Seizing The Enigma: The Race To Break The German U-boat Codes, 1939-1943 by David Kahn

Seizing The Enigma: The Race To Break The German U-boat Codes, 1939-1943 Reviews

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  Terence M - [back to abnormal :]

  1-Star - "I Did Not Like It"
  Seizing the Enigma - by David Kahn
  Audiobook - 13:32 Hours - Narrated by: Bernard Mayes
  Listened to: 03:22 Hours - Balance 10:10 Hours
  It's no use! I cannot tolerate this any longer. The audio was produced in 1990 for cassettes.
  The narrator's voice is pleasant, but his preferred reading style is not and I was distracted by continuous background noises of the microphone and/or his table being bumped!
  DNF - Returned to Audible today.
  
  From Reading Activity — May 30, 2021 12:15AM
  Terence M is 11% done
  Seizing the Enigma - by David Kahn
  Audiobook - 13:32 Hours - Narrated by: Bernard Mayes
  Listened to: 01:24 Hours - Balance 12:08 Hours
  Much and all as I love books about Enigma, the first hour and half have been replete with overwhelming minutiae ... it seems that every single crew member of the Royal Navy and the German Navy has been described in excruciating detail ... it's too early for despair, but ...
  
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  Des

  This book is enjoyable and provides engaging insights into breaking the German U-boat codes.
  Early chapters focus on the Enigma machine and how it was developed for its purpose, the code breakers of the interwar period and the scenarios of such endeavours.
  The author goes to considerable length to put such events in a historical context, making it more readable and offering up his excellent analysis.
  The conclusion reached is that the allies gained considerably from the early efforts of code-breaking, particularly those of the Polish military and intelligence about Enigma.
  The narrative contains lots of detailed information about code breaking and technical explanations of how the German military implemented its code systems.
  I found the discussion extremely interesting but I could not claim to fully understand the material presented.
  The text is good historical storytelling relating to the wartime efforts to break the German naval codes and the efforts that were put into capturing Enigma’s intelligence sources.
  The narrative was fascinating without being a triumphal war story. The conclusion was rather fascinating and well presented.
  This is good war history that is very well written and easy to read.
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  Richard Coleman

  The most comprehensive treatment of the subject I've seen. It focuses on the Battle of the Atlantic, which is undeniably the most important impact of this intelligence coup, but is otherwise fairly comprehensive. It starts with the code breaking of WWI, and the precedent of the code yield from wreck of the Magdeberg, and runs through the end of WWII, including vital contributions of Polish code breakers and French Intelligence, as well as American contributions and cooperation. It gives much clearer descriptions of a number of things, including a step-by-step setup of the machine, the continuous improvements by Germany and their effect on the allies. It describes additional levels of encryption used, and means taken to shorten messages (for speed, and to lessen chances of decryption) as well of subdivision of nets to reduce chances of decryption. It describes German enquiries into possible compromise and most importantly, successful seizures of keys, map grids and code wheels at sea. I came away with a vastly better understanding of the whole affair. There may be books as good, but I doubt that there are any better.
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  Lady Wesley

  For reasons that I do not understand, I have always been fascinated by Bletchley Park and the race to break Enigma, the Nazi naval code. This book is an excellent discussion of the Battle of the Atlantic and the four-year project to crack the supposedly unbreakable Enigma.
  
  There is a lot of detail that I could not follow, namely the explanations of how the British (building on stunning initial work done by Polish codebreakers before the war began) worked step by step to break the code and by the way, invent one of the first modern computers. This was done by men and women who were simply geniuses, especially compared to your humble reviewer. Unsurprisingly, the British were aided in their work by the Nazi's hubris. The Nazis were so convinced that Enigma could not be broken that they allowed lapses in security to go uncorrected. Even after the Royal Navy captured an Enigma machine, the Nazis would not believe it. It simply was not possible, in their mindset. (C.f., Titanic, sinking of)
  
  My befuddlement with the nuts and bolts of code-breaking did not detract from my enjoyment of the story. The narrator did though. Once I figured out to raise the speed to 1.1x, it got better.
  
  I am no expert on World War II, but there are some aspects of it that I do find interesting, and this book was a wonderful introduction to one of the most stunning code-breaking efforts in history.
  
