title: Dennis Hastert

text: ABC News reported that "for years, Jolene watched helplessly as Hastert basked in fame and power, seated to the left of the president for years in the early 2000s for the nationally televised State of the Union address." Several days before the indictment was unsealed, Burdge was interviewed by FBI agents who asked her about her brother and informed her Hastert was about to be indicted on federal charges. Neither Reinboldt nor Burdge are "Individual A" named in the indictment, but Burdge believes that "Individual A" is familiar with what happened with her brother. The statements by Burdge "marked the first time that a person has been publicly identified as a possible victim of Mr. Hastert."


title: Dennis Hastert

text: The emergence of the sexual abuse allegations against Hastert brought renewed attention to the 2006 Mark Foley scandal, and the criticism of Hastert that he failed to take appropriate action in that case.


title: Dennis Hastert

text: In the wake of the sexual abuse allegations, journalists noted that Hastert was a supporter of measures which sought to enhance punishments for child sexual abuse, such as the Adam Walsh Child Protection and Safety Act and the Child Abuse Prevention and Enforcement Act of 2000. In 2003, Hastert publicly called for legislation to "put repeat child molesters into jail for the rest of their lives."


title: Dennis Hastert

text: Hastert resigned his lobbyist position at the law and lobbying firm Dickstein Shapiro the day the indictment was unsealed. His biography was quickly removed from the firm's website and the firm purged all mentions of him from its previously posted press releases. Hastert's resignation left the firm "reeling," according to a report in "Politico". Following the Hastert indictment, Dickstein Shapiro's biggest domestic client, Fuels America, terminated its lobbying contract with the firm.


title: Dennis Hastert

text: On May 29, 2015, Yorkville Community Unit School District 115 released a statement reading: James Harnett, who was superintendent of the school district for five of the years that Hastert taught there, told the "Chicago Tribune" that he was not aware of any complaints of misconduct brought against Hastert at the time.


title: Dennis Hastert

text: On May 29, 2015, Senator Mark Kirk, Republican of Illinois, who served in the House throughout Hastert's tenure as speaker, released a statement reading: "Anyone who knows Denny is shocked and confused by the recent news. The former speaker should be afforded, like any other American, his day in court to address these very serious accusations. This is a very troubling development that we must learn more about, but I am thinking of his family during this difficult time." On June 4, 2015, Kirk announced that he would donate to charity a $10,000 contribution made to Kirk's 2010 Senate campaign by Hastert's Keep Our Mission PAC. Kirk's announcement was made following the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee (DSCC)'s call upon the senator to "return or donate Denny Hastert's money immediately." The DSCC also called upon Republican Senators John Boozman of Arkansas and Roy Blunt of Missouri (who received $11,000 and $5,000, respectively, from Hastert's PAC in recent years) to return or donate the funds.


title: Dennis Hastert

text: On May 29, 2015, White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest stated in response to a reporter's question that "there is nobody here" at the White House "who derives any pleasure from reading about the former Speaker's legal troubles at this point." On the same day, House Speaker John Boehner, Republican of Ohio, issued a statement saying: "The Denny I served with worked hard on behalf of his constituents and the country. I'm shocked and saddened to learn of these reports."


title: Dennis Hastert

text: On June 2, 2015, former Federal Housing Finance Agency director and former U.S. Representative Mel Watt, Democrat of North Carolina, released a statement saying:


title: Dennis Hastert

text: The Hastert scandal was named by MSNBC as among the "top political sex scandals of 2015," by the Associated Press as one of the "top 10 Illinois stories of 2015," and by ABC News as one of the "biggest moments on Capitol Hill in 2015." Hastert's sentencing was also named by the Associated Press as one of "top 10 Illinois stories of 2016."


title: Dennis Hastert

text: The case was assigned to U.S. District Judge Thomas M. Durkin. In between the unsealing of the indictment and the arraignment, Hastert made no public appearances and did not release any public statement. However, on May 29, 2015, CBS Chicago reported that Hastert had privately told close friends that "I am a victim, too" and that he was sorry they had to go through the ordeal.


title: Dennis Hastert

text: Hastert hired attorney Thomas C. Green, a white-collar criminal defense lawyer and senior counsel at the Washington, D.C. office of the law firm Sidley Austin, to defend him. The prosecutors assigned to the case were originally Assistant United States Attorneys Steven Block and Carrie Hamilton. Hamilton left the U.S. Attorney's Office in July 2015 after being appointed as a judge of the Circuit Court of Cook County; Diane MacArthur replaced Hamilton on the Hastert prosecution team.


title: Dennis Hastert

text: The June 9, 2015 arraignment generated a degree of media interest at the Everett McKinley Dirksen United States Courthouse not seen since the proceedings against Illinois governors Rod Blagojevich and George Ryan on corruption charges. The "Chicago Tribune" reported: "Hastert's entrance and exit from the courthouse touched off a wild scene as federal Homeland Security agents escorted Hastert and his attorneys to and from a waiting vehicle amid a crush of television news crews and photographers." At the hearing, Hastert entered a plea of not guilty. Durkin set a $4,500 unsecured bond as well as various other conditions of pretrial release, and Hastert surrendered his passport.


title: Dennis Hastert

text: At the arraignment, Durkin disclosed that he had contributed $500 in 2002 and $1000 in 2004 to the Hastert for Congress campaign; the contributions were made while Durkin was a partner at the law firm Mayer Brown, before he was appointed to the federal bench in 2012. Hastert's son, Ethan, was a partner at Mayer Brown. At the arraignment, Durkin stated that he had never met Hastert and that he believed he could be impartial, but gave the parties time to decide whether to object to his involvement in the case. On June 11, federal prosecutors and Hastert's lawyers filed notices waiving any objection to Durkin presiding over the case.


title: Dennis Hastert

text: On June 12, federal prosecutors, with the agreement of Hastert's attorneys, filed a motion for a protective order seeking to bar the public disclosure of the identity of "Individual A" and other sensitive information. The motion states that "the discovery to be provided by the government in this case includes sensitive information, the unrestricted dissemination of which could adversely affect law enforcement interests and the privacy interests of third parties." The draft order contained language directing the parties to file any such sensitive information under seal. On June 16, Judge Durkin granted the motion for a protective order but did not sign such an order.


title: Dennis Hastert

text: At a status hearing on July 14 (which Hastert again did not attend), the parties updated the court on preparations for trial. At the hearing, Green said: "The indictment has effectively been amended by leaks from the government. It is now an 800-pound gorilla in this case. It has been injected in this case I think impermissibly. (The question is) whether I wrestle with that gorilla or I don't wrestle with that gorilla." Green also said that the defense would file a motion to dismiss the indictment, possibly under seal. Judge Durkin "cautioned that even if he allows part or all of the motion to be hidden from the public, his ruling would be public and likely would disclose sealed portions of the motion." At the same hearing, the prosecution said that they expected a trial to last about two weeks.


title: Dennis Hastert

text: Hastert shut down his "Keep Our Mission" leadership PAC at the end of June 2015 and transferred $10,000 (the vast majority of the PAC's remaining funds) to a new legal defense fund, the J. Dennis Hastert Defense Trust. A Federal Elections Commission report lists the defense fund's address as a Sunapee, New Hampshire property owned by Republican donor and ex-Gerald Ford White House staffer James Rooney.


title: Dennis Hastert

text: On September 11, 2015, Judge Durkin granted a joint motion by the government and by Hastert to extend the deadline for filing pretrial motions for two weeks, "giving the two sides more time for discussions they have been engaged in." On September 22, the parties filed another joint motion requesting another two-week extension (from September 28 to October 13); the motion said that the parties were discussing issues that Hastert "may raise in pretrial motions" but provided no details. At a hearing on September 28, Hastert's attorneys and the government confirmed that they were discussing a possible plea agreement. Judge Durkin said that if no plea agreement was reached, he wanted the case to go to trial in March or April 2016. Pretrial motions were due on October 13, but none were filed, indicating that Hastert and the government "were nearing a plea deal."


title: Dennis Hastert

text: On October 15, 2015, it was announced at a court hearing that Hastert and federal prosecutors had reached a plea agreement. On October 28, 2015, under the plea agreement, Hastert appeared in court (the only time Hastert appeared personally in court after the arraignment) and pleaded guilty to the felony structuring charge. The charge of "making false statements" (lying to the FBI) was dismissed.


title: Dennis Hastert

text: Hastert said in court: "I didn't want them [bank officials] to know how I intended to spend the money. I withdrew the money in less than $10,000 increments." Possible sentences within a preliminary Federal Sentencing Guidelines calculation ranged from probation to six months in prison.


title: Dennis Hastert

text: The plea agreement allowed Hastert "to avoid a potentially long and embarrassing trial" and was thought to enable him to "keep secret information that he has hidden for years."


title: Dennis Hastert

text: Soon after pleading guilty, Hastert suffered a stroke, and was hospitalized from November 2015 to January 15, 2016. Hastert remained free on bail pending sentencing.


title: Dennis Hastert

text: Sentencing was originally set for February 29, 2016. However, in late January 2016, Hastert's attorneys asked the court to delay sentencing due to Hastert's ongoing health problems, and Judge Durkin postponed sentencing until April 8, 2016. In March, Judge Durkin ordered the appointment of a medical expert to review Hastert's health in preparation for sentencing. Later in March, Judge Durkin postponed the sentencing hearing (over the objection of Hastert's attorneys) to April 27 so that a man who alleged sexual abuse by Hastert (identified as "Individual D" in court) could testify at the sentencing.


title: Dennis Hastert

text: In early April, the parties filed submissions in court ahead of sentencing. The maximum sentence for the offense was five years in prison and a $250,000 fine, although the Federal Sentencing Guidelines range was from probation to six months. Hastert asked for probation. A statement released by Hastert's counsel said: "Mr. Hastert acknowledges that as a young man, he committed transgressions for which he is profoundly sorry. He earnestly apologizes to his former students, family, friends, previous constituents and all others affected by the harm his actions have caused." Hastert did not provide details.


title: Dennis Hastert

text: Hastert also filed under seal a response to the government's presentence investigation report. In the prosecution's filing ahead of sentencing, federal prosecutors made allegations of sexual misconduct against Hastert (the first time they had done so publicly), saying that he had molested at least four boys as young as 14 (including Steve Reinboldt and others) while he worked as a high school wrestling coach decades earlier. In a 26-page filing, prosecutors detailed "specific, graphic incidents" of sexual acts. Prosecutors asked for a six-month sentence, as called for under federal sentencing guidelines. Prosecutors also requested the court to order Hastert to undergo a sex offender evaluation and comply with any recommended treatment. While Hastert's health problems had the possibility to help him avoid prison, prosecutors noted in their court filing that he could receive medical treatment while incarcerated, if necessary.


