Before Enigma

by David Boyle

‘Exhilarating.’ - Daily Mail.

How did the British codebreakers succeed in cracking the apparently unbreakable Enigma code during the Second World War? Was it their gifted amateurism? The brilliance of Alan Turing? The invention of the very first computers? Or the pioneering work of Polish cryptographers?

It was all of the above. But there is one other crucial factor, which is much less well known. The same team had done it before.

The truth is that many of those most closely involved in cracking the Enigma code – Alistair Denniston, Frank Birch, Dilly Knox – had wrestled with German naval codes for most of the First World War. By the end of the war they had been successfully cracking a new code every day, from their secret Room 40 at the Old Admiralty Building, in a London blacked out for Zeppelin Raids.

The techniques they developed then, the ideas that they came to rely on, the people they came to trust, had been developed the hard way, under intense pressure and absolute secrecy during World War I. Before Enigma tells their story and explains how they managed to crack the supposedly indecipherable code.

The book outlines the capture of the Magdeburg and the Hobart, discusses the use of cracked codes to bring German fleets to battle at Dogger Bank and Jutland, and focuses on individuals such as Winston Churchill and Admiral Sir Reginald ‘Blinker’ Hall and their importance in the development of a British naval code tradition.

Praise for David Boyle

‘Exhilarating’ - Daily Mail

David Boyle is a British author and journalist who writes mainly about history and new ideas in economics, money, business and culture. He lives in Crystal Palace, London. His books include 'Alan Unlocking the Enigma', 'Operation Primrose', 'Rupert England’s Last Patriot', 'Peace on The Christmas Truce of 1914', ' England’s National Anthem' and 'Unheard Warfare in the Dardanelles'.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, War

77 pages, Kindle Edition

Published February 28, 2018

About the author

David Courtney Boyle was a British author and journalist who wrote mainly about history and new ideas in economics, money, business, and culture. He lived in Steyning in West Sussex.
He conducted an independent review for the Treasury and the Cabinet Office on public demand for choice in public services which reported in 2013. Boyle was a co-founder and policy director of Radix, which he characterized in 2017 as a radical centrist think tank. He was also co-director of the mutual think tank New Weather Institute.

Reviews

[Sam Quixote · Rating 3 out of 5]

Following the success of his last nonfiction Kindle Single on Alan Turing and the Enigma machine, David Boyle returns to the field of wartime codebreaking with Before Enigma. This time the focus is on World War One and how the Bletchley Park in World War Two that Turing was part of came to be.

The difficulty here is that there is very little information on Room 40. The unit’s spymaster, “Blinker” Hall (so-called because of a traumatic and malnourished childhood), wrote very little down and what records there were got burned after the war. As a result, we’re told broadly who the players are without really knowing them. Boyle tries to make Hall as compelling a figure as Turing was but can’t because of the scarcity of information.

For a book purportedly about Room 40, Boyle spends a majority of the pages on naval warfare, ie. the consequences of the codebreaking rather than the codebreaking and the team behind it. It’s a fair choice though as Room 40 didn’t seem to have problems decoding the Germans’ codes anyway as both sides undervalued this side of the war effort. As a result there wouldn’t be much to write about anyway, but that just makes a book on this subject feel all the more unnecessary.

What the book is really about is establishing how World War One led to a more sophisticated 20th century military. Blinker Hall paved the way for modern espionage practices, even giving a young Ian Fleming the experiences he would later use to create the ultimate fictional spy, James Bond. Both sides eventually realised the importance of codebreaking with the British ensuring the hierarchy/departmental structures didn’t get in the way of passing on useful information to the right people while the Germans set about creating Enigma.

Some of the young men who worked in Room 40 would go on to found Bletchley Park and hire the codebreakers that would play a major part in the Allied fight against the Nazis in World War Two, among them Alan Turing. But Turing and his story is far more compelling than the one presented in this short book. Warfare was more advanced in WW2 leading to the necessity of creating computers and the modern age which is a helluva story. Here, it’s the same story of the trenches where an outdated and staggeringly inept British leadership made one massive cock-up after another!

David Boyle’s Before Enigma is about informative as it can be on Room 40 which is to say not very - but then that’s due to a lack of material rather than effort on Boyle’s part. It’s a somewhat beguiling book at times if on the whole unmemorable. If you’re after a short read on WW1 espionage and the war’s major naval conflicts, Before Enigma provides a fine summary on the topic.

[Deacon Tom F. (Recovering from a big heart attack) · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great Book

One of the most important breaking points in World War II was the discovery of the German code in a classified bunker in Bletchley Park, England. This code helped the allies win World War II.

However, the code breakers did not just appear. They started in room 40 of the Royal Navy Admiralty headquarters during WWI.

A good read for World War II history fans. Not so much for every day readers.

[David Highton · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting book about WWI code and cipher breaking and how badly it was used by the Royal Navy

[Wayne McCoy · Rating 4 out of 5]

'Before Enigma' by David Boyle tells the story of British codebreaking that led to Enigma and Bletchley Park. It's a short read, but still highly fascinating.

Room 40 during World War I was the precursor to the codebreakers of Bletchley Park and the larger than life personality of the group was Admiral Sir Reginald 'Blinker' Hall. He assembled an odd assortment of academics who could assist in breaking the codes coming out of Germany. The problem was that there was a disconnect between the front lines and knowledge of this secret group. This played havoc at Jutland where knowledge was known but not to the right people at the right time. Lessons learned during the first conflict would be remembered.

