On this site you will find all the German U-boats of both World Wars, their commanding officers and operations including all Allied ships attacked, technological information and much more. You can also browse our large photo gallery and thousands of U-boat books and movies. While hundreds of U-boats were lost some of the boats are preserved as museums today.

We also have a huge section covering the Allied forces and their struggle with the U-boat threat - not to mention the Pacific war. Included there are all the Allied Warships and thousands of Allied Commanding officers from all the major navies (US Navy, Royal Navy, ...) plus technical pages and information on the air forces.

On January 17, 1961, in this farewell address, President Dwight Eisenhower warned against the establishment of a "military-industrial complex."

In a speech of less than 10 minutes, on January 17, 1961, President Dwight Eisenhower delivered his political farewell to the American people on national television from the Oval Office of the White House. Those who expected the military leader and hero of World War II to depart his Presidency with a nostalgic, "old soldier" speech like Gen. Douglas MacArthur's, were surprised at his strong warnings about the dangers of the "military-industrial complex."

As President of the United States for two terms, Eisenhower had slowed the push for increased defense spending despite pressure to build more military equipment during the Cold War’s arms race. Nonetheless, the American military services and the defense industry had expanded a great deal in the 1950s. Eisenhower thought this growth was needed to counter the Soviet Union, but it confounded him. Though he did not say so explicitly, his standing as a military leader helped give him the credibility to stand up to the pressures of this new, powerful interest group. He eventually described it as a necessary evil.

A vital element in keeping the peace is our military establishment. Our arms must be mighty, ready for instant action, so that no potential aggressor may be tempted to risk his own destruction. . . . American makers of plowshares could, with time and as required, make swords as well. But now we can no longer risk emergency improvisation of national defense; we have been compelled to create a permanent armaments industry of vast proportions. . . . This conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. . . .Yet we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications. . . . In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.

Less than a year before the end of World War II, then-U.S. Secretary of the Treasury Henry Morgenthau drew up a nightmarish plan to punish postwar Germany.

After the serial 1870-1871 Franco-Prussian War, World War I, and World War II—along with the failed Versailles peace treaty of 1919—the Allies in World War II wanted to ensure there would never again be an aggressive Germany powerful enough to invade its neighbors.

When the so-called Morgenthau Plan was leaked to the press in September 1944, at first it was widely praised. After all, it would supposedly render Germany incapable of ever starting another world war in Europe.

Morgenthau certainly envisioned a Carthaginian peace, designed to ensure a permanently deindustrialized, unarmed, and pastoral Germany. //

When the dying Nazi Party got wind of the plan, Adolf Hitler’s propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels had a field day. He screamed to Germans that they were all doomed to oblivion if they lost the war, even growing opponents of the Nazi Party.

Even many Americans were aghast at the plan.

Gen. George Marshall, the Army chief of staff, warned that its mere mention had galvanized German troops to fight to the end, increasing American casualties as they closed in on the German homeland.

Ex-President Herbert Hoover blasted the plan as inhumane. He feared mass starvation of the German people if they were reduced to a premodern, rural peasantry.

But once the victorious allies occupied a devastated Germany, witnessed its moonscape ruined by massive bombing and house-to-house fighting, and discovered that their “ally” Russia’s Josef Stalin was ruthless and hellbent on turning all of Europe communist, the Harry Truman administration backed off the plan.

There is a tragic footnote to the aborted horrors of the Morgenthau Plan. Currently, Germany is doing to itself almost everything Morgenthau once dreamed of.

Its green delusions have shut down far too many of its nuclear, coal, and gas electrical generation plants.

Erratic solar and wind “sustainable energy” means that power costs are four times higher than on average in the United States.

Once-dominant European giants Volkswagen, BMW, and Mercedes are now bleeding customers and profits. Their own government’s green and electric vehicle mandates ensure they will become globally uncompetitive.

The German economy actually shrank in 2023. And the diminished Ruhr can no longer save the German economy from its own utopian politicians.

The German military is all but disarmed and short thousands of recruits.

German industries do not produce enough ammunition, tanks, ships, and aircraft to equip even its diminished army, navy, and air force. //

After World War II, the Truman administration rejected the notion of a pastoral, deindustrialized, and insecure Germany as a cruel prescription for poverty, hunger, and depopulation.

But now the German people themselves voted for their own updated version of Morgenthau’s plan—as they willingly reduced factory hours, curtailed power and fuel supplies, and struggled with millions of illegal aliens and porous borders.

