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The Cypher Bureau Eilidh McGinness author Books

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The Cypher Bureau Eilidh McGinness author Books

This fictionalized history of the breaking of the Germans’ 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 world are familiar with the accomplishments of Alan Turing and the British code-breaking team at Bletchley Park—most recently popularized in the Benedict Cumberbatch movie, The Imitation Game—the substantial contribution of youthful Polish mathematicians to the unraveling of the Nazis’ 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.
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’s western border, and the Polish authorities are desperate to expose the Germans’ secrets and help foil their plans.
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—the 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.
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 was based wrote about the Poles, “They had not broken the machine, they had beaten the system.”
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’s efforts to make Enigma increasingly complex, and making hair’s-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.
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’d been hacked. This in itself is an astonishing feat!


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The Cypher Bureau Eilidh McGinness author Books Reviews

They were not your typical secret agents, and they didn’t go out (at least willingly) into the dark underbellies of countries at war. Yet, their work and their amazing abilities in the dry as dust field of mathematics (my apologies to mathematicians everywhere) saved countless lives in the horror that was World War II. The book is a mix of fact and fiction. The focus is primarily on Marian Rejewski but the breaking of the Enigma code was a team effort, a team brought together by the visionary thinking of a soldier and finally solved when an analytical brain used its intuition. It was a team that gave its all for the mission including the loss of loved ones and even their own lives.

Once begun, I finished the novel in two days, absorbed in the fascinating backstories pre, during, and post the war. The book lost a star since the fictional conversations didn’t quite click with me. Also I would not have included the blurbs at the end into the main book. A cleaner end, in my opinion, would have been the quote from the book by Major Bertrand, “Enigma, ou la plus grande enigme de la guerre 1939-1945” (1973). The rest could easily have formed part of an Author’s Note. All in all, a very good read.
I enjoyed reading about the history of cracking of the Enigma code from a different perspective .
It's great when a writer shines a light upon some little-known aspect of history. It's really surprising when this is such an important and history-changing accomplishment as the Polish cracking of the Enigma cyphers before the outbreak of the Second World War. Now the rest of the Allied nations can appreciate this achievement of intellect and hard work rather than giving all the kudos to Bletchley Park.

Eilidh McGinness brings the individuals to life, particularly Marian Rejewski. It seems strange I'd never heard that name before when probably most people in the UK know who Alan Turing was. We hear about Marian from when he was a little boy right through to when the secrecy was eventually lifted in his old age. We understand his successes and frustrations, his fascination with mathematics and cryptography, his love for his family and the agony of being separated from them.

This is a very well-researched story and the writer has even provided some contemporary photos to help the reader share the locations and the technology, so it will definitely appeal to readers of history. But as an historical fiction it did frustrate me in a couple of ways. Some of the story is missing, lacunae in the narrative for various important characters, and I would expect a fiction writer to fill these with events even if based on knowledgable speculation. I also was surprised by the way the writer sheered away from some of the most emotional events (which I won't mention here) rather than following them in detail.
This fictionalized history of the breaking of the Germans’ 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 world are familiar with the accomplishments of Alan Turing and the British code-breaking team at Bletchley Park—most recently popularized in the Benedict Cumberbatch movie, The Imitation Game—the substantial contribution of youthful Polish mathematicians to the unraveling of the Nazis’ 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.
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’s western border, and the Polish authorities are desperate to expose the Germans’ secrets and help foil their plans.
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—the 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.
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 was based wrote about the Poles, “They had not broken the machine, they had beaten the system.”
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’s efforts to make Enigma increasingly complex, and making hair’s-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.
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’d been hacked. This in itself is an astonishing feat!