41. The Imitation Game (-2.5)
Turing talks about his time working at Bletchley Park during World War II after being questioned by Nock. In 1951, two police officers, Nock and Staehl, look into mathematician Alan Turing's home after what appears to be a break-in. Alan refuses to admit it and turns out to be suspicious of police officers. The narrative shifts when it arrives at Bletchley Park in 1939, the year that Britain declared war on Germany. A socially awkward and brilliant mathematician, Turing is recruited to join a team at Bletchley Park, a British intelligence center. He becomes a member of the cryptography team with Hugh Alexander, John Cairncross, Peter Hilton, Keith Furman, and Charles Richards, under the command of Commander Alastair Denniston. Their mission is to decipher the communications, thereby gaining a significant advantage in the war. An Enigma machine doesn’t help decode the messages.
To decode a message, they need to know the machine’s settings. Germans switch settings every day promptly at midnight. Britains usually intercept their first message around 6:00 a.m., which gives exactly 18 hours every day to crack the code before it changes, and the group is meant to start again. There were 159 million possible Enigma settings. Every single German message consisted of every surprise attack, every bombing run, every imminent U-boat assault. Radio signals were encrypted. To stop a coming attack, Britain has to check 20 million years’ worth of settings in 20 minutes.
Turing works alone to create a machine that can decode Enigma signals, which break every message every day instantly. He is a tough person to work with, and he believes his coworkers are beneath him. Turing’s co-workers had raised a complaint about working with him. When Commander Denniston orders him to respond to the raised complaint and refuses to allot 100,000 pounds to design his work, Turing writes a letter and asks Stewart Menzies to hand it to Prime Minister Winston Churchill, who assigns Turing command of the team and provides funding for the machine's construction.
To locate successors, Turing fires Furman and Richards. The young Turing was tormented and miserable at boarding school in 1928. One of his classmates, Christopher, helped him tackle the violence done by the rest of their classmates. Turing posts a challenging crossword puzzle in newspapers. Joan Clarke and Jack Good passed Turing's exam. Days back at Cambridge University, Christopher suggested young Turing learn cryptography. Through his acquaintances, he became interested in cryptography, thanks to Christopher Morcom. In 1940, when Joan’s parents won't let her work with the men who encrypt messages, Turing shares his plans with her and makes arrangements for her to live and work among the female clerks who intercept the messages.
Britain was starving to death. The Americans sent over 100,000 tonnes of food every week, and every week the Germans would send their desperately needed bread to the bottom of the ocean. Their daily failure was announced at the chimes of midnight. Initially, Turing faces skepticism and resistance from his colleagues, including Commander Denniston, who doubts Turing’s unorthodox methods and clashes with his abrasive personality. Turing brings Joan the decrypted Enigma messages directly from the Nazi High Command. He says that finding a clue from the relation between encrypted and decrypted messages can help him build his machine; ‘Christopher’ is the name that Turing has given the machine. He is trying to create a universal machine that can be programmable and reprogrammable—an electrical brain, a digital computer. The Navy suspects that one of Turing’s team members is a Soviet spy and Denniston searches for the person. Soon he leaves their place when he can’t find any clue.
Turing becomes more amiable, and the other coworkers start to respect him with Clarke's assistance, and slowly he forms a close bond with her. Days back in Cambridge, Christopher and Turing passed their secret note in a cryptographic message. Joan also makes Turing’s team members like him to help him design his machine together. As the clock ticks, the Nazi flag flies from more than two dozen national capitals.
Turing’s machine is unable to figure out the Enigma encryption settings fast enough; every day the Germans reset it. When Denniston hears there is no improvement in sight, he gives the order to destroy it and dismiss Turing, but if Turing leaves, the other cryptographers threaten to follow. Following Clarke's departure per her parents' wishes, Turing makes a marriage proposal, which she accepts. Turing tries to disclose his homosexuality to her during their engagement celebration, but John Cairncross finds it and advises him not to do so with anyone, as it is illegal. Day in Cambridge Young Turing falls in love with Christopher. After hearing a female clerk discuss messages she receives from the same German coder, Turing has the idea that he can program the machine to decode terms he already knows exist in particular communications. One coder from Germany always begins his messages with a regular German script written in plain text. That decodes enough of the Enigma code for the day so that Christopher can rapidly figure out what each message means. As the result of two years of work, cryptographers now rejoice as the machine swiftly decodes a message after he recalibrates it.
They find out that a convoy is due to be attacked, but Turing understands that the Germans would realize Enigma is compromised and alter the machinery if they abruptly redirect the ship and attack the U-boats. Peter, whose brother is a sailor serving aboard one of the ships, begs desperately for the crew at Bletchley Park to save the convoy, but they cannot act upon every deciphered communication.
Joan and Turing meet Stewart Menzies and inform him that they have broken the Enigma, and they also ask him to keep it a secret from the Admiralty, Army, and RAF. To maximize destruction and minimize discovery, Turing develops a statistical model that suggests which warnings to transmit. They also suggest Menzies come up with a false story so that they can explain how they got German information that has nothing to do with Enigma.
Turing learns that Cairncross is a spy for the Soviet Union. When Turing confronts him, Cairncross says that the Soviets are allies who share the same objectives, and they pose a threat to reveal Turing's sexual orientation in retaliation. Turing discloses that Cairncross is a spy amid an apparent threat to Clarke from top MI6 agent Stewart Menzies. Menzies says he was aware of this beforehand and arranged for the British to profit from the messages Cairncross leaked to the Soviet Union. Turing, who discloses that he is gay, orders Clarke to leave Bletchley Park out of concern for her safety. Even though Clarke says she always had her doubts, she is adamant that they would have been content together. Turing then informs her that he just utilized her cryptography skills and never had any affection for her.
Despite her heartbreak, she chooses to stay because she believes that this is the most important duty she will ever embark on. She decided she wouldn't listen to Turing's or her parents' advice or second-guess her choices. Menzies instructs cryptographers to trash their work after the war because MI6 wants governments to believe they have unbreakable code machines. He advises the group that they should never meet again or discuss their actions with one another. Days back in Cambridge, the headmaster informs young Turing that his friend Christopher is dead because of tuberculosis.
Turing was found guilty of gross indecency in 1952 and, rather than serving a jail term, was chemically castrated to enable him to carry on with his work of building the Christoper again. When Clarke pays him a visit at his house, she observes his decline in both physical and mental health, and he confesses the reason behind it. She consoles him, telling him that his efforts have saved millions of lives.
The epilogue states that on June 7, 1954, Turing committed suicide following a year of hormone therapy prescribed by the government. Turing was awarded a posthumous Royal Pardon by Queen Elizabeth II in 2013, in recognition of his contributions that ultimately led to the development of what we call today a modern computer. Historians estimate that breaking Enigma shortened the war by more than two years, saving over 14 million lives. It remained a government-held secret for more than 50 years.
