Do you believe the women had an impact beyond the end of the war, and if so, what?

Do you believe the women had an impact beyond the end of the war, and if so, what?

Oh, absolutely! They were some of the best code breakers out there, and laid the groundwork for modern calculation methods, computers and cybersecurity.

I think their work would have had a bigger impact if it had been known about at the time. The Indian code-breakers were recently recognized by the White House, even thought they waited until there only a few of them left. I think it's time these code-breakers were recognized.

Yes, in a general way they did, as men came to see that women could do important work beyond teaching school and nursing. Their impact would have been, as others have said, far greater if they had gotten more recognition immediately post-war. But I think I may have even personally benefitted, as I was hired for a government job that would have been more traditionally for a man had I been competing at an earlier post in history.

Absolutely yes - they laid the groundwork for cybersecurity, practically invented crypto-analysis and probably laid the groundwork for modern computer systems. It is such a shame that their work hasn't been recognized until recently.

Yes, but in order to protect current intelligence sources and methods, the intelligence community has to be careful how much even WWII codebreaking is discussed. It’s refreshing that the early codebreakers’ accomplishments are recognized in Mundy’s book. In the beginning of my own career, Ann Caracristi was Deputy Director of NSA and was someone I looked up to. That was in the late 70s, when there were still not that many civilian women working at the agency. Those WWII codebreakers eased the way for their female successors in the intelligence community.