Skip to content

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

Best in textbook rentals since 2012!

ISBN-10: 0743217349

ISBN-13: 9780743217347

Edition: 2002

Authors: Stephen Budiansky

List price: $28.95
Blue ribbon 30 day, 100% satisfaction guarantee!
what's this?
Rush Rewards U
Members Receive:
Carrot Coin icon
XP icon
You have reached 400 XP and carrot coins. That is the daily max!

A million pages of new World War II codebreaking records have been released by the U.S. Army and Navy and the British government over the last five years. Now,Battle of Witspresents the history of the war that these documents reveal. From the battle of Midway until the last German code was broken in January 1945, this is an astonishing epic of a war that was won not simply by brute strength but also by reading the enemy's intentions. The revelations of Stephen Budiansky's dramatic history include how Britain tried to manipulate the American codebreakers and monopolize German Enigma code communications; the first detailed published explanations of how the Japanese codes were broken; and how…    
Customers also bought

Book details

List price: $28.95
Copyright year: 2002
Publisher: Free Press
Publication date: 4/9/2002
Binding: Paperback
Pages: 448
Size: 6.00" wide x 9.00" long x 1.10" tall
Weight: 0.946
Language: English

Stephen Budiansky, scientist & journalist, is a correspondent for "The Atlantic Monthly." His five highly acclaimed books include "If a Lion Could Talk: Animal Intelligence & the Evolution of Consciousness" & "The Nature of Horses." He lives in Leesburg, Virginia.

List of Maps
Prologue: Midway
"No Good, Not Even for Intelligence"
The end of the Black Chamber
William F. Friedman picks up the pieces
"I had the good sense to get out of it!"
Room 40
Winston Churchill, an early convert
The Foreign Office, a late convert
The Soviet intercepts
A strategic failure for intelligence
Nature of the Beast
The birth of codebreaking
Machine ciphers, Poland, and the Enigma
Depth reading
The distinct limitations of thievery
Solving the Red machine
"Il y a du Nouveau"
1939, a dark new year
Meeting at Pyry Forest
Marian Rejewski's mathematical feat
Recovering the daily Enigma keys
Alan Turing and other "men of the professor type"
Bletchley Park
The Poles' flight
Fighting Back
British mathematicians vs. the Enigma
The bombe takes shape
"A pile of dull, disjointed, and enigmatic scraps"
Cryptanalytic talent
Norway and Yellow
France and Red
HMS Glorious
Impossible Problems
The sinking of U-33
Naval Enigma and the bombe
Operation Ruthless and other straws
American isolationism
Purple
The British charm offensive
A mission to Bletchley, bearing gifts
Success Breeds Success
The Blitz
Cape Matapan
Boniface, Barbarossa, and Bismarck
Naval Enigma, U-110, and the trawler pinches
The eastern front and German atrocities
Trafalgar Day
Cribs and continuity
The Machines
The British make polite noises
IBM machines and JN-25
The machine attack on Floradora
Washington at war
Military vs. civilians
An American ultimatum
Better bombes
High-speed analyzers
Paranoia Is Our Profession
Donitz's suspicions
The evacuation of Corregidor
The Midway leak
Some bungled operations
"Do Not Talk at Meals"
Suspicions among friends
The Shadow War
Calling the shots in the Mediterranean
Torch and deception
The flight from Vichy
Atlantic convoys
U-559 and the breaking of Shark
The hunt for leaks
The American invasion
Pressures and diversions
Women in uniform
Command of the Ether
Russian espionage and Project Venona
GEE and Fish
Masters of deception
Yamamoto
The Water Transport code
Failure in the Ardennes
Signaling the end
Epilogue: Legacy
Appendixes
Chronology
Naval Enigma: Its Indicating System and the Method of "Banburismus"
Cryptanalysis of the Purple Machine
The Intercept Network
Rapid Analytical Machinery (RAM)
Notes
Glossary and Abbreviations
Bibliography
Acknowledgments
Index