Seizing the Enigma: The Race to Break the German U-Boat Codes, 1939-1945, Revised Edition - Paperback

by David Kahn (Author)

Seizing the Enigma tells the thrilling story of the Royal Navy's battle to crack the Germans' supposedly unbreakable U-boat Enigma code, which would allow the vital Allied convoys in the North Atlantic to be routed away from Dönitz's wolfpacks. This battle was fought both on shore and at sea: by an assortment of scientists, chess champions and linguists, including Alan Turing, the father of the modern computer, who struggled to crack Enigma at Bletchley Park, and in the Atlantic by sailors and intelligence officers, such as Ian Fleming, the future creator of James Bond, who undertook dangerous and often fatal missions to seize the essential encryption keys and Enigma machine components from Kriegsmarine surface ships and U-boats. Kahn expertly brings this unparalleled intelligence operation to life in this revised paperback edition of his classic book.

Author Biography

David Kahn holds a PhD in history from Oxford University. He worked for thirty years as a journalist in New York and Paris, and taught intelligence courses at Yale and Columbia. In 2002, he was scholar-in-residence at the National Security Agency in Washington, D.C. His massive history of cryptology, The Codebreakers, is still considered the standard work on the subject.