Book Review: How I Discovered World War II's Greatest Spy 102
benrothke (2577567) writes "When it comes to documenting the history of cryptography, David Kahn is singularly one of the finest, if not the finest writers in that domain. For anyone with an interest in the topic, Kahn's works are read in detail and anticipated. His first book was written almost 50 years ago: The Codebreakers – The Story of Secret Writing; which was a comprehensive overview on the history of cryptography. Other titles of his include Seizing the Enigma: The Race to Break the German U-Boats Codes, 1939-1943. The Codebreakers was so good and so groundbreaking, that some in the US intelligence community wanted the book banned. They did not bear a grudge, as Kahn became an NSA scholar-in-residence in the mid 1990's. With such a pedigree, many were looking forward, including myself, to his latest book How I Discovered World War IIs Greatest Spy and Other Stories of Intelligence and Code. While the entire book is fascinating, it is somewhat disingenuous, in that there is no new material in it. Many of the articles are decades old, and some go back to the late 1970's. From the book description and cover, one would get the impression that this is an all new work. But it is not until ones reads the preface, that it is detailed that the book is simple an assemblage of collected articles." Keep reading for the rest of Ben's review.
For those that are long-time fans of Kahn, there is nothing new in the book. For those that want a wide-ranging overview of intelligence, espionage and codebreaking, the book does provide that. | How I Discovered World War IIs Greatest Spy and Other Stories of Intelligence and Code | |
| author | David Kahn |
| pages | 469 |
| publisher | Auerbach Publications |
| rating | 8/10 |
| reviewer | Ben Rothke |
| ISBN | 978-1466561991 |
| summary | Very good collection of a large number of excellent articles from David Kahn |
The book gets its title from a 2007 article in which Kahn tracked down whom he felt was the greatest spy of World War 2. That was none other than Hans-Thilo Schmidt, who sold information about the Enigma cipher machine to the French. That information made its way to Marian Rejewski of Poland, which lead to the ability of the Polish military to read many Enigma-enciphered communications.
An interesting question Kahn deals with is the old conspiracy theory that President Franklin Roosevelt and many in is administration knew about the impending attack on Pearl Harbor. He writes that the theory is flawed for numerous reasons. Kahn notes that the attack on Pearl Harbor succeeded because of Japan's total secrecy about the attack. Even the Japanese ambassador's in Washington, D.C., whose messages the US was reading were never told of the attack.
Chapter 4 from 1984 is particularly interesting which deals with how the US viewed Germany and Japan in 1941. Kahn writes that part of the reason the US did not anticipate a Japanese attack was due to racist attitudes. The book notes that many Americans viewed the Japanese as a bucktoothed and bespectacled nation.
Chapter 10 Why Germany's intelligence failed in World War II, is one of the most interesting chapters in the book. It is from Kahn's 1978 book Hitlers Spies: German Military Intelligence In World War II.
In the Allies vs. the Axis, the Allies were far from perfect. Battles at Norway, Arnhem and the Bulge were met with huge losses. But overall, the Allies enjoyed significant success in their intelligence, much of it due to their superiority in verbal intelligence because of their far better code-breaking. Kahn writes that the Germans in contrast, were glaringly inferior.
Kahn writes that there were five basic factors that led to the failure of the Germans, namely: unjustified arrogance, which caused them to lose touch with reality; aggression, which led to a neglect of intelligence; a power struggle within the officer corps, which made many generals hostile to intelligence; the authority structure of the Nazi state, which gravely impaired its intelligence, and anti-Semitism, which deprived German intelligence of many brains.
The Germans negative attitude towards intelligence went all the way back to World War I, when in 1914 the German Army was so certain of success that many units left their intelligence officers behind. Jump to 1941 and Hitler invaded Russia with no real intelligence preparation. This arrogance, which broke Germany's contact with reality, also prevented intelligence from seeking to resume that contact.
Other interesting stories in the book include how the US spied on the Vatican in WW2, the great spy capers between the US and Soviets, and more.