title: Dennis Hastert

text: Sixty letters asking for leniency for Hastert were submitted to the court ahead of sentencing, but 19 of these letters were withdrawn after Judge Durkin said that he would not consider any letters that were not made public. Of the 41 letters that were made public, several were from current or former members of Congress: John T. Doolittle, David Dreier, Thomas W. Ewing, and Porter Goss (who also is a former CIA director). The "Chicago Tribune" noted that DeLay and Doolittle had "have had legal troubles of their own" stemming from the Abramoff scandal, although DeLay's conviction in that scandal was later overturned and Doolittle was never charged. Other supporters of Hastert who wrote letters on his behalf included his family members; former Illinois Attorney General Tyrone C. Fahner; "local leaders, board members, police officers and others from his home base in rural Kendall County"; and "several members of Illinois' wrestling community."


title: Dennis Hastert

text: At the sentencing hearing on April 27, 2016, the government presented two witnesses. Jolene Burdge, the sister of Steve Reinboldt, read a letter that her brother had written shortly before his death in 1995. Addressing Hastert, Burdge stated that she wanted to "hold you accountable for sexually abusing my brother. I knew your secret, and you couldn't bribe or intimidate your way out. ... You think you can deny your abuse of Steve because he can no longer speak for himself – that's why I'm here."


title: Dennis Hastert

text: The second witness was Scott Cross ("Individual D") who publicly identified himself for the first time. Cross gave emotional testimony, telling the court that Hastert, whom he had trusted, had abused him and caused him to experience "intense pain, shame and guilt." Cross's oldest brother is longtime Illinois House of Representatives Republican leader Tom Cross, a political protégé of Hastert's.


title: Dennis Hastert

text: Addressing the court, Hastert—who had arrived at court in a wheelchair—read from a written statement, apologizing for having "mistreated athletes." After being pressed by the judge, Hastert admitted to sexually abusing boys whom he coached, saying that he had molested "Individual B" and did not remember some of the others. Hastert said he did not remember abusing Cross, "but I accept his statement." Hastert stated "what I did was wrong and I regret it ... I took advantage of them." Hastert also acknowledged that he had misled the FBI. Judge Durkin referred to Hastert as a "serial child molester" and imposed a sentence of 15 months in prison, two years' supervised release, including sex-offender treatment, and a $250,000 fine. Hastert is "one of the highest-ranking American politicians ever sentenced to prison."


title: Dennis Hastert

text: Hastert could not be prosecuted for any of the acts of sexual abuse of which he had been accused because the applicable statute of limitations had expired decades earlier.


title: Dennis Hastert

text: Following the sentence, the "Chicago Tribune" editorial board praised "the bravery of the victims and their families who confronted the man who was once second in line to be president" and wrote of the sentence: "The enduring impact is that the truth has been revealed. And for as long as the name Dennis Hastert is recalled, the man once respected as a leader will be known as a criminal, a scoundrel, a child molester." The "Washington Post" editorial board hailed the sentence, writing that Hastert's victims "should not have had to struggle with what Mr. Hastert did to them all the while they watched him rise in stature and power." The "Post" called for extending statutes of limitations in sex-abuse cases to give victims more time to come forward and prosecutors more time to pursue perpetrators. "New York Times" columnist Frank Bruni wrote that Hastert's case underscored the danger that comes with the "quickness and frequency with which so many of us equate displays of religious devotion with actual rectitude," noting that Hastert's public displays of Christian faith during his time in office were "a factor in his colleagues' assessments of him as safe, uncontroversial." Bruni also critiqued the testimonials that prominent Republicans submitted on Hastert's behalf before sentencing, saying that these "affirm the degree to which pacts rather than principle govern partisan politics today."


title: Dennis Hastert

text: Jacob Sullum of "Reason" magazine opined that the financial structuring offense to which Hastert pleaded guilty "should not be a crime ... even if it occasionally provides the means for punishing actual criminals who would otherwise escape justice." Conor Friedersdorf of "The Atlantic" expressed similar views, writing: "The alarming aspect of this case is the fact that an American is ultimately being prosecuted for the crime of evading federal government surveillance."


title: Dennis Hastert

text: The Hastert scandal was one motivation for the advance of legislation in the Illinois General Assembly to eliminate the statute of limitations for all felony child abuse and sexual assault offenses. The measure unanimously passed the state Senate in March 2017.


title: Dennis Hastert

text: Hastert did not appeal his sentence. Shortly after being sentenced, Hastert paid the $250,000 fine and was ordered to report to prison on June 22, 2016. On that date, Hastert reported to the Federal Medical Center, Rochester in Minnesota to begin his prison term.


title: Dennis Hastert

text: In July 2017, after serving about 13 months of a 15-month sentence, Hastert was released from federal prison and returned to Chicago under "residential re-entry management" supervision.


title: Dennis Hastert

text: In April 2016, "Individual A" sued Hastert for breach of contract in Illinois state court, in Kendall County. "Individual A" (suing under pseudonym "James Doe") sought to collect the remaining $1.8 million in "hush money" allegedly promised to him by Hastert. In the complaint, "Individual A" alleged that he was molested at age 14 by Hastert and that he confronted Hastert after speaking with another of Hastert's alleged victims in 2008. Individual A alleged that he suffered panic attacks and other problems for years as a result of the abuse. Hastert counterclaimed for return of the hush money, alleging that "Individual A" violated a verbal agreement with him by disclosing the sexual abuse to federal authorities.


title: Dennis Hastert

text: In November 2016, the court denied Hastert's motion to dismiss. In September 2019, the court denied motions for summary judgment by each side. In September 2021, days before trial was set to begin, Hastert reached a settlement with the plaintiff for an undisclosed amount.


title: Dennis Hastert

text: In May 2016, a second man filed a lawsuit against Hastert. The man alleged that Hastert sexually assaulted him in the bathroom of a community building in Yorkville in the summer of either 1973 or 1974, when the man was nine or ten years old and in the fourth grade. The complaint detailed the alleged violent assault as well as threats allegedly made by Hastert. The man only recognized Hastert as the assailant after Hastert appeared at Yorkville Grade School in gym class. A Kendall County judge granted the man's motion to proceed anonymously under the "Richard Doe" pseudonym. In the complaint, the man stated that when he was 20 or 21 years old, he comprehended what had occurred and reported the crime to the Kendall County State's Attorney's Office, but that then-state's attorney Dallas C. Ingemunson "threatened to charge him with a crime and accused him of slandering Hastert's name." Ingemunson denied this allegation, calling it "bogus." In May 2016, "Richard Doe" filed a report with the Kendall County Sheriff's Office, but the state's attorney's office determined that the statute of limitations barred a complaint against anyone." NBC Chicago obtained a redacted version of the Sheriff's Office police report.


title: Dennis Hastert

text: In November 2017, this lawsuit was dismissed due to the expiration of the statute of limitations years earlier.


title: Dennis Hastert

text: Soon after sentencing, the Illinois Teachers' Retirement System announced that Hastert would forfeit future teachers' pension benefits, effective immediately. Hastert challenged this decision on the ground that the specific federal crime to which he pleaded guilty was not directly related to his time as a teacher.


title: Dennis Hastert

text: Hastert's pension for his service in the Illinois General Assembly—about $28,000 a year—was originally unaffected. However, in October 2016, the General Assembly Retirement System board of trustees unanimously voted to suspend Hastert's pension, and in April 2017 the board voted, 5–2, to terminate the pension.


title: Dennis Hastert

text: As of 2015, Hastert continued to receive his congressional pension, which amounts to approximately $73,000 a year.


title: Dennis Hastert

text: In December 1999, Northern Illinois University conferred an honorary LL.D. degree upon Hastert. In May 2016, NIU's board of trustees unanimously voted to revoke Hastert's honorary degree.


title: Dennis Hastert

text: In 2002, Lewis University conferred an honorary degree upon Hastert. In 2015, following his guilty plea, the university said that it was "reviewing the status of the honorary degree." Lewis University no longer shows Dennis Hastert as having earned an honorary degree.


title: Dennis Hastert

text: The National Wrestling Hall of Fame awarded Hastert its Order of Merit in 1995 and named Hastert to its "Hall of Outstanding Americans" in 2000. In May 2016, a few days after Hastert was sentenced to prison, the Hall of Fame (following a review) revoked all of Hastert's honors, the first time the organization had ever taken such an action.


title: Dennis Hastert

text: The Three Fires Council of the Boy Scouts of America has honored Hastert with its distinguished service award.


title: Dennis Hastert

text: In March 2001, President Valdas Adamkus of Lithuania presented Hastert with the Grand Cross of the Order of the Lithuanian Grand Duke Gediminas. In 2004, Hastert was presented the Order of the Oak Crown, Grand Cross by the grand duke of Luxembourg.


title: Dennis Hastert

text: In 2007, the J. Dennis Hastert Center for Economics, Government and Public Policy was founded at Wheaton College, the former Speaker's alma mater. Hastert resigned from the board of advisers of the center on May 29, 2015, after the indictment against him was released. On May 31, 2015, the college announced that it was removing his name from the center, renaming it the Wheaton College Center for Economics, Government, and Public Policy.


title: Dennis Hastert

text: In 2009, Hastert's official portrait was unveiled and placed in the Speaker's Lobby adjacent to the House chamber, alongside portraits of other past House speakers. The 5' by 3½' portrait, executed by Westchester County, New York artist Laurel Stern Boeck, cost $35,000 in taxpayer funds. In November 2015, the week after Hastert's guilty plea in his criminal case, the portrait was removed from the Speaker's Lobby on orders of Speaker Paul Ryan.


title: Dennis Hastert

text: In May 2009, Hastert accepted the Grand Cross of the Order of San Carlos from Álvaro Uribe, the president of Colombia.


title: Dennis Hastert

text: In May 2010, Hastert accepted the Grand Cordon of the Order of the Rising Sun from Akihito, emperor of Japan.


title: Dennis Hastert

text: In 2012, a plaque funded by private donors, "bearing Hastert's likeness and a list of his accomplishments," was placed in the historic Kendall County Courthouse in downtown Yorkville. The plaque was taken down in 2015, following Hastert's guilty plea.


title: Dennis Hastert

text: In early May 2015 (before the indictment was released), a proposal in the Illinois Legislature to spend $500,000 to commission and install a statue of Hastert in the Illinois State Capitol was withdrawn at Hastert's request. Hastert called the measure's sponsor (Michael Madigan, the speaker of the Illinois House of Representatives) and stated that "he appreciated the recognition and honor" but asked that it be deferred given the "fiscal condition" of the state.


