Enigma and The Code Breakers

by Liam McCann

On 31st August 1939, German SS Troops in Polish uniforms launched a false attack on a German radio station on the border. The following day, Hitler used this as his pretext for invading Poland with two enormous pincer movements. He believed Britain and France wouldn't react but he was mistaken and both declared war on Germany on 3rd September.Appeasement had given way to abject betrayal and the whole of Europe was plunged into war once more. The Germans believed they had a secret weapon that would give them a crucial advantage over the Enigma. This cipher machine allowed the German High Command to exchange coded messages with its forces in the field. As this enabled the German military to act as a single co-ordinated entity, it gave them the basis for Blitzkrieg, the lightning war that overwhelmed Eastern Europe and then France. The code was thought to be unbreakable because it was transmitted and received via complex Enigma machines.It immediately became a priority for the Allies to crack the code so they could monitor German troop movements, track their ships and submarines, and prepare for the Luftwaffe's strategy against the RAF and their bombing campaign on London.The task of breaking Enigma was handled by teams at Bletchley Park. This is the story of how they exploited weaknesses in the machine itself and took advantage of errors made by the German operators. By cracking the code, the men and women at the park shortened the war by at least two years and saved five million lives.

143 pages, Kindle Edition

Published May 14, 2020

About the author

Liam was born in Guildford, England, in 1973 and has a BA in Sports Physiology & Psychology. He was Sussex county champion in three of the athletics field events and swam to a national standard. He formed Shooter in 1996, a rock band that toured Europe for four years, and The Legend of Dan McCann, an acoustic combo, in 2009.

Liam started writing novels and sports books in 2003 and has since edited / proofread more than thirty titles, including the Discarded Science series for John Grant. He also works as a freelance editor / copywriter / proofreader for The Daily Telegraph, Artists’ & Photographers’ Press, Murray Books, Vivays Publishing and UK International Press, and as a part-time cricket pundit for Sky Sports.

Published Books

By Facts, Figures & Fun, an imprint of Artists’ and Photographers’ Press Ltd:

The Olympics Facts, Figures & Fun (2004)
Rugby Facts, Figures & Fun (2006)
The Sledger’s Handbook: How to Deliver the Perfect Cricketing Insult (2006) – reprinted four times
Cricket Facts, Figures & Fun (2007)
Born to Dribble (2007)
London’s Bridges (2008) – Ghost-written for Ian Pay
The Revised & Updated Sledger’s Handbook (2012)

The Battle of Boxhill (2012): This is a 50,000-word older children’s adventure story, whose central characters are birds. The book has been optioned by Bulat Galimgereyev, producer of the Oscar-nominated film Mongol (2008), and Kevin Foo, co-founder of Helix Films Inc, who intend to adapt the story for a feature-length animation in 2013-14. Liam is already planning a sequel.

By Murray Books:

The UFO Files (2012)

By G2 Entertainment:

The Little Book of Ark Royal (2012)
The Little Book of Survival (2012)
The Little Book of the Universe (2012)
The Little book of the Liners (2012)

Self-published Books:

The Little English Boy: This is the incredible true story of one man’s crusade to help the allied war effort against the Nazis by escaping occupied France with a set of top-secret gun sight drawings.

Unpublished Books:

When the Messenger meets the King, In the Lap of the Gods, The Devil’s Breath and Rolling Thunder: a science-fiction / adventure series set in the near future. The books run to between 150,000 and 200,000 words. A minimum of two more books are planned for the series.

To view his books, please visit: http://amzn.to/hdcDGY