Codebreakers: The Inside Story of Bletchley Park

by F.H. Hinsley (editor), Alan Stripp (Editor)

Familiar to anyone versed in the history of World War II or interested in the study of modern intelligence work, Bletchley Park was arguably the most successful intelligence operation in world history, the top secret workplace of the remarkable people who cracked Germany's vaunted Enigma Code. Almost to the end of the war, the Germans had firm faith in the Enigma ciphering machine, but in fact the codebreakers were deciphering nearly 4,000 German transmissions daily by 1942, reaping a wealth of information on such important matters as the effort to resupply Rommel's army in North Africa and the effect of Allied attempts to mislead the Germans about the location of D-Day landings. Indeed, Winston Churchill hailed the work of Bletchley Park as the "secret weapon" that won the war.
Only now, nearly half a century since the end of the Second World War, have any of the men and women in this group come forward to tell this remarkable story in their own words--a story that an oath of secrecy long prevented them from revealing. In Codebreakers, F.H. Hinsley and Alan Stripp have gathered together twenty-seven first-hand accounts of one of the most amazing feats in intelligence history. These engaging memoirs, each written by a different member of the codebreakers team, recount the long hours working in total secrecy and the feelings of camaraderie, tension, excitement, and frustration as these men and women, both British and American, did some of the most important work of the war. These talented people share not only their technical knowledge of cryptography and military logistics, but also poignant personal recollections as well. Walter Eytan, one of a handful of Jews at Betchley Park, recalls intercepting a message from a German vessel which reported that it carried Jews "en route for Piraeus zur Endlosung (for the final solution)." Eytan writes "I had never heard this expression before, but instinctively, I knew what it must mean, and I have never forgotten that moment." Vivienne Alford tells of her chilling memory of hearing that the atomic bomb had been dropped on Hiroshima, and the stillness that came over her and her co-workers in Naval Section VI. And William Millward confides that he is still haunted by the work he did in Hut 3 nearly fifty years ago. "I sometimes wonder, especially during the night, how many sailors I drowned."
Few readers will finish this book without feeling that the codebreakers were essential to the outcome of the war--and thereby of major importance in helping to shape the world we live in today.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, World War II, Espionage, War, Military Fiction, Science

360 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1993

About the author

Sir Francis Harry Hinsley OBE, was an English historian and cryptanalyst. He worked at Bletchley Park during the Second World War and wrote widely on the history of international relations and British Intelligence during the Second World War. He was known as Harry Hinsley.

Reviews

[^ · Rating 4 out of 5]

Essential, serious, reading for any intelligent modern-day visitor to Bletchley Park; this book describes not only how German, Italian and Japanese codes were broken and read by the Allies during WWII, but also, most fascinatingly, how the workforce was garnered and organised.

This is not a ‘popular’ light read. However it will appeal to those who are seeking the depth of more specialist technical detail that is omitted from so-called “accessible” books on the subject.
Any 16-17 year-old considering reading languages at university will find fresh perspectives to challenge their thinking.

I thought this book to be remarkably well written; I could almost smell the oil on the bombes! It left me wondering what working at GCHQ today might really be like; and how dependent we are today on close, strong, relationships with our Allies.

[Linda Anderson · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a compendium of writings by various people present at Bletchley Park during WWII. It was well edited and compiled. The map of buildings at the end was very helpful in understanding where stages of work were performed. Many of the young workers at Bletchley went on to important work in intelligence and other fields after the war. Almost all of them seemed like good team members and giving everything to win against the Germans, Italians, and Japanese. (with the exception of Chapter 19, there was something with that author who later taught at Va Tech that I did not care for. Cannot put my finger on it.) A few of the chapters were a bit technical (on specific codes and over my head) so I bought the kindle version to refer to later. Most chapters were well written and several in the Japanese code section were written with appendices attached. What a great idea to publish these writings in 1992 while these members of the greatest generation were still alive and finally able to discuss their work. They were truly heroes that did not get enough recognition. I learned a lot and the book answered some of my questions, even though it is not sequential. I did refer to Google searches quite a bit.

