German Naval Code Breakers
by Jack P. Mallmann Showell
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The story of the secret German Naval Radio Monitoring Service of World War II.Tags
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When in doubt, you can never go wrong buying a book by Jak Mallmann Showell whom I consider the foremost authority on U-Boats in the world. Although he is English, he was born in Germany in 1943 and his natural father was killed in action that same year aboard a Uboat. This is an excellent book on many levels but first and foremost it reminds us that while the Germans did not have a code-breaking success anywhere close to Ultra, they were damned good code breakers and broke almost all Allied maritime ciphers except for the very top ones.
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40 Works 573 Members
Common Knowledge
- People/Characters
- Heinz Bonatz
- First words
- The history if the German Naval Radio Monitoring Service or Funkbeobachtungsdienst, better known as the B-Dienst, is still clouded in deep mystery. Surprisingly, many naval histories scarcely mention it nd there appear to be ... (show all)no specialists' books in English on this fascinating subject.
- Quotations
- Academics were also sought [to join the code-breaking departments], but these had to be carefully selected because a high proportion of them had little experience with the practicalities of life and they easily allowed themse... (show all)lves to become bogged down with theoretical explorations, without finding a practical solution to their problems. (pp. 27)
Germany made the big mistake of thinking much of this highly sensitive intelligence should be carried out by men with sea-going experience.... By contrast, Britain realised that providing men with recent fighting experience w... (show all)as not the answer to the problem and recruited a large number of technical experts to analyze the highly specialized information. (pp. 34) - Last words
- (Click to show. Warning: May contain spoilers.)[In 1945] The German Navy assisted in evacuationg well over two million people from the Baltic regions under desperately cold conditions, over vast distances of several hundred miles and under the most painfully chaotic circumstances but if the B-Dienst did make any significant inroads in helping this mass of humanity, records of those achievements were not preserved in the chaos. (pp. 139)
Classifications
- Genres
- Nonfiction, History
- DDC/MDS
- 940.548743 — History & geography History of Europe History of Europe 1918- Military history of World War II Other Topics Unconventional warfare of Axis powers Intelligence operations
- LCC
- D810 .C88 .S57 — History of Europe, Asia, Africa and Oceania History (General) World War II (1939-1945)
Statistics
- Members
- 24
- Popularity
- 1,105,479
- Reviews
- 1
- Rating
- (3.75)
- Languages
- English
- Media
- Paper
- ISBNs
- 2
- ASINs
- 1
