Review: Before Bletchley Park – The Codebreakers of The First World War – by Paul Gannon

I have previously read a lot of material on World War 2 codebreakers and the likes of Alan Turing and their critical work against Enigma and the invention of modern computing during that period. Of course, codebreaking and cryptography is not a new science and has been a critical part of both war and diplomacy since ancient times and has only increased in significance as time progresses. World War 1 is the second biggest conflagration to have occurred on this planet. It is no surprise that codebreaking was a key element to Allied success in this war. The first World War saw the invention of devastating new military tech such as the tank, the machine gun and the use of aircraft. In cryptography and codebreaking there were new technologies and new methods and on both sides a hard fought war was fought in these areas that really tilted the balance in the end on who became victors and who lost the war.

There was a lot of new technology in the period leading up to the war, in particular in the field of communications. Submarine cables for telegraph were still a relatively new phenomenon. Britain’s position as the bridge between Europe and America in the Atlantic, gave it disproportionate power when it came to cross-ocean cable communications. The British could cut off Germany from contacting the Americas and this they did. The Germans were forced to tactically avoid this blockade. They sent ciphered traffic across the British cables where possible. They tried setting up their own systems but achieved little success. They used neutral Madrid to route most of their telegraph traffic. The British allowed some of this as they were tapping all this traffic anyway. Often the Germans were trying to get the Latin American nations involved on their side in the war, the infamous Zimmerman telegram passed through this route where he openly tried to get the Mexican government enrolled in a border conflict with the USA.

German frustrations with British control of communications boiled over into full-scale hostilities. The Royal Navy were another dominant area where the German Navy faced an uphill struggle. The British were in effect starving the Germans into submission and denying them critical supplies, both military and civilian. In addition to communication control there was a full British Navy embargo in operation. What was the Germans’ answer to this? One of the most unpleasant aspects of the war, that did indeed provide the undoing of the German war effort was their submarine war in the Atlantic. They didn’t have the battleships or cruisers to defeat the Royal Navy but their submarine technology was more advanced and they sent U-Boats to attack not just military naval targets but also commercial vessels, of all countries, including neutral nations conducting merchant navy business across the Atlantic. The Kaiser’s hand was forced really and his people demanded action. He quivered throughout, stopping and starting the U-boat programme, bit ultimately public opinion did go in the Germans’ favour and the sinki9ng of the Lusitania was a turning point as it led to America entering the war proper.

It is interesting to note that British dominance in cable technology and communications was in a large part due to a public / private sector link up – The Italian businessman, Marconi, really embedded his business future with the British, providing the Allies with state of the art disruptive cutting edge technology that was the result of his pioneering inventiveness in the area of communication technology.

The office of Room 40, which is what the predecessor to Bletchley Park and GCHQ was known as, started very much as an informal amateur driven organisation and, by the end of World War 1, had suitably ‘professionalized’ and expanded and would later provide the core for many of the essential employees of Bletchley Park during World War 2. It was set up not far from Horseguards Parade in central London. Room 40 was the hub which controlled all the intercepted traffic and where the codebreaking, cryptanalysis and hard graft was done.

A talented bunch of people inhabited Room 40, many amateurs, a lot of women. Specialisation in certain niche areas was the norm. The new technology offered new challenges and I suppose the modern art and science of cryptography was developed in Room 40. Ancient cipher techniques such as the Caesar cipher were still in use. The German naval codebooks and traffic were encrypted using a hybrid mix of substitution and transposition ciphering. It wasn’t all that difficult to work out the German codebooks for seasoned Room 40 staff. Room 40 saw the first modern computer systems introduced. They were pretty rudimentary, based on punch cards but they did cut labour time when it came to data analysis, allowing skilled staff to utilise their time more efficiently.

