A Game of Birds and Wolves: The Ingenious Young Women Whose Secret Board Game Helped Win World War II

Non-fiction book review is on A Game of Birds and Wolves: The Ingenious Young Women Whose Secret Board Game Helped Win World War II by Simon Parkin. It is 309 pages long, including index, notes, and bibliography. Lucas and published by Little, Brown and Company. The cover is a picture taken from the game room where Captain Roberts and his wrens played the war-games. There is mild foul language, no sexuality and no violence in this book. There Be Spoilers Ahead.

From the dust jacket-  the triumphant story of a group of young women who helped devise a winning strategy to defeat the Nazi U-boats and deliver a decisive victory in the battle of the Atlantic.

By 1941, Winston Churchill had come to believe that the outcome of World War II rested on the battle for the Atlantic. A grand strategy game was devised by Captain Gilbert Roberts and a group of ten Wrens (members of the Women's Royal Naval Service) assigned to his team in an attempt to reveal the tactics behind the vicious success of the German U-boats. Played on a linoleum floor divided into painted squares, it required model ships to be moved across a make-believe ocean in a manner reminiscent of the childhood game, Battleship. Through play, the designers developed "Operation Raspberry," a counter-maneuver that helped turn the tide of World War II.

Combining vibrant novelistic storytelling with extensive research, interviews, and previously unpublished accounts, Simon Parkin describes for the first time the role that women played in developing the Allied strategy that, in the words of one admiral, "contributed in no small measure to the final defeat of Germany." Rich with unforgettable cinematic detail and larger-than-life characters, A Game of Birds and Wolves is a heart-wrenching tale of ingenuity, dedication, perseverance, and love, bringing to life the imagination and sacrifice required to defeat the Nazis at sea.

Review- A fascinating, narratively told story filled with interesting characters in the drama of World War II. The book begins at the end with Captain Roberts going to Germany to learn if he was right about how the Germans were using their U-boats and then backs up to take us back to the beginning, to Captain Roberts being discharged from the Royal Navy for health reasons. The start of the war no one believed that Germany had the ability to truly stop Britain from getting supplies but they quickly learned that the Germans did have enough U-boats and they were being led by a brilliant commander who believed in U-boats and their crews.  So Captain Roberts is brought back as he had been an instructor and knew more about U-boats than anyone else. Captain Roberts comes up with an ingenious plan of basically playing battleship. Roberts trained the young women who worked for them, they were called wrens,  in basic tactical warfare and they learned. They learned so well they began teaching Royal Navy ship captains and commanders on how to defeat and evade U-boats. This is a fascinating piece of almost forgotten World War II history, with so many women at the center of it. I'm glad that the story has been found and being told to new readers. If you were looking for a different kind of World War II non-fiction book, less about the battles or the concentration camps, then I highly recommend this book.

I give this book a Five out of Five stars. I get nothing for my review and  I borrowed this book from my local library