For those that want a broad overview of the recent history of cryptography, spying and military intelligence, How I Discovered World War IIs Greatest Spy and Other Stories of Intelligence and Code, is an enjoyable, albeit somewhat disjointed summary of the topic.
The best part of the book is its broad scope. With topics from Edward Bell and his Zimmermann Telegram memoranda, cryptology and the origins of spread spectrum, to Nothing Sacred: The Allied Solution of Vatican Codes in World War II and a historical theory of intelligence, the book provides a macro view of the subject. The down side is that this comes at the cost of the 30 chapters being from almost as many different books and articles, over the course of almost 40 years.
For those that are avid readers of David Kahn, of which there are many, this title will not be anything new. For those that have read some of Kahn's other works and are looking for more, How I Discovered World War IIs Greatest Spy will be an enjoyable read.
Reviewed by Ben Rothke.
You can purchase How I Discovered World War IIs Greatest Spy and Other Stories of Intelligence and Code from amazon.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews (sci-fi included) -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.
germany ran out of people (Score:2)
they started so many wars that they didn't have enough people to replace their losses and after a while the allies' industrial might out produced the german army
battle of the bulge the US army was sending high school kids straight off the boat with no equipment and no training into battle. when they died, there were more of them. not so for german losses
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Speculative history being what it is, here's my $0.02. If Hitler were more rational, he wouldn't have become Chancellor. I think it takes a nut to get to where he got, but then because of his nuttiness the whole thing falls apart.
Not to compare Steve Jobs to Hilter in terms of morality; but there are people who say, "If only he hadn't been so arrogant as to believe that alternative medicine could cure his cancer". I think there's a similar dynamic with Jobs. If he weren't arrogant enough to believe he
Re:germany ran out of people (Score:4, Insightful)
The only way for Germany to win was to make some low-odds gambles, the "more rational" Germans wern't willing to do this.
Maybe the winning move was not to play? I realize the world had given Germany the shaft after WWI, and yes, I realize Germany in general realized the world was so sick of war that they could get away with a lot without any real repercussions. But you say it yourself, the only way Germany was going to win the wider war was with many low-odds plays coming out in their favor. Maybe the best solution was to avoid the wider conflict in the first place.
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Yes, it was in the interest of the German people to not play the war game, from a rational point of view. We understand that. However, in Hitler's estimate, his own personal interests and the interests of the German people were served best by other means.
Both Hitler and Stalin often acted as if they feared their generals more than their outside enemies. This underlying motivation precipitated decisions that were against the interests of the people of their respective nations, and creates thousands of "i
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To win, they just needed to not attack France, which was a crazy gamble that they got away with. Instead, build their military for another year using the phony war as an excuse, and then attack the Soviets. Unlikely that France would have attacked any more than they did for Poland.
As part of that attack, do not be so nasty, an encourage nationalist soviet armies. Stalin was so evil, and the purges and deliberate starvation so severe that many if not most of the soviet armies would be more than happy t
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Hitler was afraid that Russia was getting stronger rapidly. But history is less clear. Stalin was purging officers well after he should have been in full war prep mode.
Nazis and Communists are natural allies. It's only because they occupy adjacent spaces in political space that they fought each other.
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1. Germany's invasion of Russia in September was a bad move because they ran into the Russian winter. Had they invaded in the Russian spring they would have had a whole summer for action against Moscow and maybe Stalingrad.
2. Germany ended up fighting a two or maybe it can be called a three front war: Britain and western most of Europe, Russia and southern Europe (Italy/Mediterranean/North Africa). If they had jus
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Germany delayed its invasion due to a late thaw in the spring. It was not actually to attack Greece, although that was a silly thing to do.
Splitting forces in Stalingrad avoided road congestion, and Stalin really needed the petroleum further south. The bombing actually helped the defenders somewhat. But the big issue was political, being so nasty that they did not have more ex-soviet troops on their side. (They did have quite a few.)
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1. The invasion of the Soviet Union was June 22, 1941. Spring ended late, and Spring in the Soviet Union was a horrible time to try to practice mobile warfare. One common Russian term for Spring translates as "season without roads".
