ABSTRACT
The men and women who reported to Room 40 were not typical soldiers or military types. The operations in the room were so secret that code breakers had to hide their work when visitors came into the room. If the Allies could break the codes and not let Germany know the codes were broken, then Germany would continue to send messages for the Allies to intercept. The Allies would know the exact locations of the German ships. The team in Room 40 benefited from the Russian discovery of two German Navy codebooks. The codebook enabled the team to make great strides in understanding German messages. During the war, Room 40 decrypted more than 15,000 German communications. The work of the people in Room 40 was incredibly valuable to the war effort, but the staff of Room 40 was not recognized for their service until decades after the end of the war.
