The Imitation Game Christopher soon dies from tuberculosis. When Britain declares war on Germany in 1939, Turing travels to Bletchley Park. Under the direction of Commander Alastair Denniston, he joins the cryptography team of Hugh Alexander, John Cairncross, Peter Hilton, Keith Furman and Charles Richards. The team are trying to decrypt the Enigma machine, which the Nazis use to send coded messages. Turing is difficult to work with, and considers his colleagues inferior; he works alone to design a machine to decipher Enigma. After Denniston refuses to fund construction of the machine, Turing writes to Prime Minister Winston Churchill, who puts Turing in
German code breaking in World War II 1941. While the Germans appreciated the gift from their ally, they did not explain that they were already able to read "Black" code messages. In general, however, German performance in code breaking was weak due to the fragmentation of responsibility and specialized personnel. The Navy's "B-Dienst" was an exception to the rule, although its successes largely ended when the Allies began using more sophisticated encryption methods by 1943. German code breaking in World War II German code breaking in World War II achieved some notable successes cracking British Naval ciphers until well into the fourth year of the war, but