Main content

Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ Monitoring, 26 August 1939

Initially employing several hundred 'monitors', many of them refugees, the service rapidly expanded so that it could 'listen' 24 hours a day to all the European languages likely to be of wartime use. The Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ and wider world quickly recognised the uniqueness and value of Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ Monitoring, calling it in 1940 'a modern Tower of Babel'. Churchill was an avid customer of the service, and would ring up in the middle of the night and ask (of Hitler) 'What's that fellow been saying?'.

Release date:

Duration:

7 minutes