The Third Reich is Listening: Inside German codebreaking 1939-45

Description

The success of the Allied codebreakers at Bletchley Park was one of the iconic intelligence achievements of World War II, immortalised in films such as The Imitation Game and Enigma. But cracking Enigma was only half of the story. Across the Channel, German intelligence agencies were hard at work breaking British and Allied codes. Now updated in paperback, The Third Reich is Listening is a gripping blend of modern history and science, and describes the successes and failures of Germany's codebreaking and signals intelligence operations from 1935 to 1945. The first mainstream book to take an in-depth look at German cryptanalysis in World War II, it tells how the Third Reich broke the ciphers of Allied and neutral countries, including Great Britain, France, Russia and Switzerland. This book offers a dramatic new perspective on one of the biggest stories of World War II, using declassified archive material and colourful personal accounts from the Germans at the heart of the story, including a former astronomer who worked out the British order of battle in 1940, a U-Boat commander on the front line of the Battle of the Atlantic, and the German cryptanalyst who broke into and read crucial codes of the British Royal Navy.

Christian Jennings is a British freelance foreign correspondent and the author of six works of non-fiction. Since 1988, across twenty-three countries, he has been an author and journalist on international current affairs, modern history and popular science for publications ranging from The Economist and Reuters to Wired, The Guardian, and The Scotsman. He has been based variously in Rwanda, Bosnia, Kosovo, Burundi, Kenya and Switzerland. His recent book At War on the Gothic Line (Osprey, 2016), was described in The Spectator as 'military history at its most engaging'. He lives in Turin, Italy.

This gem of a book delves deep into the murky world of codebreaking during the last war, highlighting how the Germans intercepted and decoded Allied signals. Superbly written and researched, it charts not only how cryptanalysts went about their work, but also its impact on the war - from each side's perspective - and how the intelligence was used. * Britain at War * Editor's Choice * The Armourer, April 2019 *