Enigma: The Battle for the Code

by Hugh Sebag-Montefiore

Overview

ACCLAIM FOR ENIGMA

“CRACKING STUFF…VIVID AND HITHERTO UNKNOWN DETAILS.” –Sunday Times (London)

“IN A CROWD OF BOOKS DEALING WITH THE ALLIED BREAKING OF THE WORLD WAR II CIPHER MACHINE ENIGMA, HUGH SEBAG-MONTEFIORE HAS SCORED A SCOOP.” –Washington Post

Winston Churchill called the cracking of the German Enigma Code “the secret weapon that won the war.” Now, for the first time, noted British journalist Hugh-Sebag-Montefiore reveals the complete story of the breaking of the code by the Allies—the breaking that played a crucial role in the outcome of World War II.

This fascinating account relates the never-before-told, hair-raising stories of the heroic British and American sailors, spies, and secret agents who faced death in order to capture vital codebooks from sinking ships and snatch them from under the noses of Nazi officials. Sebag-Montefiore also relates new details about the genesis of the code, little-known facts about how the Poles first cracked the Luftwaffe’s version of the code (and then passed it along to the British), and the feverish activities at Bletchley Park, Based in part on documents recently unearthed from American and British archives—including previously confidential government files—and in part on unforgettable, firsthand accounts of surviving witnesses, Enigma unearths the stunning truth about the brilliant piece of decryption that changed history.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780471490357
Publisher:	TURNER PUB CO
Publication date:	02/01/2004
Edition description:	First Edition
Pages:	448
Sales rank:	559,896
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.40(h) x 1.17(d)

About the Author

HUGH SEBAG-MONTEFIORE is an attorney and journalist who has written for numerous British newspapers, including the Sunday times, the Sunday Telegraph, and the Observer. His family owned Bletchley Park before it was sold to the British government in the late 1930s. He lives in London.

Read an Excerpt

Chapter 1: The Betrayal Belgium and Germany

1931 On Sunday r November 19 3 r Hans Thilo Schmidt, a forty-three-yearold executive at the German Defence Ministry Cipher Office in Berlin, took a step from which there was no turning back. He booked into the Grand Hotel in Verviers, a small Belgium town on the border with Germany, for his first meeting with a French Secret Service agent. Schmidt had been contemplating making this move for months. During June 19 3 z he had paid a visit to the French Embassy in Berlin to find out who he should contact in Paris if he wanted to sell some secret documents to the French government.' Three weeks later he had followed up the advice given by the Embassy staff and had written a letter to the French Deuxieme Bureau, the umbrella organisation which on France's behalf carried out many of the task performed in Britain by MI 5 and MI 6.2 In his letter he explained that he had access to documents which might be of interest to France, and he specifically mentioned that he was in a position to hand over the manuals for a coding machine which had been used in Germany since June 1930. If the Deuxieme Bureau was interested he was happy to meet up with its representative in Belgium or Holland, he wrote. It was in response to this letter that the meeting in Verviers had been arranged, and the scene was set for Schmidt's first act of treachery.

In normal circumstances Schmidt would probably never have considered becoming a traitor. He was just an average man from an upper-middle-class background with no political agenda or burning ambition to be successful. Although his mother had been born a baroness, she was not rich. She had lost her title when she had married Hans Thilo's father, Rudolf Schmidt, a university history professor. Hans Thilo's circumstances had improved a little in when at the age of twenty-eight he had married Charlotte Speer, the daughter of a well-to-do hat-maker. Charlotte's mother's family business, C.A. Speer, ran a shop in Potsdamerstrasse in Berlin which was the place for smart Germans to go for their umbrellas, walking sticks and of course their hats. The profits from this shop helped to pay for Hans Thilo and Charlotte's wedding present, some land and a house in Ketschendorf, a rural area, now part of Furstenwalde, just outside Berlin.

But then came the galloping inflation and the economic downturn which forced the Speers to close their shop. All of a sudden Hans Thilo's prospects looked far from rosy. He was fortunate that his father and his brother, another Rudolf, were prepared to help him out with his domestic expenses. Hans Thilo and Charlotte had two children by the time the economic depression began to bite and, although he had his job in the Cipher Office thanks to an introduction arranged by his brother, his salary was barely enough to keep himself, let alone his young family.

