Philip Stuart Milner-Barry

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Sir Philip Stuart Milner-Barry (born  September 20, 1906 in London , †  March 25, 1995 London) was a strong British chess player . In the 1920s and 1930s he was one of the strongest chess masters in Great Britain. During the Second World War he made a major contribution to the deciphering of the German rotor cipher machine Enigma .

Life

Stuart was born as the second of six children to Edward Leopold Milner-Barry († 1917) and his wife Edith Mary on September 20, 1906 in the London borough of Hendon . He attended Cheltenham College as a student and received a scholarship to Trinity College , Cambridge . There he befriended another talented chess player, who later became two-time British chess masters, Conel Hugh O'Donel Alexander , with whom he later worked in Bletchley Park. Milner-Barry was married to Thelma Tennant Wells. He had a son and two daughters.

chess

In 1923 Milner-Barry won the British Youth Championship. He played for England at the Chess Olympiads in Stockholm in 1937 , in Buenos Aires in 1939 , in Helsinki in 1952 and in Moscow in 1956 . In the 1953 Hastings tournament he finished second. From 1938 to 1945 he worked as a chess correspondent for the newspaper " The Times ". From 1970 to 1973 he was President of the British Chess Federation .

He achieved his best historical rating in 1941 with 2552. He was 68th in the world. The "Milner-Barry-Gambit" is named after him, a chess opening which is marked by the opening moves 1. e4 e6 2. d4 d5 3. e5 c5 4. c3 Nc6 5. Nf3 Qb6 6. Bd3.

Nigel Short noted that there was a notable discrepancy between his style of playing at chess and his character at Milner-Barry. In his games he was extremely aggressive, privately a very calm and polite person.

Bletchley Park

The legendary "Hut 6" (photo from 2004) in Bletchley Park, where Milner-Barry worked on deciphering the Enigma from spring 1940 until the end of World War II. In the autumn of 1943, he took over responsibility for "Hut 6", succeeding Gordon Welchman.

Stuart Milner-Barry found himself in 1939 with his teammates Hugh Alexander, who was the reigning British chess master at the time, and Harry Golombek in Argentina at the Chess Olympiad in Buenos Aires. While the tournament was in progress, the participants were surprised by the outbreak of World War II after Great Britain declared war on the German Reich on September 3, 1939 in response to the German invasion of Poland . Milner-Barry and his team-mates then abandoned the tournament and immediately returned to England.

Immediately after their return they joined the so-called Government Code and Cypher School (GC&CS) (German: "Staatliche Code- und Chiffrenschule"), which was about 70 km northwest of London in Bletchley Park . It was a camouflage name for the military service that successfully deciphered the message traffic that the German military encrypted with their Enigma key machine during World War II .

Milner-Barry was recruited by British mathematician Gordon Welchman , a former fellow student from Trinity College . A little later, Milner-Barry recruited his chess colleague and friend Hugh Alexander. In the spring of 1940 Milner-Barry began his work in the Hut Six (German: "Baracke 6"), where the British code breakers under the direction of Welchman dealt specifically with the deciphering of radio messages from the German Army and the Air Force , which dealt with the Key machine Enigma were encrypted.

In 1993, Milner-Barry wrote that " to this day I could not claim that I fully understood how the machine worked, let alone what was involved in the problems of breaking and reading the Enigma cipher " (German: "bis to this Tag, I couldn't claim to have fully understood how the machine worked, let alone what problems were connected with breaking into the Enigma key process and deciphering it ”).

With his profound knowledge of the German language, he was able to find out that the German radio messages were often stereotyped and often contained phrases that the British code breakers could guess and use to decipher. To do this, they used a deciphering process that has been known and proven for centuries, namely the “Probable Word Method” (see also: Pattern Search ). Here the attacker guesses, suspects or knows that a certain phrase (English crib , French mot probable ) appears in the text , for example "OBERKOMMANDODERWEHRMACHT". This “crib” (probable word) is used to suitably adjust an electromechanical deciphering machine called the “ Turing bomb ”, which was devised by the English code breaker Alan Turing , and with its help to find the unknown roller position and basic position that the German Had chosen an encryptor for encryption. Finding suitable cribs was a crucial prerequisite for the function of the bomb, and from autumn 1940 Milner-Barry was responsible for this as head of the so-called "Crib Room" in Hut 6 .

Milner-Barry was housed near their place of work together with Alexander, who was involved in the neighboring department "Hut 8" with similar tasks, but in connection with the German naval enigma . Their long-standing acquaintance contributed to a very cooperative cooperation between the two departments and also helped to avoid conflicts in the allocation of the very limited "computing time" of the Turing bombs. In October 1941 became Milner-Barry Deputy Chief (ger .: deputy ) of Hut 6 , which was still led by Gordon Welchman.

At the time, the whole of Bletchley Park was suffering from a severe staff shortage, which delayed the Enigma deciphering. The GC & CS management seemed unable to solve this problem. As a result, the bosses of Hut 6 , Gordon Welchman, and Hut 8 , Alan Turing, together with their deputies, Milner-Barry and Alexander, decided to bypass the official channels and to contact British Prime Minister Winston Churchill directly . In a letter posted personally by Milner-Barry at 10 Downing Street on October 21, 1941 , they described the problems that Bletchley Park was suffering from. Churchill, who was fully aware of the importance of the decipherments, responded with his now legendary instruction: " Action this day: Make sure they have all they want on extreme priority and report to me that this has been done " (German: "Do you still act." today! Make sure you get everything you want with the utmost priority and report to me when that is done. ")

In the fall of 1943, Milner-Barry was succeeded by Welchman chief of the entire Hut 6 , while Welchman in turn was promoted to the technical vice director (" Assistant Director of Mechanization ") of Bletchley Park. At that time, the Hut 6 staff had grown to more than 450 employees. Milner-Barry retained his leadership position until the end of the war, with a number of cryptographic complications being resolved under his leadership, which the German authorities gradually introduced to strengthen the security of the Enigma. This included the plug-in reversing roller D and the Enigma watch .

The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography notes: “although he increasingly felt that Hut 6 was on the verge of losing the ability to decode Enigma, it held on until the end of the war, and this was due in no small part to his gifted leadership. ”(German:“ although he felt more and more that the Hut 6 was in danger of losing the Enigma's ability to decipher, it could continue to be preserved until the end of the war, and that was in no small part thanks to his gifted leadership qualities. ")

In recognition of his services, he was appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in 1946 and Companion of the Order of the Bath (CB) in 1962 . Eventually he was knighted as Knight Commander of the Royal Victorian Order (KCVO) in 1975 .

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Philip Stuart Milner-Barry's results at the Chess Olympiads on olimpbase.org (English)
  2. ↑ Aaron and Claire Summerscale: Interview with a grandmaster . Everyman Chess, London 2001. ISBN 1-85744-243-1 , p. 43.

literature

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Milner-Barry, Philip Stuart
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Milner-Barry, Sir Philip Stuart (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British chess master
DATE OF BIRTH 20th September 1906
PLACE OF BIRTH London
DATE OF DEATH March 25, 1995
Place of death London