2. Germany couldn't even reach the USSR without going through Poland, and the invasion of Poland was what got Britain and France into the war. It's conceivable that different diplomatic maneuvering before the war could have helped, but it's not clear that Germany could ha
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they started so many wars that they didn't have enough people to replace their losses and after a while the allies' industrial might out produced the german army
battle of the bulge the US army was sending high school kids straight off the boat with no equipment and no training into battle. when they died, there were more of them. not so for german losses
Although Germany was indeed dealing with manpower shortages, the US didn't have overwhelming manpower to throw at Germany either - that describes Russia better than the US. What we did have was vastly better equipped soldiers, and an overwhelming material advantage. Our forces were highly mobile by comparison, and had vastly superior artillery support and air dominance at that point. I don't believe the US sent our soldiers into battle with "no equipment and no training." In all the interviews I've seen
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"The bulk of the German forces were driven back by Patton's third army (who were about as well equipped as they came) as he wheeled up from the south, and by Monty, who took control Bradley's army group in addition to his own, since he was cut off from them. I don't see how you could characterize these armies as under-equipped or poorly trained either."
American deaths 19,276
American wounded 47493
German deaths 15,652.
Wounded 41,600.
Doesn't look very well equipped to me.
The Germans were tough and smart soldiers - considered to be the best in the world at the time. They essentially gathered the last of their strength and pounded at the allies weakest point in the line, catching them by surprise (the Allies were very overconfident at that point) and inflicting a great deal of damage. However, the Battle of the Bulge was, in reality, their last ability to perform anything but defensive holding actions.
Keep in mind that during WW2 we didn't have the overwhelming technical su
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The Germans in WWII were the last nation to put up a better then 1:1 kill ratio against the USA. More impressive, considering they lost.
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That plus the fact that they were on the defensive - rule of thumb is a 3x advantage.
strange complaint (Score:2)
" Many of the articles are decades old, and some go back to the late 1970's" Isn't it a book about WWII?
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The best historical evidence would have been written during / right after the war though.
Not necessarily. During and right after the war, many allied leaders were credited with great insight into enemy intentions and strategies. Today we know they were just being fed decrypted communications. The full extent of allied decryption wasn't disclosed until 1974 [wikipedia.org].
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Apparently this is a book about WWII approved by the NSA. I'm not surprised there is no new info here.
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By the 1970's, quite a bit of material relating to WWII was still classified. In the DVD notes to The World At War (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_World_at_War), a documentary series commissioned in 1969, Jeremy Isaacs noted this.
I **believe** that some of the crypto stuff is still classified - 69 years later.
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Well... today is :)
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That's a good point. I wasn't thinking about classified materials.
We don't know who the greatest spy was. (Score:1)
He was so great he was never uncovered.
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Greatest, but maybe not the most damaging (Score:5, Interesting)
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russia/USSR being invaded 3 or 4 times helped cause the cold war as well
germans in WW1
poland after WW1
US during russian revolution
germany in WW2
and that doesn't include all their other wars and invasions from northern and western europe before that
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Britain killed more people around the world than Stalin ever did. and they were the ones who invented the concentration camp
Re:Greatest, but maybe not the most damaging (Score:4, Informative)
britain killed people in india via a famine
britain killed people in ireland via a famine
in both cases there were laws against helping those who were starving
britain developed the first concentration camp during the boer war in south africa
the western powers killed a lot of africans in war there
britain killed people in afghanistan in the 1800s
britain and france attacked russia in the crimean war
britain and other western powers killed lots of people in china
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you do know that britain and other western european nations colonized india, china, africa and asia starting in the 1700's, fought each other over the colonies and killed lots of natives via war and starvation over the two centuries to spread their empires. including using the natives in their armies in european wars.
france and some of the countries that eventually became germany invaded russia in 1812 and around 1845 or whenever the crimean war was fought along with the US sending marines to murmansk, pola
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Where were these camps?
South Africa [wikipedia.org].
