Churchill's Wizards: The British Genius For Deception 1914-1945

by Nicholas Rankin

By June 1940, most of Europe had fallen to the Nazis and Britain stood alone. So, with Winston Churchill in charge, the British bluffed their way out of trouble, drawing on the trickery which had helped them win the First World War. They broadcast outrageous British propaganda on pretend German radio stations, broke secret codes, conjured up phantom armies and fake airfields with model planes, and sent captured spies back to Germany with false intelligence.

Culminating in the spectacular misdirection that was so essential to the success of D-Day in 1944, Churchill’s Wizards is a thrilling work of popular history filled with almost unbelievable stories of bravery, creativity and deception.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, War, World War II, Military Fiction, Military History, Espionage

672 pages, Paperback

First published September 1, 2008

About the author

Nicholas Rankin (b. 1950) is an English writer and broadcaster. He was born in Yorkshire, but grew up in Kenya. He was educated at Shrewsbury School and Christ Church, Oxford. He has lived and worked in Bolivia and Catalonia, Spain.

He worked for the BBC World Service for 20 years. He was Chief Producer, Arts, at the BBC World Service, when his eight-part series on ecology and evolution, A Green History of the Planet, won two UN awards.

He currently works as a freelance writer and broadcaster and lives in London with his wife, the novelist Maggie Gee. He has one daughter, Rosa.

He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 2009.

Reviews

[K.J. Charles]

Very interesting overview of deception (propaganda, misleading, double agents, false info) in WW1-2). Highly readable with a lot of interesting trails to go down. Interesting that Wheatley gets a lot of space and Maskelyne a line. Fascinating how a tabloid journo turned the worst tabloid dark arts against the Nazis. Hugely readable.

[John McDermott · Rating 3 out of 5]

When our backs are against the wall, it turns out we British are a devious lot.
Churchill's Wizards illustrates this to great effect from the invention of camouflage in WW1 to how we deceived Hitler into thinking the D- Day landings would happen at Calais.
Full of great characters,and there are a lot to keep up with, this was an entertaining and informative book.

[سماح العرياني · Rating 3 out of 5]

الكذب سلاح قوي وذا جدوى كبيرة في الحرب، فتلجأ إليه كل دولة عمداً من أجل خداع شعبها وجذب المحايدين وتضليل العدو.
ولأن خداع كل الناس ليس بالأمر الهين فيتولى المهمة غالبا الكتاب المشهورين، لأنهم الأقدر على تزيين الأكاذيب بالعبارات الأدبية البراقة أكثر من رجال السياسة أنفسهم.

أحداث كثيرة يغطيها الكتاب، من الحرب العالمية الاولى إلى اتفاقية سايكس بيكو لتقسيم الشرق الأوسط إلى الحرب العالمية الثانية.

الكتاب يركز على تفاصيل دقيقة ويترك الأحداث المهمة، لذلك كان دسم بدون فائدة !

[Caroline · Rating 3 out of 5]

The concepts of camouflage, propaganda, double agents, secret intelligence, snipers, guerilla units and commandos are all so much a part of our modern image of warfare that it's hard to remember that most of these developments only came in with the twentieth century. I suppose it took the horror and carnage of the trenches to finally bury the notion that warfare could ever be civilised, a gentlemanly game between two sides who both played by the same rules. Once it became a matter of 'win at all costs', the ends could always justify the means, and deception instead of honour became one of the cardinal rules.

The British as a nation have always been in two minds about deception and honour. On the one hand as a people we love dressing-up, pageantry, showmanship, acting, and rarely ever say what we mean. On the other hand there's still a very strong streak of 'old-fashioned values', and these twin aspects of the national character show up in the military perhaps more than elsewhere. Throw two world wars into the mix, and what results is a fascinating blend of trial and error, genius and blundering incompetence, triumph and disaster.

