Seizing the Enigma: The Race to Break the German U-Boat Codes, 1933-1945 - Softcover

Kahn, David

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1526711451 ISBN 13: 9781526711458

Publisher: Frontline Books, 2017

Synopsis

For almost four desperate years, from 1939 to the middle of 1943, the British and, in time, American navies fought a savage, losing battle against German U-boat wolf-packs. The Allies might never have turned the tide without an intelligence coup. The race to break the German U-boat codes is one of the greatest untold stories of the Second World War. Kahn expertly brings this tale to life in this updated edition of his classic book.

Soon after war broke out, Hitler’s U-boats began to sever Allied lifelines. In the grey wasteland of the North Atlantic, submarines prowled; at night, the sky lit up with the flames of torpedoed and sinking merchant ships and tankers.

To meet the growing crisis, ingenious amateurs joined the nucleus of dedicated professionals at Bletchley Park. As the Battle of the Atlantic raged, they raced to unlock the continually changing German naval codes. Their mission: to read the U-boat messages of Hitler’s cipher device, the Enigma.

Critical to their success was a series of raids at sea. U-110, captured intact in the mid-Atlantic, yielded an example of the Enigma machine itself – as well as a trove of secret documents. The weather ship Lauenburg, seized near the Arctic ice pack, provided code-settings for an entire month. In the Mediterranean, two sailors rescued a German weather cipher than enabled the team at Bletchley to solve the Enigma after a yearlong blackout.

About this title

About the Author:

DAVID KAHN holds a PhD in history from Oxford University and is the author of the Codebreakers and Hitler’s Spies. He has written many articles on codes and intelligence, from the Historical Journal to the New York Times. A former editor of Newsday, he lives in New York and is one of the world’s leading historians of cryptography.

Review:

"[Kahn's] 1997 history of cryptology The Codebreakers is regarded as the seminal work on the subject. One senses that in the future Seizing the Enigma will be regarded in the same vein. Kahn tells a long and technically demanding story with all the skills of a professional journalist. He deftly mixes intricate accounts of the workings of the Enigma machines themselves and their accompanying codes with useful pen portraits of the principal characters involved...an absorbing and thoroughly well documented account." -- Naval Books of the Year column in Warship, 2013

"The book remains a highly recommended account with a wealth of materials." -- Naval History Book Reviews, Naval Historical Foundation

About this edition

• Publisher: Frontline Books
• Publication date: 2017
• ISBN 10: 1526711451
• ISBN 13: 9781526711458
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 400