Battle of Wits: The Complete Story of Codebreaking in World War II - Hardcover

Budiansky, Stephen

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0670884928 ISBN 13: 9780670884926

Publisher: Viking, 2000

Synopsis

Over the last two years, nearly 5,000 documents detailing US and British codebreaking during WWII have been declassified. These include the complete notebooks of Alan Turing, full texts of deciphered U-boat cables, and master cryptanalyst William Friedman's diagram of the Japanese purple cipher machine - which he deduced without ever having seen the actual device. By drawing on these files, plus numerous other documents and oral histories, Stephen Budiansky has written a gripping narrative ofcodebreaking during the war.

About this title

Review

The story of the codebreakers in World War II is a rift that is in danger of being exhausted. There have been a number of outstanding books about the British efforts centred on Bletchley Park, while Simon Singh's recent study of code making and breaking throughout history is a wonderful read. Nevertheless, in this substantial (430 pages) overview of all the Allied efforts in the field, 1939 to 1945, Stephen Budiansky does manage to find some fascinating new material, thanks largely to his having access to recently declassified documents. Budiansky has the added advantage of a master's degree in applied mathematics from Harvard, and so can lead us through the complexities of the Enigma machine, for instance, with great assurance. His grasp of the wider social and historical background to the war is also good. He characterises London during the phoney war as a place where one in five people (according to an official Gallup poll) were injured, ignominiously, not from German bombing raids, but by knocking into cars, lamp-posts or each other during blackouts. Budiansky's field of vision is global, unlike that of his predecessors, and that is his strength. He covers not only the tense, brilliant atmosphere around Alan Turing and the boffins of Bletchley Park, but also the war of letters and ciphers around the Battle of Midway, the Eastern Front, the sinking of the Bismarck, the Torch operation (the Allied landings in North Africa), and the final, desperate German offensive in the Ardennnes, in all of which the codebreakers played a crucial role. You will have to be pretty interested in the whole subject to read a work of this size--but it is certainly a thoroughly researched and impressive account, and the most definitive yet. --Christopher Hart

Synopsis

Based on newly declassified documents, this is the first complete story of Allied code-breaking in World War II - the compelling tale of codebreaking's golden age. In 1939 cryptoanalysis was in its infancy, its practitioners' skills rudimentary and untried. The codebreakers faced huge barriers of official indifference and - from the military bureaucracy - even contempt for their work. Yet during the course of the war these men and women accomplished extraordinary feats of mathematical wizardry that turned the tide of many critical battles. New Stephen Budiansky tells their story. From the fight against the Nazi U-boats in the Atlantic, to the climactic showdown against Yamamoto's aircraft carriers at Midway, and the success of the D-Day invasion, "Battle of Wits" reveals the "shadow war" that lay behind the famous events of World War II, and breathes life into unsung heroes whose work has been wrapped in secrecy for decades.

Edition details

• Publisher: Viking
• Publication date: 2000
• ISBN 10: 0670884928
• ISBN 13: 9780670884926
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 448