Many intriguing and well-known characters pass through these pages, from TE Lawrence to Ian Fleming, George Bernard Shaw and John Buchan. Indeed, many of the earliest of those individuals involved in the art of camouflage and deception were deliberately drawn from the arts - painters, sculptors, writers. That said, anyone looking for a rollicking, fast-paced thriller scattered with famous names had better look elsewhere. Whilst dummy tanks, spies, forged documents and double agents are here a-plenty, this book takes the longer and more general viewpoint. This is however a thoroughly interesting overview of how deception came to be an established weapon in the military arsenal, or at least the British military arsenal in world wars 1 and 2.

Just a warning - despite the title, this isn't purely about Churchill's role in fostering this kind of underhand warfare - I suspect the title is simply a publishers' gambit to sell more copies. Churchill sells, after all.

[Juxhin Deliu · Rating 2 out of 5]

A decent, comprehensive reports on the espionage and camouflage tactics used by the British army from the first World War to the second, although it leaves you wanting for more and feeling like a well-knit summary, thus sacrifying some of the more compelling stories. Also, I struggled to believe, as the author touts (but kind of brings himself back to earth at the end), britons have really benefitted a lot due to these tactics, as if they did not have a whole Empire (despite the difficulty of mobilizing it) backing them up, and on top, the "big bro" USA and (then) "bud-buds" USSR and China.

[Rose]

Fascinating and highly-recommended history of military deception in the World Wars.

I found the development of deception during the Great War particularly interesting, because the armed forces were fighting a new kind of warfare in which the old rules didn't necessarily apply. Deception had, of course, been part of military technique for as long as men had been fighting, but by the 20th century there was a distinct sense that it wasn't "playing the game" of war; it wasn't cricket; and it certainly wasn't what British men did.

Many in senior positions vigorously resisted the introduction of, for example, camoflauge. In many ways, the Army traditions and values lead to death and defeat, and officers' worldviews had to change. For example, it had previously been important for officers to display their rank in a highly visible way, to reinforce the hierarchy. Unfortunately, in the context of trench warfare, that made it easy for enemy snipers to spot the "high value" men and pick them off. Similarly, the Army emphasis on neatness meant resistance to messy-looking camoflauge. The tops of sandbag walls were meticulously banged flat and level so they looked tidy. That, of course, made any disruption to that line - a head, a gun, a periscope - stand out clearly as a target. Gradually, cunning new techniques and strategies came into use. For instance, colour-blind spotters were sent up in observation planes because, unlike those with normal colour vision, they could pick out the artificially-green camouflage from its green surroundings. Plaster heads were made to be raised over the parapet and draw fire; poking a stick through the bullet's path through the head made it simple to locate the position of snipers. Every conceivable object became a hide for snipers or spotters - from steel-core trees to fake German corpses. By the end of the Great War, camoflauge and deception had become far more accepted as an integral part of modern warfare.

I loved the examples of how the enemy were accidentally deceived through cock-ups, especially when they resulted from the quaint belief that no-one could surely be so stupid, so it must be a set-up. During the Gallipoli campaign in the First World War: “The fact that Lord Miller and Lord Ribblesdale had loudly debated “Evacuation of the Peninsula” [of Gallipoli in WW1:] in the House of Lords in October and November accidentally misdirected the Turks and Germans. They could not credit such stupidity and carelessness among intelligent people, so supposed the debate was just propaganda.”

World War 2 brought a whole new set of challenges, and took the role of deception to a new level. Tanks that looked like trucks, trucks that looked like tanks, black radio stations (including a religious one which gained credibility after the British spread a rumour that it was actually a Vatican City black station), fake camps...you name it. I particularly liked the story of GARBO, Britain's most successful double-agent. He was a Spaniard determined to help the Allied war effort, and managed to set himself up as a supposed German spy. Having never been to England, and not speaking English, he managed to convince German intelligence that he was actually in England, gathering intelligence they requested - all based on trips to the library and a healthy imagination. He made mistakes, my favourite being his report that people in Glasgow would do anything for a litre of wine, but these went un-noticed. Once the Allies finally realised his value, he was taken over to London and eventually ran a whole network of imaginary agents across the country. His efforts contributed greatly to Plan FORTITUDE, which deceived the Nazis about the planned invasion of Normandy in Operation OVERLORD. The Germans recognised his assistance by awarding him the Iron Cross.