[lindsay · Rating 3 out of 5]

I've been reading this book for several weeks and still haven't finished it yet, but I figured I'd go ahead and review it now because the book is pretty technical and I probably won't get through it for another 3 months. I'm cheating a bit, but I don't think my review will change much between now and the end.

The book is basically a series of short first person memoirs about cryptanalysis and the Ultra intelligence work from various Huts in Bletchley Park during WWII. I picked it up because I was interested in reading a non-fiction account of codebreaking and the use of intelligence during the war. It's really fascinating, although I have to confess that it's over my head in a lot of ways.

Some of the more interesting and readable elements are small personal recollections of the narrators (as opposed to technical descriptions of the inner workings of the Huts and the creation/use of Ultra intelligence), such as the recollections of the narrator who first reviewed the transmission that Adolf Hitler was dead and that Germany had appointed a new Fuhrer. I was also fascinated by one narrator's description of the level of secrecy apparently required of Bletchley Park employees even after the war ended. It makes sense in retrospect, but it's hard to imagine that people who were so integral to the intelligence community during the war were sometimes subjected to scorn because they could not disclose that they had been involved in intelligence work and, therefore, were unable to explain -- even to their spouses -- why they seemingly had not been involved in the war effort until many decades later.

However, apart from these types of anecdotes, the book should come with a warning that if you are not a WWII historian, you will not understand 85% of what the narrators are describing. Each memoir is littered with acronyms and German language words that require repeated consultation with the glossary at the beginning of the book. Moreover, every memoir presumes intimate knowledge of the names and locations of battles, generals, ships, etc. that are taken for granted by the narrators, but which are almost entirely unfamiliar to someone not born until 30+ years after the war ended. For example, a number of the chapters make reference to "Alamein" and how the Allies' ability to read Germany's encrypted messages helped win the battle. Before I could understand these chapters, I first needed to go read an encyclopedia to learn that there were two decisive battles near a city in north Africa, Alamein, in which the Allied troops defeated Rommel. This is essentially the reason it will take me another 3 months to finish this book -- every time I read a chapter, I need to consult other source material to put everything in context.

[Ondrej Sykora · Rating 4 out of 5]

A collection of essays and memories of some of the people who worked in Bletchley Park on breaking German and Japanese codes during World War II. Overall it was very interesting, but it's important to keep in mind that the book is rather a collection of isolated texts written by different people rather than an overview of the whole situation. Also, most of texts seem to be intended for readers, who are already familiar with what was going on (and maybe even readers, who are already familiar with the technical details). In the end, I've found the parts about the operations more interesting than the parts about the ciphers.

If you are interested in the lives of the people of Bletchley Park, this is a book to read. If you're looking rather for an introduction to the codes using during WW2 and the ways to break them, you should probably look elsewhere.

[Allison · Rating 2 out of 5]

I was actually disappointed in this book. I had previously read "Between Silk and Cyanide: A Codemaker's War," which dealt with the codes made and used by the British during WWII. I was hoping for a similar history of British code-breaking, and I had heard this was the classic book on the topic. This, however, is not a narrative history; instead, its a collection of essays written by codebreakers in Bletchley Park. The problem is, each author assumes that you have a great deal of prior knowledge - of the codes used, the history of the war, etc. Most of the explanations of the codes are completely indecipherable - although some of the Japanese codes are explained quite nicely. All in all, I wouldn't recommend this as a first book for someone interested in codebreaking during WWII.

[Tekken · Rating 5 out of 5]

Sõbrale materjali otsides sattus pihku see raamat, mis pakub lugejale märksa rohkem, kui kaane peal seisab. GC&CS siseintriigid on mind juba ammu huvitanud ning Hinsley ja Stripp on õiged mehed õigeid küsimusi esitama, isegi kui osa neist vastuseta jäävad. Kahjuks võib siingi mõnes kohas poliitilisuse korrektsuse karvast käppa märgata – kui Turingut meenutatakse (enamasti teenimatult) iga natukese aja tagant, siis näiteks Eric Nave’i ainult korra ja sedagi möödaminnes.

Ajahammas on oma töö teinud ja nii mõnigi intervjueeritud isik pole tagantjärele enam suutnud kõiki koode ja šifreid täpselt paika panna. Mõnusaks vahepalaks on Carmen Blackeri mälestused, kes kirjeldab oma Bletchley Parki teenistust ilma mingi valehäbita kui kaotatud aega. That's' the spirit!

