Between Silk And Cyanide: A Codemaker's War, 1941-1945 (2000) - Plot & Excerpts
This is a fantastic book. It is gripping, educational, and funny, and comes highly recommended. At the age of 22, Leo Marks joined the Special Operations Executive, which managed resistance, espionage, and sabotage operations in Occupied Europe. His path to becoming an SOE cryptographer was not particularly smooth. First off, his interview with the code-breaking school did not get off to a good start, when the interviewer:...began the interview by asking what my hobbies were. "Incunabula and intercourse, sir." It slipped out and wasn't even accurate; I'd had little experience of one and couldn't afford the other.Having been accepted, he then became the only member of his class not to be considered worthy of the main cryptographic agency, Station X at Bletchley Park - mainly because of a bad case of being too clever for his own good. He was offered to SOE, but was very nearly rejected after they asked him to "break" an encoded message and were most disappointed when this took him the best part of a day, noting that their girls could do it in 20 minutes. Dismissing him, the captain asked for the code back, and was rather shocked to find out that Marks had not actually had the code, and had not expected one since they asked him to "break" rather than decode the message. And this was a code that they were actually using operationally. Unfortunately, the rest of their codes and procedures were about as secure, and equally disrespectful to the lives of the people who depended on them. This is what made the book so moving, for me. Many of the power-wielding paper-pushers in London were far more preoccupied by petty politics than by whether or not their workers behind enemy lines lived or died. I was saddened and angered by the needless sacrifice of those courageous people who volunteered for such dangerous work - knowing full well that if they were caught, they would be horribly tortured and then killed or sent to die in an extermination camp. The main theme throughout the book is Marks' urgent efforts to improve matters. Unlike many of those in power in SOE, he seems to have been constantly aware that codes were not just paper exercises, and made a nuisance of himself throughout his work there by trying to change how cryptography was handled. His eventual success in doing so was considerable, but came far too late for many who died at the hands of the Gestapo. Yet Marks never gave up, even though he often had to go outside official channels or use unorthodox means to do so - frequently with somewhat amusing results - whether frisking officials, impersonating his boss in memos, or bribing people with black-market provisions acquired by his mother. For example, he becomes so frustrated by the unwillingness of SOE to help him recruit more women for his Codes division that he sends a message to the Ministry of Labour: "Do not reject any girl on grounds of insanity without first offering her to SOE." However, the reader never forgets - and is, without preaching, never permitted to forget - the deeply serious business veiled over by actions that at the time were more desperate than amusing. A large part of the problem was the politics and infighting rife within SOE, and between it and other agencies (especially "C", the Secret Intelligence Service). The whole situation was aptly described by one of SOE's spies (who "couldn't wait to return to the peace and quiet of occupied France") as "a f**king mad hatter's tea party". Marks at least becomes adept at using these rivalries to his advantage: when agents or sections are reluctant to adopt his coding innovations, he regretfully informs them that he might not have enough for them because the Free French, or whoever, were getting priority. One of Marks's main preoccupations throughout the book is Holland. Based on their messages, Marks believed that most or all of SOE's agents there had been captured, with their messages sent under duress or directly by Marks's nemesis, Herr Giskes. For the most part, SOE refuses (you will be surprised to learn) to take Marks seriously despite the evidence piling up, and continues to send stores and agents straight into the hands of the Nazis. Largely powerless to change this situation despite his strenuous efforts, Marks institutes Plan Giskes to salvage what he can from the sorry mess.A vital component of this was his efforts to lull Giskes into a false sense of security for when the plan got underway. His code-briefing to a team about to be dropped into Holland (and almost certainly captured by Giskes) has a secondary aim:In basic terms, the ideal impression they would convey to him was that I seemed inexperienced, uninspired, and whatever the Dutch was for a bit of a c**t. The high master of St Paul's had frequently expressed this in Latin in my end-of-term reports, and I was about to demonstrate just how right he had been.Of course, since Marks is the book's author, the reader naturally has to consider this source of potential bias, especially concerning his own role. I found, however, that I had a high degree of trust in Marks and in the way he related events. He does not cut himself any slack while pointing out the weaknesses of others, as the quote above suggests. Indeed, he is relentless in pursuing and taking responsibility for his mistakes. Probably aware of how ludicrous it would be to take oneself too seriously in a climate in which the most serious matters are treated so lightly, Marks never misses an opportunity to skewer his own failings.The captain who instructed me was so full of himself that I spent the entire session trying to determine the reason for his self-esteem and failed to take in a single word of his instructions, except for "Any questions? Right. Get on with it."Between Silk and Cyanide is a remarkable book that will stay with me for a long time. Marks' writing style is fresh and vivid. He sounds just like the young man he was at the time, with little hint of the intervening years. My only, minor, criticism is that I would have liked more explanation of how the main codes worked, albeit simplified (I suspect that an editor may have taken these bits out on the grounds that they were too technical, but it means that other technical explanations make no sense - I re-read parts several times trying to work out what I'd missed and why I didn't understand, before realising that the information wasn't actually there and resorting to the Internet). It's a deeply human and affecting story - and one with a fine sense of the ridiculous.