Moving away slightly from the focus on deception, before reading this book I had not realised that it was more dangerous to be an Allied merchant seaman than to be in any of the armed forces. However, being a civilian was pretty damn dangerous too. Even if you discount the Blitz and the deaths caused by the blackout, your own countrymen might turn against you. In separate incidents over two days in June 1940, for example, the Local Defence Volunteers (later the Home Guard) shot dead four motorists, suspecting them of being German spies. They weren’t. (Some of the LDV guns came from the US, after Picture Post appealed for private citizens to donate their weapons.)

Rankin sums up the whole nature of deception in warfare, and why it is so successful, when discussing Agent GARBO and his stories of England. "Is it so incredible that professionally-trained Abwehr intelligence agents treated these amateur inventions as true? There is an almost infinite human capacity for self-deception. We like to hear what agrees with us, and what is most agreeable to us is a confirmation of the prejudices we already hold. We see what we think we are seeing - a mirage in Iraq, a chimera in Afghanistan, a vital secret agent in London."

[Colin · Rating 3 out of 5]

Nicholas Rankin’s comprehensive survey of the ‘British genius for deception’ over the course of two world wars is a fascinating tale of larger than life characters, arcane knowledge employed to new ends on the battlefield and home front and proof that conflict drives innovation (and, by extension, that nations with their backs against the wall are those most likely to innovate in the most daring and surprising ways). From the early camofleurs of World War l - a mixture of artists, theatre designers, zoologists and military men - to deception considered as a fine art or a higher science in the Second World War, Churchill’s Wizards is full of surprises, off the wall ideas and proof of the endless curiosity and drive for innovation that the human race - particularly when under mortal threat - is capable of. I would have liked to learn more about the role of deception, subterfuge and sleight of hand in the Far East theatre of war, but in the book’s 600 pages that conflict is hardly mentioned.

[Jean · Rating 4 out of 5]

Nicholas Rankin tells about Archibald Wavell, whose career began in the Boer War and ended with him a Field Marshall and Viceroy of India. Wavell wrote “The beginnings of any war by the British are always marked by improvidence, improvisation, and too often, alas, impossibilities being asked of the troops.” Improvisation defined British deception operations, camouflaging soldiers in the field, building entire fake armies and fake cities to fool airborne reconnaissance and bombers, counter sniping with dummy heads-all originated in the British amateur spirit and gift for discovering a way forward out of the strangest materials. The first half of the book is about World War One and the second half covers World War Two.

At the outbreak of World War I in 1914 Solomon J. Solomon a portrait painter became obsessed with camouflaging soldiers. With the help from members of the London theatrical and artistic worlds he started a British Army School of Camouflage in Hyde Park. Another painter marine artist Norman Wilkinson designed a better method to camouflage ships from submarine attacks. He used a vivid painting of the vessel that dazzled and gave the impression that the head is where the stern is.

Sefton Delmer in late 1930s produced a German language radio program to entertain and seed disinformation to demoralize Hitler’s troops. The program ran all during the war. The author also discusses the famous Operation Mincemeat. Rankin states that the British Military have always looked for ways to outsmart their enemies, by hiding the extent of and defensive weakness and obscuring the timing and direction of any offensives. The author states the British integrate deception into the highest level of strategic planning during the two world wars. Some escapades became famous: phony units with pretend tanks, a double of General Bernard Montgomery arriving in Gibraltar to discuss fake operations. I got a good laugh at one story Rankin tells about the Luftwaffe paying tribute to a dummy railhead in Egypt by dropping a wooden bomb on it.