[Deyth Banger · Rating 5 out of 5]

Let's look deeper shall we?

[Tom S. · Rating 4 out of 5]

Awesome program that helped win the war for the Allies over the Axis. The book was a little too technical for me. I hoped for more real examples of how battles were won because the enemy's messages were decoded.

[Alistair Edwards · Rating 3 out of 5]

I am very interested in the work of Bletchley Park (BP), so I picked up this book. It is a collection of chapters by people who worked there. As such it gives interesting perspectives of the work there, and provokes a lot of thoughts – see below.

One thing I learned was of the volume of intercepts deciphered, in the thousands or tens of thousands. It seems that just about everything that the Nazis were broadcasting was captured. There was even at least one instance when Montgomery read a signal intended for Rommel before Rommel did.

Clearly this amount of intelligence was of almost immeasurable value. The Introduction to the book (rather poorly written, I’d say, by one of the editors, F H Hinsley) attempts to quantify the value, but not very convincingly. I believe Churchill (not in this book) estimated that the work at BP shortened the war by some two years. Yet what might have happened in those two years? If the war in Europe had lasted even a few months more, might the Allies have dropped an atom bomb on Europe? On the other hand, how much could the Nazis have developed their V-weapons and jet aircraft in two years?

It is interesting that the Germans never realized that their ciphers had been broken. There seem to have been a number of factors leading to this. One was that the work at BP was kept entirely secret.

Nearly every chapter in this book starts by the person describing how they had to agree to total secrecy before they could be told anything about the job they would be asked to do. Then, while working there, they discussed their work with no one. There were even wives and husbands who went to their graves not knowing the contribution that their husband/wife had made. As Alan Stripp says in Chapter 29 (p.289), 'Is it possible to believe that in six tense wartime years not one of the many thousands talked about the nature of the job to a wife, husband, lover, parent, or friend? Yet the secret never emerged. Presumably we were bright enough to see that it mattered.' If asked about their work they had to give some bland, mis-leading response, ‘Boring paperwork for the Foreign Office.’ It is also notable that the residents of the Bletchley area must have wondered what went on in the big house, but apparently did not spread any speculation.

Most of the BP workers assumed they would remain silent for the rest of their lives. So it was evidently a bit of a shock when in 1982 Gordon Welchman published the book 'The Hut Six Story', giving away a lot of the ‘secrets’. The contributors to this book evidently thought that Welchman had effectively given them licence to tell their stories.

And these are their individual stories. Each chapter comes from their particular viewpoint, showing their role. Given the ‘need to know’ principle these can be quite narrow.

Another reason that the Nazis did not guess that the codes were broken was that one of the jobs in BP was to come up with a story to cover how information gleaned from signals had been derived. For instance, if the position of a convoy was uncovered then a reconnaissance aircraft would be sent to that location, to ‘accidentally’ discover the convoy. In other cases fictional agents were created as supposed sources of information.

It would seem that another reason that the Nazis did not realize their ciphers had been broken was that they simply thought that was impossible, that they were entirely secure. In fact they could have been. Enigma was not just a machine, it was a system. This included standard operating procedures which, if followed, would have made the system entirely secure. However, the human element within this system was the weak point. It is all too easy to blame the people, and the designers of the overall system should have paid much more attention to the human factors.

For instance, there was a rule that repetition in messages must be avoided, but this was not always adhered to. For instance, most messages should start and finish with the identity of the intended recipient. However, the precise naming of the recipient should not be repeated. There were two problems with this, though. For a start, some imagination would be required to think of two ways of addressing the person. Secondly, if (for instance) a signal was headed for Field Marshall Rommel, might he not be insulted if the end of the message was addressed to Mr Rommel?

Then there was a problem if it was not clear whether a message had been received correctly the simplest thing to do was to send it again. This was against the rules; the message should have been re-worded before it was sent again. But again that would have been a lot of effort.

Once more one can see how an operator who had been told that the cipher they were using was extremely secure might think that there could be no harm in breaking the rules now and again: ‘Just this once, and there’s probably no one listening, anyway.’

