Hello /r/AskHistorians
So full disclosure: Part of this is for a research paper I am writing, but this is only a small aspect of it. I believe this limited scope is withing the sub's rules for homework help, if not I apologize and will remove this post. Secondly, my educational background is in engineering, not history, so please consider me a novice in this realm.
On to the question: I am working on an analysis of the English Cryptanaysis efforts in WWI and II. Namely I am focusing on Room 40 and Bletchley Park. The larger scope of the paper is a general analysis, compare and contrast style. However I am trying to understand why it is that the British efforts at code-breaking allegedly outstripped their counterparts in other nations. I know that in WWII other nations caught up slightly (the polish enigma cracking project, for example), but in everything I have read it seems that the English code cracking teams were better. Was it just that they got started first? or is it a modern fascination with Alan Turing? So my question is: Were the English cryptanaylsis efforts truly more advanced than their counterparts in other nations, and if so, where did they derive this advantage from?
This question would be an extraordinarily difficult to answer because much of the history of cryptanalysis, even from World War II, is classified.
Even the standard book on the topic, Codebreakers by David Kahn, suffers from incompleteness. This review of the book tells why:
The one great exception to his European coverage [in WWII] is Britain, and the gap shows. Probably British cryptologists, under the constraints of their Official Secrets Acts, are less likely to talk than those from countries with less severe protective laws. In any case, Kahn has stated that he excised from his text at the request of the Defense Department the material he had on British cryptologic activities.
Finally, the NSA has a Hall of Fame, which honors some of their best cryptoanalysts. Here's a description of he contribution by a guy, Ronald Hunt, you probably never heard of:
Ronald Hunt earned a record of significant achievement in cryptanalytic diagnosis. He expanded decryption capabilities and successfully diagnosed many difficult, thought-to-be intractable, cryptologic problems. He had five primary successes, any one of which would have made a brilliant career, but which collectively made him a "giant" in his field.
In his career as a cryptanalyst and crypto-mathematician, he dealt with the complexities of determining encryption algorithms used by targets, and designing cryptanalytic attacks to exploit cipher and produce intelligence. He also developed special-purpose software to reduce the manpower involved in daily exploitation.
From the early 1970s, Mr. Hunt tackled the most difficult cryptanalytic challenges. In addition to analysis of sophisticated systems, he recognized the flaws in some special-purpose analytic tools, allowing them to be redesigned for increased effectiveness. This resulted in consistent production of actionable intelligence on very high-interest targets. Soon, he progressed from analysis of existing analytic tools to their original design. Mr. Hunt demonstrated his versatility with successes in analysis and development of analytic tools against a wide variety of targets around the world.
Of course, we have no way of judging whether his contribution is greater than Alan Turing's, because the NSA is not going to tell you what he really did. Similar people may exist in China and Russia and who knows where else.