His first act of betrayal had nothing to do with matters of state. He betrayed his wife by having an affair with his maid. Presumably Hans Thilo must have hoped that his wife would never find out what went on when she was out of the house. But if he wanted to be discreet, he certainly went about it in a half-hearted way. His children, Hans-Thilo the younger and Gisela, knew exactly what was going on. They quickly realised that they had to tip-toe around their small Ketschendorf house in case they barged in on something which they and their father might have found extremely embarrassing. Sometimes they could hear the sound of their father and the maid making love in the spare room when their mother was out shopping. It was to be the first of many such affairs. His children at first had no idea whether their mother knew about her husband's philandering. They suspected that she did not. But they did notice that from time to time one maid would disappear only to be replaced by a more ugly substitute. Then their father would start off another seduction ritual until the next maid disappeared.

Hans Thilo's extramarital affairs were not confined to his maids. He also had sexual encounters when he stayed the night in Berlin; he claimed that he had to work late in the office. His sister Martha would try to cover his tracks when Charlotte, his wife, attempted to ring him at Martha's flat where he was supposed to be staying. 'He has just gone shopping,' Martha would tell Charlotte...

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations.

Acknowledgements.

Introduction.

Prologue.

1. The Betrayal: Belgium and Germany, 1931.

2. The Leak: Poland, Belgium and Germany, 1929-38.

3. An Inspired Guess: Poland, 1932.

4. A Terrible Mistake: Poland, 1933-9.

5. Flight: Germany, Poland and England, 1939-40.

6. The First Capture: Scotland, 1940.

7. Mission Impossible: Norway and Bletchley Park, 1940.

8. Keeping the Enigma Secret: France and Bletchley Park, May-September 1940.

9. Deadlock: Bletchley Park, August-October, 1940.

10. The Italian Affair: Bletchley Park and Mediterranean, March 1941.

11. The End of the Beginning: Norway. March 1941.

12. Breakthrough: North of Ireland, May 1941.

13. Operation Primrose: The Atlantic, May 1941.

14. The Knock-Out Blow: North of Ireland, June 1941.

15. Suspicion: Bletchley Park, the Atlantic and Berlin, may-October 1941.

16. A Two-Edged Sword: The Atlantic and the Cape Verde Islands, September 1941.

17. Living Dangerously: The South Atlantic and Norway, November 1941-Marhc1942.

18. The Hunt for the Bigram Tables: Bletchley Park and Norway, December 1941.

19. Black Out: The Barents Sea, Bletchley Park and the Admiralty, February-July 1942.

20. Breaking the Deadlock: The Mediterranean and Bletchley Park, October-December 1942.

21. The Turning Point: South of France, the Mediterranean and the Atlantic, November 1942-September 1943.

22. Trapped: South of France, November 1942-March 1943.

23. The Arrest: Berlin, march-September 1943.

24. Sinking the Scharnhorst: The Barents Sea, December 1943.

25. Operation Covered: Paris, the Indian Ocean and the Atlantic, August 1943-March 1944.

26. The Last Hiccough: Germany, France and the South Atlantic, March-June 1944.

Epilogue – Where did they go?

Chronology.

Glossary.

Appendix 1. Polish Codebreaking Techniques.

Appendix 2. The Bombe.

Appendix 3. Naval Enigma.

Appendix 4. Cillis.

Appendix 5. Rodding.

Appendix 6. Naval Enigma Offizier.

Notes.

Bibliography.

Index.

Editorial Reviews

The Barnes & Noble Review
In Enigma: The Battle for the Code, Hugh Sebag-Montefiore tells the secret history of World War II -- the remarkable struggle of Allied cryptanalysts to break the secret "Enigma" code employed by the mighty German military machine. The story begins in 1931 with Hans Thilo Schmidt's money problems. Many Germans were having similar difficulties at that time, but Schmidt came up with a unique solution. Using his officer brother's connections, he got a job in the government bureau that guarded the secret German military code. Smart and well educated, Schmidt had a penchant for the company of women other than his wife, felt like the world owed him a living, and had no qualms about trading government secrets for money. One he gained access to the codebooks that contained the setting for the Enigma machine, which was designed to transmit undecipherable secret messages, Schmidt was quickly able to pique the interest of the French intelligence service.