title: Dennis Hastert

text: In 2015, following the unsealing of the indictment against Hastert the previous month, the Denny Hastert Yorkville Invitational, a popular wrestling tournament in Illinois, was renamed the Fighting Foxes Invitational.


title: Dennis Hastert

text: Hastert has been married to Jean Hastert (née Kahl) since 1973. They have two children, Ethan and Joshua. Hastert's older son, Joshua, was a lobbyist for the firm PodestaMattoon, representing clients ranging from Amgen, a biotech company, to Lockheed Martin, a defense contractor. This provoked criticism from Congress Watch: "There definitely should be restrictions [on family members registering as lobbyists] ... This is family members cashing in on connections ... [and it] is an ideal opportunity for special interest groups to exploit family relationships for personal gain." Joshua Hastert responded to the allegation by saying that he did not lobby House Republican leaders.


title: Dennis Hastert

text: Hastert's son Ethan ran in 2010 as a Republican for his father's old congressional seat (Illinois' 14th congressional district), but was defeated in the primary by Illinois State Senator Randy Hultgren. Hultgren received 55 percent of the vote, while Hastert received 45 percent. In 2011, Ethan won a seat on the village board of Elburn, Illinois. Ethan left the Elburn village board in 2014 because he and his family moved to nearby Campton Hills. As of 2015, Ethan was a partner at the Chicago office of the law firm Mayer Brown.


title: Dennis Hastert

text: Hastert suffers from type 2 diabetes and requires daily insulin injections. Because of his condition, he sometimes walked with protective coverings on his feet to avoid foot problems.


title: Dennis Hastert

text: Hastert has received treatment for kidney stones at least three times. In 2005, he underwent minor surgery at Bethesda Naval Hospital to remove kidney stones. In 2006, Hastert was hospitalized for cellulitis (a type of bacterial skin infection).


title: Dennis Hastert

text: In November 2015, the week after entering a guilty plea in federal court, Hastert suffered a stroke and was hospitalized until January 15, 2016. According to his attorney, Hastert was additionally treated for sepsis and a blood infection, and underwent two back operations. At a court hearing in February 2016, Hastert's attorney said that Hastert "nearly died" from the blood infection.


title: Bletchley Park

text: Bletchley Park is an English country house and estate in Bletchley, Milton Keynes (Buckinghamshire) that became the principal centre of Allied code-breaking during the Second World War. The mansion was constructed during the years following 1883 for the financier and politician Sir Herbert Leon in the Victorian Gothic, Tudor, and Dutch Baroque styles, on the site of older buildings of the same name.


title: Bletchley Park

text: During World War II, the estate housed the Government Code and Cypher School (GC&CS), which regularly penetrated the secret communications of the Axis Powersmost importantly the German Enigma and Lorenz ciphers. The GC&CS team of codebreakers included Alan Turing, Gordon Welchman, Hugh Alexander, Bill Tutte, and Stuart Milner-Barry. The nature of the work at Bletchley remained secret until many years after the war.


title: Bletchley Park

text: According to the official historian of British Intelligence, the "Ultra" intelligence produced at Bletchley shortened the war by two to four years, and without it the outcome of the war would have been uncertain. The team at Bletchley Park devised automatic machinery to help with decryption, culminating in the development of Colossus, the world's first programmable digital electronic computer. Codebreaking operations at Bletchley Park came to an end in 1946 and all information about the wartime operations was classified until the mid-1970s.


title: Bletchley Park

text: After the war it had various uses including as a teacher-training college and local GPO headquarters. By 1990 the huts in which the codebreakers worked were being considered for demolition and redevelopment. The Bletchley Park Trust was formed in February 1992 to save large portions of the site from development.


title: Bletchley Park

text: More recently, Bletchley Park has been open to the public, featuring interpretive exhibits and huts that have been rebuilt to appear as they did during their wartime operations. It receives hundreds of thousands of visitors annually. The separate National Museum of Computing, which includes a working replica Bombe machine and a rebuilt Colossus computer, is housed in Block H on the site.


title: Bletchley Park

text: The site appears in the Domesday Book of 1086 as part of the Manor of Eaton. Browne Willis built a mansion there in 1711, but after Thomas Harrison purchased the property in 1793 this was pulled down. It was first known as Bletchley Park after its purchase by the architect Samuel Lipscomb Seckham in 1877, who built a house there. The estate of was bought in 1883 by Sir Herbert Samuel Leon, who expanded the then-existing house into what architect Landis Gores called a "maudlin and monstrous pile" combining Victorian Gothic, Tudor, and Dutch Baroque styles. At his Christmas family gatherings there was a fox hunting meet on Boxing Day with glasses of sloe gin from the butler, and the house was always "humming with servants". With 40 gardeners, a flower bed of yellow daffodils could become a sea of red tulips overnight. After the death of Herbert Leon in 1926, the estate continued to be occupied by his widow Fanny Leon (née Higham) until her death in 1937.


title: Bletchley Park

text: In 1938, the mansion and much of the site was bought by a builder for a housing estate, but in May 1938 Admiral Sir Hugh Sinclair, head of the Secret Intelligence Service (SIS or MI6), bought the mansion and of land for £6,000 (£ today) for use by GC&CS and SIS in the event of war. He used his own money as the Government said they did not have the budget to do so.


title: Bletchley Park

text: A key advantage seen by Sinclair and his colleagues (inspecting the site under the cover of "Captain Ridley's shooting party") was Bletchley's geographical centrality. It was almost immediately adjacent to Bletchley railway station, where the "Varsity Line" between Oxford and Cambridgewhose universities were expected to supply many of the code-breakersmet the main West Coast railway line connecting London, Birmingham, Manchester, Liverpool, Glasgow and Edinburgh. Watling Street, the main road linking London to the north-west (subsequently the A5) was close by, and high-volume communication links were available at the telegraph and telephone repeater station in nearby Fenny Stratford.


title: Bletchley Park

text: "Station X" (X = Roman numeral ten), "London Signals Intelligence Centre", and "Government Communications Headquarters" were all cover names used during the war.


title: Bletchley Park

text: The formal posting of the many "Wrens"members of the Women's Royal Naval Serviceworking there, was to HMS Pembroke V. Royal Air Force names of Bletchley Park and its outstations included RAF Eastcote, RAF Lime Grove and RAF Church Green. The postal address that staff had to use was "Room 47, Foreign Office".


title: Bletchley Park

text: After the war, the Government Code & Cypher School became the Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), moving to Eastcote in 1946 and to Cheltenham in the 1950s. The site was used by various government agencies, including the GPO and the Civil Aviation Authority. One large building, block F, was demolished in 1987 by which time the site was being run down with tenants leaving.


title: Bletchley Park

text: In 1990 the site was at risk of being sold for housing development. However, Milton Keynes Council made it into a conservation area. Bletchley Park Trust was set up in 1991 by a group of people who recognised the site's importance. The initial trustees included Roger Bristow, Ted Enever, Peter Wescombe, Dr Peter Jarvis of the Bletchley Archaeological & Historical Society, and Tony Sale who in 1994 became the first director of the Bletchley Park Museums.


title: Bletchley Park

text: Admiral Hugh Sinclair was the founder and head of GC&CS between 1919 and 1938 with Commander Alastair Denniston being operational head of the organization from 1919 to 1942, beginning with its formation from the Admiralty's Room 40 (NID25) and the War Office's MI1b. Key GC&CS cryptanalysts who moved from London to Bletchley Park included John Tiltman, Dillwyn "Dilly" Knox, Josh Cooper, Oliver Strachey and Nigel de Grey. These people had a variety of backgroundslinguists and chess champions were common, and Knox's field was papyrology. The British War Office recruited top solvers of cryptic crossword puzzles, as these individuals had strong lateral thinking skills.


title: Bletchley Park

text: On the day Britain declared war on Germany, Denniston wrote to the Foreign Office about recruiting "men of the professor type". Personal networking drove early recruitments, particularly of men from the universities of Cambridge and Oxford. Trustworthy women were similarly recruited for administrative and clerical jobs. In one 1941 recruiting stratagem, "The Daily Telegraph" was asked to organise a crossword competition, after which promising contestants were discreetly approached about "a particular type of work as a contribution to the war effort".


title: Bletchley Park

text: Denniston recognised, however, that the enemy's use of electromechanical cipher machines meant that formally trained mathematicians would also be needed; Oxford's Peter Twinn joined GC&CS in February 1939; Cambridge's Alan Turing and Gordon Welchman began training in 1938 and reported to Bletchley the day after war was declared, along with John Jeffreys. Later-recruited cryptanalysts included the mathematicians Derek Taunt, Jack Good, Bill Tutte, and Max Newman; historian Harry Hinsley, and chess champions Hugh Alexander and Stuart Milner-Barry. Joan Clarke was one of the few women employed at Bletchley as a full-fledged cryptanalyst.


title: Bletchley Park

text: When seeking to recruit more suitably advanced linguists, John Tiltman turned to Patrick Wilkinson of the Italian section for advice, and he suggested asking Lord Lindsay of Birker, of Balliol College, Oxford, S. W. Grose, and Martin Charlesworth, of St John's College, Cambridge, to recommend classical scholars or applicants to their colleges.


title: Bletchley Park

text: This eclectic staff of "Boffins and Debs" (scientists and debutantes, young women of high society) caused GC&CS to be whimsically dubbed the "Golf, Cheese and Chess Society".


title: Bletchley Park

text: During a September 1941 morale-boosting visit, Winston Churchill reportedly remarked to Denniston: "I told you to leave no stone unturned to get staff, but I had no idea you had taken me so literally." Six weeks later, having failed to get sufficient typing and unskilled staff to achieve the productivity that was possible, Turing, Welchman, Alexander and Milner-Barry wrote directly to Churchill. His response was "Action this day make sure they have all they want on extreme priority and report to me that this has been done." The Army CIGS Alan Brooke wrote that on 16 April 1942 "Took lunch in car and went to see the organization for breaking down ciphers – a wonderful set of professors and genii! I marvel at the work they succeed in doing."


title: Bletchley Park

text: After initial training at the Inter-Service Special Intelligence School set up by John Tiltman (initially at an RAF depot in Buckingham and later in Bedfordwhere it was known locally as "the Spy School") staff worked a six-day week, rotating through three shifts: 4p.m. to midnight, midnight to 8a.m. (the most disliked shift), and 8a.m. to 4p.m., each with a half-hour meal break. At the end of the third week, a worker went off at 8a.m. and came back at 4p.m., thus putting in 16 hours on that last day. The irregular hours affected workers' health and social life, as well as the routines of the nearby homes at which most staff lodged. The work was tedious and demanded intense concentration; staff got one week's leave four times a year, but some "girls" collapsed and required extended rest. Recruitment took place to combat a shortage of experts in Morse code and German.