The problem is that a lot of the historical records of Room 40 have been purged, so what we are left with is a lot of secondhand stories, some of which might or might not be fully true. This makes it tough to recommend as a straight historical record, but I can highly recommend it as similar to the type of evening you might have at a pub listening to old soldiers relate stories. I thoroughly enjoyed it.

I received a review copy of this ebook from Endeavour Press and NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. Thank you for allowing me to review this ebook.

[Jamie Smith · Rating 3 out of 5]

It is unfortunate that most of the records of Britain’s codebreaking efforts in the Great War were destroyed, so there is not a lot of factual evidence regarding how they worked and achieved their results. Still, their achievements were extraordinary. In the days before there were electronic aids codebreaking was the work of amateurs, of crossword puzzle enthusiasts and people with an ability to see patterns in long strings of letters and numbers. Despite this unpromising start, the analysts in Room 40 were able to successfully read many German naval ciphers.

They were, nevertheless, treated contemptuously by the regular Navy officers, dismissed as oddballs and cranks. One amazing example happened during the days just before the Battle of Jutland. The Navy Captain on duty in the command center asked Room 40 about the whereabouts of a certain call sign for the Chief of the German Navy. The codebreaker replied that that signal showed as being in port, and he was dismissed. However, it was policy for the German admiral to take another call sign when getting underway, leaving the original one in port as a deception measure. The codebreaker knew this, but that is not the question the Captain asked, and he was forbidden to address him unless specifically spoken to. And so, the British Navy missed an important indicator that the Germans were at sea and trying to set a trap.

The Germans had their own problems with what in modern terminology is known as OPSEC, Operational Security, which is keeping plans and objectives secret. It is somewhat amazing that the Germans never made the connection between the amount of radio traffic and fleet operations. When the order to prepare to sail was given, a lot of work had to be done, and the volume of German radio traffic increased by several times. Even without breaking the codes the British were able to tell that something was up, and could alert their own Navy. The German plan at Jutland had been to lure Beatty’s battlecruisers into a trap and destroy them under the guns of the German battleships, but armed with the knowledge that it looked like the German fleet was sailing, Jellicoe put his own fleet to sea and very nearly caught and destroyed the Germans.

Room 40 is much less well known than World War II’s Bletchley Park, but it played a key role in developing the codebreaking infrastructure that would be used so successfully in the latter war. It allowed the British to know what kind of people, with what skills, would be useful, and how to put them together to maximize their potential. Just as in World War I, it was a collection of cranks and oddballs, but this time it was a collection that changed the course of the war.

[Daryl · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Beginnings of British Naval Intelligence in WWI

The "mistakes" of top decision makers in failing to use the intelligence windfalls at their disposal continued to plague us all the way to the Viet Nam War and beyond. The story of Room 40 demonstrates how a few enlightened and fearless souls can make the right things happen despite organizational and political obstacles.

[Michael Sommers · Rating 3 out of 5]

Nice, but brief (77 pages) survey of Room 40. There are no technical details on the codes and ciphers, or the methods used to break them. The author also at times seems a little confused on the difference between codes and ciphers. The last chapter is a brief look at the lessons learned, not unlike the much more extensive last section of Welchman's Hut Six Story.

[Fred Hartshorn · Rating 5 out of 5]

Room 40 years before Bletchley and Enigma.

So much information that you don't know codes and WW1. Would things have been different at Jutland if the information had got to the right people.

[Scott Landis · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good info, poor editing

There's not much information out there on Room 40, England's predecessor to Bletchley Park. This book fills some of that dearth. However, the editing is a bit problematic with a number of grammatical issues

[BeverlyNespal · Rating 5 out of 5]

Code breakers a necessity of war

This was a great book about the early code breakers. I have been very interested in what they did. I hope I can find more books on code breakers and Enigma.

[SCOTT NILES · Rating 4 out of 5]

That was Enigma, before it was real

Was a story of people, places and codes. How codes were gotten , unraveled and then kept so private them were almost useless. It took a certain combination of persons to go from WWI to WWII and to bring that knowledge forward.

[Tiffany L · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book was more about the people involved in the war rather than the code breaking.

[Cody · Rating 3 out of 5]

Short, interesting, in need of a good editor, read of the code breakers of WWI.

[Susan Johnston · Rating 4 out of 5]

For fans of spy novels and code breaking, this is a fascinating look at the men who set the stage for the successes of WWII through the mistakes that were made in WWI. Without these men, there might never have been an Alan Turing and his team.
It provides insight into the world of espionage that had changed dramatically thanks to new technologies. The fact that few had any inkling of how these things could be turned to advantage and that those that did would not share their knowledge led to a treacherous learning curve.
Britain was unable to use the codebreaking information as effectively as possible until the information was integrated between departments and services.
It's a fascinating look at the mistakes that were made that led to things being done differently in WWII. Much of the credit goes to the man who set the stage for modern day spies. He was responsible for a no-holds-barred approach where deceipt and subterfuge were merely tools in the arsenal before the rest of the world caught up.
This is a recommended read for anyone who enjoys military histories particularly ones that deal with the covert aspects of it.

[Ron Camp · Rating 4 out of 5]

If you are interested in WWII this is a great starting place because it lays the ground work for what transpired at the beginning of WWII as it relates to the intelligence department. It is so interesting to see how the English gathered information and how they didn't know the best way to pass it to the correct people...great information

[Betsy · Rating 3 out of 5]

A short but interesting book about Room 40 and the efforts to set up codebreaking by the British in WWI. Much of what they learned was put to good use 20 years later.

Of interest too, is the success with the Zimmermann Telegram, and the less successful application in the Battle of Jutland, which probably prolonged the war.