The United States also used concentration camps, with very high death rates, during their conquest and pacification of the Philippine Islands. More info here [wikipedia.org].
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Britain killed more people around the world than Stalin ever did.
Not the same. Stalin killed white people.
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forgot when they changed the law, but for a long time in the USA if you were from southern or eastern europe you weren't legally white
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Not the same. Stalin killed white people.
So it's ok to kill people as long as they aren't white people?
The world does not treat them the same. America expended money and political capital to confront the ethnic cleansing in Bosnia, but did nothing about the far, far bloodier conflict in Rwanda. The British went to much effort to help the Dutch during the Hunger Winter of 1944 [wikipedia.org], while a hundred times as many were starving in Bengal [wikipedia.org], not due to food shortages, but from British administrative apathy. Hitler and Stalin are, legitimately, considered the monsters of the twentieth century. But Leopold II [wikipedia.org] may hav
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Britain killed more people around the world than Stalin ever did. and they were the ones who invented the concentration camp
The very fact that you're trying to compare a single dictator versus the collective actions of a world wide empire over their entire history should tell you something.
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I'd put Kim Philby up there as the most damaging . . . he revealed just about everything of Western Intelligence to the Soviets: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K... [wikipedia.org]
Oh, and the Chief of German Military Intelligence, Admiral Wilhelm Canaris, "was among the military officers involved in the clandestine opposition to Adolf Hitler and the Nazi regime. He was executed in the Flossenbürg concentration camp for the act of high treason.": http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A... [wikipedia.org]
So what all he was up to on the side . .
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Dude.. really you need to read a bit more on this. The Russian program was not dependent upon Fuchs for the either the atomic or hydrogen bomb. And all intelligence the Russians received had to be double and triple checked. Fuchs aided their atomic program but it would have been build in much the same time frame without him.
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You are wrong. Really. You clearly need to expand your resources on the subject past what you have so far. And honestly, it seems more that you have a fixation on Stalin than anything else.
The best that can be arugued is that Fuchs sped up the development of the implosion atomic weapon, largely by helping them better focus their resources. The Soviets could have made a gun device but opted instead to go to the high yield/smaller deliverable. And the further removed you get from the end of the war the le
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Perhaps he was the most damaging to what the US thought were its best interests at the time. But by sharing those secrets the US lost the option of using the a-bomb again. Maybe a Cold War was better than the alternative
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The US didn't need to use the bomb again, the mere knowledge that it existed was enough.
Anyhow, it was several years until the Soviets got their own bomb, and even longer until they had some way to deliver them. Until the mid-1950s at least the Soviets had no bomber planes or missiles capable of dropping atom bombs on the USA.
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Primarily because their scientists reported that it was an atomic bomb using lots of U-235, and correctly thinking it would be a long time before the US had another U-235 bomb. The Nagasaki bomb was a plutonium implosion bomb, which nobody else seems to have really researched, and they were far easier to produce once the technology was in place. That was far more threatening, and the Japanese didn't know how many more bombs were coming (the third could have been ready to drop by the Japanese surrender).
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Designing a fission nuke isn't as hard as people like to make it out to be. With a couple of math and physics students and access to unclassified materials and you can have a working, though perhaps not efficient, design in less than a year. We know this to be true because someone paid a couple of graduate students to do it and they came up with a design that, according to analysis by experts, would have worked. He might have helped them along by a few months, but the real bottle neck in any nuclear prog
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the material Fuchs gave was not a game changer by any means and had even less bearing of the H-bomb.
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An even better read and the greatest spy of them all:
http://amzn.to/1j1XrXx [amzn.to]
"Seizing the Enigma" - an excellent book (Score:5, Interesting)
I found a hardcover copy of "Seizing the Enigma" in a bookstore discount bin well over ten years ago. I found it to be an excellent read. The only (very minor) criticism I would have is the title. The book seemed as much (if not more) about the Allied prosecution of the German U-boat war as about the Enigma. Again, a very minor point about what seemed to be a very well researched and written book.
