Dan Snow's History Hit - Nazi Codebreaking with Betty Webb

Episode Date: May 15, 2023

Betty Webb is the last known living veteran who worked on both German and Japanese codes at Bletchley Park and Dan got an invite to her 100th birthday party over the weekend. Codebreaking, secrets and dancing were all part of daily life at Bletchley Park, she joined Dan on the podcast back in 2021 to tell him all about her incredible time at the place that enabled the Allies to win WWII.You can take part in our listener survey here.If you want to get in touch with the podcast, you can email us at [e-mail], we'd love to hear from you!

Hi everybody, welcome to Dan Snow's History. I've just got out of the car, I've parked up because I'm coming to a very special party. It's the 100th birthday party of Betty Webb. She was born on the 13th of May 1923. Now Betty is a national treasure. She has deservedly become very famous in recent decades, in fact so famous that she was invited to King Charles III's coronation because she is one of the last surviving codebreakers from Bletchley Park. She served during the Second World War at Bletchley and then because she was so talented in Washington DC for

the remainder of the war against Japan in 1945. She worked on intercepted German and Japanese messages at Bletchley. She had joined as a teenager against her mother's wishes. She ran away from school, as you'll hear, deliberately to join up because she wanted to do more to contribute to the fight against fascism than just make sausage rolls and serve cups of warm tea. She's been decorated by the British and French governments for her wartime service. She is having a magnificent 100th birthday party thrown for her today and I'm very privileged indeed to have been invited and to mark this very special centenarian this is an episode of the podcast I recorded three or four years ago when I went to visit her house in Birmingham she sat me

down she gave me a slice of cake the size of an anchor, and she told me all about her childhood, wartime experiences, and what it was like working at Bletchley Park. Enjoy. quite unity till there is first and black unity never to go to war with one another again let's talk about your childhood because it's quite a long time ago now and it's a bit different to how children might be brought up these days oh absolutely i was brought up in the country i'm a salopian actually and we and we lived in Richard's Castle, which is on the borders of Herefordshire and Shropshire, in the days when one didn't have telephones. And I

never went to school. My mother taught me all I know. And apart from a few months in Germany in 1937, yes, I spent three months with a family in a little village called Hernhut in Sachsen near Dresden. That was 37, yes, yes. When the Hitler regime was just beginning to boil up and the family with whom I was living, very religious people, and they were obviously

very anxious about it all. But their two daughters, aged, I think, about 11 and 12, had to attend the Hitler thing called the Bay Day and Maidles, which was a Hitler regime gathering every Sunday morning. But they never told us what they were doing there. But they were obviously being indoctrinated, I think. So that was remarkable that you also witnessed life in Nazi Germany just before the war. So you mentioned these girls were going away and becoming indoctrinated. What else do you remember from that time in Germany? Well, I remember going to school with the

daughters of the house. My German wasn't absolutely brilliant, but I was able to understand quite a lot. But the thing that bothered me was um the practice was becoming uh usual for everybody to stand up and say hi Hitler the beginning of a lesson at the end so I I didn't quite know what to do but I just sort of went like that and hope nobody saw looks like a royal wave and why did you even so you were only you're only sort of 15 or so at that stage but why did you even at that age think I don't want to be part of what Hitler's got going on here? Well, there was a certain amount of discussion in the household where I was. They were obviously very worried about what was happening and not knowing the whole story.

But I was aware of food rationing and that sort of thing. They were beginning to get really worried about what was going to happen. And this rather secretive thing for the young girls to go to every Sunday morning, we never heard what they did or what they were told about or anything like that. It was all very secretive. Did you ever find out that family survived the war? No, I didn't. No. Sadly, things moved on and I never got in touch with them again.

And so you grew up without telephones, televisions. What other mod cons did you grow up without? Oh, we had a radio, but it was a crystal set to begin with. And then it became a wireless before it was a radio. And what do you remember from that, Charles? I mean, you did lessons with your mother and then the rest of the time, what were you up to? Well, we were very fortunate in that we had a large area in the country and we had animals and I had to help with those, of course. And when the weather was fine, we didn't do lessons.