title: Bletchley Park

text: In January 1945, at the peak of codebreaking efforts, nearly 10,000 personnel were working at Bletchley and its outstations. About three-quarters of these were women. Many of the women came from middle-class backgrounds and held degrees in the areas of mathematics, physics and engineering; they were given chance due to the lack of men, who had been sent to war. They performed calculations and coding and hence were integral to the computing processes. Among them were Eleanor Ireland who worked on the Colossus computers and Ruth Briggs, a German scholar, who worked within the Naval Section.


title: Bletchley Park

text: The female staff in Dilwyn Knox's section were sometimes termed "Dilly's Fillies". Knox's methods enabled Mavis Lever (who married mathematician and fellow code-breaker Keith Batey) and Margaret Rock to solve a German code, the Abwehr cipher.


title: Bletchley Park

text: Many of the women had backgrounds in languages, particularly French, German and Italian. Among them were Rozanne Colchester, a translator who worked mainly for the Italian air forces Section, and Cicely Mayhew, recruited straight from university, who worked in Hut 8, translating decoded German Navy signals.


title: Bletchley Park

text: For a long time, the British Government failed to acknowledge the contributions the personnel at Bletchley Park had made. Their work achieved official recognition only in 2009.


title: Bletchley Park

text: Properly used, the German Enigma and Lorenz ciphers should have been virtually unbreakable, but flaws in German cryptographic procedures, and poor discipline among the personnel carrying them out, created vulnerabilities that made Bletchley's attacks just barely feasible. These vulnerabilities, however, could have been remedied by relatively simple improvements in enemy procedures, and such changes would certainly have been implemented had Germany had any hint of Bletchley's success. Thus the intelligence Bletchley produced was considered wartime Britain's "Ultra secret"higher even than the normally highest classification and security was paramount.


title: Bletchley Park

text: All staff signed the Official Secrets Act (1939) and a 1942 security warning emphasised the importance of discretion even within Bletchley itself: "Do not talk at meals. Do not talk in the transport. Do not talk travelling. Do not talk in the billet. Do not talk by your own fireside. Be careful even in your Hut..."


title: Bletchley Park

text: Nevertheless, there were security leaks. Jock Colville, the Assistant Private Secretary to Winston Churchill, recorded in his diary on 31 July 1941, that the newspaper proprietor Lord Camrose had discovered Ultra and that security leaks "increase in number and seriousness". Without doubt, the most serious of these was that Bletchley Park had been infiltrated by John Cairncross, the notorious Soviet mole and member of the Cambridge Spy Ring, who leaked Ultra material to Moscow.


title: Bletchley Park

text: Despite the high degree of secrecy surrounding Bletchley Park during the Second World War, unique and hitherto unknown amateur film footage of the outstation at nearby Whaddon Hall came to light in 2020, after being anonymously donated to the Bletchley Park Trust. A spokesman for the Trust noted the film's existence was all the more incredible because it was "very, very rare even to have still photographs" of the park and its associated sites.


title: Bletchley Park

text: The first personnel of the Government Code and Cypher School (GC&CS) moved to Bletchley Park on 15 August 1939. The Naval, Military, and Air Sections were on the ground floor of the mansion, together with a telephone exchange, teleprinter room, kitchen, and dining room; the top floor was allocated to MI6. Construction of the wooden huts began in late 1939, and Elmers School, a neighbouring boys' boarding school in a Victorian Gothic redbrick building by a church, was acquired for the Commercial and Diplomatic Sections.


title: Bletchley Park

text: After the United States joined World War II, a number of American cryptographers were posted to Hut 3, and from May 1943 onwards there was close co-operation between British and American intelligence. (See 1943 BRUSA Agreement.) In contrast, the Soviet Union was never officially told of Bletchley Park and its activities a reflection of Churchill's distrust of the Soviets even during the US-UK-USSR alliance imposed by the Nazi threat.


title: Bletchley Park

text: The only direct enemy damage to the site was done 2021 November 1940 by three bombs probably intended for Bletchley railway station; Hut4, shifted two feet off its foundation, was winched back into place as


title: Bletchley Park

text: Initially, when only a very limited amount of Enigma traffic was being read, deciphered non-Naval Enigma messages were sent from Hut 6 to Hut 3 which handled their translation and onward transmission. Subsequently, under Group Captain Eric Jones, Hut 3 expanded to become the heart of Bletchley Park's intelligence effort, with input from decrypts of "Tunny" (Lorenz SZ42) traffic and many other sources. Early in 1942 it moved into Block D, but its functions were still referred to as Hut 3.


title: Bletchley Park

text: Hut 3 contained a number of sections: Air Section "3A", Military Section "3M", a small Naval Section "3N", a multi-service Research Section "3G" and a large liaison section "3L". It also housed the Traffic Analysis Section, SIXTA. An important function that allowed the synthesis of raw messages into valuable Military intelligence was the indexing and cross-referencing of information in a number of different filing systems. Intelligence reports were sent out to the Secret Intelligence Service, the intelligence chiefs in the relevant ministries, and later on to high-level commanders in the field.


title: Bletchley Park

text: Naval Enigma deciphering was in Hut 8, with translation in Hut 4. Verbatim translations were sent to the Naval Intelligence Division (NID) of the Admiralty's Operational Intelligence Centre (OIC), supplemented by information from indexes as to the meaning of technical terms and cross-references from a knowledge store of German naval technology. Where relevant to non-naval matters, they would also be passed to Hut 3. Hut 4 also decoded a manual system known as the dockyard cipher, which sometimes carried messages that were also sent on an Enigma network. Feeding these back to Hut8 provided excellent "cribs" for Known-plaintext attacks on the daily naval Enigma key.


title: Bletchley Park

text: It was set up in the mansion's water tower under the code name "Station X", a term now sometimes applied to the codebreaking efforts at Bletchley as a whole. The "X" is the Roman numeral "ten", this being the Secret Intelligence Service's tenth such station. Due to the long radio aerials stretching from the wireless room, the radio station was moved from Bletchley Park to nearby Whaddon Hall to avoid drawing attention to the site.


title: Bletchley Park

text: Subsequently, other listening stationsthe Y-stations, such as the ones at Chicksands in Bedfordshire, Beaumanor Hall, Leicestershire (where the headquarters of the War Office "Y" Group was located) and Beeston Hill Y Station in Norfolkgathered raw signals for processing at Bletchley. Coded messages were taken down by hand and sent to Bletchley on paper by motorcycle despatch riders or (later) by teleprinter.


title: Bletchley Park

text: Often a hut's number became so strongly associated with the work performed inside that even when the work was moved to another building it was still referred to by the original "Hut" designation.


title: Bletchley Park

text: Most German messages decrypted at Bletchley were produced by one or another version of the Enigma cipher machine, but an important minority were produced by the even more complicated twelve-rotor Lorenz SZ42 on-line teleprinter cipher machine.


title: Bletchley Park

text: Five weeks before the outbreak of war, Warsaw's Cipher Bureau revealed its achievements in breaking Enigma to astonished French and British personnel. The British used the Poles' information and techniques, and the Enigma clone sent to them in August 1939, which greatly increased their (previously very limited) success in decrypting Enigma messages.


title: Bletchley Park

text: The bombe was an electromechanical device whose function was to discover some of the daily settings of the Enigma machines on the various German military networks. Its pioneering design was developed by Alan Turing (with an important contribution from Gordon Welchman) and the machine was engineered by Harold 'Doc' Keen of the British Tabulating Machine Company. Each machine was about high and wide, deep and weighed about a ton.


title: Bletchley Park

text: At its peak, GC&CS was reading approximately 4,000 messages per day. As a hedge against enemy attack most bombes were dispersed to installations at Adstock and Wavendon (both later supplanted by installations at Stanmore and Eastcote), and Gayhurst.


title: Bletchley Park

text: Luftwaffe messages were the first to be read in quantity. The German navy had much tighter procedures, and the capture of code books was needed before they could be broken. When, in February 1942, the German navy introduced the four-rotor Enigma for communications with its Atlantic U-boats, this traffic became unreadable for a period of ten months. Britain produced modified bombes, but it was the success of the US Navy Bombe that was the main source of reading messages from this version of Enigma for the rest of the war. Messages were sent to and fro across the Atlantic by enciphered teleprinter links.


title: Bletchley Park

text: The Lorenz messages were codenamed "Tunny" at Bletchley Park. They were only sent in quantity from mid-1942. The Tunny networks were used for high-level messages between German High Command and field commanders. With the help of German operator errors, the cryptanalysts in the Testery (named after Ralph Tester, its head) worked out the logical structure of the machine despite not knowing its physical form. They devised automatic machinery to help with decryption, which culminated in Colossus, the world's first programmable digital electronic computer. This was designed and built by Tommy Flowers and his team at the Post Office Research Station at Dollis Hill. The prototype first worked in December 1943, was delivered to Bletchley Park in January and first worked operationally on 5 February 1944. Enhancements were developed for the Mark 2 Colossus, the first of which was working at Bletchley Park on the morning of 1 June in time for D-day. Flowers then produced one Colossus a month for the rest of the war, making a total of ten with an eleventh part-built. The machines were operated mainly by Wrens in a section named the Newmanry after its head Max Newman.


title: Bletchley Park

text: Bletchley's work was essential to defeating the U-boats in the Battle of the Atlantic, and to the British naval victories in the Battle of Cape Matapan and the Battle of North Cape. In 1941, Ultra exerted a powerful effect on the North African desert campaign against German forces under General Erwin Rommel. General Sir Claude Auchinleck wrote that were it not for Ultra, "Rommel would have certainly got through to Cairo". While not changing the events, "Ultra" decrypts featured prominently in the story of Operation SALAM, László Almásy's mission across the desert behind Allied lines in 1942. Prior to the Normandy landings on D-Day in June 1944, the Allies knew the locations of all but two of Germany's fifty-eight Western-front divisions.


title: Bletchley Park

text: During the Spanish Civil War the Italian Navy used the K model of the commercial Enigma without a plugboard; this was solved by Knox in 1937.


title: Bletchley Park

text: When Italy entered the war in 1940 an improved version of the machine was used, though little traffic was sent by it and there were "wholesale changes" in Italian codes and cyphers.


title: Bletchley Park

text: Knox was given a new section for work on Enigma variations, which he staffed with women ("Dilly's girls"), who included Margaret Rock, Jean Perrin, Clare Harding, Rachel Ronald, Elisabeth Granger; and Mavis Lever.


title: Bletchley Park

text: Mavis Lever solved the signals revealing the Italian Navy's operational plans before the Battle of Cape Matapan in 1941, leading to a British victory.


title: Bletchley Park

text: Although most Bletchley staff did not know the results of their work, Admiral Cunningham visited Bletchley in person a few weeks later to congratulate them.


