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

Outstanding!

This book is great! Highly recommended to everybody interested in World War II History and historical aspects of cryptoanalysis.

Fills in a critical part of WWII history.

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.

Fascinating; lots of detail

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.

Biased.Too Anglo-American centric

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.

Really complete story!!

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.