Benedict Cumberbatch in "The Imitation Game"

[Bakerstreet Irregular]

It was entertaining though all those men hanging off the words of a woman, no less, considering the times, and then how they all rush for the door. It made a good moment no matter how off history it might have been.

[joanneta1]

Add to that the provable fact that Grossadmiral Erich Raeder would never have tolerated any of his Kriegsmarine subordinates to use Hell Hitler on ANY signal, most emphatically not the U-Boat service. A youngster who later went on to become one of the top aces, was forced to resign his Party membership before he could join the Marineschule at  Muerwick, because the navy had to stand above politics. Only after the aborted attempt on Hitler's life did that salutation become obligatory, and that was in July 1944, while the code was broken in August 1941, and it was not Hugh Alexander but Gordon Welshman who introduced the diagonal board to speed up the process, and the weather reports mentioned came from German weather ships.    By July 1944, Grossadmiral Doenitz had replaced Reader, and he was much more of an opportunist.

The story of the youngster can be found in uboat.net under his name, Erich Topp , the weather report was sent religiously at six o'clock German time, never allowing for latitude or longitude changes, but it was the careless Luftwaffe which gave them their break, and the British had another three - wheel Enigma machine captured when a U-boat surrendered to them,  whereupon the decision was taken by the OKW (German Naval High Command) to add a fourth rotor, just in case, which further complicated Hut 8 and Hut 10 lives, until U 559 sank near Port Said and three men risked their lives to retrieve the updated Weather Short Signal book and the Short Signal book. Without their heroism, the four-rotor update would have lengthened the war and prolonged the wait for the whole D-Day operation, as Bletchley remained blind for over ten months. And rerouting convoys out of the reach of wolfpacks was pretty standard practice.

The script for the film may win as many awards as it deserves, but it has more plot holes and inaccuracies than a sieve.

[Bakerstreet Irregular]

What movie doesn't besides I go to the movie even the semi-documental ones to be entertained not to be bored to tears over some dry, uninteresting, plodding, annal retentive historically correct piece of over worked picture that would be a waste of my time and money.

[T.o.b.y]

I don't care how historically inaccurate it is - "the only two words of German you need to know to break the code" was my personal highlight of the film. It is just such a great story element, and I think the person who came up with the idea is a genius.

[Carol the Dabbler]

I agree -- plus according to Inge's account, it is historically accurate in the sense that the lucky break was due to the messages always containing certain words.  I thought the movie did a very nice job of demonstrating the difference between having to consider all possible permutations versus only having to consider those permutations that would include certain words.

 

[T.o.b.y]

I agree -- plus according to Inge's account, it is historically accurate in the sense that the lucky break was due to the messages always containing certain words.  I thought the movie did a very nice job of demonstrating the difference between having to consider all possible permutations versus only having to consider those permutations that would include certain words.

 

I don't even quite understand what "permutations" are - I just like the "two words" idea for the sake of poetic justice. Wouldn't it have been just amazing if that phrase had cost them winning the war. Such a great idea for a story, and I don't care if it's wholly and utterly untrue.

[Caya]

Permutations are (pardon me for explaining that so sloppily, Carol ;)) possible combinations. Say, you got ten people (five men, five women) who want to dance and form pairs. If you have to consider all possible combinations, the first person would have nine partners to choose from, while the next (after the first two paired off) would only have seven, and so on. Number of possible dance floor pairings: 9x7x5x3x1 = 945. Now, on the other hand, if they'd prefer forming male-female pairs only, the first person would have five partners to choose from, the next one four, and so on. Number of possible dance floor pairings: 5x4x3x2x1 = 120 (this is written as 5! in math-speak). You can see how having a condition that must be fulfilled (like male-female, or certain words in the code) cuts down on possible combinations, and therefore needs less calculating power/time.

[Carol the Dabbler]

Well, to be technically accurate, what you've described is (as you said) combinations.  Permutations are the same except that the order the partners and couples are chosen in would make a difference, which would certainly be true in language.  So with any given set of items, there are even more permutations than combinations.

