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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 March 2019 episode of the Bletchley Park podcast, from Casino to Cahima.

In this It Happened Here episode, we go back to the spring of 1944, when much of Europe,

and indeed the world, held its breath awaiting the second front in Europe.

This would be realised in June, when Operation Overlord, the D-Day landings, began in France.

During that spring, however, British and allied troops were involved in some of the fiercest fighting of the war in Italy and in the Far East,

as the tide finally turned against the Japanese in Burma.

The codebreakers at Bletchley Park continued to support these operations,

and were able to achieve some of their most significant successes yet

against both German and Japanese codes and ciphers.

As usual, our guide to these events is Dr David Kenyon, Bletchley Park's research historian.

This is Bletchley Park.

It happened here.

David, in the last It Happened Here episode, we left off as things were heating up on the Italian front.

Can you give us a bit of background about what was going on there?

75 years ago this month would have been the spring of 1944.

A lot of people now are looking forward to the 75th anniversary of D-Day and the events in Western Europe, but we have to remember that British troops and allied troops were very

heavily involved in fighting in other parts of the world throughout 1943 and into 1994.

And the Italian campaign in the spring of 1944

reaches a real peak of intensity, particularly around the battles along the Gustav Line and famously

at Monte Cassino. What led up to those battles? Well, the invasion of Italy in 1943,

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