I think they meant to the wider public.
The movie certainly helped, I would put that as the biggest reason the general public heard of him more.
https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=Alan+Turing&ye...
> changing the course of the war and giving the Allies a significant advantage over their Nazi adversaries.
Turing, Bletchley Park, Engima machine had no material impact on the war. 90% of the german military were destroyed by the Soviets in the eastern front in a simple battle of attrition. It would have served the soviets better if britain had shut down bletchley park and used those resources to send bullets/trucks/etc to the Soviets. Turing, Bletchley Park, etc provide no advantage over the germans as the germans were already heavily disadvantaged - by population, economy, technology, military, etc.
The soviets by themselves vastly outnumbered the germans and had a far greater military industrial complex. The soviets produced more tanks, planes, guns, etc than the germans. Now toss in the british empire and the US and the germans stood no chance.
It's amazing how misleading the media, news, etc are when it comes to ww2. One look at the actual data/facts/stats is rather sobering. Germany had no chance of winning. You have a better shot at beating 3 heavy weight MMA fighters at the same time than Germany had of beating the US/Soviet Union/British Empire. Go look at the data of Japan vs the US/China/British Empire/etc. Japan had even longer odds.
The propaganda that has been built around Turing, Enigma machine and WW2 in recent years is rather impressive. I guess being one of the founders of Computer Science isn't good enough? We have to exaggerate/lie about him winning ww2?
That's simply not true, even if Enigma has been somewhat mythologised.
First, consider that time was of the essence. The Germans were working on their own nuclear weapon, and had enough traction that this was of great concern to the allied leadership. So the question is not, would the soviets have won, but rather would they have won *before the germans completed their nuclear weapon*.
So the real question is - did Enigma distract and delay the germans from this goal?
It did. As just one example, breaking Enigma is widely held to weakened the U-boats hold on the North Atlantic, without which the D-Day landings could have been delayed by a year or even longer, as the North Atlantic was the route that brought ammunition, fuel, food and troops to Britain from America.
What would the germans have done with an extra year with no western front to worry about?
At the very least, they would have been able to redeploy resources to the easter front, which would certainly have slowed the russians down. And at the worst, they could have completed their own atom bomb, with dire consequences to the rest of the world.
It's certainly hyperbole to say that Enigma won the war. But it's also hyperbole to say - as you do - that Engima machine had no material impact on the war.
(1) Pointing out that Turing was well known before 2012, as if this fact somehow explains anything about the context or reasoning for the viewpoint, is lazy. Generally, duplicated points occur in internet forums. "someone else already said this" is, at best, banal.
(2) This is apparently what happened, so it's accurate critical analysis, afaict.
(3) This is beyond hyperbole. Fabric of society? Which society? What do you mean by "fabric"? SMH
Lastly, I am surprised at your umbrage at what I have said in (1). When asked "why", it seems like a pretty reasonable answer to say "look at all the other comments that confirm and justify this statement".
(3) Fair enough, it is hyperbolic. Democratic society. "Fabric" is a pretty common idiom for the underlying norms (e.g. journalism exposing issues with the other 3 branches, having a non-governmental source of mass information)
For what is worth, your comment and this link[1] is the first time I have seen it used for material infrastructure.
[1] I am on the fence whether the quotes in the link can straightforwardly be interpreted to be about material infrastructure as opposed to "moral/social fabric".
This is probably true of the Germany army, but not the air force, and certainly not the navy.
Furthermore, it does not demonstrate your point that "Bletchley Park ... had no material impact on the war", which is demonstrably false. See for example https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultra for a list of some contributions; but it is surely obvious that reading the enemy's communications is going to be of great help in a war.
> Germany had no chance of winning.
True once they were fighting UK + USSR + USA; the odds against them were too great.
Quote:
> The exact influence of Ultra on the course of the war is debated
So, you provided a link that proves your own comment incorrect ...
The parent comment wrote:
> which is demonstrably false
which demonstrably proves my comment perfectly valid and correct.
Try again later.
Should they have spent the money on trucks or information?
Did Enigma do anything or did it merely prevent losses?
Should they have invested in spies or computers?
There is another possibility…was enigma merely a front to mask the real source of the information—-some human source? Initially its value could have been as a “check” on the intelligence coming in from a German source. The fact that it led to the development of computing must be entirely due to Alan Turing’s influence.
That's a rather odd claim to make. The ACM's Turing Award has been given out since 1966; Turing's crucial role in the breaking of Enigma was revealed in the 70's. In 1999, he was one listed as one of Time magazine's 100 most important people of the 20th century.
As far as I can determine, the only new information that was declassified in 2012 was a couple of technical papers from Turing's work at Bletchley Park. Any relationship to public awareness of his life seems entirely coincidental.