Book Reviews

An enlightening look at the roles different countries payed in cracking the Enigma code, and the effects it had on the war. A key observation was how the code breaking didn’t exactly win the war, but likely helped speed up the end. I enjoy this frank honesty when dealing with key aspects of WWII.

The book details a lot of the mindsets of the period and the Axis hubris of how the machine couldn’t be cracked. In many ways, it wasn’t really completely broken, as the keys were still needed for the most part, and there was usually enough of a delay to make the broken codes harder to capitalize on. Still, there are plenty of examples where it did save ships and lives as some heroic deeds by brave sailors. Trouble is, the Allies often couldn’t completely take advantage of the knowledge gained as it would tip their hand—something movies in this genre often depict.

While the book illustrates many details, it’s still very difficult to understand the full process of how the codebreaking works. Reading it, I knew there were vast descriptions that I would forget in weeks or months, though I have a nice overview of what took place.

What was awful was that due to a lot of the torpedoing being in cold waters, even those escaping into the water would often succumb to freezing to death—something that might have been different in warmer seas. And when a sub was taken out, any surviving German sailors could be rescued by ships. Yet, if a sub took out a ship, there wasn’t any real way to save the men in the water.

One feature is getting a glimpse of life at the secret code-breaking quarters at Bletchley Park—a place that does offer tours and might be a fascinating place to tour someday. Life there must have been pretty surreal during the way.

For WWII books, it’s good, although a little technical in nature. I’d say one would need a heavy interest in this type of thing to stay invested in reading the book. I enjoyed it, though others might get a little bored.