Unbreakable--The Spies Who Cracked the Nazis' Secret Code by Rebecca E. F. Barone

Author:Rebecca E. F. Barone
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Henry Holt and Co. (BYR)

When one German unit couldn’t quite figure out what “Paula” stood for, the Polish codebreakers read in some disbelief the explicit definition: “Paula = Paris.”

Hitler was coming for the heart of France.

The Allies knew the German plans, yet no one mounted a defense of the city. The French forces were spread thin; there wasn’t anyone to come to Paris’s rescue. Bertrand later wrote that the commander in chief of the French air force’s hands were tied: “he did not have the hundred fighter aircraft necessary unless he stripped the front of that number.” And the aircraft at the front, perilously trying to hold back the Nazi push into France, could not be moved.

On May 15, the French prime minister, Paul Reynaud, called British prime minister Winston Churchill in despair. “We have been defeated. We are beaten. We have lost the battle. The road to Paris is open.”

Churchill immediately left for France and was in Paris the next day. Confronting Reynaud, he demanded, “Where are the strategic reserves?” And then, his frustration rising to the surface, translated his own message immediately into French: “Où est la masse de manoeuvre?”

Reynaud responded only, “Aucune!” [“None!”]

There was nothing and no one to stand between Hitler’s forces and the French capital.

On June 3, planes with black swastikas flew over Paris, dropping bombs and laying waste to buildings, roads, and bridges. Rejewski, Zygalski, and Różycki watched in horror as their home was destroyed around them for the second time in less than a year.

Parisian streets were clogged with people fleeing the city. Cars were gridlocked, and people tried evacuating on foot, pushing what they could load into handcarts. The few trains that came through were mobbed with people who had slept at the stations, desperate for something to come along to take them away. Refugees from the north of France began flooding into Paris, adding to the crowds and chaos.

French refugees fleeing the German invasion.

[Bundesarchiv, Bild 146–1971–083–01 / Tritschler / CC-BY-SA 3.0]

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