Cracking the Nazi Code: The Untold Story of Agent A12 and the Solving of the Holocaust Code

“This is the story of a man whose love of country and the steps he took to secure its safety is well-written and interesting and deserves to be devoured.”

“On Sunday, March 19, 1939, Winthrop Bell opened his basement vault and stepped inside, through an imposing green steel door designed for a bank.” Thus the story of MI6 British spy, Winthrop Bell, referred to by his designated code, A12, opens.

Jason Bell, author of Cracking the Nazi Code, has no relationship to Winthrop Bell other than sharing the same last name, but the investigative work the author has done has produced a biography suited to the best of the current-day spy novels. (It should be noted for clarity that references in this review to “Bell” refer to Winthrop, the subject of the story. Any further references to Jason Bell will be indicated as “the author.”)

The author takes the reader on a journey of early British espionage from the primary activities of World War I through to the onset of Hitler and his Nazi Party destruction.

The author provides a substantial amount of information early in the book about Bell’s background, his personal appearance, and his personality, all items that contribute to Bell’s eventual involvement in the intelligence world.

A great deal of the text is spent unfolding Bell’s entry into espionage for his country during the early 20th century, just as World War I comes to pass, and the era immediately following that event.

Bell is considered a phenomenologist. “Phenomenology is a philosophical approach that aims to see essences through appearances . . . the essence is suggested by, but not reducible to, the appearance.” This is a theme that travels through this book and explains how Bell develops his theories about how Hitler and the Nazi Party developed and maintained such a stranglehold on the German people before and during both World Wars.

Bell is one of the few observers of events and activities during and after the Great War, who recognizes the danger of Adolph Hitler and the rise of the Nazi Party. “In the spring before the war was launched, the murderous Final Solution to the Jewish Question still had no name. Bell named it Hitler’s Extermination Program, and its scope, he typed, was ‘worldwide.’ This was the first clear warning of a strange fact that most people still do not realize today: Hitler and his allies meant to destroy all non-Aryan races on every inhabited continent of earth”

Although born and raised in Canada, Bell stretches his desire to learn through a worldwide search, and in 1914, prior to the onset of World War I, Bell is studying at the university in Göttingen Germany, writing his dissertation. It is not long before Bell is swept up in the search for enemies of Germany, and incarcerated. Although through his academic studies, he has made several well-placed friends, he remains in jail as the war unfolds.

It is during this time that he studies the war up close and personally. He develops more friendships with others with whom he discusses the state of the war and the countries and leaders who seem to be in various states of confusion.

Throughout the entire story, the author discusses in detail who many of these people are and how valuable the information is that they provide to Bell. It is through this minute detail that the author sometimes wanders away from Bell, but the reader should consider the importance of this added information. In particular, the author details the people who provide Bell with vital information and how this information is subsequently used to the benefit of the Allies.

As word travels back to Britain about Bell, the government considers him to be an asset in obtaining details about the events occurring in Europe, and soon Bell is called to England where he becomes a valued part of the espionage world. To give him cover, he is provided a position with Reuters as a reporter, and he develops a secret means for transmitting information about various leaders of the opposition back to Britain.

The author’s words are well chosen and the reader will sense a feeling of danger as Bell comes close to encountering life-threatening situations. And yet through it all, Bell provides the British government with enough information to remain on the winning side of the war.

If there is any drawback to this story, it is that the author tends to draw a picture of Bell almost single-handedly winning the war. It should be noted, however, that the information garnered by Bell was, indeed, priceless in its value to understanding the plans set forth by the Nazi Party.

This is the story of a man whose love of country and the steps he took to secure its safety is well-written and interesting and deserves to be devoured.