Once the French had purchased Schmidt's information, they realized that they still didn't have enough to read the Germans' secret messages. While maintaining contact with Schmidt, they made some inquiries among the British and the Poles to find out what these allies might know about Enigma. The British were keen to learn more, while the Poles secretly had a head start in breaking the code. With the outbreak of World War II and the German invasion of Poland in 1939, the Polish cryptanalysts sought refuge in France. As it became apparent that France would suffer a fate similar to Poland's, the code-breaking torch was passed to Britain.

Alan Turing, a brilliant young mathematician and one of the fathers of modern computers, built on the work of the Poles to develop a "bombe" machine that could help decipher the remarkably complex Enigma settings that were used to encrypt and transmit messages. But due to the Germans' convoluted and regularly changing encoding system, Turing and his colleagues could not read the secret messages as quickly as the war effort demanded. Faced with ever-mounting U-boat attacks on their supply convoys, the Royal Navy launched a successful series of operations that enabled them to capture the essential codebooks from German warships. Though German commanders were concerned about how much the Allies might learn, their intelligence experts convinced them that it was practically impossible to break the Enigma code. As a result, Allied cryptanalysts were able to decipher German military communications for the remainder of the war, enabling the Allies to defeat Germany at least two years earlier than they otherwise would have; without this advantage, they might not have won the war at all.

There's plenty of battle action in this book, as well as a wealth of technical detail about how the encoding and decoding machines worked. Anyone interested in World War II, spies, codes, or computers -- or who enjoys reading about the eccentricities of British intellectuals -- will find Enigma fascinating and exciting. With access to many newly declassified sources, Sebag-Montefiore has produced the first comprehensive -- and, most likely, the definitive -- study of the Enigma phenomenon.

William T. Wells lives in Winston-Salem, North Carolina.

bn.com

Sebag-Montefiore (British attorney and journalist) utilized newly-discovered American and British archive documents, previously- confidential government files, and accounts of several survivors to develop this comprehensive exploration of the breaking of the German Enigma code by the Allies in WWII. Using an engaging, narrative style, the author describes in detail the work of the decoders at Bletchley Park (Britain's WWII counterintelligence station, and home of the author's ancestors until the late-1930s). He also recounts the previously-untold story of numerous British and American sailors, spies and secret agents who risked<-->and sometimes lost<-->their lives gathering information vital to the eventual success of the codebreakers, and critical to the outcome of WWII. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Booknews

It wasn't only a crew of eccentric English mathematicians with brains the size of basketballs who cracked the Germans' Enigma code during WWII, but a whole cast of spies and soldiers as well, says journalist Sebag-Montefiore in this magnetic story of breaking the cipher. Not that Sebag-Montefiore downplays the inspired contributions of those famed cryptographers at Bletchley Park (including Alan Turing, the eccentric genius who used to pedal his bike about the countryside wearing a gas mask and kept his coffee mug chained to a radiator). The author spends plenty of time detailing their toils, complete with code-smashing math in appendices. But other players were involved, as well as the workings of fate and dumb luck. There was also more than one Enigma code, and each was more vexing than the last. There were spies who sold early versions of the code to the French, whole companies of men assigned to raiding German vessels (particularly U-boats) for Enigma machines, and an important cast of Polish codebreakers and intelligence officers. Sebag-Montefiore does a masterful job of keeping the suspense ticking as he fills in all the details, for as he makes clear, it was not just breaking the code that was critical, it was keeping that knowledge a secret so as to exploit the information. What made it all so cat-and-mouse—and what keeps the reader on the edge of the seat—was that the Germans were suspicious that Enigma had been compromised (but never enough so to stop using it), Gestapo agents in occupied France were arresting individuals who knew the extent of Allied progress on Enigma, and the Allies themselves didn't know what had been divulged. The fate of theinvasionatNormandy hung in the balance. The Enigma story continues to enthrall and delight, even after 50 years and a few dozen accounts: don't miss this one. (photos, not seen)

Kirkus Reviews