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Title: Seizing the Enigma: The Race to Break the German U-Boats Codes, 1939-1943 by David Kahn ISBN: 0-395-42739-8 Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Pub. Date: 01 March, 1991 Format: Hardcover Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $24.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.6 (5 reviews)
Rating: 4
Summary: A history book that reads like a thriller
Comment: The year is early 1941, and the Battle of Britain is intensifying. The Kriegsmarine submarines, organized in groups - wolf packs - 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 documentary photographs.
Rating: 4
Summary: A gripping account of radio intelligence battle in world war
Comment: Information contained in the book remained classified for a long time. We came to know that Allies read German Enigma ciphers with the publication of F.W.Winterbotham's book Ultra Secret.This made it indispensible for the historians to re-interpret the History of world war Two , particularly Battle of Atlantic.Undoubtedly Ultra was the biggest secret of World War Two. Some portions of the book is very technical. I feel the reader not having scientific , mathematical background may have to peruse it couple of times before he could hope to understand complexties of the German enigma machine cipher narrated in the book.Be that may ,benefitting from the experience of World war One the Kriegsmarine had taken extraordinary precautions to make its crypto systems foolproof.Communications formed the core of Admiral Doenitz's U-boat wolf-pack warfare.an U-boat after spotting a convoy shadowed its quarry calling other U-boats to the scene.Movements of several U-boats towards the scene were controlledby U-boat HQs at Lorient at the Biscay coast.Attack commenced only when the converging U-boats had formed a pack.This strategy of co-ordinated attack can succeed only if Kriegsmarine had access to secure communications.The German naval Enigma provided such communication.Unlike Germany's other military ciphers[Army, Airforce]the naval version defied cryptanalysis for a long time.why? Unlike the standard Army Enigma[which had a choice of 3 scramblers out of possible 5]the naval Enigma had 4 scramblers out of possible 8.This increased the number of scrambler arrangements 6 times,correspondingly increasing the number of scrambler substitutions for a cryptanalyst to check.The other difference concerned the reflector responsible for returning the signal through scramblers.Standard Enigma reflector was fixed in one particular orientation but naval enigma reflector can be fixed at any one of the particular orientations.This increased the number of possible keys by a factor of 26.In short extra scramblers,variable reflector new systems of exchanging message keys,non-stereotypical messages combined to make German naval communications impenetrable.Naval Enigma had pseudonyms Hydra,Triton.Where ever intellectual endeavour fails to obtain keys other measures had to be resorted to:theft,espionage.Combination of technical wizardry shrewd guess work,lucky breaks[pinching navalEnigma scramblers, cipher materials from seized German trawlers,weatherships,U-boats]the British were able to make inroads into the U-boat communications.Their labour further simplified by some careless mistakes made by German Enigma operators.The book is replete with technical jargons such as Hernivel tip,Crib.All of them represented different meathods conceived by Britishto narrow down the number of possibilities to be tested for determining the correct scrambler settings.Reader will find in this book personal profiles of Britain's leading codebreakers.Polish contribution in the struggle to break Enigma has also not been ignored by the author.Cracking U-boat codes helped mitigate disastrous shipping losses as the Allied navies were able to determine the patrol lines formed by U-boats.Bylate 1943 more and more convoys were steered away from the waiting U-boat packs.Besides cutting shipping losses Enigma decrypts also served as a force multiplier.Ultra guided escort carriers and hunter-killer groups towards u-boats instead of having to search for them over a large area.It sounds ironical,Kahn after writing a fine book,in the final count,has belittled the the role of Ultra in the Battle of Atlantic.Kahn says Ultra or not the Allies were bound to win.However I disagree with author's optimism in this regard.If the German naval Enigma had not been cracked the number of U-boats would have multiplied.By this time new Electro boats would have come into action.Type xx1 class was a full-fledged submarine,had snorchels coated with radar absorbing material,torpedoes that zig-zigged ,guided to the targets helped by soundplots without exposing their periscopes.Then boats stealthily moved away drom the scene of action running on silent motors making it difficult for hydrophones to detect.The outcome of this form of struggle hard to predict.Besides a new naval Enigma was about to enter service when war came to close.Allies obtained technical details of new German submarine after decrypting messages sent to Tokyo by the japanese navasl attache in Berlin.Finally another statement I find difficult to agree with the author is what he calls as functional attributes of intelligence:A country defending its freedom is only in need of good intelligence.I wish to modify it by saying that a country embarking on a warwith its neighbouris also in need of good intelligence.Former must know the strengh and weakness of opponent's armed forces,psychological profile of latter's militaryleadership,terrain,weapons and doctrine guiding its employment,number of reserves at its disposal.For instance Hitler and his Generals seriously underestimated RedArmy ,especially the number of divisions it could bring from the hinterland.RedArmy had immense reserves totalling 200-300 divisions.this frustrated,though at a great cost, the German drive to capture Moscow.Let us recall what the great Chinese military thinker SunTzu said centuries ago"Know your enemy and know yourself and you can fight hundred battles without defeat".
Rating: 5
Summary: Excellent History of the Enigma and how it was Broken
Comment: This book deals with the German code machine the Enigma; How it was developed, how it was used and finally how its code was broken. This book is very well researched and was very interesting to read with no slow spots.
The most interesting point I got out of this book was the Enigma machine was very well designed and if properly used its code was unbreakable. The trouble was that lazy German code operators often broke the security rules regarding the enigma (the most blantant of these was sending the same message in an inferior code(the british easily broke this) and the same message enciphered in Enigmna. With the one message easily deciphered the British were able to break the Enigma one. German code operators made a number of other mistakes due (cutting corners) regarding the keys which made these codes possible to break.
THe author also gave a great deal of credit to the Polish code breakers (Rejewski, etc) as being the first to crack the Enigma. Most other histories/documentaries neglect this important aspect which made it possible for the British get Bletchley Park up and running. THe Poles gave the British & French a great deal of their research info regarding Enigma after Poland was overun.
The narratives of the British boarding German weather ships and U-boats were quite exciting to read with the author writing in a manner that made you feel you were with the boarding party.
Good book through and through, excellent read!
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Title: Hitler's Spies: German Military Intelligence in World War II by David Kahn ISBN: 0306809494 Publisher: Da Capo Press Pub. Date: June, 2000 List Price(USD): $23.00 |
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Title: The Codebreakers : The Comprehensive History of Secret Communication from Ancient Times to the Internet by David Kahn ISBN: 0684831309 Publisher: Scribner Pub. Date: 05 December, 1996 List Price(USD): $70.00 |
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Title: Enigma: The Battle for the Code by Hugh Sebag-Montefiore, Hugh Sebag-Montefiore ISBN: 0471407380 Publisher: Wiley Pub. Date: 05 January, 2001 List Price(USD): $30.00 |
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Title: The Secret in Building 26 : The Untold Story of America's Ultra War Against the U-boat Enigma Codes by JIM DEBROSSE, COLIN BURKE ISBN: 0375508074 Publisher: Random House Pub. Date: 20 April, 2004 |
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Title: The Making of the Atomic Bomb by Richard Rhodes ISBN: 0684813785 Publisher: Simon & Schuster Pub. Date: 01 August, 1995 List Price(USD): $20.00 |
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