Germans accept that they have no military to speak of that could protect their insecure borders—without a United States-led NATO.

Eighty years ago, Germany’s former conquerors rejected wrecking the defeated nation as too harsh. But now Germany is willfully pastoralizing, disarming, deindustrializing—and destroying—itself.

“This is a strange Christmas Eve. Almost the whole world is locked in deadly struggle…. [B]efore we turn again to the stern task and the formidable year that lie before us, resolved that, by our sacrifice and daring, these same children shall not be robbed of their inheritance or denied their right to live in a free and decent world.” //

OwenKellogg-Engineer | December 25, 2024 at 6:09 am
I just finished reading “The Splendid and the Vile” by Erik Larson, about Churchills first year as PM (May 1940-May 1941). What an incredible insight into one of the 20th Century’s most prominent figure. He truly understood that the freedom of western civilization was at stake.

My, how we have slipped away in such a short period of time…..

The 51 Factory has been established with the goals of supporting the legendary P51 Mustang, British Spitfire, and other Rolls Royce or Packard Merlin powered aircraft of the WWII era.

These superb aircraft powered by 1650 cubic inch, over 1500 hp, liquid cooled V-12 engines, represented some of the most advanced technologies of the day, and most certainly greatly contributed to the allied victory, both in the Pacific, and in Europe.

The fighters developed in WWII are the pinnacle of piston engine, propeller driven aircraft performance. Even today, the fastest piston engine aircraft in the world are modified WWII fighters with Rolls Royce/Packard Merlin V-12’s, as seen at the annual Reno Air Races.

The bomb caused runway damage and cancelled 80 flights. Thankfully it did not hurt anyone. //

Blackwing1 | October 2, 2024 at 2:36 pm
I so much want to insert a clip from “Falling Hare” where Bugs Bunny meets the Gremlin, who is pounding the nose of a bomb with a giant sledgehammer, and tells him, “To make these block-buster bombs go off, you have to hit them JUUUUUST right.” //

Hodge in reply to scooterjay. | October 2, 2024 at 3:06 pm
Nice math but you are way under-estimating just how many bombs were dropped during the War.

“World War II ended more than 79 years ago. But remnants of the intense airstrikes across Japan keep surfacing occasionally. The Self-Defense Forces reported that during the fiscal year 2023 alone, they disposed of 2,348 bombs, weighing a total of 41 tons.”

https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/travel/travel-news/japans-miyazaki-airport-shuts-after-wwii-era-bomb-explosion-87-flights-cancelled/articleshow/113876737.cms //

TargaGTS in reply to Joe-dallas. | October 2, 2024 at 1:38 pm
The wife and I went sailing around Denmark & Germany (through the Kiel Canal) in 2019. We tied up next to a weird looking Danish navy ship. So, I introduced myself to one of the sailors and asked what kind of ship it was. It was a bomb disposal ship. It’s outfitted with MADs (like what we use to detect subs underwater) and specialty sonar and it spends the year looking for unexploded WWII ordnance…and finds a LOT of it every year. They’ve even found WWI mustard gas shells. They apparently have similar land-based units that do the same thing. The ground is so soft in that part of Europe (probably not unlike where that airport sits), that these 500-lb would simply bury themselves meters-deep into the soil and sit there until some unsuspecting farmer or developer hit it with machinery. //

Hodge in reply to Joe-dallas. | October 2, 2024 at 2:52 pm
“Quite a few” is quite an understatement –

The zone rouge (English: red zone) is a chain of non-contiguous areas throughout northeastern France that the French government isolated after the First World War.

The zone rouge was defined just after the war as “Completely devastated. Damage to properties: 100%. Damage to Agriculture: 100%. Impossible to clean. Human life impossible”.

Each year, numerous unexploded shells are recovered from former WWI battlefields in what is known as the iron harvest. According to the Sécurité Civile, the French agency in charge of the land management of Zone Rouge, 300 to 700 more years at this current rate will be needed to clean the area completely. Some experiments conducted in 2005–06 discovered up to 300 shells per hectare (120 per acre) in the top 15 centimeters (5.9 inches) of soil in the worst areas.

At the start of WWII, the US armed forces used various means for enciphering their confidential traffic. At the lowest level were hand ciphers. Above that were the M-94 and M-138 strip ciphers and at the top level a small number of highly advanced SIGABA cipher machines.

The Americans used the strip ciphers extensively however these were not only vulnerable to cryptanalysis but also difficult to use. Obviously a more modern and efficient means of enciphering was needed.