title: Bletchley Park

text: On entering World War II in June 1940, the Italians were using book codes for most of their military messages. The exception was the Italian Navy, which after the Battle of Cape Matapan started using the C-38 version of the Boris Hagelin rotor-based cipher machine, particularly to route their navy and merchant marine convoys to the conflict in North Africa. As a consequence, JRM Butler recruited his former student Bernard Willson to join a team with two others in Hut4. In June 1941, Willson became the first of the team to decode the Hagelin system, thus enabling military commanders to direct the Royal Navy and Royal Air Force to sink enemy ships carrying supplies from Europe to Rommel's Afrika Korps. This led to increased shipping losses and, from reading the intercepted traffic, the team learnt that between May and September 1941 the stock of fuel for the Luftwaffe in North Africa reduced by 90 percent.


title: Bletchley Park

text: A Middle East Intelligence Centre (MEIC) was set up in Cairo in 1939. When Italy entered the war in June 1940, delays in forwarding intercepts to Bletchley via congested radio links resulted in cryptanalysts being sent to Cairo. A Combined Bureau Middle East (CBME) was set up in November, though the Middle East authorities made "increasingly bitter complaints" that GC&CS was giving too little priority to work on Italian cyphers. However, the principle of concentrating high-grade cryptanalysis at Bletchley was maintained. John Chadwick started cryptanalysis work in 1942 on Italian signals at the naval base 'HMS Nile' in Alexandria. Later, he was with GC&CS; in the Heliopolis Museum, Cairo and then in the Villa Laurens, Alexandria.


title: Bletchley Park

text: Soviet signals had been studied since the 1920s. In 193940, John Tiltman (who had worked on Russian Army traffic from 1930) set up two Russian sections at Wavendon (a country house near Bletchley) and at Sarafand in Palestine. Two Russian high-grade army and navy systems were broken early in 1940. Tiltman spent two weeks in Finland, where he obtained Russian traffic from Finland and Estonia in exchange for radio equipment. In June 1941, when the Soviet Union became an ally, Churchill ordered a halt to intelligence operations against it. In December 1941, the Russian section was closed down, but in late summer 1943 or late 1944, a small GC&CS Russian cypher section was set up in London overlooking Park Lane, then in Sloane Square.


title: Bletchley Park

text: An outpost of the Government Code and Cypher School had been set up in Hong Kong in 1935, the Far East Combined Bureau (FECB). The FECB naval staff moved in 1940 to Singapore, then Colombo, Ceylon, then Kilindini, Mombasa, Kenya. They succeeded in deciphering Japanese codes with a mixture of skill and good fortune. The Army and Air Force staff went from Singapore to the Wireless Experimental Centre at Delhi, India.


title: Bletchley Park

text: In early 1942, a six-month crash course in Japanese, for 20 undergraduates from Oxford and Cambridge, was started by the Inter-Services Special Intelligence School in Bedford, in a building across from the main Post Office. This course was repeated every six months until war's end. Most of those completing these courses worked on decoding Japanese naval messages in Hut 7, under John Tiltman.


title: Bletchley Park

text: By mid-1945, well over 100 personnel were involved with this operation, which co-operated closely with the FECB and the US Signal intelligence Service at Arlington Hall, Virginia. In 1999, Michael Smith wrote that: "Only now are the British codebreakers (like John Tiltman, Hugh Foss, and Eric Nave) beginning to receive the recognition they deserve for breaking Japanese codes and cyphers".


title: Bletchley Park

text: After the War, the secrecy imposed on Bletchley staff remained in force, so that most relatives never knew more than that a child, spouse, or parent had done some kind of secret war work. Churchill referred to the Bletchley staff as "the geese that laid the golden eggs and never cackled". That said, occasional mentions of the work performed at Bletchley Park slipped the censor's net and appeared in print.


title: Bletchley Park

text: With the publication of F.W. Winterbotham's "The Ultra Secret" (1974) public discussion of Bletchley Park's work finally became possible, although even today some former staff still consider themselves bound to silence.


title: Bletchley Park

text: Professor Brian Randell was researching the history of computer science in Britain in 1975-76 for a conference on the history of computing held at the Los Alamos National Laboratory, New Mexico on 10-15 June 1976, and received permission to present a paper on wartime development of the COLOSSI at the Post Office Research Station, Dollis Hill. (In October 1975 the British Government had released a series of captioned photographs from the Public Record Office.) The interest in the “revelations” in his paper resulted in a special evening meeting when Randell and Cooombs answered further questions. Coombs later wrote that "no member of our team could ever forget the fellowship, the sense of purpose and, above all, the breathless excitement of those days". In 1977 Randell published an article "The First Electronic Computer" in several journals.


title: Bletchley Park

text: In July 2009 the British government announced that Bletchley personnel would be recognised with a commemorative badge.


title: Bletchley Park

text: After the war, the site passed through a succession of hands and saw a number of uses, including as a teacher-training college and local GPO headquarters. By 1991, the site was nearly empty and the buildings were at risk of demolition for redevelopment.


title: Bletchley Park

text: In February 1992, the Milton Keynes Borough Council declared most of the Park a conservation area, and the Bletchley Park Trust was formed to maintain the site as a museum. The site opened to visitors in 1993, and was formally inaugurated by the Duke of Kent as Chief Patron in July 1994. In 1999 the land owners, the Property Advisors to the Civil Estate and BT, granted a lease to the Trust giving it control over most of the site.


title: Bletchley Park

text: June 2014 saw the completion of an £8 million restoration project by museum design specialist, Event Communications, which was marked by a visit from Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge. The Duchess' paternal grandmother, Valerie, and Valerie's twin sister, Mary ("née" Glassborow), both worked at Bletchley Park during the war. The twin sisters worked as Foreign Office Civilians in Hut 6, where they managed the interception of enemy and neutral diplomatic signals for decryption. Valerie married Catherine's grandfather, Captain Peter Middleton. A memorial at Bletchley Park commemorates Mary and Valerie Middleton's work as code-breakers.


title: Bletchley Park

text: The Bletchley Park Learning Department offers educational group visits with active learning activities for schools and universities. Visits can be booked in advance during term time, where students can engage with the history of Bletchley Park and understand its wider relevance for computer history and national security. Their workshops cover introductions to codebreaking, cyber security and the story of Enigma and Lorenz.


title: Bletchley Park

text: In October 2005, American billionaire Sidney Frank donated £500,000 to Bletchley Park Trust to fund a new Science Centre dedicated to Alan Turing. Simon Greenish joined as Director in 2006 to lead the fund-raising effort in a post he held until 2012 when Iain Standen took over the leadership role. In July 2008, a letter to "The Times" from more than a hundred academics condemned the neglect of the site. In September 2008, PGP, IBM, and other technology firms announced a fund-raising campaign to repair the facility. On 6 November 2008 it was announced that English Heritage would donate £300,000 to help maintain the buildings at Bletchley Park, and that they were in discussions regarding the donation of a further £600,000.


title: Bletchley Park

text: In October 2011, the Bletchley Park Trust received a £4.6m Heritage Lottery Fund grant to be used "to complete the restoration of the site, and to tell its story to the highest modern standards" on the condition that £1.7m of 'match funding' is raised by the Bletchley Park Trust. Just weeks later, Google contributed £550k and by June 2012 the trust had successfully raised £2.4m to unlock the grants to restore Huts 3 and 6, as well as develop its exhibition centre in Block C.


title: Bletchley Park

text: Additional income is raised by renting Block H to the National Museum of Computing, and some office space in various parts of the park to private firms.


title: Bletchley Park

text: Due to the COVID-19 pandemic the Trust expected to lose more than £2m in 2020 and be required to cut a third of its workforce. Former MP John Leech asked tech giants Amazon, Apple, Google, Facebook and Microsoft to donate £400,000 each to secure the future of the Trust. Leech had led the successful campaign to pardon Alan Turing and implement Turing's Law.


title: Bletchley Park

text: The National Museum of Computing is housed in Block H, which is rented from the Bletchley Park Trust. Its Colossus and Tunny galleries tell an important part of allied breaking of German codes during World War II. There is a working reconstruction of a Bombe and a rebuilt Colossus computer which was used on the high-level Lorenz cipher, codenamed "Tunny" by the British.


title: Bletchley Park

text: The museum, which opened in 2007, is an independent voluntary organisation that is governed by its own board of trustees. Its aim is "To collect and restore computer systems particularly those developed in Britain and to enable people to explore that collection for inspiration, learning and enjoyment." Through its many exhibits, the museum displays the story of computing through the mainframes of the 1960s and 1970s, and the rise of personal computing in the 1980s. It has a policy of having as many of the exhibits as possible in full working order.


title: Bletchley Park

text: This consists of serviced office accommodation housed in Bletchley Park's Blocks A and E, and the upper floors of the Mansion. Its aim is to foster the growth and development of dynamic knowledge-based start-ups and other businesses.


title: Bletchley Park

text: In April 2020 Bletchley Park Capital Partners, a private company run by Tim Reynolds, Deputy Chairman of the National Museum of Computing, announced plans to sell off the freehold to part of the site containing former Block G for commercial development. Offers of between £4m and £6m were reportedly being sought for the 3 acre plot, for which planning permission for employment purposes was granted in 2005. Previously, the construction of a National College of Cyber Security for students aged from 16 to 19 years old had been envisaged on the site, to be housed in Block G after renovation with funds supplied by the Bletchley Park Science and Innovation Centre.


title: Bletchley Park

text: The Radio Society of Great Britain's National Radio Centre (including a library, radio station, museum and bookshop) are in a newly constructed building close to the main Bletchley Park entrance.


title: Bletchley Park

text: Not until July 2009 did the British government fully acknowledge the contribution of the many people working for the Government Code and Cypher School ('G C & C S') at Bletchley. Only then was a commemorative medal struck to be presented to those involved. The gilded medal bears the inscription "G C & C S 1939-1945 Bletchley Park and its Outstations".


title: Bletchley Park

text: Bletchley Park is opposite Bletchley railway station. It is close to junctions 13 and 14 of the M1, about northwest of London.


title: Tress MacNeille

text: Teressa Claire MacNeille (née Payne; born June 20, 1951) is an American voice actress, whose credits include voicing Dot Warner on the animated television series "Animaniacs", Babs Bunny on "Tiny Toon Adventures", Chip and Gadget Hackwrench on "", and Daisy Duck in various Disney media since 1999. She has also worked on animated series such as "The Simpsons", "Futurama", "Rugrats", and "Hey Arnold!"


title: Tress MacNeille

text: MacNeille loved cartoons as a child and wanted to be a voice actress from the age of eight, but instead chose a "practical" career, feeling she would never be able to realise her ambition. She graduated from the University of California, Berkeley, and attended broadcasting school, becoming a disc jockey.