We went for walks in the countryside but we know we did work then because we we picked flowers and then we were obliged to come home and draw them and give a description of each flower i remember that very clearly and i also remember the fact that if you needed to communicate with anyone, you walked. And we were some distance from any other dwelling. So it was fairly primitive in a way. We didn't have any water. That had to be pumped up. And no electricity.

We had oil lamps and candles. So, I mean, it seems like really a different world, the one that we're living in now. Absolutely different, yes. People can't envisage it, I think. Perhaps even you can't. I don't know. But then I decided that, when I got a bit older, that I wanted to do domestic science. So I went to Shrewsbury, there was a college there at that time. This was the beginning of the war. But as the war rolled on, a lot of us felt that we were wasting our time making sausage rolls. So, well, I remember

four of us leaving in midterm, which was a bit naughty. But anyway, that's how I came to be in the ATS. And what were the opportunities for young women in the Second World War? Because I think lots of people listening to this will think, well, the men all went off to fight and the women could take their place in factories and as bus conductors. There were opportunities to serve. and the women could take their place in factories and as bus conductors. There were opportunities to serve. What were they? Well, they were the ATS, the Auxiliary Territorial Service, the RINs and the WAFs. So there was plenty of choice,

providing you were physically fit and mentally able. And what did you end up doing in the ATS? Well, I did my training, basic training in the ATS at the Wurlitz Fusilier Unit. And then I was sent to London to be interviewed by an intelligence corps officer in German, because I'd said at the time that I was bilingual. And the next thing I know, I'm on a train for Bletchley, never having heard of Bletchley, certainly didn't know what was going on there.

And that's how I came to be there, rather unceremoniously, really. Can I ask just quickly, I've talked to some other women from this period who said that their parents were a little bit worried about sending them off to join in the war effort. How did your family respond to you bunking out of college and joining up? Yes, I think my mother was a little bit worried because she said, you know, dear, if you ever want to come out, just tell them. She recently had an operation for cancer, which, of course, in those days was not very sophisticated as it is today.

And she said, I can always get the doctor to sign something and you can come home. But it was very exciting for you. Did you ever regret your decision? No, no, I didn't. No, in fact, I think I probably grew up in Bletchley. And certainly it was a tremendous experience from the point of view of mixing with all walks of life.

So you get to Bletchley Station and you thought, what do you think? Where is this godforsaken place? It was dark. I couldn't see anything anyway. all walks of life. So you get to Bletchley Station, and you thought, what do you think, where is this godforsaken place? It was dark, I couldn't see anything anyway, and we were taken straight to a billet in one of the railway towns. I was with a girl, actually, who'd escaped from Belgium. She'd joined up, joined the ATS, and she and I piled up on the train as it happened.

And we were then taken to this village in Bradwell and finding that we not only had to share a room, but we had to share a bed, which was a bit of a shock to both of us. And the facilities were very primitive indeed. And so the following day I asked if I could be moved. But I went from the frying pan into the fire to another rather indifferent dwelling with four members of the family, three of us, and there was no bathroom.

It's like you had such a hardy upbringing. Absolutely, yes, yes. Oh, yes, I mean, that didn't matter so much. But my next move was to a lovely house in Loughton which is now part of Milton Keynes where the family of five and three of us I mentioned the numbers because with ration books that was jolly good it meant that we we ate very well and they also had a very good garden and lots of fruit trees and so on. So we were compared with what a lot of people had to live on in those days. We were very well fed.

And so tell me about Bletchley. I mean, secrecy was so important. So quite rapidly, they must have sort of had to get the paperwork done, make sure you weren't going to tell anyone, and to make it clear that this was a sort of totally, totally top secret operation, ultra secret operation. Absolutely, yes. Well, the first morning, having been bussed into Bletchley, I was taken into the little office on the left of the entrance and faced with, I think it was an intelligence corps officer with a gun on the table.

