- Paperback: 352 pages
- Publisher: Arrow Books Ltd; New edition edition (21 Nov 1996)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0099784114
- ISBN-13: 978-0099784111
- Product Dimensions: 19.6 x 12.8 x 2.6 cm
- Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
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Amazon Bestsellers Rank:
463,743 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #33 in Books > History > World History > World War II 1939-1945 > Enigma Code
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Product Description
Product Description
An account of one of the key campaigns of World War II, the Battle of the Atlantic. While the Royal Navy and RAF protected Allied shipping and captured secret documents and cipher machines, the Intelligence group at Bletchley Park fought the backroom war to unravel the German code, Enigma.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
19 of 19 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
A history book that reads like a thriller,
This review is from: Seizing the Enigma: Race to Break the German U-boat Codes, 1939-43 (Paperback)
The year is early 1941, and the Battle of Britain is intensifying. The Kriegsmarine submarines, organized in groups - wolfpacks - are trying to cut the life-line the British defense depends on - the convoys which supply Britain with food, military supplies and raw materials. And they are pretty much successful in it, sinking more ships each month than Britain and United States can build. Meanwhile, a group of mathematicians, linguists and other odd characters located a top-secret base in Bletchley Park, Buckinghamshire, is trying in frenzy to decode the German naval code, Enigma...David Kahn has produced a well researched and clearly written book on this segment of naval history, which has long remained classified. The story of Enigma is traced from the Arthur Scherbius's design, through the first successful decoding made by Marian Rejewski's group in Poland, and finally to Alan Turing and the Hut 8 staff in Bletchley Park. We learn that while direct attack on the cipher was mindbogglingly impossible, the chances for decoding being 150 million million million to one, the Brits had to find bypasses, raiding German boats for the on-board code books, employing "kisses" (identical messages transmitted in two different cryptosystems), and finally mechanising the solution finding with the "bombes". The emphasis of the book is more on the naval war than on the cryptology. Although the operation of Enigma machine is described to some extent, you will not be able to fully understand its workings from it alone. Singh's Code Book, for instance, has a much better introduction to it. It also limits its scope quite narrowly, not spending one single word on the fact that while Hut 8 was busy solving naval Enigma, some hundred yards away the world's first electronic computer - Colossus - was built in attempt to solve the German Lorenz cipher. The book comes with an exhaustive list of notes, an excellent bibliography and a useful index. There are also over thirty b/w photographs.
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
great book, real heavyweight read,
By
This review is from: Seizing the Enigma: Race to Break the German U-boat Codes, 1939-43 (Paperback)
Kahn has written a great book, a real heavyweight read. It easily matches other good works on WWII radio intelligence, such as Anthony Cave Brown's "Bodyguard of Lies," and has a smooth style. It is fairly heavy material and Kahn goes to great lengths to describe the inner workings of the German Enigma machine. Don't despair, those sections are well written and Kahn takes great care in making the descriptions understandable, even for the layman. The material is still current and he dispells some of the myths that have grown about the Enigma machine that have been perpetuated by other authors. On interesting detail is that German naval enigma codes mostly withstood British codebreaking efforts for the first two years of the war and were not cracked until the British captured secret German code keys from a German warship.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Great read, though somewhat lacking in detail.,
By
This review is from: Seizing the Enigma: Race to Break the German U-boat Codes, 1939-43 (Paperback)
Kahn's book is an excellent read; rather than focusing too much on the details, he paints the process of breaking the Enigma with broad strokes, allowing readers without much insight in mathematics or signals intelligence to follow him.
The book is packed with anecdotes showing how the various bits of the puzzle to solve the Enigma came about, be it from German procedural errors, 'revelations' among the scientists tasked with solving it or simply good old courageous action from fighting men. This book's major strength lies not in providing you with the best technical account of how the Enigma was broken - it doesn't - but rather in the way it enables the reader to single out the subjects (s)he'd rather find out more about, providing an excellent list of references.
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