I think you're a bit caught up in the customs of the present with an incomplete understanding of the times. Secrecy often had purpose and value to more people than just those directly involved at Bletchley and rather than grade it to different levels it made more sense to apply it as a blanket rule. Long-term vengeance was a real concern. Case in point...long story but true...
A few years ago I did a genealogical investigation for a woman whose aunt had lost an uncle (the aunt's father's brother) in England in WW II. He was a crewman in a bomber squadron but he never came home from the war and his family were never given a definitive status for him. They literally never knew what happened to him, which seems strange in this day and age when those missing in action at least get an MIA designation and usually, eventually, some sort of account of what is at least believed to have happened to them.
When Pres. Clinton declassified a vast amount of WW II documents around 1996, it became a treasure trove for authors, screenwriters, reporters, playwrights, historians, and WW II buffs. My friend asked me to see if there was finally any way to discover what happened to her aunt's uncle. This was around the time an online database subscription service now called Fold3 (formerly Footnote.com) started up. They offered tons of war-related files from the National Archives for reading and downloading and learned very quickly that WW II records were the most popular databases they had based on customer interest.
I bought a 30 day subscription and found the mystery man listed in 8 documents under the Missing Airmen section. It turned out he'd been part of a bomber crew routed over Holland to hit a munitions factory in Berlin, but his plane was hit by anti-aircraft fire, forcing the pilots to land in Holland in a field surrounded by woods. There they did as they'd been taught, destroying paperwork, abandoning the plane and running in different directions, though most of them had some injuries. Two crewmen were quickly intercepted by members of the Dutch resistance, who were waiting for them; the Resistance was kept apprised of the dates, times, and routes of most air missions coming out of England by British intelligence so they could station themselves below the bombers' paths as much as possible, just to be available for rescues like this.
By passing the fliers from one Resistance member to the next the Dutchmen managed to get the two fliers back to England within days. The remainder of the crew, including the guy I was looking for, were all captured and imprisoned. Within a few months they were sent back to England as part of a prisoner exchange, which I was surprised to learn went on anywhere in WW II. The man I was researching had been injured during the hard landing and didn't get proper treatment while imprisoned, so that even though he made it back to England and had surgery at a hospital near his airbase, he died within a couple of weeks. They buried him in a cemetery near or on the base (records made it hard to tell which and gave no name).
His file went through in the normal way as Missing Airman paperwork. The captain in charge of his case spent two years revisiting it, interviewing all his fellow crewmembers, pressing them to remember every detail of the last time they'd seen him, contacting his parents, relatives, and friends in the U.S. more than once to see if they'd heard from or of him. It was hard to see the captain's notes in the margins of the later documents when he was still trying to find this guy, saying things like, "Family deserves to know his whereabouts". The missing man did not fall through some paperwork cracks; someone, somewhere, decided to keep his fate secret, deliberately letting the process of searching for him continue though it had no chance of success. To be cruel? No.
The reason was to protect the Dutch Resistance members who'd helped the other crewmen, those who had helped earlier Allied fliers, and all who were expected to continue doing so. British Intelligence, in whatever form and designation, had secured this kind of help from the Dutch in return for promising to keep their names and activities secret through the lifetimes of their children AND their grandchildren. Fear of Nazi retribution was that great. We have to remember that these were people living in countries that had either already been invaded by the Germans or who were fighting to avoid being invaded by the Germans. It was a completely different mindset born of bloody experience and obviously it was felt that lying about the fate of one American flier was worth the pain it caused his family compared to the possibility of harm befalling the Dutch Resistance members and subsequent loss of their valuable services. To this day I have no idea how many people the Dutch may have saved in this way, nor any notion of how to learn about it.
At any rate I printed 8 pages of documents about the search for this man on the part of the U.S. military MIA department captain and sent them to the woman who had asked for my help. She said a few days later that her aunt was greatly moved to learn what had happened to the long-lost uncle, even though we had no luck pinning down where he might be buried, or if his burial had been moved to a proper cemetery. She was glad to know that at least he'd been buried somewhere all these years in a free country like England. So, that's what I've learned about secrecy in those times. I find it entirely believable that anyone in Britain who was involved in intelligence or sensitive work of any kind would feel bound to keep perfectly quiet for the rest of their lives.
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cherns-2
10 years ago
That's a very interesting story--many thanks. I can certainly understand why the military would have thought it necessary to keep stuff like this secret at the end of the war, but I would also have thought that a few years after, by which time Germany had become a NATO ally and the Cold War was in full swing, they would find it necessary to keep up the secrecy. But I guess that the military doesn't like flexibility.
However, that's not really what I was addressing. My father was doing secret work for Canadian Intelligence at exactly this time. When anyone--even family--asked about his wartime experience, he would say something like, "I was in the Artillery and then the Army taught me Japanese and then I did some work in Ottawa that I can't talk about it." He didn't say more until it was all unclassified--I think in the seventies. And it turned out that he was aiding in the decryption of Japanese intercepts, which actually would have been a pretty logical deduction anyway.
In the show, we see that the various Bletchley women seem to be terribly oppressed by the fact that they can't tell anyone--even family--what they did in the war. Of course they couldn't talk about how clever they had been, or give any details about the work or even the location, but I would have thought that "I was doing some work that I can't talk about" would have been a complete and satisfactory answer, and one that would have especially been respected at the time. And, as with the story you give, there would have been lots of people who were in that position, in many different facets of the war.
Alternatively, there would be the cover story--"I was a typist at a supply depot," which would presumably provoke yawns instead of interest. Either way, I don't see how either of these stories would have led to the psychological trauma we see in the show. Of course it must have been frustrating not to be able to brag about one's cleverness or how important one was in winning the war, but I just question how traumatic it was--especially when one had more important post-war things to worry about, like how to stretch rations.
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WizardsMug
9 years ago
Women were seen as a possession (still are nowadays in many cases) supposed to be mothers and slaves for their busy men (i'm a little crass of course)
the only reason they were brought into the war effort was the lack of men. After the war they tried to put women back into their "place" asap stay at home mom if married, or only allowed to take menial jobs.
Seeing these women being able to say that they had a job they couldn't talk about doesn't make sense during that time.
it is obvious that even Susan's husband is embarrassed that a woman his wife would want to speak with the police about her theory, he helps her. not because he believes in her as a person but to mollify her out of love (which is nice enough but condescending) he keeps making excuses for her behavior in front of the police man and is astonished that they take her seriously.
And Susan is dating a "modern" man for her time.
if you are not being taken serious due to your gender alone. you try to get off the radar.
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