Fwd: OBITUARY : Elisabeth Hardy, Bletchley translator

Thursday 08 September 2016

OBITUARY : Elisabeth Hardy, Bletchley translator
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Elisabeth Hardy, who has died aged 92, was part of the Bletchley Park
team who translated and analysed decrypted Nazi communications during
the Second World War; she later became part of the British Joint
Intelligence Commission at the Nuremberg war crime trials.

She was born Elisabeth Mary Stewart at Bellshill, just south-east of
Glasgow, on August 3 1923, to schoolmaster Thomas Stewart and his wife
Margaret ( née Caulfield ). After attending Dalziel High School in
Motherwell, she went on to the University of Glasgow, where she
graduated with an MA in Modern Languages. She had wanted to be a dancer
but her mother dissuaded her.

Her linguistic skills brought her to the attention of British
intelligence agents and she was hired by the RAF intelligence officer
Peter Calvocoressi in 1942 to work at Bletchley Park. Her immediate boss
was Jim Rose, who would end the war in the rank of Wing Commander and go
on to become founding director of the International Press Institute ( IPI ).

When the young Elisabeth Stewart arrived at what staff called “the Park”
– Bletchley Park in the Buckinghamshire countryside – she was described
as an “FO Civilian – TJAO ( Foreign Office Temporary Assistant Junior
Officer )”.

The house, she was told, had initially been rented for “Captain Ridley’s
shooting party” when war seemed imminent – a story put out to explain to
local farmers and villagers why men and women with upper-class accents,
many of them in uniform, had descended on the area.

Informed that she would be working with MI6 and the Government Code and
Cypher School ( GC&CS  to crack Nazi codes, she was assigned to Hut 3,
one of several wooden huts in the gardens of the mansion house, where
her job was to translate, interpret and distribute Nazi army and
Luftwaffe messages deciphered by the Enigma Machines in Hut 6.

She was given a significant role in her hut’s SALU sub-section, focusing
on radio traffic from the Luftwaffe – notably German bombers and
reconnaissance aircraft – and passing the information on to British pilots.

The work gave the RAF a real advantage in aerial combat. Having
impressed her superiors with her discretion, Elisabeth was then asked to
be part of Joint Intelligence Commission at Nuremberg for the war trials
of senior Nazis.

“We knew they would use the 'we were only acting on superior orders’
defence,” she recalled. “But our prosecutors had enough evidence to blow
that away.” Entering court, her first impression of the officers of
Hitler’s high command was of a “pretty shabby” group, though Goering
“was impressive because he was so intelligent”.

There, Elisabeth Stewart fell in love with an American prosecutor,
Alexander Hardy, and moved to America with him. She recalled watching
the GIs play baseball in Nuremberg stadium......


http://www.telegraph.co.uk/obituaries/2016/09/08/elisabeth-hardy-bletchley-translator--obituary/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J5LOGTU29c8