Enigma: How the German Machine Cipher Was Broken, and How It Was Read by the Allies in World War Two

by Christopher Kasparek, Thomas F. Troy, Wladyslaw Kozaczuk

Kasparek, Christopher, Troy, Thomas F., Kozaczuk, Wladyslaw

Genres: Nonfiction, Espionage, History

396 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1984

Reviews

[Beth · Rating 3 out of 5]

Another eye-opener for the farmer's daughter. What would I know. Too many years spent watching films and not reading the 'right' books. Films told me, the mathematicians at Bletchley built a computer and used that to crack the German's codes. Not true.

This is a good story about some very brave folk.

[MD · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book tells the story of the Polish breaking of the German Enigma code before WWII and thru the early part of the war. The famous English Enigma work was based on the earlier work performed by 3 Polish mathematicians. This book tells how the Polish broke the code using mathematics (not a captured machine as is commonly thought) and details the methods used to decrypt messages when settings were changed. There is a lot of (Polish) patriotic pride in this book which occasionally gets in the way of the content, but it is an excellent book nonetheless. It includes an appendix in which the mathematician who originally broke Enigma explains exactly how he did it which is especially interesting.

[Omer Wazir · Rating 1 out of 5]

Terribly composed, for a topic that needs to be set straight in history this could have been so much better.

The only redeeming quality of this is the appendixes featuring insights from Marian Rejewski about how Engima was solved.