210
Alan Turing was a fucking hero, and the British legal system drove him to suicide
(media.piefed.social)
this post was submitted on 25 Sep 2025
210 points (98.6% liked)
History Memes
921 readers
109 users here now
A place to share history memes!
Rules:
-
No sexism, racism, homophobia, transphobia, assorted bigotry, etc.
-
No fascism (including tankies/red fash), atrocity denial or apologia, etc.
-
Tag NSFW pics as NSFW.
-
Follow all Piefed.social rules.
Banner courtesy of @setsneedtofeed@lemmy.world
founded 5 months ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
In the 1950s Ultra (the code name for the massive British project that regularly decrypted German radio communications) was still a state secret. The reasons for maintaining this secrecy long after the end of the war aren't fully known, but German encryption devices (of which Enigma was one) had been sold to many countries around the world and Britain probably wanted to preserve the possibility of reading their secret communications if necessary (the machines used for this had been destroyed and the personnel disbursed, so this wasn't something Britain was still doing at this point).
So it would not have been possible for anyone to weigh in on Turing's behalf and publicly point out how instrumental he had been in helping to win the war. But surely someone like Churchill (who was still alive) could have interceded behind the scenes. Truly shameful that nobody did.
Tommy Flowers built colossus Turing made rules for programming it and yet flowers is basically unknown and Turing is known for flowers work and being discriminated against.
Flowers literally threw his chosen career away for the benefit of society and we still don't recognize him in a meaningful way.
Hell, look at how many people died or were crippled for life fighting fascism, and we honor their supreme sacrifice ... by bringing back fucking fascism.