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

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 HartRead More