At that time Swedish inventor Boris Hagelin was trying to sell his cipher machines to foreign governments. He had already sold versions of his C-36, C-38 and B-211 cipher machines to European countries. He had also visited the United States in 1937 and 1939 in order to promote his C-36 machine and the electric C-38 with a keyboard called BC-38 but he was not successful (1). The Hagelin C-36 had 5 pin-wheels and the lugs on the drum were fixed in place. Hagelin modified the device by adding another pin-wheel and making the lugs moveable. This new machine was called Hagelin C-38 and it was much more secure compared to its predecessor.

In 1940 he brought to the US two copies of the hand operated C-38 and the Americans ordered 50 machines for evaluation. Once the devices were delivered, they underwent testing by the cryptologists of the Army’s Signal Intelligence Service and after approval it was adopted by the US armed forces for their midlevel traffic. Overall, more than 140.000 M-209’s were built for the US forces by the L.C. Smith and Corona Typewriters Company. (2) //

‘Report of interview with S/Sgt, Communications Section 79 Inf Div, 7th Army’. (dated March 1945) (51):

"The US Army code machine #209 was found to be something that hampered operations. It would take at least half hour to get a message through from the message center by use of this code machine and as a result the codes of particular importance or speed, for instance mortar messages, were sent in the clear."

Also, from the ‘Immediate report No. 126 (Combat Observations)’ - dated 6 May 1945 (52): ‘Information on the tactical situation is radioed or telephoned from the regiments to corps at hourly or more frequent intervals. Each officer observer averages about 30 messages per day.………………The M-209 converter proved too slow, cumbersome and inaccurate for transmission of those reports and was replaced by a simple prearranged message code with excellent results’.

Buchanan documents, as have others before him, that both the First and Second World Wars are primarily the product of wretchedly incompetent management of international relations on the part of Britain, France, Germany, and others. //

Most readers, myself included, will not buy all of Buchanan's arguments. Regarding the fecklessness of European diplomacy, and the causes of the First World War, I think that Buchanan is on solid ground. Other researchers before Buchanan have found the First World War to have been an avoidable tragedy that the European states should have been able to avoid. Buchanan's Second World War arguments are somewhat more problematic. //

Buchanan makes a pretty good case that Hitler was an opportunist, and that he was not without justification in seeking return of the Sudetenland and of Bohemia. Had he stopped there, and negotiated return of Danzig without war (which Buchanan says would have happened absent the British guaranty) we might be living in a very different world. Who can say?

Personally, I still think that Hitler was determined to fight a bloody war against Russia and persecute the Jews and other nationalities and ethnicities that he hated. Ultimately, it seems that Hitler was bound to fight such a war, but Buchanan makes some case that the world might have been better had Germany and Russia fought their war without the Western Allies being involved. Each reader must decide for him or her self. I don't accept this thesis. //

Mr. Buchanan's most insightful analysis is at the very end of this piece. He argues, as discussed above, that inept European diplomacy in which Great Powers went to war for non-vital reasons, was the cause of the World Wars. He then contrasts this with US diplomacy from World War I to the end of the Cold War. During this time American leaders refused to be easily drawn into conflicts and joined the World Wars only in their latter stages (particularly the First) thereby avoiding in significant degree, the horrendous casualties that many others suffered. Even more significantly, once America became the leading world power, American diplomacy repeatedly avoided war-starting confrontations by refusing, not without anguish, to fight wars for non-vital interests to America. Hence America's refusal to fight wars over Soviet interventions in Czechoslovakia and Hungary, or even the Cuban Missile Crisis. The contrast between the success of America in winning the Cold War without a World War (albeit with some sizable errors such as Vietnam) and European fecklessness in managing to start two world wars in 25 years, is stark. This is a truly fascinating insight which in my opinion is the major contribution of this book.

Christos T. • June 27, 2024 12:44 AM

@sqall:

In 1947 the US occupation authorities retrieved the files of the German Army’s codebreaking agency, called Inspectorate 7/VI. These had been buried at the end of the war in a camp in Austria.

The list of the documents that were retrieved is available from NARA as TICOM report IF-272 Tab ‘D’:
https://catalog.archives.gov/id/2811501

In page 12 of that report, it says: ‘Technische Erlaeuterung zur maschinellen Bearbeitung von AM 1 Kompromisstextloesungen auf der Texttiefe’.
The translation of that report is TICOM DF-114 ‘GERMAN CRYPTANALYTIC DEVICE FOR SOLUTION OF M-209 TRAFFIC’ and was released by the NSA to NARA in 2011 and copied and uploaded by me to Scribd and Google drive in 2012.