title: Tress MacNeille

text: MacNeille worked in numerous jobs and had many minor voiceover roles before becoming a regular on an animated TV show. In her words: "I'd been doing radio spots, some TV, demos, sound-alikes, industrial narrations—anything that came my way for about two years." She was also a member of the improvisational comedy group The Groundlings for ten years. MacNeille took acting workshops and worked as a casting assistant for voice acting talent agent Bob Lloyd in what she calls "The University of Voice-over." Lloyd and fellow agent Rita Vennari got MacNeille her first role on an animated show: a part in an episode of the 1979 "Scooby-Doo and Scrappy-Doo".


title: Tress MacNeille

text: She sang and appeared (as Lucille Ball) in the music video for "Weird Al" Yankovic's song "Ricky" (1983), which was based on the "I Love Lucy" television show and parodied the song "Mickey" by Toni Basil. MacNeille and Mary Kay Bergman also appeared on Yankovic's 1999 album "Running with Scissors", on the tracks "Pretty Fly for a Rabbi" and "Jerry Springer".


title: Tress MacNeille

text: MacNeille was cast as Babs Bunny in "Tiny Toon Adventures" (1990–1992). Writer Paul Dini said that MacNeille was good for the role because she could do both Babs's voice and the voices of her impressions. MacNeille commented: "The best part of doing Babs is that she's a mimic, like me...In the show I do Babs doing Billie Burke, Hepburn, Bette Davis, Madonna and Cher. I even have her doing Jessica Rabbit." The success of "Tiny Toon Adventures" led to the series "Animaniacs". MacNeille was brought in to voice Dot Warner, one of the show's three main characters, because Dot's character was very similar to Babs Bunny. Andrea Romano, the voice director and caster for "Animaniacs", said that the casters had "no trouble" choosing the role of Dot: "Tress MacNeille was just hilarious (...) And yet [she had] that edge." MacNeille was nominated for an Annie Award for her performance on the show in 1995.


title: Tress MacNeille

text: She has provided voices for numerous films, television shows, video games and commercials, garnering over 200 credits. MacNeille says: "The characters that I do all come from people in my own life – as well as the material I've stolen from my friends!". Her TV roles include characters on "The Simpsons", where she voices Agnes Skinner, Brandine Spuckler and Lindsey Naegle, and "Futurama", in which her main role was the character Mom. MacNeille has provided voices on many other television shows and cartoons such as "Rugrats" (as Charlotte Pickles), "" (as Chip and Gadget Hackwrench), "TaleSpin" (as Kitten Kaboodle), "Histeria!", "Hey Arnold!" and "Dave the Barbarian" (as Fang), as well as dubbing work on English-language anime translations.


title: Tress MacNeille

text: She is the voice of Daisy Duck and Wilma Flintstone since 1999 and 2000 respectively. MacNeille also appeared as an angry anchorwoman in "Elvira, Mistress of the Dark" and served as the voice of Elvira's Great-Aunt Morganna Talbot. She provided voice acting for the 2003 Wile E. Coyote and the Road Runner short feature "The Whizzard of Ow".


title: Tress MacNeille

text: MacNeille married Kevin Whitsett MacNeille in Carson City, Nevada, on August 29, 1974. In 1983, she gave birth to her daughter.


title: Kukri

text: The kukri () or khukuri (, ) is a type of machete originating from the Indian subcontinent, and is traditionally associated with the Nepali-speaking Gurkhas of Nepal. The knife has a distinct recurve in its blade. It serves multiple purposes as a melee weapon and also as a regular cutting tool throughout most of South Asia. The blade has traditionally served the role of a basic utility knife for the Gurkhas. The kukri is the national weapon of Nepal, and consequently is a characteristic weapon of the Nepalese Army.


title: Kukri

text: There have been, and still are many myths surrounding the kukri since its earliest recorded use in the 7th century—most notably that a traditional custom revolves around the blade in which it must draw blood, owing to its sole purpose as a fighting weapon, before being sheathed. However, they are frequently used as regular utility tools. The "kukri", "khukri", and "kukkri" spellings are of Indian English origin, with the original Nepalese English spelling being "khukuri".


title: Kukri

text: Researchers trace the origins of the blade back to the domestic sickle and the prehistoric bent stick used for hunting and later in hand-to-hand combat. Similar implements have existed in several forms throughout the Indian subcontinent and were used both as weapons and as tools, such as for sacrificial rituals. It might have derived from the ancient Indian saber called "nistrimsa" (निस्त्रिंश), itself possibly based on the Greek kopis brought by Alexander the Great's forces to India in the 4th century BC. Burton (1884) writes that the British Museum housed a large kukri-like falchion inscribed with writing in Pali. Among the oldest existing kukri are those belonging to Drabya Shah (c. 1559), housed in the National Museum of Nepal in Kathmandu.


title: Kukri

text: The kukri came to be known to the Western world when the East India Company came into conflict with the growing Gorkha Kingdom, culminating in the Gurkha War of 1814–1816. It gained literary attention in the 1897 novel "Dracula" by Irish author Bram Stoker. Despite the popular image of Dracula having a stake driven through his heart at the conclusion of a climactic battle between Dracula's bodyguards and the heroes, Mina's narrative describes his throat being sliced through by Jonathan Harker's kukri and his heart pierced by Quincey Morris's Bowie knife.


title: Kukri

text: All Gurkha troops are issued with two kukris, a Service No.1 (ceremonial) and a Service No.2 (exercise); in modern times members of the Brigade of Gurkhas receive training in its use. The weapon gained fame in the Gurkha War and its continued use through both World War I and World War II enhanced its reputation among both Allied troops and enemy forces. Its acclaim was demonstrated in North Africa by one unit's situation report. It reads: "Enemy losses: ten killed, our nil. Ammunition expenditure nil."


title: Kukri

text: The kukri is designed primarily for chopping. The shape varies a great deal from being quite straight to highly curved with angled or smooth spines. There are substantial variations in dimensions and blade thickness depending on intended tasks as well as the region of origin and the smith that produced it. As a general guide the spines vary from at the handle, and can taper to by the point while the blade lengths can vary from for general use.


title: Kukri

text: A kukri designed for general purpose is commonly in overall length and weighs approximately . Larger examples are impractical for everyday use and are rarely found except in collections or as ceremonial weapons. Smaller ones are of more limited utility, but very easy to carry.


title: Kukri

text: Another factor that affects its weight and balance is the construction of the blade. To reduce weight while keeping strength, the blade might be hollow forged, or a fuller is created. Kukris are made with several different types of fuller including "tin Chira" (triple fuller), "Dui Chira" (double fuller), "Ang Khola" (single fuller), or basic non-tapered spines with a large bevelled edge.


title: Kukri

text: Kukri blades usually have a notch ("karda", "kauda", "Gaudi", "Kaura", or "Cho") at the base of the blade. Various reasons are given for this, both practical and ceremonial: that it makes blood and sap drop off the blade rather than running onto the handle and thereby prevent the handle from becoming slippery; that it delineates the end of the blade whilst sharpening; that it is a symbol representing a cows' foot, or Shiva; that it can catch another blade or kukri in combat. The notch may also represent the teats of a cow, a reminder that the kukri should not be used to kill a cow, an animal revered and worshipped by Hindus. The notch may also be used as a catch, to hold tight against a belt, or to bite onto twine to be suspended.


title: Kukri

text: The handles are most often made of hardwood or water buffalo horn, but ivory, bone, and metal handles have also been produced. The handle quite often has a flared butt that allows better retention in draw cuts and chopping. Most handles have metal bolsters and butt plates which are generally made of brass or steel.


title: Kukri

text: The traditional handle attachment in Nepal is the partial tang, although the more modern versions have the stick tang which has become popular. The full tang is mainly used on some military models but has not become widespread in Nepal itself.


title: Kukri

text: The kukri typically comes in either a decorated wooden scabbard or one which is wrapped in leather. Traditionally, the scabbard also holds two smaller blades: an unsharpened "chakmak" to burnish the blade, and another accessory blade called a "karda". Some older style scabbards include a pouch for carrying flint or dry tinder.


title: Kukri

text: The Biswakarma Kami (caste) are the traditional inheritors of the art of kukri-making. Modern kukri blades are often forged from spring steel, sometimes collected from recycled truck suspension units. The tang of the blade usually extends all the way through to the end of the handle; the small portion of the tang that projects through the end of the handle are hammered flat to secure the blade. Kukri blades have a hard, tempered edge and a softer spine. This enables them to maintain a sharp edge, yet tolerate impacts.


title: Kukri

text: Kukri handles, usually made from hardwood or buffalo horn, are often fastened with a kind of tree sap called "laha" (also known as "Himalayan epoxy"). With a wood or horn handle, the tang may be heated and burned into the handle to ensure a tight fit, since only the section of handle which touches the blade is burned away. In more modern kukri, handles of cast aluminium or brass are press-fitted to the tang; as the hot metal cools it shrinks, locking onto the blade. Some kukri (such as the ones made by contractors for the modern Indian Army), have a very wide tang with handle slabs fastened on by two or more rivets, commonly called a full tang ("panawal") configuration.


title: Kukri

text: Traditional profiling of the blade edge is performed by a two-man team; one spins a grinding wheel forwards and backwards by means of a rope wound several times around an axle while the sharpener applies the blade. The wheel is made by hand from fine river sand bound by "laha", the same adhesive used to affix the handle to the blade. Routine sharpening is traditionally accomplished by passing a "chakmak" over the edge in a manner similar to that used by chefs to steel their knives.


title: Kukri

text: Kukri scabbards are usually made of wood or metal with an animal skin or metal or wood covering. The leather work is often done by a "Sarki".


title: Kukri

text: The kukri is in standard service with various regiments and units within the Indian Army, such as the Assam Rifles, the Kumaon Regiment, the Garhwal Rifles and the various Gorkha regiments. Outside of its native region of South Asia, the kukri also is in service with the Brigade of Gurkhas in the British Army and Gurkha Contingent of the Singapore Police Force. The kukri is the staple weapon of all Gurkha military regiments and units throughout the world, so much so that some English-speakers refer to the weapon as a "Gurkha blade" or "Gurkha knife". The kukri often appears in Nepalese heraldry and is used in many traditional, Hindu-centric rites such as wedding ceremonies.


title: Kukri

text: The kukri is effective as a chopping weapon, due to its weight, and slashing weapon, because the curved shape creates a "wedge" effect which causes the blade to cut effectively and deeper. Because the blade bends towards the opponent, the user need not angle the wrist while executing a chopping motion. Unlike a straight-edged sword, the center of mass combined with the angle of the blade allow the kukri to slice as it chops. The edge slides across the target's surface while the center of mass maintains momentum as the blade moves through the target's cross-section. This gives the kukri a penetrative force disproportional to its length. The design enables the user to inflict deep wounds and to penetrate bone.


