Three England chess players from the 1939 Olympiad joined Bletchley Park as codebreakers

As World War II erupted in 1939, England’s chess team withdrew from the Buenos Aires Olympiad.

In his fourth column for TOI, Grandmaster Aarav Dengla explores how Hugh Alexander, Stuart Milner-Barry and Harry Golombek returned home to join Bletchley Park.

Dengla writes that they harnessed chessboard skills such as pattern recognition and strategic elimination to play pivotal roles in cracking Germany’s Enigma code, contributions that remained secret for decades and helped secure Allied victory.