Seizing the Enigma: The Race to Break the German U-boat Codes, 1939-1943

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Seizing the Enigma tells the story of one of the great dramas of World War II. A multinational corps of cryptologists struggled to break the German U-boat codes that were helping Nazi submarine wolfpacks tear at the lifeline between America and Britain. But these codebreakers realised that German messages could not be read without obtaining the encryption keys from the ships that held them. Several daring captures at sea of critical documents and encryption machines by the Royal Navy finally led to mastering the U-boat codes. Kahn begins his narrative with the creation of the Enigma machine in 1918 and its refinement during the two decades leading up to World War II. He introduces key figures on both sides of the battle including: Arthur Scherbius, who gave the Germans a boost in the race between codemaker and codebreaker and Polish mathematician Marian Rejewski, who reconstructed the Enigma keys. Since its original publication in 1961, Seizing the Enigma has remained a vital source of information about Enigma and the art of codebreaking.