» Between Silk and Cyanide : A Codemaker's War, 1941-1945
Between Silk and Cyanide : A Codemaker's War, 1941-1945 Details
Binding: HardcoverFormat: Bargain Price
Label: Free Press
Manufacturer: Free Press
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 624
Publication Date: 1999-06
Publisher: Free Press
Studio: Free Press
Between Silk and Cyanide : A Codemaker's War, 1941-1945 Reviews
Customer Rating:
Summary: wonderful adventure and intrigue
Comment: Agents are being air dropped into Nazi occupied France to aid the underground, and they are being captured
as soon as they land. The British have to find out why all of their activities are known to the Nazis. Leo Marks,
a 21 year old puzzle genius is put in charge of coding and decoding information going in and out of Britain. This sounds like a formula movie, but is what really happened during WWII, and it is fascinating, exciting and often touching. There is no doubt in this conflict who the good guys are, and this look at what was really happening during this era is hard to put down. It is well written and a real adventure.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Monty Python meets Bletchley Park
Comment: I was about to direct the play "Breaking the Code" and plucked this book from somewhere because I thought it would provide background. The project fell through so I put the book aside thinking that it would be extremely dry and technical - not exactly what you want on your nightstand. Two years go by. I had finished my current read and was desperate for something else to tide me over until the next right book came along - Between Silk and Cyanide came off the shelf and I could NOT put it down.
The code war has always been a fascination of mine. I'm convinced that the arm of British Intelligence which created codes for agents working under the most horrific circumstances strong-armed and thwarted the German war machine as handily and Churchill, Montgomery and Eisenhower (better late than never, I always say). These agents of Britain, the Free French and the DeGaulle French (there were two French sections for reasons which are stated in the book but will come as no surprise to anyone who has encountered the French on any level. Talk about Resistance), the Dutch, the Scandinavians were so gallant and selfless.
Leo Marks, young, smart code-maker extraordinaire, does justice to their incredible bravery while providing insight into the machinations of the code war the success of which was paramount to the war effort.
And he's funny. It's rather like Black Adder going forth to fight the war in the quintessentially British fashion with many bewildering dicta handed down from on high without the obvious plausibility of sound judgment. Or so it appears to Marks, at 23, who can recognize a good black market cigar and a pretty FANY when he sees one and also a true hero.
It's technical but like Shakespeare if you read it quickly enough, you get the gist. The miracle is that understatement, self-deprecation and imagination can win a war. Those who have no sense of humour will never conquer.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Wonderful read, wanted more
Comment: I found this via a web search for 84 Charing Cross Road; I started reading the eval pages online, and loved it so much that I ordered it immediately.
I fun and interesting read...I simply didn't want it to end.
I'm getting it for my granddaddy, who was in WWII.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Unputdownable WWII memoir
Comment: I'm surprised to find this wonderful book had no Amazon reviews yet. I offer mine as a stopgap since it's based on memory. The physical book was mailed to a friend several years ago.
I found it remarkable for several reasons: 1) that it concerned an obscure branch of British intelligence of which I'd been ignorant; 2) it was wonderfully readable, straight to the point without being terse (often being laugh-out-loud funny), and 3) it deftly profiled the inner functioning of an often dysfunctional agency charged with life & death security decisions for its field agents in occupied France. The immense consequences of wartime intelligence decisions, and the curiously whimsical internal judgements and happenstance events on which they turn are highlighted with a light-hearted irony that I found irresistible.
If you want a dry catalogue of official events clothed in academic prose and interminable footnotes, skip this. If you read history for insight into human nature or the pure pleasure of a good read this is your book.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Between Silk and Cyanide
Comment: Between Silk and Cyanide is a humorous and engaging account of code making in England during World War II. Leo Marks was not good enough to be sent to Bletchley Park for code breaking, instead he was sent to work on code making and teaching people who were to be sent to Europe how to encode their messages. He was immediately appalled at how insecure the British codes were. The book is about his fight to make better, more secure codes and make sure that no messages that were received where indecipherable.
More Reviews for Between Silk and Cyanide : A Codemaker's War, 1941-1945
Editorial Review for Between Silk and Cyanide : A Codemaker's War, 1941-1945:
In 1942, with a black-market chicken tucked under his arm by his mother, Leo Marks left his father's famous bookshop, 84 Charing Cross Road, and went off to fight the war. He was twenty-two. Soon recognized as a cryptographer of genius, he became head of communications at the Special Operations Executive (SOE), where he revolutionized the codemaking techniques of the Allies and trained some of the most famous agents dropped into occupied Europe. As a top codemaker, Marks had a unique perspective on one of the most fascinating and, until now, little-known aspects of the Second World War. This stunning memoir, often funny, always gripping and acutely sensitive to the human cost of each operation, provides a unique inside picture of the extraordinary SOE organization at work and reveals for the first time many unknown truths about the conduct of the war.
SOE was created in July 1940 with a mandate from Winston Churchill to "set Europe ablaze." Its main function was to infiltrate agents into enemy-occupied territory to perform acts of sabotage and form secret armies in preparation for D-Day. Marks's ingenious codemaking innovation was to devise and implement a system of random numeric codes printed on silk. Camouflaged as handkerchiefs, underwear, or coat linings, these codes could be destroyed message by message, and therefore could not possibly be remembered by the agents, even under torture.
Between Silk and Cyanide chronicles Marks's obsessive quest to improve the security of agents' codes and how this crusade led to his involvement in some of the war's most dramatic and secret operations. Among the astonishing revelations is his account of the code war between SOE and the Germans in Holland. He also reveals for the first time how SOE fooled the Germans into thinking that a secret army was operating in the Fatherland itself, and how and why he broke the code that General de Gaulle insisted be available only to the Free French. By the end of this incredible tale, truly one of the last great World War II memoirs, it is clear why General Eisenhower credited the SOE, particularly its communications department, with shortening the war by three months. From the difficulties of safeguarding the messages that led to the destruction of the atomic weapons plant at Rjukan in Norway to the surveillance of Hitler's long-range missile base at Peenemünde to the true extent of Nazi infiltration of Allied agents, Between Silk and Cyanide sheds light on one of the least-known but most dramatic aspects of the war.
Writing with the narrative flair and vivid characterization of his famous screenplays, Marks gives free rein to his keen sense of the absurd and wry wit without ever losing touch with the very human side of the story. His close relationship with "the White Rabbit" and Violette Szabo -- two of the greatest British agents of the war -- and his accounts of the many others he dealt with result in a thrilling and poignant memoir that celebrates individual courage and endeavor, without losing sight of the human cost and horror of war.