  Seizing the Enigma is free via the Audible Plus catalog.
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  David

  During World War II the Battle of the Atlantic was the longest and most critical to the outcome of the war. In the earlier years of the war the German U-Boats were stalking and sinking cargo ships trying to resupply England faster than the allies were able to build them. Pinpointing U-Boat locations was difficult, at best. They were in communication with the German high command to report ship sightings and locations. But these communications were encrypted using a very complex machine with codes that were changed often. Seizing The Enigma: The Race To Break The German U-boat Codes, 1939-1943 by David Kahn describes this machine in a fair amount of detail. As an engineer I found this description interesting but certainly would not be constructing my own machine any time soon. This was helpful in appreciating the efforts of the code breakers to figure out the key to Enigma. Help came whenever a U-Boat or enemy ship equipped with Enigma were captured, sometimes including the master code books before the crew could destroy them. This was a fascinating read about the monumental efforts to solve the codes and use them to locate U-Boats on patrol. This was the major turning point that allowed the allies to go from being hunted to being the hunters once they could locate and neutralize the German submarines and their crews faster than they could be replaced. The technical descriptions of how the codes were created by the Enigma were probably not that helpful to most readers but the main story of success is worth it.
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  Dennis Mews

  Bletchley Park and all that
  
  The book went into considerable technicalities which I skimmed a little bit. The overall momentum of the book was compelling, however, and I found it difficult to put down.
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  Denise

  The codebreaking exploits of the brilliant minds assembled at Bletchley Park in WWII are a fascinating topic that I'm always interested in reading about. Newer, more engaging books on the subject have been published since this one came out in 1991, but this was nevertheless a quite interesting read - though the narrator of the audio version certainly seemed to be trying his best to put me to sleep regardless...
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  Jarrod

  This is the intelligence portion of how the battle of the Atlantic was won and how Bletchly Park rode their knowledge to break the German codes. There is great detail here especially with the math and routines of logic used to break the codes and put them to use. Really loved the thought process detail and learning more about how Turing's brilliance won the fight in intelligence.
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  Tim

  worth it. Covers raiding German ships and stealing keys and enigma machine parts as well as the genious breakthroughs in codebreaking tedious codebreaking back at Bletchley Park (B.P.).
  
  This delivers many interesting computer security tidbits. For example, the codebreakers at B.P. found that some messages were sent out both under the enigma cipher and under a more easily breakable maritime cipher. The plaintext that resulted from the maritime cipher helped them derive the keys for the enigma. At times, they wanted to trigger the transmission of these doubled up messages (called kisses at B.P.) so they would have the British navy do things like lay mines that they knew would trigger the doubled transmissions.
  
  Will remind everyone of Cryptonomicon.
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  Patrick Belair

  This was a very interesting book. It has alot of detail to digest.Turns out this chapter on the war was so important that most people don't realize.Could we have won with out cracking the enigma, it surely would have been alot more difficult.All history and ww2 buffs should check out this book, you won't be disappointed.
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  Luke Johnson

  Now you'd think book about stealing German Enigma machines, cracking the Nazi's code, defeating the Third Reich would be kind of exciting right? And if we were talking about movies like U-571 or The Imitation Game I'd probably agree with you. This book.... not so much. Yes, it is a very thorough and well researched book but I had to struggle to get through it there was so many information that I didn't find relevant that it was pretty tough. Part of the reason for that is there's no "main character" if you will. Sure there's people in it but it's maybe a spy for a chapter, then it moves on to a British Sea Lord or somebody, then it's Alan Turing. But in each of these cases about the only description we get about the people themselves is their hair color. I kinda felt bad for Turing since the only description of him we really get is a list of his quirks and a few foibles. The author does have the tact to leave out his homosexuality but hardly anything is said about his strengths. As you may have assumed I am an American and this book is very British and thus the author and I have differing views on the war. The Americans don't show up until chapter 19 if I recall correctly and aren't given much acknowledgement until the conclusion where the author basically says how important reading the Enigma messages were to winning the war, and yet the war would no doubt be won anyway because America was building more ships than the German's could destroy. I would disagree. I would say it was the American fighting spirit that fought the Nazi's out of Africa and through Europe (while at the same time island hopping through the Pacific fighting the Japanese) that won the war. The author seems to forget about Dunkirk and how close England came to being invaded. According to the author another main factor in Germany's defeat was because America and England believed in the rule of law, and everyone in Hitler's army was just trying to get in his good graces.
  