You can find it at NARA: https://catalog.archives.gov/id/23889821

Alternative historical fiction is a popular genre in America, where readers explore possibilities such as Napoleon deciding not to invade Russia or a Confederate victory in the Civil War, pondering the hypothetical impact on world history. In honor of Maritime Day 2024, let's consider what would have happened if the United States had fought the Second World War without a strong Merchant Marine and the tens of thousands of courageous mariners who delivered crucial supplies, troops, and weapons across dangerous waters.

It's clear: we would have lost the war or failed to achieve a decisive victory.

During WWII, an estimated 250,000 mariners served, and nearly 10,000 gave their lives, resulting in a higher per capita casualty rate than any of the armed services. Over 700 Merchant Marine ships were sunk by enemy attacks, and hundreds of mariners were held as prisoners of war.

FDR recognized the indispensable role of the Merchant Marine, which he considered the "fourth arm of defense" on par with the navy, army, and air force.
As we observe current global instability and brutal Eurasian conflicts, who will be the visionary leader and advocate who ensures the readiness of our Merchant Marine for the challenges ahead? Its current state is far from adequate. //

The distinction between admirals, generals, and media commentators who freely opine on strategy and theory neglects or casually assumes away the hard reality of logistics. Lately, the strategists have not fared well in deterring conflicts, and the logistic shortcomings in Ukraine and the Middle East are glaring. While those deficiencies are apparent, they pale in comparison to a potential war in the Pacific.

Policymakers properly acknowledge China as the pacing threat, but so few seriously consider the critical importance of logistics and the availability of highly trained and militarily obligated maritime personnel. Decades of war in the Middle East have conditioned us to the luxury of uncontested sea and airspace. We enjoyed large support bases close to combat operations. Our fleet had uninterrupted access to intact and secure port facilities. //

The People's Liberation Army knows that sealift is key to our success. While many debate the vulnerability of our aircraft carriers, they gloss over that our combat power will be short-lived without robust sealift and persistent combat logistics in a war at sea.

Regrettably, we are no longer a true maritime nation; we are now a naval nation.

China, now a bona fide maritime nation, has made significant investments in its merchant fleet and can call on over 5,000 merchant vessels during war. The US has around 80. We must expand our commercial fleet to align with our strategic interests. That means acquiring more ships and enhancing our ability to build, maintain, and quickly repair them. Above all, we cannot prevail without a significant number of merchant marine officers who are ready and obligated to serve the nation when called upon.

Ben Shapiro @benshapiro
·
What an enormously stupid and vile comment. Trump is not Hitler. And voting is not storming a beach under a hail of machine-gun fire to free millions from the tyranny of the Nazis.

Hillary Clinton @HillaryClinton
Eighty years ago today, thousands of brave Americans fought to protect democracy on the shores of Normandy.

This November, all we have to do is vote.
2:16 PM · Jun 6, 2024 //

These delusions of grandeur are astonishing and pathetic. This is what happens when people, devoid of religion and purpose in life, try to project their emptiness onto politics. No, you aren't like D-Day veterans because you showed up to vote against the bad orange man. To even suggest that is insane. That I even have to say that is a sad testament to just how far the Democratic Party has fallen. //

WestTexasBirdDog
16 hours ago
Actually Hillary is totally correct. We do need to vote this November, but not with the result she wants.

This gentleman is no less than Mad Jack Churchill, a man who went into battle with a sword, a revolver, a longbow, and bagpipes. He was one of the bravest men to ever draw breath, and thus richly deserving of our admiration. //

Determined to pursue his education in the most masculine setting possible, Jack Churchill decided he would attend university at King William’s College on the Isle of Man.

