During the past several decades, declassified British documents have changed our understanding of how Nazi Germany was defeated. The key words are Enigma, the German encryption machine, and Bletchley Park, where Britain’s codebreakers unraveled Germany’s secrets. Those key words have been the subject of many books, documentaries and films (The Imitation Game). With War of Shadows, Israeli historian Gershom Gorenberg examines Enigma and Bletchley from a different angle, the North African campaign. Germany’s commander in the African desert, Gen. Erwin Rommel, seemed to have “preternatural” knowledge of where to strike at Allied forces. His intuition may have been aided by old fashioned espionage, but he was ultimately thwarted with the help of British codebreakers who deciphered many of his communications. War of Shadows is a fascinating look at the politics of the Middle East, a region that would explode after the war, written with a thriller writer’s sense of character and timing.