And the official secrets act there for me to read, which, of course course my age and experience was fairly formidable but there were no two ways about it I mean you signed it and that was that until the 60 years passed and I remember saying to myself well Betty you have no option you just do it. Was this the beginning of a glimpse you thought actually this might be something rather exciting were you not a bit nervous that you might have yeah I was quite nervous about the fact that I did have to keep everything to myself because I didn't know what I was going to see or hear anyway but having told myself very strictly that that is what it has to be it was so once they got the paperwork out the way they'd given you a bit of a scare what Well, then I was taken into Major Tester's office, which in those days was upstairs.

I don't know the, well, it doesn't matter really. It's upstairs above the ballroom. There were three little rooms up there. I think they were servants' quarters originally. And my first task was to register all the messages that were coming in at quite a rate, something in the region of i i didn't handle 10 000 but that's how many there were in the height of activities to be registered before the code breakers could handle them so that was your job was was the top of the

funnel was it which was check it sort of getting all the messages in and then... That's right, and registering them in a not very detailed way because apart from the date and a little call sign, everything was in groups of five letters or figures, which was totally unintelligible. Was it exciting work or a bit boring? No, it was boring, really. And what date was... What point of the war was this this was 1941 right yes so the war was going were you aware the war was going badly was were you nervous about that or do you not

really see the big picture well we weren't told very much i mean the public knowledge was very limited i mean sometimes you'd hear one of our planes is missing or something like that, but it wasn't detailed. The only thing we did know was whether or not we could spend our off days in London and we'd be told whether or not it was safe to go. But apart from that, we knew very little. And Bletchley wasn't bombed, as you probably know, but a bomb dropped between the church and the mansion. But it was a jettison bomb. But we were never actually attacked. So the job, the work was a bit boring initially. Yes, it was boring, because you didn't know what was going to happen to it next. And because we couldn't say anything outside our own offices, we didn't get to know

the rest of the story. Did you guess that it was German codes? Oh, I think we were told that it was, although it's only very recently, a couple of years ago, when Mick Smith told me that I'd been handling Holocaust material, but I didn't know at the time. You listen to Dan Snow's history. Don't go anywhere. There's more to come.

I'm Matt Lewis. And I'm Dr. Eleanor Janaga. And in Gone Medieval, we get into the greatest mysteries. The gobsmacking details and latest groundbreaking research. From the greatest millennium in human history. We're talking Vikings, Normans, Kings and Popes,

who were rarely the best of friends, murder, rebellions, and crusades. Find out who we really were by subscribing to Gone Medieval from History Hit, wherever you get your podcasts. and talk to me about the famous social life at bletchley what was that like it was pretty good well we had well actually mark will tell you that. He's got a splendid book about the drama group, which put on a play fairly often.

Goodness knows how they did it with the shift system that we had. But anyway, yes, we had drama groups. We had a Bach choir run by Herbert Murrell, who was a professional musician. And then we had a magical society, which I enjoyed, and a gramophone group. We also had lectures from various people. I don't know who they were now, but we did.

So all in all, yes, it was a balanced life, but it was quite hard work, especially if you were on the three-shift system, which was 8 to 4, 4 to midnight, and midnight to 8, shift system which was um eight to four four to midnight midnight to eight which um is all very well except the uh one during the night isn't very good because you have to have a meal and one system doesn't like that in the middle of the night and sir bletchley park the giant code breaking exercise did it was 24 hours a day yes yes it yes, it was. Oh, yes, it had to be. And was there romance between all the various people there? There was a little, but bear in mind that we outnumbered the men three to one,

so there wasn't much scope for it. There were some romances, some famous ones. We were talking about them earlier. What's their name? It's gone for the minute, but quite well-known people who met when they were breaking codes. At the Magical Society meetings? Yes, that's right. Where the magic happened. And did you then move on to other jobs within Bletchley?

I did, actually, yes. Bearing in mind I was very junior, I had a job in Hartford one time, which was a naval one, I think. And the gentleman I was working for had only a very, really primitive way of writing things down. And he wanted me to sort it out and type out what he'd written, which was fine, except that he wrote from the top to the bottom, as most sensible people do, and then he'd turn the paper around, and I never knew where to sort of hang on to things. It was quite extraordinary. I remember that very clearly. Did they move you around because there was a danger that you'd sort of get bored and sloppy in one position, or did they move you around because you were very good and they kept promoting you?

