The

The From the home of the codebreakers and the birthplace of modern computing, this is the Bletchley Park podcast.

Welcome to the March 2020 episode of the Bletchley Park podcast. Welcome to the March 2020 episode of the Bletchley Park podcast.

Plunder on the Rhine.

As 1945 began, the Germans' last roll of the dice in the Ardennes had failed.

They were left to face the overwhelming force of men and material of the Allied

armies, approaching the fatherland from all directions. For the Allies in the West, the natural

barrier of the Rhine River was all that lay between them and the open plains of Germany and

the last phase of the war in the West. Meanwhile, the government code and cipher school at

Bletchley Park were producing more intelligence than ever before, but for how much longer?

We'll find out how it was at this point that the Germans challenged the co-breakers like never

before. In this It Happened Here episode, our research officer, Dr Thomas Cheatham, will take us through the action on the front line and reveal just how difficult it was becoming to keep supplying actionable intelligence in the last year of the war.

As usual, special thanks go to Mr Ben Thompson for voicing our archival documents.

This is Bletchley Park.

It happened here.

With Allied armies moving in on Germany from east and west, the German High Command finds itself to put it mildly in an unenviable position.

To tell you something about it, here is Colombia's military analyst,

Major George Fielding Elliott.

From the point of view of the German High Command, the war situation must look something like this.

On the east, the two heavily fortified planking positions on which the defense of the Reich

initially depended, East Prussia and Upper Silesia have been overrun. This releases for further

attack westward, the best part of two Russian army groups. What is needed is more troops

...