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Enigma: The Battle for the Code

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The Ultra secret was kept for a long time after WWII. Recently declassified, it was the Allied code name for the Enigma ciphering system used by the Germans to coordinate U-boat attacks, to gather weather reports and intellegence, etc. This book is interesting in that the author gives ample space to the sailors and intellegence officers that gathered hard data, often from sinking U-boats, instead of focussing exclusively on the technical work performed at Bletchley Park. The result is an action-packed account that speeds through the material, while giving the reader a glimpse at the personalities and actions of the people responsible for solving the Enigma.

The book is arranged roughly chronologically, but Sebag-Montefiore divides his chapters into subject areas that span months at a time. This makes for a better flow. Therefore, the book backtracks from time-to-time, but it is never confusing, due to the skill of the author (and his editor). Oft-neglected episodes are included, much to the benefit of the book - because the U.S. and Britain were the two largest Allied powers, many books overlook contributions by other nations. Not so with this book - the Polish codebreakers that originally duplicated the Enigma and broke the peacetime ciphers are given more space than the celebrated Alan Turing. Likewise, the Canadian contribution to convoy duty (and therefore U-boat hunting and intellegence gathering from sinking U-boats) is given its rightful share of space.

The author wisely keeps the pace moving with events and doesn't allow the narrative to bog down in technical descriptions of the deciphering procedures. These procedures are gathered as appendices at the end of the book. The appendices are not great - they are descriptive without going into the mathematical detail, and therefore come across as "hand-waving." Luckily this difficulty does not detract from the main part of the book, so is not a fatal flaw, but those looking for a technical explanation should look elsewhere.

It's remarkable that 60 years on new information continues to surface about the breaking of the Enigma code. Having followed much of the "new material" released over the last 20 years in books and films it is great to see other key players in the Enigma drama getting due credit.

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.

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.)

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.

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.

Whereas many other books concerned with Enigma have concentrated on the work of the cryptanalysts of Bletchley Park this deals with those other people crucial to the effort. The seamen of the Royal Navy, secret agents, Polish cryptanalysts and ironically the Germans.

If you are after the technical details of how Enigma worked and how it was cracked then don't get this book. But if you are interested in reading a gripping account of the events surrounding the Battle for the Code and the consequences thereof then this is a must.

Sebag-Montefiore has compiled outstanding source and reference materials to give the human story behind the code breaking efforts by the British. The bravery of the men of the Royal Navy who risked life and limb to steal codebooks and Enigma machines from German warships and submarines. Also covered are the details of the steps that the Germans took to "secure" their code that often backfired making it easier to break and the incompetance of some German radio operators that also compromised security.

I enjoyed this "chatty" (typically British, public school style) account of how Enigma was broken and constantly re-broken as the Nazi's upgraded their systems over the course of the conflict. Seabag-Montefiore has done his homework providing a well researched account of Bletchleys Park's major contributions at many decisive turning points in WWII. He also shone some light on many of the "front line" Polish and French agents and controllers who provided vital intelligence about the key inner-workings of the actual Enigma "typewriting" machines at the beginning of the war. Following their exploits through to their ends provided a human face to those heroic individuals surviving after occupation. Reasonably footnoted and sprinkled with a number of first-person accounts gained though increasingly rare interviews. Extensive appendices provide a good primer on the main cryptographic problems encountered and the various work-arounds the code-breakers discovered. All in all a well rounded history of the contributions made by British intelligence and others to the defeat of Hitlers mad ambitions.

There are two themes to this book, the methods used to break the German enigma machine cipher and the capture of code books that aided in this process. As such, the book contains both a lot of technical information on machine ciphering/deciphering and exciting chapters dealing with the capturing of German submarines and some surface ships; both are critical aspects of the story of how the German enigma messages were deciphered. The book focuses almost exclusively on the naval machine, which was both more technically complex and utilized more complex encoding procedures than that of the German Army and Air force machines. The breaking of the naval code was made easier by the ability to capture code books from submarines and small surface ships (weather ships, trawlers, etc.). This, as is discussed in the book, was a two edged sword, as the whole enigma deciphering program might be placed in jeopardy if the Germans learned of these captures. Fortunately, the Germans believed that even such captures would be of only modest value because of the complexity of the machines and the procedures that were employed. At most, it was believed that code books would be of only short-term value, since the machine settings and tables were frequently changed making a stolen code book soon obsolete.