Well, I don't really know why I was moved around or why I was promoted, but I ended up in the Japanese section, Block F, which no longer exists. And somebody discovered that I was good at paraphrasing decoded Japanese messages. So I did that for quite quite long time until 1945. And then I was told that I was to go to the Pentagon and carry on with my paraphrasing, which I did. So at that stage, you're looking at unencrypted, you're looking at codes as they would have originally appeared

to the Japanese operators. So did you have a sense that, did that connect you with a distant battlefield? Was that a strange feeling? In a way, but of course, a lot of, did that connect to you with a distant battlefield? Was that a strange feeling? In a way, but of course, a lot of the names that came up, this is after they'd been decoded and translated, the battle area between Burma and India,

places like Kohima, Maikdila was the other famous one. But anyway, all that borderline between the two countries, that came up quite a bit. And as I say, it was my job to paraphrase. And so when we hoped that when these messages went on to the commanders in the field, if the Japs had picked up, they wouldn't realise that we'd actually decoded their messages. Okay, so you're saying paraphrase. Do you mean you're almost rewriting them? Rewriting, that's right, yes. I do have an example here somewhere that might be helpful.

It's not a very long one. I mean, most of them are very long. The example, border areas near Kohima and Oumphal expected to be attacked Monday, becomes early next week. Attacks

could be further west, maybe Kohima area. Really? Yes. That's a very short one. So you would look at a message from a Japanese field commander

it said right we're moving we're going to go and attack the Infant and Cohema and you would set your decision as to what you wrote and sort of make it all subtle and suggestive and that's a very serious job it was yes and I did that in the Pentagon as well

only a short time of course because this was I went out after the war in europe and finished and uh of course the bomb the atomic bombs dropped in august or was the 9th i think and uh so that was it that's all i had to do then so so why exactly do you have to paraphrase why can't you just send commanders in the field exactly what their Japanese opponent has written down and sent back to Tokyo? Yeah, well, the point of that was because we didn't want the Japs to know that we'd actually broken their codes. So if your message fell into the wrong hands, it would look like British intelligence sort

of speculating? I guess so. But of course, again, being very junior, and I was never given the full story, I was never able to follow it through. Did any of those messages that came across your desk at that late stage of the war give you real pause for thought and think, oh, there are men and people out there on those battlefields in the most terrible conditions? Did any of those messages really arrest you? Well, no, because we didn't know very much about it. There were not news reports in the way that we have them today. We had very, very little information, certainly at my level.

How did the male officers, the senior male staff, how did they treat you women? Did they look on you as equals or was there a... Yes, a tremendous esprit de corps. It was very it's very good very good indeed i don't remember any uh the old feeling between the men and the women we all worked together very amicably and at the end towards the end of the war being sent to the pentagon i mean that must have been extraordinary that order to receive that was something else especially as there'd been a mix-up in the movement order.

I should have gone on a ship, and the officer in Radnor Place, which was the area where you were sent here, there or wherever, she'd gone on leave and hadn't opened the movement instruction for me, so I missed the boat. And I rang my boss in Block F and said, I'm still sitting here. So he sent me back to the war office. And they organised for me to go on a flying boat from Pool Harbour, which went to Ireland and then to Newfoundland and then down to Baltimore. Took 22 hours to get there. How old were you at that stage? Oh gosh, well I was born in 23, this was 41. I was 18, 19.

So did you feel that you and your female colleagues were advancing the cause of women? Was there anything like that going on in your head or did you just, you just felt there was a job to do and well that's right i think we we accepted it because there was a war on and this is what we we had to do it was there a pride perhaps that women could do jobs that previously that had been sort of reserved for male intelligence officers i'm sorry it's a subject i really don't know anything about because you see I was only growing up in in the country and then joining up when I was I've just lost track of how old I was yes I know I was too too young and inexperienced to know anything about the rest of the employment situation and then when war where were you when the war ended VJ day where were, where were you? V-J Day, I was in Washington.