Another problem that operators had was that in some instances they were required to input random sequences of letters. Humans are not very good at being random, and again the operators were probably unaware how important it was that these inputs were truly random. It was more fun to input a swear word, or their girlfriend’s name, or – even better, if known – the name of the receiving operator’s girlfriend. The sequence QAYWSX might look pretty random – unless you look at a German keyboard and see that those are the letters in the first two columns of keys.

Another technique to aid the breaking of a cipher that I had been unaware of was getting the enemy to generate predictable messages. Specifically the RAF would be told to sew mines at a specific location. (This was referred to as ‘Gardening’ – and my uncle, who was an air gunner talked about it. Of course, he thought he was just laying mines to sink enemy ships; he would not have known that he was helping to break German codes.) This would lead to signals warning of this new minefield – which would include the known coordinates.

This book is not a handbook on code breaking. It does include quite a lot of details of some of the ciphers and how to break them. For instance, Chapter 19 gives quite a detailed account of how to break the Fish cipher, but not in a way that I – at least – could implement. Many of the detailed descriptions are hard to follow because the authors seem to assume prior knowledge in the reader. Some of this is due to the use of jargon. (Now don’t get me started: Jargon is inevitable and a good thing – it is the mis-use of jargon that is reprehensible.) In fact I think it is interesting in itself how jargon, new words, were generated within the BP work. Some of these neologisms reflect British humour, and some of them show the Classics backgrounds of many of the BP workers. There is a glossary at the start of the book, which is helpful, but not exhaustive. It is also possible that some details have been deliberately omitted. One author holds back, unsure whether he might be straying into an area which is still officially secret.

If anyone has got this far in this review, then they probably should read the book.

[Nathan · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is the story of code-breaking during World War II, told by the participants themselves. I enjoyed reading their memories from the years they were doing intelligence work in Great Britain. Their contributions to the war effort were immense, but they write with great humor and humility.

[Jay · Rating 3 out of 5]

I started the book but quit 24 pages in. Too dry, detailed and slow moving…

[Marie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Overall, I thought the book was really good. It gave the reader a really good overview of what it was like to be a codebreaker during World War II. It’s interesting because everyone knows about World War II and the battles and the generals, but no one really knows about the people breaking codes that were behind many of the successes of the Allied armies.
The book is written in chapters under different sections discussing the same topics. Each chapter is written by a different veteran who was a codebreaker at one point in Bletchley Park. They describe the different huts occupied by different types of people and they explain the different jobs each hut had to carry out in order for a code to be broken. I really liked the chapters that were talking about people’s real experiences while working on codes. It was good when people gave little anecdotes about their experiences because it was so interesting to learn about how different people had to deal with what they were doing at Bletchley Park. Some of the people who contributed to writing the book actually witnessed really important turning points of the war. One person said that he had received the code saying that Hitler was dead!
What I didn’t like, however, was how technical the book was in many places. Many of the people writing tried to really fully explain how the Enigma (code breaking machine) worked. They told the readers about how to turn the wheels based on different days, showed different types of codes and how to examine them to find the message, and explain how to actually break codes. This technicality goes on throughout most of the book. I’d rather learn about people’s more personal experiences because it’s not like I’m actually going to break a German code or anything. However, the technical side of the book does provide insight on how difficult it was at times to break some of the codes received.
So, long story short, the book was still very meaningful and gave a really good insight onto this one subject of World War II that no one really knows about. The brave people that broke codes for the Allies risked their lives to achieve a victory for the Allies, just as much as the soldiers fighting on the battlefront did. I would recommend this book to anyone wanting to really learn about the insides and outs of code breaking and anyone who is mathematically inclined. I hope if you read the book, you learn about the art of code breaking just as much as I did.