The Germans did not realize that Polish and then British mathematicians had uncovered weaknesses in the enigma system, and that these weaknesses allowed the ciphers to be broken even without code books (although at times these code books were invaluable). This book explains how this was done, both in the body of the text and at greater length in a series of appendices. (This aspect of the book is very complex and technical, which some readers might find a bit tedious and off-putting.) The book also tells the exciting stories of very brave British sailors (and some Americans) going down into sinking submarines to retrieve code books and enigma machines, all the while aware that scuttling charges might go off killing them outright or trapping them in a very much more rapidly sinking submarine (from which they would not be able to escape); indeed some did not escape. Some of the book also focuses on spies and counter spies and how a German sold the secret of the enigma machine to the French, how this aided the Polish code breakers before the start of the war, the subsequent German attempts (mostly successful) to capture the French and Polish code breakers, and finally why they did not learn enough from these captures to stop using the enigma machines.

As noted, this is largely the story of British code breakers, working on the German naval ciphers. There is some reference to work with the Americans and work on other German ciphers. I recommend Budiansky's Battle of Wits for information on the American collaboration with the British, efforts of the British and Americans to break the German Army and Air force enigma machines and the American work on Japanese codes and ciphers.

I recommend this book to those interested in the history of WWII and to those interested in codes and ciphers. Those who just want an exciting story of spies and adventure on the high seas may find the more than half of the book that is very technically oriented to detract from what they are seeking and they therefore might be disappointed. Likewise, those only looking for technical information may find the adventure parts of the book distracting.

"Enigma" by Hugh Sebag-Montefiore is an up-to-date look at the history of the cracking of the code, from the initial efforts in Poland through the final changes the German's made in May of 1945. The most impressive thing about this book is how comprehensive it is. The author covers all of the aspects of the code-breaking effort. Including some of the technical details involved in breaking the code, the personalities of those involved, the stories of their efforts to capture code books and equipment, and the effects that their efforts had on the war. The book is arranged in chronological order, with appendixes provided to give more of the detail of the technical aspects. The epilogue includes a wrap-up of what happened to the major participants after the war. This is a very worthwhile read for anyone interested in World War II and Enigma.

I have a great interest in the Battle of the Atlantic part of World War Two. My expectation was that this book would shed important light on how that part of the war was fought and I was not disappointed. The book is very richly researched with a full and easy to follow footnote section at the back. For those who are interested in following the complexities on how the Enigma machines worked there are fascinating chapters at the end of the book where one can read at length and in depth.

Several things struck me about this book. One was how irregular, sporadic and fragmented were the efforts of the math whizzes at Bletchley Park. This was not their fault but was a product both of how complex the puzzle was to unwrap (before the age of computers)and how difficult each new twist and turn of changes to the wheels in the machine were to unravel. On top of this there were several types of Enigma languages to consider. One for the Army and a more complex one for the German Navy. There were sub codes that the weather stations would use and others that the Officers of certain rank would use. Another fact that was of interest was the often odd way that the code breakers went about recruiting brilliant and young people into a program that was super secret. We also learn that a few very capable women were involved.....what is clear is that because of the extreme nature of the needs (to break the codes as fast as possible) the "old boys" club attitudes towards excluding women or men with many years of experience was thrown out in favor of accepting anyone who could help and was not a security risk.

That last point has a reference to the very tragic story of the best of the brightest, Alan Turing. He WAS considered a security risk and not because he was very eccentric. He was thought of as a danger because he was a somewhat open homosexual. I know, to our minds in the 21'st century it sounds absurd, but his fate after the war was extraordinarily cruel and unjust. I won't ruin the story because it should be read; but I will say that the injustice done to him was an ugly throwback to the Victorian Era sexual ethos that destroyed the likes of Oscar Wilde.

A big surprise for me was learning that the code breakers had to make the same type of terrible decision to withhold releasing code intercepts to their own Navy out of a fear of another successful sorti or diversion for the Navy. The fear was that too many successes back to back would tip the German High Command off to the fact that their codes had been breached. This, it was feared, would motivate the Germans to complicate the codes even more, thus putting the Brits right back into the dark again. What this meant in the real world is that on certain occassions, the British Navy either was attacked and some of its sailors lost or else in a mirror way, some U-boats or other German ships were allowed to get away, all again to protect that secret. This is a parallel conundrum that Churchill had to face when deciding whether he should evacuate Coventry. He knew that the Luftwaffe was coming and would decimate the city. Should he evacuate the citizens and thus alert the Germans that they had prior knowledge? He chose to not evacutate them and many died as a result. A terrible choice to make and the Bletchley Park people, working with Churchill, made similar choices. This was really chilling to read.

There are other stories here in the book that talk about how the Polish teams were the first to crack early variations of Enigma even before the expected war broke out. We learn of spies and the price they paid for their craft. We learn of how very dangerous it was for the Allied sailors when they attempted to climb down into a U-boat that had been captured. The book is full of so many stories that you do not loose your interest from beginning to the end. A really great example of thorough, insightful and penetrating research. I loved it.