{"id":7400,"date":"2018-08-13T08:12:23","date_gmt":"2018-08-13T12:12:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=7400"},"modified":"2018-10-05T09:13:02","modified_gmt":"2018-10-05T13:13:02","slug":"the-cypher-bureau","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=7400","title":{"rendered":"****The Cypher Bureau"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Enigma

PX Here, creative commons license<\/p><\/div>\n

By Eilidh McGinness \u2013 This fictionalized history of the breaking of the Germans\u2019 Enigma code methods in World War II is as tense as any thriller and more consequential, based, as it is, on true events.<\/p>\n

Although readers around the world are familiar with the accomplishments of Alan Turing and the British code-breaking team at Bletchley Park\u2014most recently popularized in the Benedict Cumberbatch movie, The Imitation Game<\/em>\u2014the substantial contribution of youthful Polish mathematicians to the unraveling of the Nazis\u2019 coding system is less well known. This novelization of the life of Polish mathematician Marian Rejewski and his colleagues attempts to fill this historical blank spot.<\/p>\n

As children, Rejewski and his two friends and fellow mathematics stars, Henry Zygalski and Jerzy Rozycki, lived through the German occupation and depredations of the First World War. Now, on the cusp of completing their university studies, war clouds are once again amassing on their country\u2019s western border, and the Polish authorities are desperate to expose the Germans\u2019 secrets and help foil their plans.<\/p>\n

Rejewski, Zygalski, and Rozycki are successfully recruited to work for the Cypher Bureau, although, as invasion approaches, the danger of such work grows by the by day. They have successfully solved numerous important decryption problems, yet Rejewski longs for a chance to try cracking the Enigma\u2014the coding machine the Germans considered unbreakable. Finally, he gets this super-secret assignment. Thanks to documents obtained by French intelligence and the lucky acquisition of an Enigma machine, he is able to reconstruct its internal wiring. Once that is accomplished, the method for determining the master key for a given day is the remaining challenge.<\/p>\n

The insight that allows his breakthrough is not mathematical or technical, it is psychological. Having had German tutors in his youth, Rejewski knows how they think. As the author of the book on which The Imitation Game<\/em> was based wrote about the Poles, \u201cThey had not broken the machine<\/em>, they had beaten the system<\/em>.\u201d<\/p>\n

Once Germany invades Poland, the code-breaking team flees, working its way across Europe, stopping briefly here and there to decode messages, deal with Germany\u2019s efforts to make Enigma increasingly complex, and making hair\u2019s-breadth escapes from the enemy. Although this book aims to be a true account and the writing style is never hyperbolic, its substance is akin to an action thriller.<\/p>\n

The bravery and intellectual contributions of the Polish mathematicians and their team is clear. Equally so is the commitment of a great many people in Poland and elsewhere to keeping the secret of their accomplishments. Not one person ever revealed this information throughout the long years of the war, and the Germans never knew they\u2019d been hacked. This in itself is an astonishing feat!<\/p>\n

As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. Click the photo below to order this book.
\n<\/a>\"\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Eilidh McGinness \u2013 This fictionalized history of the breaking of the Germans\u2019 Enigma code methods in World War II is as tense as any thriller and more consequential, based, as it is, on true events. Although readers around the … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"****The Cypher Bureau - sometimes a true story is more exciting than fiction. How young Polish math stars broke the Nazi codes.","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[366,193,40,266,126,186],"tags":[1375,416,1374,129],"class_list":["post-7400","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-drama","category-espionage","category-fiction","category-history","category-reading-2","category-technology","tag-eilidh-mcginness","tag-real-life","tag-the-cypher-bureau","tag-wars-and-conflicts"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2NkiT-1Vm","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7400","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7400"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7400\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7504,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7400\/revisions\/7504"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7400"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7400"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7400"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}