Janeczko included a quotation in the passage to show the public support for government efforts.
illustrate the enthusiasm of German spies.
establish the competency of British code breakers.
prove the historical significance of an event.
Read the excerpt from The Dark Game by Paul
Janeczko.
The first mistake of German intelligence was the error
of arrogance, believing that the British were not up to
the challenge of deciphering their messages. Another
mistake they made was sending duplicates and even
triplicates of some of their messages, with each one
using a different cipher key. This ill-advised practice
meant that the code breakers had a couple of different
versions of the same message, giving them a much
better chance of cracking the cipher. The men of Room
40 were, in the words of one historian, "reading Berlin's
messages more quickly and correctly than the German
recipients." This group of cryptography amateurs, who
were generally recruited from college faculties, was
able to achieve its success with "ingenuity, endless
patience, and sparks of inspired guessing."