title: Kukri

text: While most famed from use in the military, the kukri is the most commonly used multipurpose tool in the fields and homes in Nepal. Its use has varied from building, clearing, chopping firewood, digging, slaughtering animals for food, cutting meat and vegetables, skinning animals, and opening cans. Its use as a general farm and household tool disproves the often stated "taboo" that the weapon cannot be sheathed "until it has drawn blood".


title: Kukri

text: The kukri is versatile. It can function as a smaller knife by using the narrower part of the blade, closest to the handle. The heavier and wider end of the blade, towards the tip, functions as an axe or a small shovel.


title: Kukri

text: Kukris can be broadly classified into two types: Eastern and Western. The Eastern blades are originated and named according to the towns and villages of Eastern Nepal. The Eastern Khukuris are Angkhola Khukuri, Bhojpure Khukuri, Chainpure Khukuri, Cheetlange (Chitlange) Khukuri, Chirwa (Chiruwa) Khukuri, Dhankute Khukuri, Ganjawla Khukuri, Panawala Khukuri, Sirupate Khukuri translates as "Siru" grass leaf like. Khukuris made in locations like Chainpur, Bhojpur, and Dhankuta in Eastern Nepal are excellent and ornate knives.


title: Kukri

text: Western blades are generally broader. Occasionally the Western style is called "Budhuna", (referring to a fish with a large head), or "baspate" (bamboo leaf) which refers to blades just outside the proportions of the normal "Sirupate" blade. Despite the classification of Eastern and Western, both styles of kukri appear to be used in all areas of Nepal.


title: Kukri

text: There is Khukuri named after Gorkhali General Amar Singh Thapa called Amar Singh Thapa Khukuri. This Khukuri is modelled on the real Khukuri used by the Gorkhali General. The real Khukuri used by Amar Singh Thapa is archived at National Museum of Nepal and is more curvy in nature than other traditions.


title: Sigurd

text: Sigurd ( ) or Siegfried (Middle High German: Sîvrit) is a legendary hero of Germanic heroic legend, who killed a dragon and was later murdered. It is possible he was inspired by one or more figures from the Frankish Merovingian dynasty, with Sigebert I being the most popular contender. Older scholarship sometimes connected him with Arminius, victor of the Battle of the Teutoburg Forest. He may also have a purely mythological origin. Sigurd's story is first attested on a series of carvings, including runestones from Sweden and stone crosses from the British Isles, dating from the eleventh century.


title: Sigurd

text: In both the Norse and continental Germanic tradition, Sigurd is portrayed as dying as the result of a quarrel between his wife (Gudrun/Kriemhild) and another woman, Brunhild, whom he has tricked into marrying the Burgundian king Gunnar/Gunther. His slaying of a dragon and possession of the hoard of the Nibelungen is also common to both traditions. In other respects, however, the two traditions appear to diverge. The most important works to feature Sigurd are the "Nibelungenlied", the "Völsunga saga", and the "Poetic Edda". He also appears in numerous other works from both Germany and Scandinavia, including a series of medieval and early modern Scandinavian ballads.


title: Sigurd

text: Richard Wagner used the legends about Sigurd/Siegfried in his operas and . Wagner relied heavily on the Norse tradition in creating his version of Siegfried. His depiction of the hero has influenced many subsequent depictions.


title: Sigurd

text: In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, Siegfried became heavily associated with German nationalism.


title: Sigurd

text: The names "Sigurd" and "Siegfried" do not share the same etymology. Both have the same first element, Proto-Germanic "*sigi-", meaning victory. The second elements of the two names are different, however: in "Siegfried", it is Proto-Germanic "*-frið", meaning peace; in "Sigurd", it is Proto-Germanic "*-ward", meaning protection. Although they do not share the same second element, it is clear that surviving Scandinavian written sources held "Siegfried" to be the continental version of the name they called "Sigurd".


title: Sigurd

text: The normal form of "Siegfried" in Middle High German is "Sîvrit" or "Sîfrit", with the "*sigi-" element contracted. This form of the name had been common even outside of heroic poetry since the ninth century, though the form "Sigevrit" is also attested, along with the Middle Dutch "Zegevrijt". In Early Modern German, the name develops to "Seyfrid" or "Seufrid" (spelled "Sewfrid"). The modern form "Siegfried" is not attested frequently until the seventeenth century, after which it becomes more common. In modern scholarship, the form "Sigfrid" is sometimes used.


title: Sigurd

text: The Old Norse name "Sigurðr" is contracted from an original "*Sigvǫrðr", which in turn derives from an older "*Sigi-warðuR". The Danish form "Sivard" also derives from this form originally. Hermann Reichert notes that the form of the root "-vǫrðr" instead of "-varðr" is only found in the name "Sigurd", with other personal names instead using the form "-varðr"; he suggests that the form "-vǫrðr" may have had religious significance, whereas "-varðr" was purely non-religious in meaning.


title: Sigurd

text: There are competing theories as to which name is original. Names equivalent to "Siegfried" are first attested in Anglo-Saxon Kent in the seventh century and become frequent in Anglo-Saxon England in the ninth century. Jan-Dirk Müller argues that this late date of attestation means that it is possible that "Sigurd" more accurately represents the original name. Wolfgang Haubrichs suggests that the form "Siegfried" arose in the bilingual Frankish kingdom as a result of romance-language influence on an original name "*Sigi-ward". According to the normal phonetic principles, the Germanic name would have become Romance-language "*Sigevert", a form which could also represent a Romance-language form of Germanic "Sigefred". He further notes that "*Sigevert" would be a plausible Romance-language form of the name "Sigebert" (see Origins) from which both names could have arisen. As a second possibility, Haubrichs considers the option that metathesis of the "r" in "*Sigi-ward" could have taken place in Anglo-Saxon England, where variation between "-frith" and "-ferth" is well documented.


title: Sigurd

text: Hermann Reichert, on the other hand, notes that Scandinavian figures who are attested in pre-twelfth-century German, English, and Irish sources as having names equivalent to "Siegfried" are systematically changed to forms equivalent to "Sigurd" in later Scandinavian sources. Forms equivalent to "Sigurd", on the other hand, do not appear in pre-eleventh-century non-Scandinavian sources, and older Scandinavian sources sometimes call persons "Sigfroðr" "Sigfreðr" or "Sigfrǫðr" who are later called "Sigurðr". He argues from this evidence that a form equivalent to "Siegfried" is the older form of Sigurd's name in Scandinavia as well.


title: Sigurd

text: Unlike many figures of Germanic heroic tradition, Sigurd cannot be easily identified with a historical figure. The most popular theory is that Sigurd has his origins in one or several figures of the Merovingian dynasty of the Franks: the Merovingians had several kings whose name began with the element "*sigi-". In particular, the murder of Sigebert I (d. 575), who was married to Brunhilda of Austrasia, is often cited as a likely inspiration for the figure, a theory that was first proposed in 1613. Sigibert was murdered by his brother Chilperic I at the instigation of Chilperic's wife queen Fredegunda. If this theory is correct, then in the legend, Fredegunda and Brunhilda appear to have switched roles, while Chilperic has been replaced with Gunther.


title: Sigurd

text: It has also been suggested by others that Sigurd may be a purely mythological figure without a historical origin. Nineteenth-century scholars frequently derived the Sigurd story from myths about Germanic deities including Odin, Baldr, and Freyr; such derivations are no longer generally accepted. Catalin Taranu argues that Sigurd's slaying of the dragon ultimately has Indo-European origins, and that this story later became attached to the story of the murder of the Merovingian Sigebert I.


title: Sigurd

text: Continental Germanic traditions about Siegfried enter writing with the "Nibelungelied" around 1200. The German tradition strongly associates Siegfried with a kingdom called "Niederland" (Middle High German "Niderlant"), which, despite its name, is not the same as the modern Netherlands, but describes Siegfried's kingdom around the city of Xanten. The late medieval Heldenbuch-Prosa identifies "Niederland" with the area around Worms but describes it as a separate kingdom from king Gibich's land (i.e. the Burgundian kingdom).


title: Sigurd

text: The "Nibelungenlied" gives two contradictory descriptions of Siegfried's youth. On the level of the main story, Siegfried is given a courtly upbringing in Xanten by his father king Siegmund and mother Sieglind. When he is seen coming to Worms, capital of the Burgundian kingdom to woo the princess Kriemhild, however, the Burgundian vassal Hagen von Tronje narrates a different story of Siegfried's youth: according to Hagen, Siegfried was a wandering warrior (Middle High German "recke") who won the hoard of the Nibelungen as well as the sword Balmung and a cloak of invisibility ("Tarnkappe") that increases the wearer's strength twelve times. He also tells an unrelated tale about how Siegfried killed a dragon, bathed in its blood, and thereby received skin as hard as horn that makes him invulnerable. Of the features of young Siegfried's adventures, only those that are directly relevant to the rest of the story are mentioned.


title: Sigurd

text: In order to win the hand of Kriemhild, Siegfried becomes a friend of the Burgundian kings Gunther, Gernot, and Giselher. When Gunther decides to woo the warlike queen of Iceland, Brünhild, he offers to let Siegfried marry Kriemhild in exchange for Siegfried's help in his wooing of Brünhild. As part of Siegfried's help, they lie to Brünhild and claim that Siegfried is Gunther's vassal. Any wooer of Brünhild's must accomplish various physical tasks, and she will kill any man who fails. Siegfried, using his cloak of invisibility, aids Gunther in each task. Upon their return to Worms, Siegfried marries Kriemhild following Gunther's marriage to Brünhild. On Gunther's wedding night, however, Brünhild prevents him from sleeping with her, tying him up with her belt and hanging him from a hook. The next night, Siegfried uses his cloak of invisibility to overpower Brünhild, allowing Gunther to sleep with her. Although he does not sleep with Brünhild, Siegfried takes her belt and ring, later giving them to Kriemhild.


title: Sigurd

text: Siegfried and Kriemhild have a son, whom they name Gunther. Later, Brünhild and Kriemhild begin to fight over which of them should have precedence, with Brünhild believing that Kriemhild is only the wife of a vassal. Finally, in front of the door of the cathedral in Worms, the two queens argue who should enter first. Brünhild openly accuses Kriemhild of being married to a vassal, and Kriemhild claims that Siegfried took Brünhild's virginity, producing the belt and ring as proof. Although Siegfried denies this publicly, Hagen and Brünhild decide to murder Siegfried, and Gunther acquiesces. Hagen tricks Kriemhild into telling him where Siegfried's skin is vulnerable, and Gunther invites Siegfried to take part in a hunt in the Waskenwald (the Vosges). When Siegfried is slaking his thirst at a spring, Hagen stabs him on the vulnerable part of his back with a spear. Siegfried is mortally wounded but still attacks Hagen, before cursing the Burgundians and dying. Hagen arranges to have Siegfried's corpse thrown outside the door to Kriemhild's bedroom. Kriemhild mourns Siegfried greatly and he is buried in Worms.