Churchill loved cloak-dagger exploits and was fascinated by cryptography, and military wizardry. Churchill promoted unorthodox figures who excelled in the crucial field of camouflage, propaganda, secret intelligence and Special Forces operation. Rank quotes one of Churchill’s famous declarations that he lived up to that “in wartime the truth should be protected by a bodyguard of lies.”

The book is a page turner and lots of fun; it covers many exciting and interesting illustration of British deception. If you are interested in either WWI or WWII or just in military history this is a must book for you. I read this as an audio book downloaded from Audible. It is fairly long at about 22 hours. Napoleon Ryan does a great job narrating the book.

[Michael Pryor · Rating 4 out of 5]

Eye-opening, startling, engrossing.

[Joel Arnold · Rating 3 out of 5]

Lots of fun. Walks through WWI and WWII with different anecdotes about how the British used intelligence successfully. A very entertaining and interesting book. Here are some of my highlights from the Kindle edition:

The Archduke Ferdinand was the hated symbol of the Austro-Hungarian Empire that had annexed Bosnia and Herzegovina in October 1908, tearing it away from Greater Serbia. The Black Hand, a Serb nationalist terrorist cell, intended to kill the archduke as he drove in his motorcade through Sarajevo. One of the conspirators threw a bomb from the crowd, but the chauffeur floored the accelerator and the black car shot over the device, which exploded behind, injuring dignitaries in the following vehicle as well as some bystanders. Hours later, driving back from a hospital visit to the injured, the chauffeur took his fateful wrong turn. As the car reversed slowly back up Gebet Street, it passed a tubercular and weedy-looking youth called Gavrilo Princip, consoling himself with a sandwich in Moritz Schiller’s cafe. The 19-year-old Bosnian Serb could hardly believe his luck, for he was one of the seven-strong gang disappointed by the failure of the earlier bomb. In one pocket Princip had a cyanide capsule and in the other a Belgian-made Browning 9 mm semi-automatic pistol. The open-topped Austrian car offered him a second opportunity for his cause to make its mark on history, and he shot the Archduke and his wife at close range.

The Duke of Wellington once said: ‘All the business of war, and indeed all the business of life, is to endeavour to find out what you don’t know by what you do; that’s what I called “guessing what was at the other side of the hill”.’

It was the paramount need to deceive eyes in the skies that led to the rise of camouflage.

From the earliest days of organised human fighting, elaborate headdresses, shiny armour and shields, garish warpaint and costumes were designed to alarm the enemy, like the threat displays of other nonhuman animals.

It was the development of accurate guns that did most to cause exuberant brightly coloured uniforms to give way to the familiar drab tones of the modern soldier.

Charles Masterman set up a War Propaganda Bureau at Wellington House, Buckingham Gate, in London.

The USA was considered the most crucial country to get on side, and so the War Propaganda Bureau put the Canadian-born romantic novelist Sir Gilbert Parker in charge of the public relations campaign aimed across the Atlantic.

those who practise deception are most deeply deceived; those who excel in the simulations of grief are most early

reduced to tears; the liar falls most completely for the lie.

The word ‘propaganda’ is religious in origin, coming from the Roman Catholic Church’s congregatio de propaganda fide, ‘congregation for propagation of the faith’, a body set up to aid the missionary work of the Church.

The true wizard is the man who works by spirit on spirit. We are only beginning to realize the strange crannies of the human soul. The real magician, if he turned up today, wouldn’t bother about drugs and dopes . . . The great offensives of the future would be psychological, and . . . the most deadly weapon in the world was the power of mass-persuasion . .

He was soon accepted, but was horrified one day to see his white bull terrier proudly

trotting alongside his wagon in a bright collar proclaiming his owner’s name: ‘Lt. Ironside: Royal Artillery’. Nevertheless, Ironside managed to bluff his way through and even got a German medal (which he later displayed to Adolf Hitler).

