Seizing the Enigma: The Race to Break the German U-Boat Codes, 1939-1943

In contrast to some English-language books on this subject, Kahn gives credit squarely where it is due. He emphasizes the fact that the Poles cracked the German Enigma code, and that "Poland did what no other country had done--and what the Germans believed impossible." (p. 67). Kahn recognizes the fact that Polish mathematician Marian Rejewski was the "solver of ENIGMA." (p. 323). He even calls Rejewski one of the "greatest cryptanalysts of all time". (p. 66). Kahn emphasizes the codes used by the German Navy, but also touches on other aspects of WWII. He notes the Katyn massacre, wherein the Soviets murdered tens of thousands of disarmed Polish officers and intellectuals. He points to the irony of the Germans exploiting this tragedy for propaganda purposes while at the same time having killed many more Poles and Jews. Kahn believes that the ULTRA was the greatest WWII secret after the atom bomb. However, he rejects the premise that the cracking of the "invincible" German codes by the Allies enabled them to win the war. Instead, he supposes that the Allied victory in the European theater would have been delayed by about a year, and with much greater casualties, had the Allies not broken the German ciphers.

Kahn hits it out of the park again with this look at the race to break the German Enigma cypher during WWII. The strategy and success of the Third Reich -- particularly the Kriegsmarine -- rested on the infallability of the code. While Hitler's tank-based blitzkrieg gets the most credit for his effective rampaging across the European continent, Doenitz's u-boats played an equally important role in the initial victories of the fatherland. How was it possible that so many u-boats could sink millions of tons of allied shipping every month, in the most coordinated fashion, with the allies virtually helpless to stop it? The answer: Doenitz, master strategist, centrally controlled all u-boats via radio communications. For this to work, those communications needed to be encrypted in an unbreakable manner. The admiral had such a device in the Enigma machine -- until, that is, the best Polish, British, and American minds began to make progress against it.... In the same tradition as his masterpiece, The Codebreakers, Kahn presents audiences with as much technical detail as possible without deterring any one of them. Readers cannot escape the nail-biting prose that educates us despite ourselves.

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.

I have read a lot in the past about the Enigma machines, the Battle of the Atlantic, and some of the operations in this book (e.g. the Lofotens raid). Even so, I found many new details which I'd never seen before. This is also an excellent book for those who know nothing of the cryptography battles of WW2. Just writing this has made me want to read it again!

David Kahn's Seizing the Enigma is a detailed effort to tell the story of how the German naval code was broken. Though that intelligence breakthrough of WWII is widely known, little is known of how complicated the effort was. It required the effort of brilliant mathematicians working the theoretical side and the bravado of British naval and intelligence officers who literally risked their lives to obtain the information and equipment needed to crack the code. Kahn gives a very detailed story and it is at times a bit thick and difficult to follow. This is only because the theory behind the enigma was so complex and a complete history of the saga requires at least some examination of the intriguing, yet, sometimes confusing mathematical concepts. In all, a good read. John Kidd