  Other parts I didn't enjoy about the book was how the author talked about the British had boats named for all the lands and peoples they controlled under their Empire. Yes this is true historically but what a dick move on the part Brits. Yes it would be several generations before Apartheid but this book was published in 1991 I believe, which is after and the author isn't going to say anything about it? This was a whole fleet of ships named for the peoples they were oppressing around the world. I also found it downright sexist the way the author quotes a man who worked with the W.A.V.E.S. and is quoted as saying he worked with a lot of pretty girls and a lot of fancy machines. Let us not forget W.A.V.E.S. is an acronym for Women "Allowed" for Volunteered Emergency Service. The author seems to have very little concept that women wanted to do their part and were often lonely during the war because the men in their lives were away fighting.
  
  So even despite all the interesting facts and pages of information it's that kind of egotism and arrogance that made this book so hard for me.
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  Jesse

  A fascinating account of the famous German Enigma code machine, as used by the Third Reich before and during the Second World War. Kahn relates the history of the machine as well as techniques and trends in cryptology--codes and codebreaking--starting around the turn of the 20th century. The story follows a several groups of cryptologists and mathematicians who were up against the most advanced cipher creator in history up to that point.
  
  In the past, secret codes had been constructed using more or less simple word and letter replacement techniques. An elementary example of a coding technique would be to assign each letter in the alphabet to some other letter (A= R, B = M, C = E, and so on). A message could then be enciphered using this alternate alphabet, called a cipher key, and deciphered using the same key by the message recipient. This method had many flaws, however, and was easily cracked using rudimentary statistical and linguistic techniques. Even more advanced ways of coding messages still fell back on this basic premise. The Enigma machine, however, used a combination of mechanical and electrical elements to create ciphers that were, ostensibly, unbreakable. These elements have been calculated to provide a military-grade Enigma machine, as used on German U-boats in WW2, with about 156 quintillion possible code cipher combinations. That is what Polish and British (and to a lesser extent American) cryptologists were up against as they sought to break German codes during the war. The story of how they both failed and succeeded, and the accompanying tales including battles, high-stakes raids, military and political hubris, and determination makes for a rewarding read.
  
  The book is extremely detailed and well-researched. The mathematical parts, and the technical descriptions of the working of the machine, is difficult for a layperson like me to follow, but still highly interesting. One of the highlights of my reading so far this year.
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  Blake Brashear

  A look into the world of codes and code breaking. Mostly focused on the submarine warfare of the Atlantic and the allies efforts to break the enigma. A couple of times the enigma as actually captured, but without additional key paperwork. they were essentially useless, as the allies had already replicated the circuitry of the enigma. There was a significant amount of technical detail in this book. Since I listened to the audiobook, this title may be better suited in written format if it has technical drawings or diagrams to better understand the inner workings of the enigma and various other machines involved in the codebreaking. Overall an interesting view into the British efforts to break the codes of the German war machine. I found this a good compliment to
  Code Girls: The Untold Story of the American Women Code Breakers Who Helped Win World War II
  Code Girls: The Untold Story of the American Women Code Breakers Who Helped Win World War II if one is interesting in the cryptology efforts during WWII. That book mentioned the enigma, but was mostly focused on the US' efforts to crack the Japanese code and the battle of the Pacific. Very much similar in the allies efforts. If you've read one, the other is also worth reading.
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  Stuart

  Great book that combines many of my interests. WWII, Bletchley Park, cryptography and submarine warfare.
  
  The are many books on the cracking of the German enigma code but we forget that the code could only be broken by brute force which was automated and assisted by intelligence that had been gathered from captured German ships and submarines. This book details how German code books and rotor setting books were captured.
  
  If you are only interested in cryptography there are lots of lessons to be learnt from this book especially of the danger of reusing keys and mistakes where messages transmitted multiple times by different methods and repetitive messages who’s content could be guessed.
  
  If you are interested of the work of Bletchley Park code breakers there is a lot of interesting details about the organisation of the work and the personalities who worked there.
  