I am at present a full-time cybersecurity student at Masterschool in Tel Aviv, Israel. We are studying cryptography which has an important role in internet communications – we were playing around on a virtual Enigma machine from World War 2 a few months ago. I have set up https://fourfourcyber.com as a cybersecurity business. What I particularly found intriguing in this book was that it took a detailed investigation into some example codes, seized or intercepted from the Germans and also looks direct at some of the code books. When you run though some examples as laid out by the authors it really helps to understand the exact process that is taking place. I found it pretty amazing understanding how an entire dictionary of a codebook could be constructed from just deciphering or working out a handful of words. Linguistic knowledge and skills were an important asset but fundamentally the whole process of decryption is basically like doing a crossword. In Room 40, as the war progressed these often larger-than-life cryptography eccentrics became better and better at handling German military and diplomatic systems. They were probably killing more German soldiers than any trench warfare and the efforts of Room 40 ultimately brought victory to the United Kingdom and her allies in a terrible conflict. Peace came sooner and the wisdom and knowledge gained from Room 40 was applied directly to the foundations of Bletchley Park and GCHQ, often these organisations being staffed by Room 40 veterans.

Review: Our Man in Havana – by Graham Greene

Graham Greene delivers here a classic espionage novel, fiction, set in Cuba around the time of the revolution, Greene writes in his knowledgeable subject area of expertise a comedy account of a chance vacuum salesman being recruited by Mi6 as their ‘Man in Havana.’ Struggling lone parent Wormold runs a little enterprising vacuum franchise and looks after his blooming teenage daughter, Milly. It is his spoiling her with a horse that he kind of seizes on the opportunity of becoming a spy, reasoning with himself solely really that he is in it for the extra cash. Hawthorne is the Mi6 officer who recruits Wormold and he is to and for between Cuba, Jamaica and London head office reporting on the growing successful mission of Our Man in Havana. Wormold delivers in what he sees as the safest way possible a series of critical intelligence to the British government. He has photographs of military installations in the Cuban Sierra (not dissimilar to the Russian / Soviet military installations of the later Cuban Missile Crisis), a string of local agents infiltrating and influencing critical areas of Cuban society. He is creating much excitement and hover in London they are well pleased. He collects his enhanced expenses and the bosses decide to expand the operation and send out an assistant and also the lovely young spy/secretary, Beatrice. Wormold’s secret, however, is that he’s actually fabricating all the intelligence with a keen imagination. The military installations are just a state of the art vacuum cleaner that’s been taken apart. The agents are fictitious people or people he has never even met. Yet the reports seduce the bigwigs back in Blighty. The farce grows more and more out of control until it actually becomes a real spy adventure with mishaps including the assassination of his German drinking buddy and best friend, Dr Hasselbacher and he is under a lot of scrutiny by the dirty old corrupt abusive brutal police chief, Captain Segura. Captain Segura wants the freshfaced teen Milly to be his bride and isa a bit lenient on our man, Wormold, as result of seeking the bride’s hand in marriage. Things get totally FUBAR and Wormold ends up shooting a suspected enemy agent and is forced to finally flee the Caribbean Island and head back to the safety of the United Kingdom. His charade is exposed but incredibly despite all the fake evidence, the actual real spy stuff that he accidentally does and to avoid embarrassment leads to him being retained by the intelligence service and ultimately he cops off with secretary Beatrice in a pleasant romantic twist to a wild old tale of Cold War era espionage gambits.

Review: The Power of Babel – A Natural History of Language – by John McWhorter

On Amazon Prime Great Courses Signature Collection I watched author John McWhorter present a course on World Language Families and this drew my attention to this literary work. McWhorter is a very intelligent polyglot and makes the study of global languages an interesting and fun-filled adventure. In this book we look at the vast array of human languages across the world – the 6000 or so tongues that are still in existence. We look at how these languages have evolved, the dialects that they morph into, the differences between language and dialect and also try to reconstruct the original global language of Adam and Eve. The examples of linguistic use are wide-ranging, from global super-tongues such as English, French and German, through to obscure languages such as Marathi, Tok Pisin, Cornish and Somali. Throughout the book McWhorter introduces anecdotes of popular culture to lighten the mood, from South Park to McDonalds adverts. The book has enough detail to satisfy the most learned linguist and equally is general enough to be accessible to a non-specialist lay reader. It stands out as a great work and leaves a lasting memory and for such a vast subject material McWhorter covers it well and also succinctly. I will endeavour to seek out more of the author’s work on world languages and would recommend this book to anyone with the remotest interest in our planet’s communication.

