CarefulShopper1

Fascinating Story - I learned a lot

Revisado: 08-24-16

Would you recommend this audiobook to a friend? If so, why?

I would definitely recommend this book.

It tells the story behind the challenge to break the German U-Boat communications that was the key to the Allies reducing the toll of sunken ships and associated loss of lives and materials critical to fighting and ultimately winning the war. It provides interesting background stories of the players including several unsung heroes (including the Poles) that led to the ultimate success in the Battle of the Atlantic. Unlike other books and TV documentaries I've read/seen that have told a rather simplistic story about cracking Enigma (which apparently didn't actually occur in a sustained way until the very end of the war), this book tells the more nuanced story of the hard detailed grunt work and multiple approaches that gradually (and periodically) improved the ability of the allies to get more timely and accurate information on German plans, even as the the codes and methods evolved.

Particularly fascinating to me was seeing how successes were often the result of taking advantage in weaknesses in well-intentioned German implementation procedures rather than in Enigma itself. For example, the author points out that the German guidance that a code should never repeat the same character -- guidance that is usually applied to modern passwords to this day -- actually weakened the overall strength of the encryption by eliminating an entire letter from consideration. As another example, the practice of sometimes send out the exact same message both to Navy warships using Enigma and other vessels using a lesser (i.e. cracked) coding method would provide a template for reverse-engineering the enigma key (another practice that would still apply today).

Bernard Mayes' has a nice voice with an even cadence that I generally found enjoyable. Much of the book is telling a highly suspenseful story, and in these sections his even cadence let's the natural excitement of the book shine through.

However, as noted by other reviewers, there are places where the book goes into fairly dense levels of detail, and in these sections Mr. Mayes' even cadence can be very slow going. Had I been reading the book in paper format I would have just skimmed these denser sections, going to re-read any that I found interesting or useful, but that's not possible in the audio format. And, I didn't want to just skip these sections as the background being provided is important to the overall understanding of the book.

Then I got the idea to mimic skimming by using the Audible Apps Narration Speed control and the Jump Back button. When set to about 1.2-1.3x speed, the reading still sounded natural but went by at a fast enough pace that kept my interest. And whenever a section proved interesting but I felt I might have missed something, I would hit the Jump Back button to re-listen to 30 or 60 seconds. Then, when the story resumed, I would go back to normal 1x speed.

All-in-all, it's a great story that's well told and provides lessons that are still useful today. I highly recommend it.

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