 

[Arcadia]

 

I agree -- plus according to Inge's account, it is historically accurate in the sense that the lucky break was due to the messages always containing certain words.  I thought the movie did a very nice job of demonstrating the difference between having to consider all possible permutations versus only having to consider those permutations that would include certain words.

 

I don't even quite understand what "permutations" are - I just like the "two words" idea for the sake of poetic justice. Wouldn't it have been just amazing if that phrase had cost them winning the war. Such a great idea for a story, and I don't care if it's wholly and utterly untrue.

 

 

Yay, I get to use one of my favorite sayings! "Just because it didn't happen doesn't mean it isn't true." Which pretty much sums up my response to movies based on real events.

[Bakerstreet Irregular]

It's like paraphrasing. It happened but maybe not in the exact context that we get to hear it....or in this case....see it.

[Carol the Dabbler]

When asked whether his "Hyman Kaplan" stories were true, author Leo Rosten replied, "Yes, but they never happened."

 

Sorry about not defining "permutation" in the first place, by the way.

 

[sfmpco]

Fresh video from Oscars...

[Bakerstreet Irregular]

Yay.....good for him.

[SherlockedCAMPer]

Graham Moore just got best adapted screen play for TIG

[Inge l-w]

Both Carol and Caya are right in a different context, the naval machine had eight rotors and they could be arranged in 336 different ways, (8x7x6) , while the army and the airforce had machines with only 60 encoding means, (5x4x3). The Navy never sent code with the words Heil Hitler, but Goering's pets did, constantly, even the GrOFaZ used to joke that he had an Imperial Navy, a Prussian Army and a Nazi Airforce.

When the fourth rotor was introduced in all submarines, it could not be made to work with rotors I and VIII, so the encryption was raised by a magnitude of 26 times, not 3,024 times (9x8x7x6).

Whichever way one looks at it, the Dutch pre-war invention for encrypting important commercial correspondence proved a major handicap to the Allies.

[T.o.b.y]

 

Yay, I get to use one of my favorite sayings! "Just because it didn't happen doesn't mean it isn't true."

 

Oh, Arcadia, what a wonderful saying! I hadn't heard that one before. I should embroider that on a banner and hang it over my bookshelf.

 

 

[joanneta1]

Could you please define "true"? In a physical, factual, metaphysical, theological or philosophical sense?

[Carol the Dabbler]

Anna, I suspect that's one of those things that either makes sense to you -- or it doesn't.  But if it's any help, I think of "true" in this case as meaning something like "containing the essence of what happened, the "flavor" if you will, though perhaps not literally as it happened."

 

[Carol the Dabbler]

Yay!  The Imitation Game's script won an Oscar!  Here are a whole bunch of articles about that, plus videos of Graham Moore's acceptance speech.

[joanneta1]

Thanks, Carol, you mean it is purely subjective. Tried to like, but was rejected again. So, it is true I like your common sense approach to all things, then!

Having had fourteen years of debating the Enigma failure on uboat.net, I went to watch the film with anticipation, I then went a second time, for obvious reasons, one of which was no curly mop and still lovely voice despite the upper dentures, had a lovely time, I have even taken to using his opening line in a raised tone of voice for any scatter-brained students, I  admired the boy playing young Turing, but when it came to brass tacks, namely to h o w they break the code, I very nearly stood up and yelled: "No, you idiots"! 

Especially at the heartbreaking scene where he explains how they cannot use aircraft cover to save the Carlisle, I was fit to be tied into knots, for two reasons: one was that Hut 8 NEVER had access to the grid maps, which were updated daily but in Liverpool, and the second was that HMS Carlisle was a light cruiser sent to the Mediterranean in March  1941, where she was so severely bombed by Junkers 87s  in 1943 that she was considered a constructive loss and remained as a base ship in Alexandria for the rest of the war. Out of the thousands of allied merchantmen and convoy escorts, couldn't the flipping scriptwriter have picked a name that was actually on Atlantic duties during August 1941? Heaven knows, by now they are all listed, both the hunters and the hunted, or could he simply not be bothered with such a detail because he knew the scene was a figment of the imagination?

