The Secrets of Station X: How the Bletchley Park codebreakers helped win the war
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About this ebook
The astonishing story of how the British codebreakers of Bletchley Park cracked the Nazi Enigma cyphers, cutting an estimated two years off the Second World War, never ceases to amaze.
No one is better placed to tell that story than Michael Smith, whose number one bestseller Station X was one of the earliest accounts. Using recently released secret files, along with personal interviews with many of the codebreakers themselves, Smith now provides the definitive account of everything that happened at Bletchley Park during the war, from breaking the German, Italian and Japanese codes to creating the world’s first electronic computer. The familiar picture of Bletchley Park is of eccentric elderly professors breaking German codes, but in fact the vast majority of people who worked at Bletchley Park were young women. For them and for the young graduates plucked from Britain’s best universities who did the bulk of the day-to-day codebreaking, this was truly the time of their lives. The Secrets of Station X tells their story in full, providing an enthralling account of one of the most remarkable British success stories of all time.
Michael Smith
Michael Smith is an award-winning British journalist and author, having previously served in British military intelligence. He has written for the Daily Telegraph and the Sunday Times, and is the author of fifteen books on spies and special operations, including the No 1 bestseller Station X: The Codebreakers of Bletchley Park. He lives in Henley-on-Thames.
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Reviews for The Secrets of Station X
40 ratings4 reviews
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5A gripping but very readable introduction to the rarefied secret world of the codebreakers of Bletchley Park and their incredibly important work. Go there if at all possible and read this book on the way!
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5I've read over a dozen books about Bletchley Park, the peculiar place and collection of people who helped defeat the Nazis by codebreaking the unbreakable Enigma machine. What a story. And this very personal narrative of the people and events of that amazing operation was a great look at both the scale of the challenge and the powerful role that literally thousands of people made in this critical operation that may well have affected the outcome of the war. At the very least, Bletchley shorted the war hugely, and the team and the organization -- oh so terribly British!
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Not much new here as I have already read quite a few books on this topic. The newest parts to me had to do with the personal relationships amongst the workers and the introduction of the Americans late into the decrypting activities of Bletchley Park.
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5A who's who of the codebeakers of WWII who were based at Bletchley Park in Buckinghamshire, about 50 miles North of London. A collection of the brightest brains gathered to pit themselves against ingenious cyphers of the enemy, especially the German Enigma machine. They started with a few hundred people and pencils to a peak of 8995 in 1945 utilising electro mechanical bombes and Colossus computers. Amazing commitment and dedication shaving years off the war.