JOHN MARTIN ROBINSON, Requisitioned – The British Country House in the Second World War, London, Aurum Press, 2014, ISBN: 9781781310953, £25

2015 ◽  
Vol 26 (1) ◽  
pp. 171-174
Author(s):  
Alexander Fairweather
Keyword(s):  
Second World War ◽  
World War ◽  
Country House ◽  
Second World

At Bletchley Park

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jack Copeland
Keyword(s):  
North Atlantic ◽  
Machine Building ◽  
Second World War ◽  
World War ◽  
Country House ◽  
The North ◽  
The North Atlantic ◽  
Army Air Force ◽  
Coded Messages ◽  
Second World

This chapter summarizes Turing’s principal achievements at Bletchley Park and assesses his impact on the course of the Second World War. On the first day of the war, at the beginning of September 1939, Turing took up residence at Bletchley Park, the ugly Victorian mansion in Buckinghamshire that served as the wartime HQ of Britain’s military codebreakers (Fig. 9.1). There Turing was a key player in the battle to decrypt the coded messages generated by Enigma, the German forces’ typewriter-like cipher machine. Germany’s army, air force, and navy transmitted many thousands of coded messages each day during the Second World War. These ranged from top-level signals, such as detailed situation reports prepared by generals at the battlefronts and orders signed by Hitler himself, down to the important minutiae of war such as weather reports and inventories of the contents of supply ships. Thanks to Turing and his fellow codebreakers, much of this information ended up in Allied hands—sometimes within an hour or two of its being transmitted. The faster the messages could be broken, the fresher the intelligence that they contained, and on at least one occasion the English translation of an intercepted Enigma message was being read at the British Admiralty less than 15 minutes after the Germans had transmitted it. Turing pitted machine against machine. Building on pre-war work by the legendary Polish codebreaker Marian Rejewski, Turing invented the Enigma-cracking ‘bombes’ that quickly turned Bletchley Park from a country house accommodating a small group of thirty or so codebreakers into a vast codebreaking factory. There were approximately 200 bombes at Bletchley Park and its surrounding outstations by the end of the war. As early as 1943 Turing’s machines were cracking a staggering total of 84,000 Enigma messages each month—two messages every minute. Chapter 12 describes the bombes and explains how they worked. Turing also undertook, single-handedly at first, a 20-month struggle to crack the especially secure form of Enigma used by the North Atlantic U-boats. With his group he first broke into the current messages transmitted between the submarines and their bases during June 1941, the very month when Winston Churchill’s advisors were warning him that the wholesale sinkings in the North Atlantic would soon tip Britain into defeat by starvation.

Gender and the Second World War

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Corinna Peniston-Bird ◽  
Emma Vickers
Keyword(s):  
Second World War ◽  
World War ◽  
Second World

Kapitalistische Krisen mit und ohne systemischer Herausforderung.

2016 ◽  
Vol 46 (185) ◽  
pp. 543-560 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ingo Schmidt
Keyword(s):  
World Market ◽  
Second World War ◽  
Deep Penetration ◽  
World War ◽  
Major Overhaul ◽  
Domestic Markets ◽  
Global Restructuring ◽  
Social Divisions ◽  
Class Power ◽  
Second World

This article draws on Marxist theories of crises, imperialism, and class formation to identify commonalities and differences between the stagnation of the 1930s and today. Its key argument is that the anti-systemic movements that existed in the 1930s and gained ground after the Second World War pushed capitalists to turn from imperialist expansion and rivalry to the deep penetration of domestic markets. By doing so they unleashed strong economic growth that allowed for social compromise without hurting profits. Yet, once labour and other social movements threatened to shift the balance of class power into their favor, capitalist counter-reform began. In its course, global restructuring, and notably the integration of Russia and China into the world market, created space for accumulation. The cause for the current stagnation is that this space has been used up. In the absence of systemic challenges capitalists have little reason to seek a major overhaul of their accumulation strategies that could help to overcome stagnation. Instead they prop up profits at the expense of the subaltern classes even if this prolongs stagnation and leads to sharper social divisions.

Zabiegi likwidujące skutki obrzezania wykonywane w Warszawie w czasie drugiej wojny światowej. Wstępna próba opisu zjawiska

2017 ◽  
pp. 437-446
Author(s):  
Maria Ciesielska
Keyword(s):  
Second World War ◽  
Tissue Preparation ◽  
World War ◽  
Medical Practitioners ◽  
Reconstruction Surgery ◽  
Repair Operation ◽  
Manual Treatment ◽  
Operating Technique ◽  
Almost All ◽  
Second World

Men’s circumcision is in many countries considered as a hygienic-cosmetic or aesthetic treatment. However, it still remains in close connection with religious rites (Judaism, Islam) and is still practiced all over the world. During the Second World War the visible effects of circumcision became an indisputable evidence of being a Jew and were often used especially by the so-called szmalcownicy (blackmailers). Fear of the possibility of discovering as non-Aryan prompted many Jews hiding on the so-called Aryan side of Warsaw to seek medical practitioners who would restore the condition as it was before the circumcision. The reconstruction surgery was called in surgical jargon “knife baptizing”. Almost all of the procedures were performed by Aryan doctors although four cases of hiding Jewish doctors participating in such procedures are known. Surgical technique consisted of the surgical formation of a new foreskin after tissue preparation and stretching it by manual treatment. The success of the repair operation depended on the patient’s cooperation with the doctor, the worst result was in children. The physicians described in the article and the operating technique are probably only a fragment of a broader activity, described meticulously by only one of the doctors – Dr. Janusz Skórski. This work is an attempt to describe the phenomenon based on the very scanty source material, but it seems to be the first such attempt for several decades.

Finnish refugee children’s experiences of Swedish refugee camps during the Second World War

2015 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 28-37
Author(s):  
Merja Paksuniemi
Keyword(s):  
Well Being ◽  
Second World War ◽  
Refugee Children ◽  
Refugee Camps ◽  
World War ◽  
Daily Routines ◽  
Decisive Importance ◽  
Significant Difference ◽  
Camp Life ◽  
Second World

This article seeks to demonstrate how Finnish refugee children experienced living in Swedish refugee camps during the Second World War (1939–1945). The study focuses on children’s opinions and experiences reflected through adulthood. The data were collected through retrospective interviews with six adults who experienced wartime as children in Finland and were evacuated to Sweden as refugees. Five of the interviewees were female and one of them was male. The study shows, it was of decisive importance to the refugee children’s well-being to have reliable adults around them during the evacuation and at the camps. The findings demonstrate that careful planning made a significant difference to the children´s adaptations to refugee camp life. The daily routines at the camp, such as regular meals, play time and camp school, reflected life at home and helped the children to continue their lives, even under challenging circumstances.

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