"The Poles had broken Enigma in 1932, when the encoding machine was undergoing trials with the German Army. They even managed to reconstruct a machine. At that time, the cypher altered only once every few months. With the advent of war, it changed at least once a day, effectively locking the Poles out. But in July 1939, they had passed on their knowledge to the British and the French. This enabled the codebreakers to make critical progress in working out the order in which the keys were attached to the electrical circuits, a task that had been impossible without an Enigma machine in front of them."
I think the issue is less with Bletchley, but more with the mainstream media who spread the information more widely. I would expect most people on HN to be aware of the Polish contribution, but I think that the general population (of Britain, at least) are less aware of it.
It's a touchy subject in Poland, it's generally not accepted that anyone other than the Poles deserves any recognition and any mention of the actual state of history gets you shifty looks. So while the world is starting giving credit to Rejewski's team, the broad audience here is just now discovering that it wasn't solely their work.
All fine points. Whenever this topic is brought up, I personally take the time to straighten the overwhelming view based on lack of or misinformation about these three mathematicians.
In-fact, there is a positive to all of this - via discussion and constant correction of what isn't widely stated, we are promoting the actual facts. This in my point of view is and will be the eventual success contributing factor. I'm not involved in the matters of how official statements, literature and such should be amended to promote this more, but if there is an overwhelming misunderstanding of how and what exactly happened - it's worthwhile doing so.
Wasn't there a section in Kahn's The Codebreakers telling of how at least one of the Polish fellows joined the codebreakers at Bletchley, but was put off onto menial tasks for the rest of the war?
1. Here's what Bletchley Park says on their first history page about their wartime role (http://www.bletchleypark.org.uk/content/hist/wartime.rhtm):
"The Poles had broken Enigma in 1932, when the encoding machine was undergoing trials with the German Army. They even managed to reconstruct a machine. At that time, the cypher altered only once every few months. With the advent of war, it changed at least once a day, effectively locking the Poles out. But in July 1939, they had passed on their knowledge to the British and the French. This enabled the codebreakers to make critical progress in working out the order in which the keys were attached to the electrical circuits, a task that had been impossible without an Enigma machine in front of them."
2. There's a memorial for the Poles at Bletchley Park (http://www.flickr.com/photos/ell-r-brown/5109679597/) and they have an annual Polish day.
3. There's a special page on the Polish contribution (in English: http://www.bletchleypark.org.uk/content/hist/history/polish.... and in Polish: http://www.bletchleypark.org.uk/content/hist/history/inpolis...)
I do agree, however, that the 2001 film Enigma was an utter piece of crap that depicted "Turing" as straight and a Pole as a traitor.