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Seizing the Enigma: Race to Break the German U-boat Codes, 1939-43
 
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Seizing the Enigma: Race to Break the German U-boat Codes, 1939-43 (Paperback)

by David Kahn (Author)
4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)

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Product details

  • 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: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
  • Amazon.co.uk Sales Rank: 434,159 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

    Popular in these categories:

    #26 in  Books > History > World History > World War II 1939-1945 > Enigma Code
    #32 in  Books > History > Military History > Battles & Campaigns > Battle of the Atlantic

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Product Description

Review

Ultra was the high-grade intelligence made available to the Allies throughout WW II, thanks to the UK's ability to read many of the Wehrmacht's Enigma ciphers. Messages sent via Kriegsmarine systems, however, were appreciably tougher to decode than those from Enigma machines employed by other branches of the Nazi military. As one result, Hitler's U-boats took a heavy toll on merchant shipping, threatening Great Britain's high-seas lifeline during the early years of the war. Newsday editor Kahn (Kahn on Codes, 1983) offers a wide-ranging appreciation of how the Royal Navy furnished the Oxbridge dons and other boffins posted to England's Bletchley Park the material they needed to decipher submarine signals. In brief, the high command authorized a series of attacks on German weather vessels gathering climatic data offshore Iceland. These forays, plus the fortuitous capture of several U-boats, paid off in up-to-the-minute rundowns on code-wheel settings, which allowed cryptanalysts to read tactical communiques almost as quickly as sub captains. Consequently, the Admiralty was able to route convoys away from wolf packs, saving untold numbers of vessels and keeping desperately needed supplies moving from North America to the island nation. Among other fresh perspectives, Kahn provides detailed, action-packed accounts (drawn from interviews with surviving eyewitnesses on both sides) of the bold seizures that yielded vital documents. Covered as well are the contributions of Polish mathematicians to unriddling Enigma transmissions, code-breaking successes by the Axis, German countermeasures, and the intricacies of convoy management. The author is at pains to stress that Ultra intelligence, while important for helping to save blood and treasure, was not decisive in the battle of the Atlantic. As the conflict intensified, he concludes, Anglo-American forces gained an unbeatable edge in technology and firepower; their shipyards, moreover, produced replacement bottoms at a pace faster than U-boats could sink operational fleets. A first-rate briefing on the use of brawn as well as brains to alleviate the U-boat threat. (Kirkus Reviews)


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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Average Customer Review
4.2 out of 5 stars (5 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
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18 of 18 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars A history book that reads like a thriller, 20 Jun 2001
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.

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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars great book, real heavyweight read, 5 Nov 1999
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.
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars Great read, though somewhat lacking in detail., 18 May 2007
By Odd Erling Eriksen (Aalesund, Norway) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   
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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Most Recent Customer Reviews

4.0 out of 5 stars very detailed
In reading this book one easily can extrapolate the methods of deciphering te Enigma to the methods used today by the hackers in order to break security systems. Read more
Published on 6 Nov 2000

5.0 out of 5 stars Winning the cryptography war.
This book is one of the best at describing the advancements in cryptography both preceeding and during the second world war. Read more
Published on 23 Mar 2000 by graemetc

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