Codebreakers: The Inside Story of Bletchley Park

by Alan Stripp (Editor), Alan Stripp (Editor), F. H. Hinsley (Editor)

• Used

  Paperback
  1994

  $3.25

  Bletchley Park was arguably the most successful intelligence operation in world history, the top scecret workplace of the remarkable people who cracked Germany's vaunted Enigma Code. Almost to the end of the war, the Germans had firm faith in the Enigma ciphering machine, but in fact the codebreakers were deciphering nearly 4,000 German transmissions daily by 1942. Indeed, Winston Churchill hailed the work of Bletchley Park as the 'secret weapon' that won the war. Only now, nearly half a century since the end of the Second World War, have any of the men and women in this group come forward to tell this remarkable story in their own words - a story that an oath of secrecy long prevented them from revealing. In Codebreakers , F. H. Hinsley and Alan Stripp have gathered together twenty-seven first-hand accounts of the most amazing feats in intelligence history. These engaging memoirs, each written by a different member of the codebreakers team, recount the long hours working in total secrecy and the feelings of camaraderie, tension, excitement, and frustration as these men and women, both British and American, did some of the most important work of the war. This book is intended for readers interested in the Second World War and Intelligence work; historians of the Second World War, cryptography, intelligence.

• Used

  Hardcover
  1993

  $3.25

  This is a colourful and authentic account of daily life and work at Government Communications Headquarters, Bletchley Park, the most successful intelligence agency in history. By 1942 the codebreakers of Bletchley Park and its out-stations were breaking some 4,000 German signals a day, and almost as many from Italy and Japan, eavesdropping on enemy communications up to the highest levels of command. Their colleagues used these decrypts to produce Ultra intelligence which gave a detailed, accurate, and up-to-date picture of enemy strengths, weaknesses, and intentions. The codebreakers' contribution to the war effort was invaluable: Churchill described them as the 'secret weapon' that 'won the war'. For the first time a group of the men and women who worked on this top-secret enterprise have combined to write their story in full. Here, they vividly describe their recruitment and training, their feelings and activities, and recall in detail their successes and failures.