And that was noisy. And the dropping of the atomic bomb, of course, came as a total shock to you. Did you learn about it through your work or did you just hear about it on the wireless? No, I heard about it through an office in... I had moved from the Pentagon after my job was over and I went into the British Army... No, the British Joint Services Mission Office

near the White House. I was with one of the staff who was Commander Dennison's daughter and she told me that it was about to happen rather secretly. I didn't know it was going to happen. So you knew before the bomb was dropped, you knew it was going to happen? I did actually, yes. And then when Japan surrendered, did you all pile out onto the Mall? Yes, indeed. And the residents of Washington fixed their car horns for 24 hours. You have never heard such a cacophony in all your life. And then we all went out and clung to the railings of the White House,

shouting, we want Harry. Harry is Truman. Absolutely crazy. And the other interesting thing was that, well, there wasn't much food rationing. There was a certain amount of meat rationing. And suddenly the meat appeared. We think it had been saved up for the end of the war.

You're talking about it now. It looks, you have clearly some fond memories. I mean, did you enjoy your wartime service? Oh, yes, I did very much because having been tucked away in the country for so many years and not meeting an awful lot of people, it was a real joy for me, meeting different people and interacting with them. I really enjoyed it. Did you lose, I mean, did you think about those in your generation, men, women, civilians, who had different experiences and suffered on the battlefield or on the home front? I mean,

did you have friends and cousins in your wider network? Yes, indeed. I mean, most of my family at age, they were in one of the services or others. And we have quite a few regular army officers in the family. So, yes. Sorry, I've lost the call. And did they all come back unscathed? Yes, they did. Yeah, they did. Yes. It was the First World War ones who didn't come back unscathed. No, Second World War, they did, fortunately. Yes. Just while I've got you, you mentioned the First World War ones who didn't come back unscathed. No, the Second World War, they did, fortunately, yes. Just while I've got you, you mentioned the First World War. Do you remember people in the 1920s from your younger days?

Do you remember the First World War veterans particularly? Well, I remember two uncles of mine, and one of them was at Gallipoli and had nightmares forever. Yes, I remember that very clearly. And after the war, how did your life go differently to how it might have done had you stayed up there in Shropshire? I would become a cabbage, I think. But no, it sounds awful to say this, but the war was good for me because it made me interact with other people much more, which I wouldn't have

done otherwise. And yes, and I found being out in the world very interesting and I stayed out in the world. You stayed working after the war? Yes, I did. Well, I went home for a bit, as we all did, I think. I had to wait until February 46 before the mob group came up and then I went home for a while and the big difficulty was then prospective interviewers couldn't understand why you couldn't tell them what you were doing now a lot of people have felt this especially men because you know you weren't able to say and people didn't understand was it a bit of an anti-climax I mean you'd been in Washington DC you heard about nuclear bombs getting dropped but you'd but you'd stood on the railings of the White House and suddenly you're back looking for a job?

A bit tame, yes. But I was lucky because I went back to Richard's Castle, which was near Ludlow, and the head of Ludlow Grammar School was also a former Bletchley person. So we just looked at each other, said nothing, and he gave me a job. Yes, people can't understand that, but we never discussed it between... I remember bumping into my Block F boss, who was a civilian actually, but I was in Cheltenham for some reason, and I spotted him in a restaurant. And he just, he just nodded. He said, I thought it was you. And that was it. You see, the secrecy was still very much with us. What was it like finally being able to talk about it in the 1970s? Yes, it was very strange. I was working in Birmingham at that time and

out at lunchtime and there was another Bletchley person across the road. I didn't know her name. I just knew her by sight. And she said, it's out. I said, what's out? She said, we can talk. I said, oh, bye. And, you know, I didn't. I didn't want to. It was years before I actually opened up. It wasn't until somebody suggested that I should give talks that I realised that I must dig into my memory and start talking, which I did. And I've been giving talks ever since. And you've met royalty and been decorated for those talks. Well, no, yes, I've met most royalty, actually, but that's another story. The citation when I had my MB, he simply said, for remembering and furthering the work of Bletchley Park, which is what I do all the time now. I always keep leaflets in my handbag. And you always go back to reunions, don't you?

I always go back to reunions and many other times when I'm free to do so. Take people down and, yes. They can take me down one day, I'd love that. Okay, will do. Thank you very much indeed. Well, thank you. you