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Like you say, The Imitation Game is a movie, not a historical documentary, and despite the fact I dearly love Benedict Cumberbatch, there are huge chunks of the movie that make no sense historically.
However, the 'HH', 'Heil Hitler' and the German word for 'weather' were all used to build the cribs for deciphering German transmissions. 'CILLY' was a real story. Being able to identify individual pianists by listening to the pattern of a transmission is really a thing, and has been since Thomas Alva Edison was a telegraph key operator way back when.
BTW, there is a rather fascinating show on history now where they have brought world class cryptologists and experienced cold case investigators to try and definitively identify The Zodiac Killer. If you have even a passing interest in codes, or the Zodiac, this show is worth watching.
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Well that was just plain stupid whoever decided that they need reinforce (or at least feint) their dedication to Hitler in ever message. I can see not changing the word for weather, wesser. Since where would you begin or end on encrypting your normal vocabulary in an already encrypted message.
I can vaguely see hoow with HH in every message and a relatively consistent time weather is submitted with "wesser" in it being a key to decoding when you know that a letter or character can never be itself through the genius code breakers have.
IIRC, that was the opening line to every meeting of the German General Staff where Hitler was not present . . . .
I found a source stating this here. But I do not stand for its credibility.
EDIT: I'm sorry, didn't see Andre posted more or less the same thing.
I've cited him myself actually in a paper on Thomas Cromwell. I used him once (out of about 30-40 citations in the whole essay iirc) and given that I got a 74 or something (out of 100), his inclusion apparently didn't cause many problems. As a previous poster stated, it was simply to provide an alternate source to make it look like I was well-read (I wasn't). Plus, having been interested (if not a bit of a fan - although that's unfashionable and extremely questionable for reasons discussed on many a forum here) in Churchill for a long time, I knew he mentioned the guy in his History of the English Speaking Peoples and couldn't resist.
Citing Churchill, I think, would be mandatory in dealing with British naval policy in the beginning of WW1 and British policy in general throughout WW2. However, given the problems inherent in both (there's a significant lack of truth in his recollections of his time at the admiralty for example), I'd relegate them to primary source material that you'd probably spend most of your time disputing with other evidence from other sources.
Citing Churchill, I think, would be mandatory in dealing with British naval policy in the beginning of WW1 and British policy in general throughout WW2. However, given the problems inherent in both (there's a significant lack of truth in his recollections of his time at the admiralty for example), I'd relegate them to primary source material that you'd probably spend most of your time disputing with other evidence from other sources.
I do wonder how the Man that was in charge of Gallipoli and the Norwegian campaign, at least as far as the navy goes was second choice after Halifax? Was he really the only one that wanted the job in 1940? After Churchill duped Halifax into thinking he was consider peace with Germany there didn't seem to be anyone else in his way I can find historically.
He was the most prominent Conservative opponent of appeasement. The other Tory candidates for the office like Halifax were tainted by association with Chamberlain's disastrous foreign policy.
He 'redeemed' himself from Gallipoli by fighting in the trenches, he resigned his commission as First Lord and took command of an infantry battalion. The Norwegian campaign was blamed on Chamberlin not Churchill.
He messed up Gallipoli and Norway, but he had a lot of less heralded good ideas to go along with them. In the run-up to WWII he had the exceedingly valuable attribute of being a contrarian. In a situation where all the conventional wisdom about Hitler and Germany proved itself wrong, Churchill was screaming something that made no sense to anyone else, and in fact he proved correct. He didn't just correctly identify what would happen, but who would make it happen that way, and why. That's an incredibly powerful and persuasive reason to put him in charge. If you are going to war, if your leader personally seems to have a good idea of what's making the enemy tick, that's a darn good reason to give him enough power to beat them. He had a long and varied political and military career before that, and certainly seemed capable of leading the nation from the POV of experience and ability. Given all this, there certainly didn't seem to be anything to loose by putting him in charge.
And the Labour Party leadership said that he was the only Conservative politician they'd be prepared to serve under.
These are the minutes of the House of Commons debate where Chamberlain was accused of botching the Norway campaign: he resigned 3 days later.
http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/...onduct-of-the-war#S5CV0360P0_19400507_HOC_366
It's particularly worth scrolling down for the speech by Admiral of the Fleet (retired) Sir Roger Keyes (Conservative MP for Portsmouth North). He basically said, "Gallipoli in 1915 was a great idea of Churchill's, which was thrown away by its timid, slow and blundering implementation. Norway in 1940 has turned into exactly the same thing, for the same reason. When are we going to unleash Churchill and let him do his thing?"
Sir R Keyes said:
While I wholeheartedly second the idea of reading the original text of the debate, it can be supplemented by the excellent Wikipedia article, which explains the context of the speeches and some of the allusions. It also notes that Admiral Keyes' speech was met with "thunderous applause", even though the House of Commons had a long-standing tradition forbidding applause.