Book Review the Secret War by Michael Paterson

One of the factors that allowed the Allies to win the Second World War was the fact that many of the Axis communications were being read by the military leaders of the Allies. The Secret War: The Inside Story of the Code Makers and Code Breakers of World War II, by Michal Paterson, details how this turn of events came about.

The fact that the security of the Axis communications had been breached was a secret closely guarded during the war. Furthermore, it would take another thirty years after the war ended for the secret to be revealed by the British Government. The loosing of secrecy allowed those who were involved in the work of breaking the Axis codes and ciphers to reveal what they had been doing during the conflict.

According to Robert Harris, who wrote the foreword, "At its peak, Bletchley was decrypting 10,000 enemy signals per day." The decoded messages were taken to the upper echelon of Allied Command and were "Eyes Only." No copies were allowed to be kept of the messages, for fear that the Axis Powers would learn of Bletchley Park's ability to read their communications.

The Secret Wars starts off with relating why breaking the codes and ciphers was such important work, and how difficult the work was. Much of the work was done at Bletchley Park. During the course of the code breaking, several important developments in the field of computer science occurred.

Much of the information from this book is first person accounts of how it felt to work at Bletchley Park. This makes the book extremely valuable to those taking undergraduate courses dealing with World War II history; there is always a need to locate books with adequate primary document material in them. The book would also be useful for writers of espionage and adventure fiction set during this time period.

The fact that many of the codes used by the Axis powers were cracked has resulted in a reevaluation of leaders on both sides of the conflict. While this book contains just a thimbleful of the information that was decoded, it does throw light on the defeats suffered by Hitler and his military.

After dealing with the living conditions at Bletchley Park, Paterson goes on to provide overviews of the importance of the deciphered messages during the air battle for Britain, the war in the Atlantic, North Africa and Italy, the buildup towards D-Day and the European campaign, and the war in the Pacific. Paterson also includes a chapter detailing the problems that faced the Resistance, who depended upon coded and enciphered messages to communicate with the leadership in Britain. Throughout the book are accounts of how the Allied military reacted to the presence of the code-breakers.

Of special interest is the quest to break the messages encoded by the German Enigma machine. One of the surprising facts that can be learned from this book is the role that Poland played in this struggle before their country was overran by the Nazi.

Thanks to the primary source material, the characters of those who were working at Bletchley Park come alive. I highly recommend this book to those who are interested in the intelligence end of the war. It is also valuable for those who are studying the history of various campaigns and battles, giving an idea of the insider information that informed many of the Allied decisions.

Michael Paterson. The Secret War: The Inside Story of the Code Makers and Code Breakers of World War II. Foreword by Robert Harris. Cincinnati: David & Charles (2007).