Review: Behind The Enigma – The Authorised History of GCHQ – Britain’s Secret Cyber-Intelligence Agency – by John Ferris

This is a weighty tome (800 plus pages) and the authoritative history of perhaps the least glamorous of the U.K.’s principal security services. However, the facts illustrated in this book clearly demonstrates the critical role GCHQ plays in national security and perhaps one could argue is more relevant and more important than its more glamorous siblings, MI5 and MI6. From its incept in the early twentieth century we see the heights reached by Bletchley Park, the immediate forerunner to the (renaming) creation of GCHQ. The success of cracking the Nazi Germany Enigma code by computer-creating cryptographer heroes such as the now famous Alan Turing, is perhaps the height of the glamour. Post WW2 Bletchley Park staff were transferred over to a permanent base in rural Gloucestershire. Cheltenham later housed the service in the legendary doughnut, a purpose built facility that can rival James Bond’s flash new Thames-side MI6 HQ. The main division of labour at GCHQ falls into two branches – SIGINT and COMINT. Mathematicians are well sought for their crypto-analytic skills and GCHQ also encourages linguistically skilled talent. Most workers tend to stay in the organisation until retirement although the pay rates can be rather low and promotion opportunities thin on the ground. However, job satisfaction exists with interesting, varied, intellectually stimulating and critically important jobs. As well as skilled university recruits, a lot of workers are recruited in the administrative divisions and women have always been treated on a more or less level par with their male colleagues.

The initial post-WW2 focus on the agency was for targeting Russia, with linguists retraining and as much as 90% of the interceptions being directed to behind the Iron Curtain. GCHQ had success against the Soviet Union to a degree much more than HUMINT counterparts. MI5 and MI6 were often left lagging in comparison with KGB master spies. GCHQ has developed and is almost totally integrated with the American equivalent of signals intelligence, the NSA (National Security Agency) in the United States of America. Intelligence sharing in the secret UKUSA handshake agreement allowed all but the most politically sensitive data between the two nations to be completely shared. Five Eyes (including Commonwealth partners, Canada, Australia and New Zealand) is also important as is co-working with NATO allies but the USA with its larger budget and technological dominance has really been an asset to GCHQ development and from their point of view the NSA appreciates the skilled dedication of more traditional and experienced British siginters. As the twentieth century progressed, the digital age continued to rapidly develop on a global scale. GCHQ has to constantly adapt and master new communications technologies and acquire the latest state of the art equipment, necessary to maintain Britain’s post-imperial role as a primary global power. Enemies also change and Germans have given way to Soviets, the collapse of the USSR after the fall of the Berlin Wall, leading towards an internet dominated age where Islamic Salafi Jihadists strike terror in Western democracies and rising China sends an unleashed horde of cyberattackers, their quest to steal Western technology and disrupt libertarian values in their global competitors.

The internet is a revolution and there is a demand for the public to be protected. In recent years GCHQ has emerged from the shadows and reluctantly revealed some of its clandestine secrets and the Directors of the present day have a need to be media savvy as well as being able to cloak and dagger brief the politicians and its foreign office and military masters. I found the details of the trade union problems in the 1970s to be surprising and interesting and can understand why unionisation was banned at GCHQ as a result of protecting national security. The most memorable chapter of the book was the case studies on Palestine (Israel), Konfrontasi (Indonesia) and Falklands conflict (Argentina). Being a linguist experienced in Mandarin Chinese, Arabic and Russian, someone who is techwise and also keen on protecting the nation and Commonwealth and allies of the U.K., and with the doughnut being half hour train ride away, I have written to them on multiple occasions, seeking some form of mutually beneficial employment but alas, the door is firmly closed and I have not heard but a peep emanating from the elusive GCHQ. Interesting book though, and well-researched and written in detail. Recommend.

