I earned my A to Z winner badge, completing 26 posts in April on the topic of codebreaking in World War II. I learned a lot, some of which will help in the novel that I’m writing. I hope that you learned some interesting things, too!

Here are all my posts, in alphabetical order.

A is for Arlington Hall, where the US Army broke codes

B is for Bletchley Park, the headquarters of the British codebreaking effort

C is for Cryptography, with some helpful definitions

D is for Driscoll, honoring Agnes Driscoll and her expertise

E is for Enigma, the most famous of the broken codes

F is for Friedman, the power couple of codebreaking

G is for Goucher College, one of several women’s colleges that supplied American codebreakers

H is for Hoover, the FBI director who couldn’t be trusted with the secrets of codebreaking

I is for IBM, the provider of tabulating and other complicated machines used in codebreaking (and run by women)

J is for Japanese Missionaries, who wielded the rare and valuable skill of translation

K is for Knox, honoring Dillwyn Knox, a British codebreaker

L is for Layton, honoring Edwin Layton an American intelligence officer who led a codebreaking effort that supported the victory at Midway

M is for Magic, the intelligence briefing compiled from decrypted secret messages

N is for Normandy and the success of the invasion brought about, in part, by women who faked radio traffic for a fake invasion force

O is for Ōshima, the Japanese diplomat in Berlin who unwittingly provided vital information to Allies via a code that wasn’t as secure as he thought

P is for Prather, honoring my distant relative, Mary Louise Prather, and her leadership before, during, and after the war

Q is for Communications, a funny story from a WAVE

R is for Racism, to honor the under-recognized black codebreakers and because segregation, then, contributes to inequality, now

S is for Secrecy Oath, how the men got the story out while women went to their deaths with their families believing that they were secretaries, not codebreakers, during the war

T is for Traffic, describing a technique of learning from radio traffic even when the messages couldn’t be decrypted

U is for U-Boats, and how brave British seamen seized an opportunity to retrieve a cipher book from a sinking submarine that proved vital to the codebreaking effort at Bletchley Park

V is for Vint Hill Farms, the radio signal interception station in Virginia

W is for WACs and WAVES, the women who served in uniform in all kinds of roles, including as codebreakers

X is for X List, a captured Japanese document that listed their ships, but it turned out the US knew about nearly all of them because the water-transport code had been broken

Z is for Zubko, the last post transitioning us from World War II to the Cold War with an effort to break Russian codes