A deeply frustrating book, one that falls very short of the inside history of a hidden war that that it promises, and is instead a personal memoir of a very vain and unreliable narrator.Marks' greatest failing as a writer of memoirs is his false modesty, where he depreciates himself endlessly as a young a foolish boy whose only saving grace is his willingness to sacrifice his own best interests for the sake of the agents. Marks' greatest failing as a historian is his remarkable memory of events that passed 50+ years before, where he is the only surviving witness and all of the records of his office were destroyed soon after the war. The result is a book built upon the merry tale of a feckless English lad matching wits with the coolly professional German warmasters (and Gosh! He Wins!). Then there is the problem with the framing of this narrative. To really follow what is happening as the author moves from event to event (in a loosely chronological sequence) one needs to have more than a passing knowledge of the British command structure, the British and German Intelligence Services, the timing of various battles and most of all, get a firm handle on the partisan politics of the many Governments in Exile and their guerrilla operations in occupied Europe. This isn't a singular failing of Marks, first person narratives are usually full of inside references and jargon. What is a problem is that the events described were already 50 years in the past by the time Marks got around to publishing this personal history, so really there is no excuse for all the inside jokes and gossip that Marks tries to pass off as colorful period detail. Marks' assumption that we already know what happened as well as he does, and his breezy writing style combined to throw me out of the story time and again while I tried to keep track of who he was introducing and their importance. Very often we are told that someone important is coming to visit him in his little office, and that this will change everything, and then nothing happens, and he never changes his behavior, and he never loses his utter certainty (no matter how much he claims to respect his superiors) that he is the only one in the entire war office who really really cares about the lives of the field agents. Neither was I given a reason to care about the people he claims to admire so much since he seems to believe that his own feelings and judgements are good enough for us to follow. That would only be possible if he hadn't spent so much time convincing us that his judgements are terrible and childish as part of his pose for the rest of the book.Then there is the problem the reader has assessing exactly what Marks' contributions were to improving agent code security: how effective were his new codes?; were fewer agents captured?; was crucial information successfully passed? These are things we cannot even guess at because Marks is adept on the one hand of puffing up his various achievements (this is usually done though staged meetings with his superiors where their jaws either drop with astonishment with the wonders that he has revealed, or clench with anger at the damage he has done to their internecine battles with other intelligence divisions) while simultaneously telling us that they were mere bagatelles, a folly, a distraction, a stopping point on his way to an even better code product.Then there are the poems. What the (view spoiler)[ HELL???????? Are we really supposed to believe that he memorized all those confidential code poems and to whom they were given (hide spoiler)]
What do You think about Between Silk And Cyanide: A Codemaker's War, 1941-1945 (2000)?
Wow, this book was great! Eric's been trying to get me to read it for ages, and I finally got around to it.Leo Marks was the cryptographer who revolutionized the British codes during World War II. He invented many of the codes used by the British during the war, briefed many of their agents, and organized systems for decoding "indecipherables" -- coded messages that were garbled to the point that they couldn't be decrypted. He also turns out to be an excellent writer (he's also a screenwriter and poet), and has written an intense, serious, and very human account of his experiences during the war. He has a sly sense of humor, keen insights, and tells many of the secrets he kept during the war (but one can be sure it's not all of them).The motivation for the book seems to have been the doubt about whether the Dutch agents during the war were captured by the Germans, and for how long they had been compromised. Marks is able to answer that clearly, but points out that it was not acknowledged at the time for political reasons, and was never clarified after the war because those in the know were never asked. He takes this opportunity to set the record straight as he knew it.His stories about the war are fascinating, illuminating, and frequently heartbreaking. This is a book well worth reading.
—Rachel
A bloated, blathering account of what should have been a fascinating subject. Marks's faults are manifold: he never gives us a clear picture of how he solved codes and leaves us in the dark for most of the book as to the exact significance of codebreaking in relation to the war effort as a whole. He's also rather full of himself, expecting us to be interested simply because being a codebreaker is Just So Cool!, and constantly making tired attempts at wit in order to leaven his dull account. 600 pages, and every one was painful.
—Nathan
This is quite frankly the best book I have read in months and months. An auto-biographical account by Leo Marks of his time as the Head of Codes for Special Operations Executive, the British war department created to 'set Europe ablaze' during WWII, it was unputdownable.That everything actually happened made the story even more riveting. I have always been interested in codes and ciphers, and I found Mark's descriptions of how they created codes and how they broke them fascinating. Marks is such a wonderful writer, he'd probably write a gripping account of how to watch paint dry, but with material like unearthing which Dutch agents had been captured by the Germans by analyzing their coded messages to headquarters, the in-fighting between SOE and the British Secret Service, as well as the ingenuity of Marks and other SOE operatives in laying their hands on scarce resources to do their jobs, I was reading late into the night three nights in a row.Marks' wonderfully rich phrases and his dry, sardonic wit mean that even serious, sometimes heartbreaking situations are tackled with empathy and humour. His style shows his deep respect for the sacrifices of the agents who went into Occupied Territories to disrupt the German supply lines and organize insurgent armies. Marks was the person who came up with the idea of printing codes on pieces of silk which could be burned after every use, hence the title of the book. Each agent was given a cyanide tablet to chew should they be captured, so the Nazis could not torture information such as codes out of them. When asked to come up with a two page report motivating why his silk system should be adopted rather than the very unsafe system they were using, Marks said: 'It can to reduced down to a single phrase. It's between silk and cyanide.'I cannot recommend this book highly enough. Amazing writing, gripping story, totally compelling.
—Michelle Diener