Review: On Paris

On Paris by Ernest Hemingway
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This very brief work is a collection of Hemingway’s writings as a foreign correspondent for the Toronto Star. The author’s bright prose lights up what I believe to be the most fantastic city on earth, during the turbulent times of the 1920s. Paris was in a post-Versailles dilemma, the politicians fighting for German reparations and dangerously questing into the Ruhr valley. Hemingway vibrantly details the glamorous life in the French capital. The post-absinthe hedonism, the cafe culture, the nightlife of the Moulin Rouge. He contrasts the French joie de vivre with that of other European capitals and with a flamboyant passion for Paris, he brings to life this exotic city for all his readers.

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Review: The Battle for Spain: The Spanish Civil War 1936-1939

The Battle for Spain: The Spanish Civil War 1936-1939 by Antony Beevor
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This is a definitive history of the Spanish Civil War. The book has been regarded by the Spanish themselves as one of the best-researched volumes on this dark period of turmoil in their country’s history. The breakdown of democracy saw the split of the nation and a leftist democratically elected government was forced to deal with the rise of a militaristic fascist rising headed by Franco. The precursor to World War 2, this civil war attracted the interests of the rising Fascist movement across Europe with the Caudillo’s forces being supplemented and supported by Hitler’s Germany and Mussolini’s Italy. They got to test out their modern weaponry in the field of action and a lack of international support for the actual government left them with little alternative but to rely on the Soviet Union for their support. This led to the republicans being over-reliant on the Spanish communists who struggled to take over and erode democracy from their own angle, constantly infighting and vying for strength with the other elements of the Spanish left; the Anarchists and the POUM. This history details how all the events unfolded and describes how each of the key battles was won and lost. There was a ferociousness during this conflict which only civil wars attract. The horrors of modern war truly unfolded disasters such as Guernica only emphasised how critical air support had become. The German Condor Legion and their Meschersmitts, backed up by Italian Fiats, consistently demolished the Republican resistance and paved the way for an overall Nationalist victory. Poor military judgement, combined with Stalinist purges of even the more successful Russian generals, left the Republicans constantly making errors in their military tactics. The lack of proper international support (with the exception of the volunteer International Brigades), in particular from Britain led to the inevitable crushing of the elected government and their forces. Appeasement was in the air as Western politicians tried to avoid the inevitable European conflict that was brewing and the Spanish were sacrificed. It was a war of experimentation which left the Spanish people at the mercy of the violent forces which dominated the time. Franco consolidated his own power well and was relentless and unforgiving, not accepting any olive branch of peace when offered and pursuing an ultimate military victory so he could proceed to rebuild his country in his own image. The book is highly detailed and covers every angle well, though I would have perhaps wanted a more lengthy conclusion to discuss more of what happened in the post-conflict period. I look forward to tracking down some of the author’s other work, in particular, his account of the battle of Stalingrad which was often mentioned in this most excellent history of the Spanish Civil War.

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Review: Siddhartha

Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This short work by German / Swiss author and nobel literature prizewinner, Herman Hesse, was a cornerstone of the hippy movement which emerged during the 1960s. The book explores the journey of a young Indian man through an adventurous life, in which his main quest is to achieve enlightenment. He leaves home, becomes an ascetic and then meets the Buddha (Gotama), before rejecting asceticism and turning to the material world, seeking the pleasures of lust, wealth and gambling. He fathers a child with his lover and then departs off to seek pastures new, depressed and fed up of his life in the city. He finds a middle way between the asceticism of his youth and the high life of his merchanting. As a ferryman, next to the river, he lives with a wise old sage who comforts him and allows him to finally achieve the enlightenment he seeks. His son disowns him and his old friend, who becomes a follower of the Buddha, periodically bumps into him and eventually the story concludes with the two old men sharing views on life and what they have learnt, with Siddharta revealing some of the deep philosophies which have shaped him. It’s an exciting and eminently readable tale, full of Buddhist and Eastern mystical titbits that the reader can relate to and indeed be enlightened by. I can see why hippies favoured this novel and it really can be classed as a true twentieth century classic.

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