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The men and women of Bletchley Park, who repeatedly broke German military cyphers throughout the Second World War, made an incalculable contribution to the allied success. This book, written by one of the code-breakers provides a fascinating insight into the process.
Despite the core subject, this is not really a book about cryptography, but about how to manage people and technology to solve complex, important problems. Welchman was the "glue" between the pure ideas men like Alan Turing, and the code-breaking production line. His talents were clearly in building the organisation, and liaising between the different parties so that interception, decoding, understanding and using the intelligence became a repeatable success.
Welchman's insights into British wartime society and bureaucracy are keen and frequently very humourous. Many of his insights are equally applicable today, in business as well as military circles. For example an individual's promotion, prestige and salary should not depend solely on the number of subordinates.
Although he was very modest about it, it is clear that Welchman was no mean cryptologist himself. The book does attempt to explain several of the ways in which Enigma was cracked, but I found the primarily verbal explanations difficult to follow. However, this doesn't prevent an understanding of the principals, and how different methods were applied at different points during the war.
The book does have some limitations. Because he was not personally involved, he explicitly refuses to discuss the effort focused on the German naval codes so important to the Battle of the Atlantic, and generally says little about the use of the intelligence information.
... Sadly, the current edition of the book omits much of Welchman's advice on the analysis of battlefield communications, and how to keep such communications secure. However, one observation has been retained - it was a fundamental mistake to believe Enigma was secure simply because of the enormous computing power required for a brute-force attack. This should perhaps be noted in our Internet age, when so much depends on the assumed difficulty of factoring large numbers.
If I have a criticism of the book, it's the rather poor production in places, with very faded photographs and occasionally blurred text. Figures are sometimes absent when they are most needed, e.g. when first explaining the Enigma machine. I read this book having only recently attended an excellent lecture and actually seeing an Enigma - otherwise I would have struggled at such points.
Nonetheless this is an excellent, insightful and inspiring book, containing a range of lessons relevant today, and I thoroughly recommend it...
The is a more complete book specifically on how the Enigma code was broken and dealt with at Bletchley park than Herivelismus and Top Secret Ultra (though they're very good also and concentrate on more specific elements of the story). Welchman was involved early on and was involved with some specific element of code breaking but also sheds light on the importance of his prominent role into organising the handling of all this information to make the most of it. Reading it it did feel like he'd missed a trick not selling it as a management book but later on he does lightly touch on this point himself.
The book is 254 pages of medium size print split in to four parts over 13 chapters with 3 appendices. Some diagrams, pictures and specific example of documents intercepted and fed on an included.
Part one: Backdrop to Hut 6 Part Two: The First Year Part Three: The Rest of the War Part Four: An Addendum (Explaining the difference between the Polish Bomba and British Bombe
A fascinating topic this is and is written in a pleasant easy to read style covering the pre war Enigama, Polish code breaking, handing this to the British and French and how Bletchley took it forward once it got harder to crack.
What is fascinating is the how the leverage of technique they used to get a foot hold into breaking the code, how precarious it all was, how innovative people were (punched holes in paper helped them crack the code!), how organised they were and how much the broke. One of the interesting background stories is the proper secret squirrel operation the Poles undertook when a German parcel was incorrectly posted and they had a weekend to work their magic on it then return it as was....
Welchman covers the two important contribution he made to code breaking, one of which was already independently being developed, as well as the planning and implementation of the hut's organising and the strong links he formed with the signals teams to produce a well oiled machine.
The only criticism I'd really make is this book replaces the original Part four with Welchmans article on the Bombe/Bombe. May be it was a bit dated but could be interesting to read his view on what could have been learnt from his experience back in the 80's.Read more ›