many years later.
So the outstanding accomplishments of the young women at Bletchley Park during the War were kept secret until “1977, when the British government released seventy thousand intelligence documents related to the work done at the Park.” After that, at least some of the women broke their silence and wrote books about their experiences at Bletchley Park. Fleming uses those accounts as the primary sources for her book. Her extensive bibliography lists those books as well as many other books, articles, documents, and videos for the basis of her account.
Fleming focuses on ten of the girls and their experiences. Some of them spoke another language, some were brilliant at math. They ran the difficult decoding machines, unraveled the decoded messages and made sense of the wireless sound waves. Fleming skillfully weaves the stories of the girls’ work and personal experiences into the account of what was happening in the war. Several chapters labeled “TOP SECRET, If You Were a Code and Cipher Breaker: Deciphering a Message,” give readers a chance to practice their own code breaking. Fleming ends one of those chapters with: “As a cryptographer you will need to be patient and dogged. You will need the willingness to try again and again. And you will have to work quickly. You have only twenty-four hours to break a Nazi cipher.”
Fleming is a master at her craft who has received many awards for her books. However, this book is the best of the best. Primary source documents, photographs of people and the machines add to the reader’s understanding. Young people in grades six through twelve will be riveted by the story of these amazing young people.–Recommended by Marilyn Carpenter, Professor, Emeritus Eastern Washington University
Title: The Enigma Girls
Author: Candace Fleming
ISBN: 978-1338749571
Pub. Date: March 5, 2024
Publisher: Scholastic Focus
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- Themes: Candace Fleming, Enigma Girls, Marilyn Carpenter
- Descriptors: WOW Recommends