That’s right – the Isle of Man. //

After letting the Krauts get in good and close, Churchill gave the order to attack by brandishing his claymore, chucking a grenade, and bellowing, “CHARGE!” The Brits charged, led by the possibly mad Churchill and his broadsword, and routed the German patrol. When asked later by a higher-ranking officer why he insisted on carrying the Scottish sword, Churchill replied by exclaiming that any officer who goes into action without his sword is improperly dressed. //

He went on going into battle properly dressed, leading his men on a series of rear-guard and guerilla actions against the Germans until the BEF was evacuated at Dunkirk. He was wounded in the neck by a machine-gun bullet but refused evacuation and went on fighting. //

That unit landed and fought in Sicily and Salerno. In that second action, Churchill was ordered to silence a mortar position and eliminate a German observation post that controlled a pass overlooking the Salerno beachhead. Most officers would have assembled a patrol and moved on the positions with fire and maneuver in a traditional infantry operation, but not Jack Churchill. He led No. 2 Commando to encircle the German observation post, then drew his sword, brandished it, bellowed “COMMANDO!” and charged the post, easily taking it and killing or capturing the German troops. He then went on to take out the mortar post by capturing one guard, then moving on to the others in turn, shoving his Scottish sword in their faces and demanding their surrender. He later commented:

I maintain that, as long as you tell a German loudly and clearly what to do, if you are senior to him he will cry 'jawohl' (yes sir) and get on with it enthusiastically and efficiently whatever the situation. //

In May of 1944, he was ordered to raid the German-held island of Brač.
...
On the second morning of the mission, Churchill led a flanking attack on the German positions while the Partisans remained behind. By the time the Commandos reached the objective, only six were left alive, of which Churchill, still toting a rifle along with his sword and bagpipes, was one. Mortar fire swept their positions, killing all remaining members but Churchill. Out of grenades and ammo. As the Germans closed in, he stood and began playing Will Ye No Come Again on his bagpipes until a grenade knocked him unconscious.

The Germans, noting the name on this identity disk and incorrectly assuming a family connection to the British Prime Minister, sent him to Berlin. There he was interrogated until, in frustration of having learned nothing from the stalwart officer, the Germans sent him to the Sachsenhausen concentration camp near Oranienburg, Germany.

By September 1944, Mad Jack had enough of a prisoner’s life. Enlisting a Royal Air Force officer, Bertram James, to help in the attempt, he and James crawled under the wire around the camp and into an abandoned drainpipe. //

Probably because of his predilection for escaping and also probably because he intimidated the bejeebers out of his Wehrmacht guards, in April of 1945 Churchill was sent to an SS-run concentration camp near Tyrol.
...
one Captain Wichard von Alvenslaben, that they were worried about being murdered by the SS, the German captain (perhaps looking ahead to the consequences of Germany’s looming defeat) surrounded the camp and “advised” the SS to get the hell out. They did so, and soon after the German regulars did as well. Churchill and some others promptly decamped and walked 90 miles to Verona, Italy, where they found an American armor unit. On rejoining Allied forces in this manner, Churchill was disappointed to find the Germans had surrendered, and so wasted no time demanding reassignment to Burma, where the Japanese were still kicking up their heels.

The assignment was granted, but by the time Churchill made his triumphant return to Burma, Hiroshima and Nagasaki had both been wiped off the map. The Japanese Emperor, realizing that the tide of battle had irreversibly turned against Japan now that Mad Jack Churchill was in the theater of operations, surrendered. //

He went on bagpiping and longbowing his way through life. Even in retirement, he maintained an office and, in the afternoons on his return home, startled train passengers by hurling his briefcase out of the train window some ways before his stop. When someone finally worked up the nerve to ask why, he calmly explained that he was chucking the thing into his back garden so he wouldn’t have to carry it home from the station.

John Malcolm Thorpe Fleming Churchill died on March 8th, 1996, at 89 years of age, in Sussex. The Royal Norwegian Explorers Club named him “one of the finest explorers and adventurers of all time,” and to this day, he has yet to be outmatched in that regard. //

Randy Larson
an hour ago
I would question why a man’s proficiency with the bagpipes would serve him on the silver screen in 1924, when movies were still silent… but then I think I’ve answered my own question.

As I’ve heard them them say in the UK a gentleman is a man who knows how to play the bagpipes… but doesn’t.

This action-packed film embraces the good-versus-evil dichotomy of World War II as Allied commandos rain fury on the Nazis. //

Sometimes an old-fashioned, Nazi-killing romp is just what the movies need. And that’s exactly what “The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare” brings to the cinema. The film, very loosely based on the real-life exploits of World War II British special operators, eschews politics in favor of humor, action, and plenty of Nazi-centric violence.

I'll start our D-Day Memorial Broadcast around 5:00 pm EDT on the evening of June 5th and it'll run through June 7th.

Since Eastern Daylight Savings Time is the same as Eastern War Time, the NBC D-Day Broadcasts will begin at roughly the correct time of 2:45 am on June 6th.

Carlson and Rogan didn’t moralize over Hamburg, Dresden, or Tokyo. Instead, they bobbed their heads and lamented the use of a particular type of weapon, not the death toll or civilians roasting alive from firebombs.

