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

Welcome to the January 2019 episode of the Bletchley Park podcast, Second Front Now.

1943 had been a year of turning points in the Second World War, but 75 years ago, few people could have known for certain the monumental events that would unfold

in 1944. In this It Happened Here episode, we take stock and look at the year ahead.

The Big Three, Churchill, Roosevelt and Stalin, met together for the first time, and they took decisions

that would ultimately lead to the 6th of June. D-Day.

In the wider war, the Germans had bogged the Allies down on the Italian front, while at sea, Bletchley Park saw success with their contribution in the sinking of the Scharnhorst. Meanwhile, back in the Buckinghamshire countryside, GPO engineer Tommy Flowers delivered Colossus 1 to Bletchley Park.

Seen now as the world's first large-scale electronic digital computer, at the time, it was

part of the evolution of machinery that the co-breakers had at their disposal.

As always, Bletchley Park's research historian, Dr David Kenyon, is our guide.

Music Dr David Kenyon is our guide. This is Bletchley Park.

It happened here.

The title of this episode is Second Front Now, but what was the Second Front?

Second Front now is a term that's coined by the Russians. There are actually several fronts

going on by beginning with 1944.

But ever since 1942, the Russians had been campaigning that they shouldn't be,

as they saw it doing all the heavy lifting in the war,

because they, almost from Barbarossa, from the invasion of Russia in 1941 onwards,

they have more troops fighting more Germans than anybody else.

So they're very anxious that the Western allies, the UK and the US, should get on with attacking the Germans somewhere,

and ideally in mainland Europe and in France, effectively. And Stalin had written to Churchill

...