‘I found out in the war that it didn’t do to underrate your opponent’s brains. He’s pretty certain to expect a feint and not to be taken in. I’m for something a little subtler.’ ‘Meaning?’ ‘Meaning that you feint in one place, so that your opponent believes it to be a feint and pays no attention–and then you sail in and get to work in that very place.’ John Buchan, John Macnab (1924)

Their coeval George Orwell speaks for them: Personally I believe that most people are influenced far more than they would care to admit by novels, serial stories, films and so forth . . . It is probable that many people who would consider themselves extremely sophisticated and ‘advanced’ are actually carrying through life an imaginative background which they acquired in childhood from (for instance) Sapper and Ian Hay.

Some dummies even had a slot in the mouth for a lighted cigarette which could be puffed from below through a rubber tube. Prichard wrote: ‘It is a curious sensation to have the head through which you are smoking a cigarette suddenly shot with a Mauser bullet.’ Camoufleurs helped snipers in the field by making realistic hides and observation posts which fitted seamlessly into no-man’s-land or the trenches: shattered brickwork, a French milestone, shorn-off poplars, a swollen dead horse, even the corpse of a Prussian or a French soldier. Camoufleurs also painted special full-length ‘sniper’s robes’ in the appropriate earth and vegetation colours.

It was true, too, of Compton Mackenzie’s deception initiative on Lesbos in July. The writer was sent in his Royal Marines uniform from GHQ to Mytilene on the island of Lesbos. His orders were to make plans for establishing a ‘secret’ military base there, in readiness for a forthcoming big Allied attack on Smyrna on the Turkish mainland. No such attack was planned: the whole thing was a diversion. But Mackenzie told various people–the British Consul, The Times’ correspondent, the Civil Governor–about the plans, ‘in confidence’, and numerous Greek small businessmen soon came rushing forward with drachma bribes in the hope of future contracts with military forces. Mackenzie, of course, suavely but unconvincingly denied they were coming. This three-week deception operation, planned and set in motion by the staff officer Guy Dawnay, was effective and historically important.

The fact that Lord Milner and Lord Ribblesdale had loudly debated ‘Evacuation of the Peninsula’ in the House of Lords in October and November accidentally misdirected the Turks and Germans. They could not credit such stupidity and carelessness among intelligent people, so supposed the debate was just propaganda.

As the trenches emptied, the rearguard left behind rifles wedged in the parapet. They were rigged to self-fire by a wire or cord round the trigger, linked to a Heath Robinson mechanism of cans that dripped water or trickled sand till the lower can had enough weight to exert a finger’s pressure.

The word ‘tank’ was coined by Swinton to maintain secrecy by referring to the armoured vehicles as straightforward riveted metal containers. The Russian for ‘Handle With Care: Petrograd’ was painted in large white Cyrillic letters on the side of a prototype Mark 1 tank, to deceive people that it was just a tank of oil for the Russian army.

The First World War marked the rise of the geopolitical region known as ‘the Middle East’. The term was first coined in 1902 by the American theorist of naval strategy, Rear Admiral Alfred Thayer Mahan, to indicate the Arab and Persian area between the ‘Near East’ of the Mediterranean Levant and the ‘Far East’ of India and China.

The British Army started the war with fewer than 900 motor vehicles, but had over 120,000 by its end in November 1918.

Virtually all the new Royal Navy warships built in 1912, 1913 and 1914 were oil-fuelled. To guarantee those Royal Navy oil supplies, the British government spent £5 million in 1912 to gain the controlling interest in the Anglo-Persian Oil Company (later British Petroleum) which first struck black gold in the Persian Gulf in 1908.

Sharif Hussein said he wanted a single independent state carved out of the Ottoman Empire, an Arab bloc that would embrace today’s southern Turkey, Syria, Iraq, Kuwait, Lebanon, Jordan, Israel, Palestine, Saudi Arabia and Oman.