Even with that horror, Japan was not moved to surrender after Tokyo was set on fire 17 months before Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Japan didn’t surrender after a half million of her civilians had died from conventional bombs. Japan only surrendered when Truman bluffed and assured Japan that her cities would be leveled with more atomic bombs.

When Truman ordered Fat Man and Little Boy to drop on Japanese cities, he saved countless lives, both civilians and combatants. When Emperor Hirohito ordered his country to stand down, he saved countless lives – both civilian and combatants. Both decisions saved the lives of Marines like my father. Men who came back to build lives and raise families. The deaths of civilians at Hiroshima and Nagasaki were regrettable, but the lives of Americans and Japanese were spared because of it. That act was “good” in that the resulting surrender and peace clearly were. //

AdeleInTexas
7 hours ago
Great piece, heartfelt and factual. Carlson's claim that ending the war in Japan by use of the atomic bombs was prima facie evil is prima facie stupidity. //

. I asked him what he thought about the use of the atomic bombs and he was all for it. He just wished they had them sooner.

For you Millenials, Gen Zs, and whatever, I'd recommend putting aside your anime for a couple of hours and watching a real movie.
While the breakout from Stalag Luft III is the most famous prison break, it was nowhere near the biggest or most successful. It occurred at Stalag 315 in Epinal, France, on May 11, 1944. Stalag 315 housed over 3,000 Indian, Sikh, and Gurkha soldiers, mostly captured in Dunkirk and North Africa. On May 11, the Eighth Air Force carried out a 67 bomber raid on Epinal, and some of the collateral damage was the prison. About 70 prisoners were killed, but over 1,000 prisoners made a break for it, and about 500 made it to Switzerland. Unfortunately, their story hasn't received the attention of the Stalag Luft III escape. As with the Great Escape, some of the prisoners were summarily executed upon recapture.

Here are some of the other major prison breaks.

People often ask: why did Pius XII, Eugenio Pacelli, not speak out more forcefully against Hitler? Historian Fr Dermot Fenlon of the Birmingham Oratory looks at the facts and sets the record straight. //

"Those rescued by Pius are today living all over the world. There went to Israel alone from Romania 360,000 to the year 1965."

The vindication of Pius XII has been established principally by Jewish writers and from Israeli archives. It is now established that the Pope supervised a rescue network which saved 860,000 Jewish lives - more than all the international agencies put together.

After the war the Chief Rabbi of Israel thanked Pius XII for what he had done. The Chief Rabbi of Rome went one step further. He became a Catholic. He took the name Eugenio.

Today we celebrate 80 years of Colossus, the code-breaking computer that played a pivotal role in WWII.

Today we have released a series of rare and never-before-seen images of Colossus, in celebration of the 80th anniversary of the code-breaking computer that played a pivotal role in the Second World War effort.

The Colossus computer was created during the Second World War to decipher critical strategic messages between the most senior German Generals in occupied Europe, but its existence was only revealed in the early 2000s after six decades of secrecy.

Anthony McAuliffe (centre) and his officers in Bastogne, Belgium, December, 1944. The commander of the U.S. Army’s 101st Airborne would go down in history for his defiant, one syllable reply to a German surrender ultimatum. //

“McAuliffe realized that some kind of answer had to be offered and he sat down to think it over. After several minutes he admitted to his officers that he did not know what to say in response.

On Thursday, UK's Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) announced the release of previously unseen images and documents related to Colossus, one of the first digital computers. The release marks the 80th anniversary of the code-breaking machines that significantly aided the Allied forces during World War II. While some in the public knew of the computers earlier, the UK did not formally acknowledge the project's existence until the 2000s.

Colossus was not one computer but a series of computers developed by British scientists between 1943 and 1945. These 2-meter-tall electronic beasts played an instrumental role in breaking the Lorenz cipher, a code used for communications between high-ranking German officials in occupied Europe. The computers were said to have allowed allies to "read Hitler's mind," according to The Sydney Morning Herald. //

The technology behind Colossus was highly innovative for its time. Tommy Flowers, the engineer behind its construction, used over 2,500 vacuum tubes to create logic gates, a precursor to the semiconductor-based electronic circuits found in modern computers. While 1945's ENIAC was long considered the clear front-runner in digital computing, the revelation of Colossus' earlier existence repositioned it in computing history. (However, it's important to note that ENIAC was a general-purpose computer, and Colossus was not.)