I still find it very interesting how Poland's role in breaking German encryption played in the overall history at that time. Poland very well understood that they were in a bad place (geographically and militarily) with regard to Germany and their military buildup and therefore, had a interest in trying to learn the details of Germany's intentions. I found Marian Rejewski to be a particularly interesting character. A Polish mathematician who was certainly smart, but not brilliant. Through determination (and some use of statistics) he was able to work with 2 other mathematicians to break a Enigma-encoded message. I find him to be a personally inspiring individual.
I cannot help but wonder what is happening in modern Poland with the actions of Russian and eastern Ukraine. Having joined NATO and the EU, I would still expect that they are more than a little interested in knowing what the intentions are of their neighbors.
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The wrath?????
No, the bath [etsy.com]
Nothing to sneer at. (Score:2)
"From the book description and cover, one would get the impression that this is an all new work. But it is not until ones reads the preface, that it is detailed that the book is simple an assemblage of collected articles."
And what's wrong with that? Collections and anthologies have a long a distinguished history in non-fiction as well as fiction - for a reason. Books are far less ephemeral than magazine (and especially web!) articles, and seeing all the material at once or having it collected in one place
Please proof your posts and post title (Score:2)
It's World War II's Greatest Spy
Please don't forget the apostrophe in the name of the book you are reviewing. That's just bad.
"...singularly one of..." (Score:2)
Me me me (Score:2)
How I Discovered World War IIs Greatest Spy
WW2's greatest spy? (Score:1)
World War II's greatest spy was a man who betrayed the Weimar Republic's intelligence secrets for money?
I'm afraid, Ben Rothke, that I must disagree with David Kahn.
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Ok, thanks.
Who would you suggest is the greatest one?
NYT reports last of the Codebreakers dies 3/25/14 (Score:1)
Good WWII source (Score:2)
This is a really good blog on crypto in the WWII era http://chris-intel-corner.blog... [blogspot.gr]
War Secrets in the Ether (Score:3)
If you're interested in the German side of world war cryptanalysis, an excellent book is War Secrets in the Ether, by Wilhelm Flicke. The author was a German cryptanalyst during the two world wars, and it was written shortly after the end of the second world war. (It is out of print, so I suggest looking in libraries.)
It has been a decade or more since I read it, so I may have misremembered details, but here are a few points of note:
Pre-war, he'd been analysing Russian radio usage. They had a complicated system where the same station would use different call signs depending who they were talking to. This made their intercepts more chaotic and harder to do traffic analysis on. He and all his colleagues were shifted to the western front with the outbreak of war. When the war with Russia started, in the initial shock their complicated system failed and they fell back on a more standard system. Once they started to get over the initial attack and reorganize, they returned to the complicated system. The German cryptanalysts who were present had no experience with this (the experienced ones having been moved) so they interpreted the chaoticness of the signals as showing the Russians were in complete disarray, when the exact opposite was true.
He thought that the course of Battle of Crete indicated that the allies had broken the German codes at that time. (Which was correct, but he missed that they'd broken most of the German codes for almost the entire war.)
They knew that the allies had very good intelligence, but thought that it was supplied by spies. As a result, he spend the second half of the war on a whack-a-mole mission to shut down spy radio transmitters.
He complained about the multitude of German intelligence agencies and their lack of cooperation due to infighting.
David Kahn and the NSA (Score:3)
By the time David Kahn had became an NSA fellow he had ceased being a writer about cryptography and had become an agency stenographer. Seriously - the "revised edition" of The Codebreakers published in 1996 simply has a 16 page forward that adds nothing to what he wrote in 1967. To learn anything about the vast changes to codes and cryptography over the last fifty years, you will have to go somewhere else.
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The US was lost in its own world with the Army and Navy working on Japan as different teams early on. US codes where often old, badly used. Italy made some great human efforts too.
The UK was really the master, breaking most of the diverse 1920-30's European countires code efforts and learning from what their spies well placed where
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the uk also created pki...but they decided to make it private...unlike the mit rsa project
Garbo (Score:2)