» Battle Of Wits: The Complete Story of Codebreaking in World War II
Battle Of Wits: The Complete Story of Codebreaking in World War II Details
Binding: HardcoverDewey Decimal Number: 940.5485
EAN: 9780684859323
ISBN: 0684859327
Label: Free Press
Manufacturer: Free Press
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 448
Publication Date: 2000-10-10
Publisher: Free Press
Studio: Free Press
Battle Of Wits: The Complete Story of Codebreaking in World War II Reviews
Customer Rating:
Summary: Outstanding!
Comment: This book is great! Highly recommended to everybody interested in World War II History and historical aspects of cryptoanalysis.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Fills in a critical part of WWII history.
Comment: I have for many years wondered exactly how the supposedly unbreakable German Enigma machine and the Japanese diplomatic and Naval codes were broken. Stephen Budiansky does a great job at explaining how this was done. This was no easy task, requiring the ability to explain complex mathematical and mechanical concepts in a political and military context. Budiansky is uniquely suited to this task and I for one am grateful for his successful effort. He has a master's degree in applied mathematics, along with work in military studies as a Congressional Fellow. To this one must add that he is a good writer, as attested to by the fact that he is a correspondent for The Atlantic, The New York Times and The Economist among other prestigious publications.
This is no dry academic text, but is a story of great excitement, of great internal rivalries and intrigues. It is also fortunately much more, as it also goes into detail about the design and operation of the code machines and ciphers, as well as the novel approaches that were used to overcome them. It goes into considerable detail about these approaches, without becoming overly pedantic. This book covers the Japanese Diplomatic and Naval codes as well as the German Enigma machine. As such, it covers both code machines and ciphers, with a very good discussion of the history of both and the distinction between them. This book is more than a dry discussion of mathematics, but also delves into the personalities of the people involved and the internal rivalries between the US Army and Navy and between the civilian and military branches of the governments involved. It touches on espionage and the application of the knowledge of what was learned from the code breaking.
I was aware of the general outlines of what was done, of Bletchley Park and the American equivalents and of the importance of the early work of Polish code breakers. What I was not aware of was exactly how this was done. The Germans were confident that even if the allies got hold of a code machine they could not unscramble a message that was coded with what was a virtually unlimited number of possible combinations. I now have a better idea of how this was done and if you read this book so will you. I learned of the importance of a spy in Germany who early on provided a few messages and some code setting that were of great initial help, how German regularity in the form of the messages and the laziness of some operators in reusing the same text were of great importance, of the struggles to overcome the continual changes in the machines and upgrading of the codes. Most of all, I learned of the creativity and persistence of the human mind. My only criticism, and it is a minor one, is that very little space is given to the German and Japanese efforts (many of them successful) in deciphering allied codes. I hope that this will be the subject of a future book of Budiansky's.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Fascinating; lots of detail
Comment: This was a great read. It helps quite a bit to be able to understand technical subjects, because this isn't a simple technology. Great detail.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Biased.Too Anglo-American centric
Comment: It seems there is no dearth in books on intelligence[codebreaking ] in World War II.Ever since British Govt lifted Official Secrets Act in 1974 there have been explosion of books on this sensitive subject.
Author dwelts upon complex intricate nature of German, Japanese ciphers;difficulties involved in breaking it which make up most of this book .Author's narration at times looks convoluted,abstruse.Especially dificult to follow mechanism of American IBM computer used to break Axis ciphers.Americans being more mechanically minded came up with devices like Comparator,RAM [Rapid Analytical Machinery ]for breaking codes.Appendix section of the book contain detailed explanation of German naval Enigma and Japanese purple ciphers plus techniques used for decoding it.
What I like in this book is the section dealing with U boat warwhat author calls shadow warfare.This was a dicey situation with warring powers reading each other codes with themselves not aware of it.On the negative side ,To assert FDR had no fore warning about Japanese raid on Pearl Harbor when we have abundant evidence to the contrary partially detracts the value of this book . Budiansky has virtually ignored Eastern Front despite the fact former Soviet Union bore brunt of war against Nazi Germany.I feel this to be a manifestation of author's cold war mentality unfortunately prevalent among few academics in the West.
What we do not know even today wheather Russians too read German ciphers.Soviet dictator Stalin definitely knew about Ultra thanks to Kim Philby and Cambridge spyring.Soviets had a spy network operating in the Nazi-occupied Europe [Red Orchestra].Information it provided influenced some crucial battles fought on the Eastern Front.For details refer Red Orchestra by Tarrant V.E.
To sum up,Budiansky's work is highly Anglo-American centric.To call this book-as given in the title'Complete story of codebreaking in World War II'- is actually misnomer.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Really complete story!!
Comment: I was interested in the history of codebreaking in World War II but my very incomplete knowledge about the subject stemmed from fiction work, both movies (such as "Enigma') and books (such as Neal Stephenson' 'Cryptonomicon'). After reading this book I have now a very clear picture of what really happened. The author does a great of explaining in great details the history and background of this cryptograhical war. The emphasize of this book is really on efforts by both British and Americans to break German codes although activities to break codes of other Nazi allies also described. The author does a very good job of explaining how various algorithms worked in a language that should be understandabe to anybody (for somebody who is interested in more technical details there are a number of appendixes). It provides a very good and 'live' portraits of people that were involved in these activities. It made me realize how much bureaucracy and stupidity these people had to overcome. Highly recommended for anybody who is interested in the subject but feels he still didn't get a complete picture.
More Reviews for Battle Of Wits: The Complete Story of Codebreaking in World War II
Editorial Review for Battle Of Wits: The Complete Story of Codebreaking in World War II:
On December 3, 1941, officers of the U.S. Army Signal Intelligence Unit decoded a message sent from Tokyo to the Japanese embassy in Washington, ordering embassy staff to destroy its code books and other sensitive material. This, the officers determined, meant that Japan was preparing to break off diplomatic relations with the United States and go to war. When, they could not say; to gain a precise date, they would have had to break the Japanese naval codes. Therein, writes Stephen Budiansky in Battle of Wits, lay the rub: "Since mid-1939, America had not read a single message in the main Japanese naval code on the same day it had been sent. For most of the period from June 1, 1939, to December 7, 1941, the [U.S.] Navy was working on naval messages that were months, or even over a year old."For all their lack of preparedness and occasional inefficiencies, and for all the disdain with which some Allied ground commanders held the work of military intelligence, writes Budiansky, Allied cryptographers were of critical importance in determining the outcome of World War II. The decoding of Japanese and German encryption engines, for instance, helped the Allied navies gain victory in the battles of the Atlantic and Midway, while the translation of secret German railroad schedules allowed Winston Churchill to warn Josef Stalin that the German army was about to invade the Soviet Union--though Stalin refused to take the warning seriously. The codebreakers, in short, "averted disasters that would have been terrible setbacks to the Allied cause," and they almost certainly saved a considerable number of lives as they labored to crack such profound puzzles as Enigma and Purple.
Budiansky's narrative is strong on the science of cryptography--so much so that readers without a background in mathematics and logic may have trouble following the arcana of key squares, bigrams, and all the other trade secrets of cryptanalysis. Readers willing to brave matters technical, however, will find Budiansky's comprehensive account to be the best single book on the subject, and one well worth their attention. --Gregory McNamee