[Alexandra Lowrance · Rating 4 out of 5]

Imagine being called in for a job interview of which the coordinator will tell you nothing about beforehand. After being asked to analyze objects and answer a series of questions, you are dismissed. Once you are told you have the job, you must swear an oath to tell no one about it. Ever. As you arrive where you will spend the majority of the next few years your life, you find ominous barb-wire defenses surrounding dreary hut-like buildings. This would seem to alter the mood of the men and women working for Ultra during WWII, but it didn’t, because of the overwhelming desire of the populace to contribute to the war effort. In Hinsley and Stripp’s book Codebreakers you read memoir after memoir describing the everyday life of the men and women--usually being referred to as Wrens--working for Ultra who helped gain the upper hand over the Germans via decryption; ultimately turning the tides of WWII in the Allies’ favor.

From the Introduction to this book, the reader learns that Ultra was top secret during the war as well as for a long time thereafter. The influence of Ultra, according the authors, brings with it controversy concerning its influence on the war. Until the 1970s Ultra was hidden from the public and was kept a closely guarded secret by everyone involved. No one knew of its existence. Therefore historians, when compiling events and memoirs of WWII before the 1970s, did not take into account Ultra’s contributions to the victory of the Allies. Once the secret was released to the public and the historians, the new question came to mind: What exactly were Ultra’s contributions and how do historians incorporate this into the history books? They now have to detach Ultra from accounts of WWII and thus calculate how the war would have gone without that influence. This is what the authors deem so controversial. It would require counter-factual history, which in itself is an extremely difficult task. It is nearly impossible to predict what the enemies would have done had intelligence not known beforehand via decryptions. If the reader and historians do not try to analyze this then the significance of Ultra will never be fully known.

All chapters in Codebreakers, except for the intro, are Ultra workers’ recollections of their respective time spent there and the tasks they were assigned. The chapters themselves are split into five parts, each of them demonstrating the importance of the authors’ argument. Part one is devoted entirely to the production and intelligence of Ultra. Ultra, which was located in Bletchley Park, contained a facility divided into temporary ‘huts’ until later moving to more permanent buildings with different names. Each hut had a specific task pertaining to their expertise in warfare, for example: Air Force and Navy. Hut 3 was devoted to German Army and Air Force translation and processing. Hut 4 was for German Navy translating and processing. Hut 6 was in charge of German Army and Air Force Enigma cryptanalysis. Hut 8 was thus in charge of German Navy Enigma cryptanalysis. As Hut 6 decrypted ciphers they sent their work to Hut 3 who--through a series of people--translated and processed according to importance. The same goes for Hut 6 and Hut 4.

Part two and three of Codebreakers was devoted to the Enigma. These parts extensively cover a vast array of things like: how the devices made by the Germans evolved over time, how they were made, how they worked, how one would go about deciphering them, etc. Part Four is all about the mechanics of codes and ciphers, how they were ciphered, their interception by Ultra and their process of deducing which key to use, and how one used that to translate. Part Five was centered entirely on Japanese Codes. The Japanese attack, as the Maurice Wiles states, “found Britain ill-prepared in many ways, not least in people proficient in the language.” Therefore, they had to bring genius students in and the few people who knew the language had to teach them crash courses in Japanese. Japanese being a very hard language to learn, proved difficult since there are words that can have several unrelated meanings and one word can even mean a very specific phrase or description of an action. Hugh Denham, for example, says one word means “trying out a new sword on a passer-by” and another meaning “rolling up one’s sleeves and grinding one’s teeth in chagrin.”

Hinsley and Stripp’s book compiles memoirs of American and British civilians, scholars, teachers, and soldiers; both men and women, all having different points of view to contribute to the overall portrayal of Ultra. This book is an excellent example of the phrase “short and sweet.” It is very concise and to-the-point while astonishingly giving you different perspectives and opinions of varying real life Ultra personnel. The introduction forces you to fully understand the weight of trying to counter history and what it entails. It does this by point out the difficulty it takes to do so, and the consequences of how you perceive the history you are countering. The proceeding parts and chapters seamlessly fall together. Instead of just flat out telling the reader about Ultra and what it was like to be a part of it; the authors pieced together primary sources and lets you find out for yourself, being laid out in such a way and providing a glossary, effortlessly. It was a delight to see Bletchley Park through other’s eyes and learning how each individual became a part of it. It was even more so when at the end of every memoir the Ultra worker provides a memorable moment or cipher they had read of the enemies’. A goose bump worthy example being when Jewish Walter Eytan said, “we intercepted a signal from a small German commissioned vessel…reporting that it was transporting Jews… for the ‘final solution’. I instinctively knew what it must mean and I have never forgotten.” Through these endings to their memoirs you understand why, stated above, the men and women were determined to help the war effort so much so that they voluntarily sacrificed years, sleepless days, and their blissful ignorance (like Eytan) to the cause. These men and women did not get to claim any form of recognition. Hinsley and Tripp not only provide the reader with ample insight into the impact of Ultra, but also spur appreciation and admiration for the hard years of sacrifices these men and women made.