[Carol the Dabbler]

The "Like" button has been a little iffy for me today as well.  But if you scroll back up to my earlier post, you'll see that your vote was actually counted, no matter what the error message said.  The same thing happened to me just a little while ago.

 

[T.o.b.y]

   Having had fourteen years of debating the Enigma failure on uboat.net, I went to watch the film with anticipation, I then went a second time, for obvious reasons, one of which was no curly mop and still lovely voice despite the upper dentures, had a lovely time, I have even taken to using his opening line in a raised tone of voice for any scatter-brained students, I  admired the boy playing young Turing, but when it came to brass tacks, namely to h o w they break the code, I very nearly stood up and yelled: "No, you idiots"! 

Especially at the heartbreaking scene where he explains how they cannot use aircraft cover to save the Carlisle, I was fit to be tied into knots, for two reasons: one was that Hut 8 NEVER had access to the grid maps, which were updated daily but in Liverpool, and the second was that HMS Carlisle was a light cruiser sent to the Mediterranean in March  1941, where she was so severely bombed by Junkers 87s  in 1943 that she was considered a constructive loss and remained as a base ship in Alexandria for the rest of the war. Out of the thousands of allied merchantmen and convoy escorts, couldn't the flipping scriptwriter have picked a name that was actually on Atlantic duties during August 1941? Heaven knows, by now they are all listed, both the hunters and the hunted, or could he simply not be bothered with such a detail because he knew the scene was a figment of the imagination?

 

I think this might serve to illustrate what I mean by real versus true. The conversation shown in the film never actually happened, sure, and there are good reasons for why it couldn't have happed that way. Still, the point behind it remains true: Gathering information is rarely enough, once you've got it, you need to decide what to do with it, and if the information is weighty, that usually involves tough ethical decisions and uncomfortable responsibilities. It was a true moral problem they presented there, regardless of who actually faced it in the real world and how.

 

[Bakerstreet Irregular]

Even at the end of the film it was iterated that they did sometimes have to withhold vital information. Having to "decide who lived and who died".  And some of those World War ll veterans may be still alive maybe some of that information could still be classified. And since the HMS Carlisle was already pretty much decommissioned anyway, no harm done for using her name.  And more of that paraphrasing.....she was bombed.....just not exactly when or where it happened in real time.

[joanneta1]

Dear Toby,

I know you are right, it is a piece of fiction, after all, it is very-well crafted, BC himself has explained to what lengths he went to get the character right, sfmpco even posted that lovely interview before the Oscars.

But the devil lies in the details, and one cannot simply sit back and erase years of research, along with hundreds of others dedicated to  WWII uboat history, specialists and amateurs alike, simply because the scriptwriter is too lazy to check up on such an easy thing to find as the casualty list of ships for August 1941 when he has done such good work elsewhere. But I guess he is just sloppy in some ways. Did you notice how the detective uses corrector fluid when he wants to find out about the elusive, prickly professor? Well, the stuff was developed in 1951, but was available for commercial use in 1956, by which time his quarry had died.

One particular scene where I could barely control my Sherlock fascination is when he wants to break off his engagement, and it is SO beginning of HLV with Keira slapping him (he must have become quite an expert at dodging irate females by now), and he stands there in the familiar hands clasped behind his back pose,  actually making eye contact. I did enjoy that bit immensely!

P. S. Sorry, bakerstreetirregular, yes, she was bombed, NOT sunk by uboats. The whole algorithm thing of playing God, was codenamed Ultra, and, of course Menzies is the original of Ian Fleming's M.
 

[J.P.]

Was actually looking for the video of Graham Moore's powerful Oscar speech, and stumbled about this interesting article: How to Write About Characters Who Are Smarter Than You