title: Sigurd

text: The redaction of the text known as the "Nibelungenlied" C makes several small changes to localizations in the text: Siegfried is not killed in the Vosges, but in the Odenwald, with the narrator claiming that one can still visit the spring where he was killed near the village of Odenheim (today part of Östringen). The redactor states the Siegfried was buried at the abbey of Lorsch rather than Worms. It is also mentioned that he was buried in a marble sarcophagus—this may be connected to actual marble sarcophagi that were displayed in the abbey, having been dug up following a fire in 1090.


title: Sigurd

text: In the "Rosengarten zu Worms" (c. 1250), Siegfried is betrothed to Kriemhild and is one of the twelve heroes who defends her rose garden in Worms. Kriemhild decides that she would like to test Siegfried's mettle against the hero Dietrich von Bern, and so she invites him and twelve of his warriors to fight her twelve champions. When the fight is finally meant to begin, Dietrich initially refuses to fight Siegfried on the grounds that the dragon's blood has made Siegfried's skin invulnerable. Dietrich is convinced to fight Siegfried by the false news that his mentor Hildebrand is dead and becomes so enraged that he begins to breathe fire, melting Siegfried's protective layer of horn on his skin. He is thus able to penetrate Siegfried's skin with his sword, and Siegfried becomes so afraid that he flees to Kriemhild's lap. Only the reappearance of Hildebrand prevents Dietrich from killing Siegfried.


title: Sigurd

text: Siegfried's role as Kriemhild's fiancé does not accord with the "Nibelungenlied", where the two are never formally betrothed. The detail that Kriemhild's father is named Gibich rather than Dancrat, the latter being his name in the "Nibelungenlied", shows that the "Rosengarten" does include some old traditions absent in that poem, although it is still highly dependent on the "Nibelungenlied". Some of the details agree with the "Thidrekssaga". Rosengarten A mentions that Siegfried was raised by a smith named Eckerich.


title: Sigurd

text: Although the "Þiðrekssaga" (c. 1250) is written in Old Norse, the majority of the material is translated from German (particularly Low German) oral tales, as well as possibly some from German written sources such as the "Nibelungenlied". Therefore, it is included here.


title: Sigurd

text: The "Thidrekssaga" refers to Siegfried both as Sigurd ("Sigurðr") and an Old Norse approximation of the name "Siegfried", "Sigfrœð". He is the son of king Sigmund of Tarlungaland (probably a corruption of "Karlungaland", i.e. the land of the Carolingians) and queen Sisibe of Spain. When Sigmund returns from a campaign one day, he discovers his wife is pregnant, and believing her to be unfaithful to him, he exiles her to the "Swabian Forest" (the Black Forest?), where she gives birth to Sigurd. She dies after some time, and Sigurd is suckled by a hind before being found by the smith Mimir. Mimir tries to raise the boy, but Sigurd is so unruly that Mimir sends him to his brother Regin, who has transformed into a dragon, in the hopes that he will kill the boy. Sigurd, however, slays the dragon and tastes its flesh, whereby he learns the language of the birds and of Mimir's treachery. He smears himself with dragon's blood, making his skin invulnerable, and returns to Mimir. Mimir gives him weapons to placate him, but Sigurd kills him anyway. He then encounters Brynhild (Brünhild), who gives him the horse Grane, and goes to King Isung of Bertangenland.


title: Sigurd

text: One day Thidrek (Dietrich von Bern) comes to Bertangenland; he fights against Sigurd for three days. Thidrek is unable to wound Sigurd because of his invulnerable skin, but on the third day, Thidrek receives the sword Mimung, which can cut through Sigurd's skin, and defeats him. Thidrek and Sigurd then ride to King Gunnar (Gunther), where Sigurd marries Gunnar's sister Grimhild (Kriemhild). Sigurd recommends to Gunnar that he marry Brynhild, and the two ride to woo for her. Brynhild now claims that Sigurd had earlier said he would marry her (unmentioned before in the text), but eventually she agrees to marry Gunnar. She will not, however, allow Gunnar to consummate the marriage, and so with Gunnar's agreement, Sigurd takes Gunnar's shape and deflowers Brynhild, taking away her strength. The heroes then return with Brynhild to Gunnar's court.


title: Sigurd

text: Sometime later, Grimhild and Brynhild fight over who has a higher rank. Brynhild claims that Sigurd is not of noble birth, after which Grimhild announces that Sigurd and not Gunnar deflowered Brynhild. Brynhild convinces Gunnar and Högni (Hagen) to murder Sigurd, which Högni does while Sigurd is drinking from a spring on a hunt. The brothers then place his corpse in Grimhild's bed, and she mourns.


title: Sigurd

text: The author of the saga has made a number of changes to create a more or less coherent story out of the many oral and possibly written sources that he used to create the saga. The author mentions alternative Scandinavian versions of many of these same tales, and appears to have changed some details to match the stories known by his Scandinavian audience. This is true in particular for the story of Sigurd's youth, which combines elements from the Norse and continental traditions attested later in "Das Lied vom Hürnen Seyfrid", but also contains an otherwise unattested story of Siegfried's parents.


title: Sigurd

text: The second half of the heroic poem "Biterolf und Dietleib" (between 1250 and 1300) features a war between the Burgundian heroes of the "Nibelungenlied" and the heroes of the cycle around Dietrich von Bern, something likely inspired by the "Rosengarten zu Worms". In this context, it also features a fight between Siegfried and Dietrich in which Dietrich defeats Siegfried after initially appearing cowardly. The text also features a fight between Siegfried and the hero Heime, in which Siegfried knocks Heime's famous sword Nagelring out of his hand, after which both armies fight for control over the sword.


title: Sigurd

text: The text also relates that Dietrich once brought Siegfried to Etzel's court as a hostage, something which is also alluded to in the "Nibelungenlied".


title: Sigurd

text: The so-called "Heldenbuch-Prosa", first found in the 1480 "Heldenbuch" of Diebolt von Hanowe and afterwards contained in printings until 1590, is considered one of the most important attestations of a continued oral tradition outside of the "Nibelungenlied", with many details agreeing with the "Thidrekssaga".


title: Sigurd

text: The Heldenbuch-Prosa has very little to say about Siegfried: it notes that he was the son of King Siegmund, came from "Niederland", and was married to Kriemhild. Unattested in any other source, however, is that Kriemhild orchestrated the disaster at Etzel's court in order to avenge Siegfried being killed by Dietrich von Bern. According to the Heldenbuch-Prosa, Dietrich killed Siegfried fighting in the rose garden at Worms (see the Rosengarten zu Worms section above). This may have been another version of Siegfried's death that was in oral circulation.


title: Sigurd

text: "Das Lied vom Hürnen Seyfrid" (the song of horn-skinned Siegfried) is a late medieval/early modern heroic ballad that gives an account of Siegfried's adventures in his youth. It agrees in many details with the "Thidrekssaga" and other Old Norse accounts over the "Nibelungenlied", suggesting that these details existed in an oral tradition about Siegfried in Germany.


title: Sigurd

text: According to the "Hürnen Seyfrid", Siegfried had to leave his father Siegmund's court for his uncouth behavior and was raised by a smith in the forest. He was so unruly, however, that the smith arranged for him to be killed by a dragon. Siegfried was able to kill the dragon, however, and eventually kills many more by trapping them under logs and setting them on fire. The dragon's skin, described as hard as horn, melts, and Siegfried sticks his finger into it, discovering that his finger is now hard as horn as well. He smears himself with the melted dragon skin everywhere except for one spot. Later, he stumbles upon the trail of another dragon that has kidnapped princess Kriemhild of Worms. With the help of the dwarf Eugel, Siegfried fights the giant Kuperan, who has the key to the mountain Kriemhild has been taken to. He rescues the princess and slays the dragon, finding the treasure of the Nibelungen inside the mountain. Eugel prophesies, however, the Siegfried only has eight years to live. Realizing he will not be able to use the treasure, Siegfried dumps the treasure into the Rhine on his way to Worms. He marries Kriemhild and rules there together with her brothers Gunther, Hagen, and Giselher, but they resent him and have him killed after eight years.


title: Sigurd

text: The Icelandic Abbot Nicholaus of Thvera records that while travelling through Westphalia, he was shown the place where Sigurd slew the dragon (called Gnita-Heath in the Norse tradition) between two villages south of Paderborn.


title: Sigurd

text: In a song of the mid-thirteenth-century wandering lyric poet Der Marner, "the death of Siegfried" ("Sigfrides [...] tôt") is mentioned as a popular story that the German courtly public enjoys hearing, along with "the hoard of the Nibelungs" ("der Nibelunge hort").


title: Sigurd

text: The chronicles of the city of Worms record that when Emperor Frederick III visited the city in 1488, he learned that the townspeople said that the "giant Siegfried" ("gigas [...] Sifridus des Hörnen") was buried in the cemetery of St. Meinhard and St. Cecilia. Frederick ordered the graveyard dug up—according to one Latin source, he found nothing, but a German chronicle reports that he found a skull and some bones that were larger than normal.


title: Sigurd

text: In contrast to the surviving continental traditions, Scandinavian stories about Sigurd have a strong connection to Germanic mythology. While older scholarship took this to represent the original form of the Sigurd story, newer scholarship is more inclined to see it as a development of the tradition that is unique to Scandinavia. While some elements of the Scandinavian tradition may indeed be older than the surviving continental witnesses, a good deal seems to have been transformed by the context of the Christianization of Iceland and Scandinavia: the frequent appearance of the heathen gods gives the heroic stories the character of an epoch that is irrevocably over.


title: Sigurd

text: Although the earliest attestations for the Scandinavian tradition are pictorial depictions, because these images can only be understood with a knowledge of the stories they depict, they are listed last here.


title: Sigurd

text: The so-called Prose Edda of Snorri Sturluson is the earliest non-pictorial attestation of the Scandinavian version of Sigurd's life, dating to around 1220. Snorri retells the story of Sigurd in several chapters of the section of the poem called "Skáldskaparsmál". His presentation of the story is very similar to that found in the "Völsunga saga" (see below), but is considerably shorter. This version does not mention Sigurd's vengeance for the death of his father. The text identifies Sigurd as being raised in a place called "Thjod."