[Judy · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is not a book for everyone. It presupposes a pretty in-depth knowledge of WWII battles, and an ability to understand the mechanics and human abilities used to break codes. After an almost indecipherable introduction, each chapter is written by an alumni of Bletchley Park (although some of them ended up being sent out into the field), and therein lay the interest for me. The people recruited to work there were really interesting folk, drawn from many different fields, and asked to accept the job and the secrecy conditions before really understanding what they were getting themselves into. Yet because they wanted to contribute to the war effort in their own way, they accepted, and they managed to keep up the secrecy until the work was unclassified in the 1970's. Having some experience with military intelligence during the Cold War, I recognized many of the characteristics as having also been those of my work mates decades later. I had to skim the technical parts about code breaking, but ate up the stories of people who had to learn unfamiliar languages quickly and apply it to intercepted messages. Because of the necessity of limiting each person's knowledge to their own area, this is not a source for understanding how their work affected the war, but perhaps putting their stories with other information would eventually help with such an analysis.

[Bryan · Rating 2 out of 5]

Before this, I read Erebus: The Story Of A Ship by Michael Plain and I felt that this book needed his genius to tell the story. Like that book, it tells a historical story but Palin at least weaved a thread through and created a story out of the history, that ultimately made me care about it. Not so in this case I'm afraid. It's a good book i.e. a well documented and written but it's so packed with facts, figures, dates and details that the why is lost i.e. why should I care about this. I love this period of history and there is a story to tell here but it needed to be told in a different way than just having the participants recount their stories verbatim. I couldn't give it a 1 star because I do recognise that it's a well-written book telling a vital part of world history but I realised a third of the way through that I was looking at the words on the page without actually ingesting any of it.

[Bob Schmitz · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book is a compendium of recolections of people who served at Betchley Park during the 2nd World War dealing with the the code breaking of the Germany's Enigma Code machine. It is very dry reading and I would really not recommend it to anyone except someone VERY interested in misc details of the work at Betchley Park. It gives no overview or thematic discourse on the subject but just a bunch of small recollections. What is amazing is that so many people worked there and the work was kept secret for so long. The only reason I read the book was that at my hotel in Costa Rica this was the only book in English that was in the book exchange shelve that I had not read. So many Germans visit CR. I had no idea.

[Paulo · Rating 2 out of 5]

The inside story of the wartime work of Bletchley Park and its outstations, where the german codes decryption work took place during World War II.

The book it is written by men and women who themselves worked there. It has rested almost entirely on personal memories and recollections more than on severe accuracy.

The editors decided that the best order was to place the handling of decrypts first, and following the description of the work of cryptanalysts. These more technical sections are subdivied in the main programmes developed at Bletchley:
- The Enigma machine and the bombe.
- Fish and Colossus.
- Field ciphers and tactical codes.
- Work on Japanese codes.

[Leonard · Rating 4 out of 5]

A bit over my head in thatI didn't understand the charts and high math displayed in the book. I also don't understand the British money system. These people deserve a lot more credit than they received, of course I understand that the Cold War was heating up in the late 1940's and code breaking is very valuable if hostilities were to break out. The seal on the story is much like the seal on the Navajo code talkers in the U.S.

[Carolyn · Rating 2 out of 5]

I got this book from the library to provide increased background for the various books I read recently that involved Bletchley Park. I found Code Breakers much more than I wanted to know about the inner workings of BP. Additionally, the various authors of the sections were not the greatest writers and so I ended up skimming more than reading the book. The sections that provided personal experiences of the authors were the most interesting.

