City sacrificed 'simply not true'

GROWING up in Coventry you learn all about the city's suffering during World War Two.

- By DANNY THOMPSON

With such symbolic scars as the cathedral ruins standing resolutely in our city centre, it's a history you simply cannot turn away from.

But one of the darker sides of Coventry 's story from that time is the theory that then British Prime Minister, the generally considered heroic Winston Churchill, knew all about Operation Moonlight Sonata - Nazi Germany's plan to destroy Coventry. But nothing was done to prevent it for fear it would lead to the enemy realising the Allies had intercepted and cracked encrypted German Enigma Code thanks to the renowned Bletchley Park codebreakers.

The general consensus was being able to secretly intercept German comms and decipher them would play a huge part in helping bring down Adolf Hitler's regime. So if the powers that be let Coventry take a hammering now, in the long run it would benefit the wider country. This makes images of a sympathetic Churchill strolling through the ruins of our city in the days after the Blitz quite galling.

The idea is one that's often repeated, and many believe it to be true hands down - it makes sense and is quite believable. It’s a story that has appeared in books and documentaries for decades.

However, there isn’t actually any cold, hard evidence of it, and according to a Coventry professor with an expert knowledge of Bletchley Park, it’s simply not the case.