Secrets of War - Intelligence (The Ultra Enigma, Women Spies in World War II)
Long before electronic computers were a reality, the Germans developed an encoding device called, appropriately enough, Enigma.  Enigma was a fiendishly clever mechanical setup that scrambled messages according to given patterns.  The responsibility for unraveling those patterns fell to the Poles and, later, a group of English mathematicians and cryptographers.  The story of Enigma is a fascinating one, as each side desperately practiced countermeasures to defeat each other, and the formulas that came out of the struggle provided the primitive groundwork for what would later become computer languages. The second instalment of this DVD deals with four women who worked for the OSS (the predecessor of the CIA) in World War II.  At great risk to their personal safety, these women (interviewed some 50 years later) operated behind German lines and were the cause of considerable mayhem and confusion for the German war effort.  Many other Allied spies (male and female) weren't so lucky and were sent to concentration camps or executed before war's end.  Narrated by Charlton Heston, this disc uncovers more obscure information about the Second World War, a war with as many stories as there are people who were involved in it.  Both segments go far to capture the gritty desperation of the war with Germany and the urgency of the Allies prevailing; recommended for all history buffs.--Jerry Renshaw