[J Grimsey · Rating 4 out of 5]

A fascinating series of experiences at Bletchley Park divided into chapters written by participants in different sections - even a builder gets a chapter. Some were put to work on things they felt were crucial some of little use. So stories were engaging and some sections technically were beyond me.

[Nelson Elhage · Rating 4 out of 5]

Consists of 30 essays by individuals who worked as part of the British codebreaking or MI efforts during WWII. Full of fascinating anecdotes and details of what daily life and operations were like at Bletchley Park, and delightful deep dives into the cipher-breaking process.

[David Shaffer · Rating 3 out of 5]

A series of essays by though who served at Bletchley Park. Interesting personal accounts some more readable than others which portrays the personal experiences of those involved. Interesting but not at the top of the list for those interested code breaking to read. it

[Tim Haley · Rating 4 out of 5]

A really interesting read about what all went on at Bletchley Park. I think what I enjoyed a lot was hearing about all the non-Enigma work that was happening in parallel. Especially enjoyed how it was short essays from people directly involved.

[Anne · Rating 4 out of 5]

Since this was the only book in the Portage County Library System on this topic, I thought I would read it. And it is actually a pretty good one, with first-hand accounts from many of the people who actually worked there.

[Joel Haasnoot · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very diverse and often personal account of British codebreaking during World War II. Focussed on more than just enigma, the narratives feel well rounded, if not slightly lacking in depth.

[Jon Webb · Rating 2 out of 5]

Interesting insight but dull and repetitive.

[Neil Baker · Rating 4 out of 5]

I found it interesting but rather dry, and in parts difficult to take-in the information laid out in the book. Worth it though if you can stick with it.

[John Bickelhaupt · Rating 5 out of 5]

At the beginning of the war, personnel involved in code-breaking at Bletchley Park totaled about thirty people. By the end of the war, there were thousands. Efforts to decode high-level encrypted German communications, particularly the Enigma machines, drove the invention of the first electronic computers, a fact which was kept secret for fifty years after the end of the war. This was a massive effort of critical importance to the success of the Allied war effort. Particularly difficult was the decryption of u-boat communications. The tonnage of shipping the allies lost was directly connected to the success or failure of Bletchley Park cryptographers to read the German communications quickly enough for the information to be put to use in routing convoys and sinking submarines. A change in codebooks could choke off decryption for weeks. When u-boats' three-rotor machines were replaced with four-rotor versions, it took cryptographers months to break back into German communications. "Codebreakers: The Insided Story of Bletchley Park" does a good job of explaining the cryptographers' methodes, the technologies they developed and employed, and the conditions and pressures they were subject to.

[Tinanz · Rating 3 out of 5]

A fascinating account of the real-life battle of wits that allowed the Allied forces to read so much of Axis encrypted transmissions during WWII. These are first-hand accounts from those who were there at Bletchley Park. In most cases the people involved saw only their own tiny slice of the process and had very little idea of what, if any, advantage their efforts provided. It is hard to imagine how they managed to keep themselves motivated day after day, on tasks like recording the encrypted messages that were intercepted - at that point meaningless strings of characters without any context. Something I really liked about this book was how it included accounts from people working at all the different tasks and stages of the process, rather than focusing only on the mathematical 'superstars' - all the more creditable given that the editors (F H Hinsley and Alan Stripp) were themselves members of that elite.

And, even after paintakingly slogging through the detailed 'how it was done' sections, I still remain clueless and in awe of those who broke the codes.

[Alan Cook · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have been to Bletchley Park and seen the machines, including the German Enigma, and the allied machines--almost computers--invented to help break the enemy codes during World War II. This book contains the personal stories of a number of people who worked at Bletchley, or were connected with it. It's obvious from the stories that the military didn't always like or trust the code breakers, and that cost the allies a lot of money, casualties and time. One thing I liked about the book is that it contains information on how to go about breaking codes. It turns out that even a machine like the Enigma, which can create a number of combinations that has many zeroes, also has its weak points. One weakness is the coders, and another is the types of messages sent. It's amazing how fast you can narrow down the possibilities. This is like the game of Mastermind, in which you try to guess the colors of a number of pegs. Although there are thousands of possibilities, a good player can eliminate combinations and get the correct answer in just a few guesses.