
The Holocaust Codes
The Untold Story of Decrypting the Final Solution
Christian Jennings(Author)
John Blake Publishing Ltd
Published on 1. August 2024
Book
Hardback
368 pages
978-1-78946-726-0 (ISBN)
Description
'Massive, groundbreaking new research that sheds more truth on the Holocaust.' - Helen Fry
Never told in detail before, this is the account of how, for four years, British and Allied codebreakers decrypted secret SS and Gestapo messages detailing the mass killings of the Holocaust, and how the Germans in turn deployed cryptanalysis to try to conceal their persecution of Europe's Jews. The compelling and fast-paced narrative is told from the perspectives of two central and opposing characters, who never meet.
At Bletchley Park, there is the legendary but unsung British codebreaker Nigel de Grey, shy, determined, nicknamed 'the Dormouse' by his colleagues. In Nazi-occupied Poland, SS Major Hermann Hoefle, a former taxi driver from Salzburg, and one of the Third Reich's ruthless bureaucrats of mass death, oversees the operations of five concentration camps, including Treblinka.
De Grey fought hard to make sure the vital intelligence from decrypted signals reached Allied leaders and was acted on. Hoefle, meanwhile, used complex coded messages to try to conceal the mass killings. De Grey worked with his American counterparts, as well as codebreakers and intelligence agents from the Soviet Union, France, the Vatican, Switzerland and Poland. Yet he had dangerous enemies closer to home: a cabal of senior British government and intelligence officials disbelieved or ignored repeated intelligence reports about the ongoing Holocaust.
Flawlessly researched, this is the story of a battle between good and evil, between life and mass death, a cat-and-mouse war of electronic wits. More than eighty years on, as Russian leaders face war crimes charges in international courts, the words 'Never again' seem more pertinent than ever.
Never told in detail before, this is the account of how, for four years, British and Allied codebreakers decrypted secret SS and Gestapo messages detailing the mass killings of the Holocaust, and how the Germans in turn deployed cryptanalysis to try to conceal their persecution of Europe's Jews. The compelling and fast-paced narrative is told from the perspectives of two central and opposing characters, who never meet.
At Bletchley Park, there is the legendary but unsung British codebreaker Nigel de Grey, shy, determined, nicknamed 'the Dormouse' by his colleagues. In Nazi-occupied Poland, SS Major Hermann Hoefle, a former taxi driver from Salzburg, and one of the Third Reich's ruthless bureaucrats of mass death, oversees the operations of five concentration camps, including Treblinka.
De Grey fought hard to make sure the vital intelligence from decrypted signals reached Allied leaders and was acted on. Hoefle, meanwhile, used complex coded messages to try to conceal the mass killings. De Grey worked with his American counterparts, as well as codebreakers and intelligence agents from the Soviet Union, France, the Vatican, Switzerland and Poland. Yet he had dangerous enemies closer to home: a cabal of senior British government and intelligence officials disbelieved or ignored repeated intelligence reports about the ongoing Holocaust.
Flawlessly researched, this is the story of a battle between good and evil, between life and mass death, a cat-and-mouse war of electronic wits. More than eighty years on, as Russian leaders face war crimes charges in international courts, the words 'Never again' seem more pertinent than ever.
Reviews / Votes
A meticulous and fascinating contribution to the history of the Holocaust, filling in what the Allies knew and when. Allied Intelligence went to the wall to protect Ultra - out of the question was to alert the world to the mass killings of captured Jews if it threatened Bletchley's secrets. Jennings exposes this open secret that was known from early on and unravels one of the Second World War's outstanding mysteries: why publicising our knowledge of the Final Solution was not a priority. * Nicholas Shakespeare * Massive, groundbreaking new research that sheds more truth on the Holocaust. This previously untold story of Bletchley Park and its deciphering of messages about the Nazi killing machine places firmly on the record the shocking truth of what was known about the Holocaust and when. * Helen Fry *More details
Language
English
Place of publication
London
United Kingdom
Illustrations
6 Maps
Dimensions
Height: 239 mm
Width: 158 mm
Thickness: 38 mm
Weight
616 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-78946-726-0 (9781789467260)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Person
Christian Jennings is a British writer and foreign correspondent, and the author of ten non-fiction books of modern history and current affairs. These include the acclaimed The Third Reich is Listening: Inside German Codebreaking 1939-1945, the first comprehensive account in English of German wartime cryptanalysis. His latest book is Syndrome K: How Italy Resisted the Final Solution. He has lectured for Bletchley Park on German codebreaking, and from 1994-2012 he reported on international current affairs and complex war-crimes investigations, including genocide and its aftermath, across twenty-three countries in the Western Balkans and Africa. He has written for publications ranging from The Economist and Reuters to Wired, The Guardian, and The Scotsman, and as a foreign correspondent was based in Rwanda, Bosnia, Kosovo, Burundi, Kenya and Switzerland.