Codebreaking and World War II in The Pacific Series-Class I: The Beginnings of U.S. Army Codebreaking Efforts and The Breaking of Purple    NEW!

There have been movies, television shows, books and articles devoted to the breaking of the German Enigma coding machine during WWII.   Codebreaking's role in the Pacific war is equally interesting and just as important, but other than the movie Midway less attention has been paid to it.  While the Enigma story is primarily British, this story is almost entirely American. The purpose of this series of related, but independent, classes is to give the history of American codebreaking, give the human stories involved, and describe its impact on the war in the Pacific.

Register to learn about the creation of the first American codebreaking unit shortly after World War I, led by the inimitable, poker-playing Herbert O. Yardley; its termination by Secretary of State Henry L. Stimson; Yardley’s tell-all bestseller The American Black Chamber; the role of codebreaking in the Washington Naval Treaty negotiations; the founding of the Army’s cryptographic group; and the cracking of Japan’s Purple encryption machine.