  An interesting detail often overlooked was that the British naval codes were being routinely read by the Germans and often many of the same mistakes that were made on the German side which lead the codes to be broken were repeated by the British.
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  Bruce Cline

  Seizing the Enigma, The Race to Break the German U-Boat Codes, 1939-1943, by David Kahn (2012, 11.5 hrs audiobook). Containing more detail about Enigma (the German ingenious cryptography machine) than I’ve previously read, I gained a much better understanding of the multi-year, multi-national effort to crack German naval codes. The effort was monumental and stunning in complexity. I’d always thought the capture of an enigma machine from a U-Boat in 1941 was critical to this effort, but that does not seem to be the case. The Polish army had an enigma machine in the late 1930s, and eventually shared it. While hardware was important, the individual and collective brainpower of cryptologists when added to captured machines and code books made the difference. And, the fact that Germany believed their system was impregnable, despite suspicion and some evidence to the contrary, doomed them. Interestingly, the author refuted others’ claims that breaking the U-Boat codes was the most critical element of winning the war of the Atlantic. He does agree that it probably saved lives and costly time, but believes the Allies would have prevailed regardless. Loved the book.
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  Wanda

  I really enjoyed this. I am constantly surprised about things I didn’t know. You don’t hear much about the battle of the Atlantic, but apparently that was most important to win if we were to win the war. The Germans had a stranglehold on shipping and supplies, so nothing was getting through.
  
  I had no idea they were so close to North America that some ships were even destroyed in the St. Lawrence River. What a story! What bravery and derring do. We could all be speaking German now if not for these brave, intelligent, and spunky men and women who worked hard to break the codes, had hunches, paid attention, attacked subs and got the equipment and secret keys and codes at peril to their lives.
  
  WWII buffs...you should definitely read
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  Lynn

  I wanted to like this but the many explanations of exactly how the Enigma variations worked are extremely technical and dense. The story is fascinating but the use of so much technical data and detail made it hard to concentrate on the events.
  There are some very good parts of the book and Mr. Kahn's research and grasp of the subject are incomparable. (He is considered a - if not the - leading cryptography historian.) His descriptions of the major players, their individual personalities and the effects of those personalities on decisions were excellent.
  If you have a somewhat mathematical mind and are able to visualize how the inner workings of machines work, you might fare far better than I.
  (Disclaimer: David Kahn is my second cousin.)
  
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  Lance

  This is an extremely good historical account of how the enigma machine came to be and how the code was broken over the time it was used. I was empressed on the way the writer captured the factual and historical information in such a way as to capture my attention. He even had me on 'the edge of my seat' in one of the later chapters, at least as much as a historical book could. Kahn also evenly brings in the contributions that many women had in helping break the codes, not just as one or two mentions, but a continuous showing of individuals, which is impressive during this era of history. Overall, a great read for those into cryptanalysis, WWII or submarine warefare.
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  Tom

  Engrossing story of the challenges and approaches to breaking the Enigma cryptography. A good deal of detail in the description (and some that could have been served by better maps and drawings). An interesting observation (among many others) was that Enigma, itself, provided a secure encryption. But when mixed with humans and with bad habits, it would fail. Habits like sending a message encrypted via Enigma and also through a weaker system; reusing keys; not accepting that printed key lists were captured.
  
  I'll be looking for a copy of David Kahn's earlier book "The Codebreakers."
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  Grant

  The master of cryptographic history offers a thorough, but not overwhelming, study of what has become military history's best-known secret. Kahn provides a balanced overview, detailing the efforts of the cryptanalysts but focusing more on the efforts to seize code and cipher devices and materials, sometimes at great risk and loss. Kahn's conclusions regarding the Allied successes and German failures are measured and thoughtful. The text is well-written and comprehensible, even in the technical sections. Highly recommended.
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  Ellen

  It's a fascinating story, and well told. The lack of a star is my fault, I think, because I did have to concentrate hard to get the most from the story and follow what was happening. I think what really interests me about this historical moment is that is was the cusp between mechanical and electronic codes, where it was still possible to 'break' a code with a lightbox and a couple of superimposed good guesses. This telling feels authoritative and is certainly rich in detail.
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  Diane Henry

  This grew on me. Kahn is an uneven writer but the topic is fascinating. And I could really feel the horror of the Battle of the Atlantic. I also appreciated that Kahn broke down the steps involved in encrypting a message using the Enigma, in addition to the standard (extremely complicated) steps to break the encryption. The Allies periodic breaking of the Naval Enigma was more fraught and difficult than any quick narrative could describe.
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  Jesse C Stollings

  Interesting hidden story
  
  This is a very detailed and well researched book. Great Insight into the way the codes were broken. I will admit though that the detailed intricate descriptions of the inner workings of the Enigma did confuse me and did not help me in understanding how the codes were broken. Overall, an enjoyable read.