Enigma: The Battle for the Code

"cracking stuff . . . vivid and hitherto unknown details."-Sunday Times (London)

The complete untold story of the cracking of the infamous Nazi code

Most histories of the cracking of the elusive Enigma code focus on the work done by the codebreakers at Bletchley Park, Britain's famous World War II counterintelligence station. In this fascinating account, however, we are told, for the first time, the hair-raising stories of the heroic British and American sailors, spies, and secret agents who put their lives on the line to provide the codebreakers with the materials they needed. Noted British journalist Hugh Sebag-Montefiore tracked down many of the surviving players in the Enigma drama, and these witnesses-some of them speaking on record for the first time-provide unforgettable firsthand accounts of the courageous men and women who faced death in order to capture vital codebooks from sinking ships and snatch them from under the noses of Nazi officials. In addition to these gripping stories, we learn fascinating new details about the genesis of the code and the feverish activities at Bletchley. Enigma is a spellbinding account of the brilliant feat of decryption that turned the tide of World War II.

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Forget about the crude attempts by Hollywood in the film U-571 to credit the americans with breaking the code, and read this book to find out about the huge contributions by the Poles (who were breaking Enigma in the early 1930's), the British and Canadian seaman (boarding subs and weather reporting trawlers to capture code books), and the French.

This book is not for those who want a deep understanding of deciphering techniques used at Bletchly Park - this is covered in other exellent volumes (see Sarah Flannery's book "In code: A mathematical journey" if you want a gentle introduction to cryptography ). It does give detailed and personal accounts of the risks taken by others in the armed forces and outside to secure code books, Enigma machine wheels and other "cribs" to help the code breakers.

The hardest part for me was reading about the fate of the various Polish mathemeticians who pioneered the Enigma work throughout the 1930's, and who were mostly left to perish in tragic circumstances by the French and British, despite being got out of Poland after the German invasion.

35 of 37 found the following review helpful:

Reads like a novelApr 26, 2002
By Phillip J. Moore
This is an excellent history of code breaking during World War II. The majority of the book is from the British perspective. It is action packed. If you are looking for the math behind the code breaking, this is not the book.

Some key points are:
-Code breaking of enigma much sooner than I had known.

-Steps that the Germans took to "secure" their code often backfired and made it easier to break.

-We are all human. Human habits were key to breaking the codes.

-The code breaking was a key weapon in WWII.

This book whet my appetite. I hope the author writes more. Possible topics include:
-German code breaking. Too many teasers in this book about the German code breakers.. I want more details.

-US code breaking of Japan and Germany.

-The hints of the French activity left me wanting to know more.

Overall I enjoyed the book. I would recommend it to history buffs and math buffs (too few books where mathematics and mathematicians are the heros.)

45 of 51 found the following review helpful:

New Stories of the Great Code WarApr 16, 2001
By R. Hardy "Rob Hardy"
In last year's film _U-571_, tribute was paid to those American heroes who were able to grab a Nazi Enigma encryption machine, thereby enabling the allies to break enemy messages and win the war. _U-571_ showed the American heroes capturing Enigma, when in truth it was British heroes who did so, and not just once. Nonetheless, the film did demonstrate the continuing realization of the importance of the cracking of Enigma, the most famous episode of codebreaking in history. The story of the English boffins at Bletchley Park, led by the strange, brilliant, and doomed Alan Turing is indeed one of the great victories of the war.

But it wasn't all mathematicians, primitive computers, and brainpower. _Enigma: The Battle for the Code_ (John Wiley & Sons) by Hugh Sebag-Montefiore tells plenty about the cerebral efforts within Bletchley Park, but expands the story to include the cloak-and-dagger work and military captures of German vessels that were able to bring codebooks, Enigma machines, and encoding wheels into the purview of the cryptographers. The victory over Enigma is a thrilling story that first started being revealed only twenty years ago, and this book helps to describe the difficulties the decoders went through because of the hazards of getting information from the field. And it is a good story, with hair-raising escapes, bureaucratic in-fighting, eccentric characters, and genuine heroism on the high seas.

Some of the spywork was mundane. We owe a lot to Hans Thilo Schmidt, for instance, the German who spied for the French Secret Service, providing keys to the system as early as 1931. Schmidt was, however, no hero; he was simply in it for the money, to pay for vacations and mistresses. He continued to provide information for pay until caught by the Germans in 1943. Captured, he took cyanide, perhaps provided by his family and perhaps allowed by his captors to avoid an embarrassing trial. His story has not been told before, and came from sources previously unavailable to historians.

_Enigma_ gives a chronology of the battle for the codes that demonstrates how vital decryption was in winning the war in the Atlantic. When Bletchley Park could decrypt quickly, information got to the convoys enabling them to avoid U-boats. When the Nazis changed methods of using Enigma, information slowed and ships were lost. The ups and downs of gaining information from spies or from captured ships and using that information to crack messages is well told here. The victory over Enigma is rightly remembered and celebrated. Sebag-Montefiore expands the extent of the victory beyond the Bletchley cerebrations to the mostly unsung heroes who gave the code-crunchers something to work on. The book is full of information, including appendices on details of how the Enigma machine worked and a useful chronology of high points in the Enigma battle. It is a vivid account of the battles at sea and on land that won the code war.

16 of 16 found the following review helpful:

YSDX FWPO QLSV DSCA PXCHMar 15, 2003
By G. T. Olson "GTO"
Once I picked this book up, it was very hard to put down. Sebag-Montefiore has compiled a gripping glimpse into the code breaking efforts by the British. His source and reference material are outstanding and his explanations of the technical aspects are gentle enough for the non-cryptologist to follow. I felt his technical analysis was just right, enough to let me understand the problems the Bletchly Park code breakers faced, while not to technical for me to lose interest.

Those wanting a in depth review of the methods used may want to look elsewhere, but I believe this book details the human story behind Bletchly Park's success masterfully. It's amazing to me that despite the capability of the Enigma machine, its ultimate Achilles heel was that it was operated by humans, who are in the end non-random and prone to habit. The eccentricities of the code breakers, the stiff British upper lip, and the maverick attitude of the US code breakers are all displayed for the reader.

The exploits of the Royal Navy is nothing short of truly heroic in their efforts to obtain code books to aid Bletchly's cause. It's ironic that the Enigma was first broken by three Polish mathematicians, who have never received much credit.

A fascinating book on exploits that had far reaching consequences after the end of WWII. Strongest recomendation.

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