cover image Station X

Station X

Michael Smith. TV Books, $24.95 (256pp) ISBN 978-1-57500-094-7

A bestseller in the U.K., this gripping account of British intelligence's cracking of the Nazi Enigma machine code during WWII is the basis of a PBS Nova documentary. Billed as the first book on the subject to incorporate interviews with the code-breakers since the declassification of official files, the volume is packed with revelations and the voices of these largely unsung heroes. While most histories of Enigma focus on the top brains such as mathematician Alan Turing, Smith (New Cloak, Old Dagger, etc.), a reporter for London's Daily Telegraph, portrays the top-secret code-breaking operation at Bletchley Park (""Station X""), a quaint Victorian mansion outside London, as a vast collaborative effort involving several thousand people, the great majority of them women. An odd mix of Cambridge mathematicians, seasoned and novice code-busters, eccentrics, spies, bureaucrats, German-language students, patriotic volunteers and clerical assistants, they tell their stories with a refreshing modesty that makes their saga all the more inspiring. Without getting bogged down in technical complexities, Smith illuminates how the Bletchley Park cryptanalysts' ingenuity, obsessive persistence and ""Alice in Wonderland-type thought processes"" enabled them to decipher the Germans' chameleon code. The intelligence obtained from Enigma decrypts shortened the war and saved countless lives by furnishing information vital to the Allies' D-Day invasion, the British sinking of U-boats and campaigns in Italy, North Africa and the Balkans. On one level, this page-turner is a deeply satisfying parable of the power of humane intellect to defeat evil; it's also a stunning re-creation of one of the most important chapters in the war. Photos. (Jan.)