The letters between McMahon and Sharif Hussein never quite agree on the vital topic of what territory was to be excluded from the plan. Prominent in the area of disagreement is the region of southern Syria between the river Jordan and the Mediterranean that the British called ‘Palestine’.

In all, Great Britain spent some £11 million bribing Arabs in WW1.

The Arabs would not engage Turkish troops but only attack empty stretches of the Hijaz railway line.

The Armistice arrived before Lawrence could prove the idea that a war might be won without fighting battles, but he was moving that way. These simple ideas have become conventional nowadays, but then they were as revolutionary as quantum mechanics.

T. E. Lawrence’s ‘Evolution of a Revolt’; the sixth refers to his ‘Twenty-Seven Articles’ from the Arab Bulletin of 20 August 1917, of which Article 15 reads: Do not try to do too much with your own hands. Better that the Arabs do it tolerably than that you do it perfectly. It is their war, and you are there to help them, not to win it for them.

In the East African campaign against the Germans in Tanganyika, Meinertzhagen laid dead birds and animals around a clean water-hole and signposted it POISONED so as to deny it to the enemy but keep it safe for his own use. As the British Intelligence officer, he once sent a suspected German spy 1,500 rupees and a thank-you note and made sure the Germans intercepted it, so they would shoot their own man and save Meinertzhagen the trouble.

the famous ‘haversack ruse’ of 10 October 1917 which Allenby credited with a major role in the successful attack on Gaza, and always claimed to have carried it off, in person and alone. In essence, Meinertzhagen said he rode out into the country north-west of Beersheba, deliberately tangled with a Turkish patrol and got himself shot at. He slumped in the saddle, dropping his water bottle, field glasses, rifle and, most important of all, a khaki haversack stained with his horse’s fresh blood, containing personal letters, papers and £20 in notes.

The mayor of Jerusalem came out in a frock coat and fez, carrying a white flag and the keys to the city, which he offered, in a moment of bathos, first to some army cooks from London, then a sergeant, then some gunnery officers, then a brigadier, until, at last, a general could be found.

Lloyd George had seen that the support of international, and especially US, Jewry for the Allies was invaluable and that the Zionist movement could be used (in John Marlowe’s phrase) ‘as a wooden horse of Troy to introduce British control into Palestine’

In the spring of 1921, Winston Churchill took over the Colonial Office. The Middle East ‘presented a most melancholy and alarming picture’ of turmoil and turbulence. There was rebellion in Iraq, Egypt was in ferment, there was tension between Arabs and Jews in Palestine and disgruntled desert chiefs were rousing the Bedouin beyond the Jordan. Churchill formed a new department to deal with the area and invited T. E. Lawrence to join. He proved an admirable civil servant. In March 1921, at the Hotel Semiramis in Cairo, Colonial Secretary Churchill gathered the top British civil and military administrators of the region (nicknaming them ‘the forty thieves’) all together for a tenday conference. Churchill and Lawrence then effectively redrew the map. They split the British-controlled territory west of Iraq in two, along the line of the river Jordan. The 23 per cent of the land west of Jordan, already under a Jewish High Commissioner, Sir Herbert Samuel, was to become the ‘national home for the Jewish people’ promised in the Balfour Declaration. The 77 per cent of the dry territory east of the river, now named Trans-Jordan or Transjordania, was for the Arabs, and was to be ruled by Sharif Hussein’s son, the Hashimite Emir Abdulla. His brother Feisal, who had been ejected from Damascus by the French in July 1920, now received his consolation prize, the Kingdom of Iraq, a place he had never visited.

Ironically, the power of the U-boat weapon would actually ensure that Germany lost the war. The isolationist United States of America only entered the fray after Imperial Germany began its strategy of indiscriminate submarine attacks on all ships, neutral or Allied, military or merchant, hospital or passenger, within huge zones of blockade. Two days after the Kaiser announced unrestricted submarine warfare, the USA cut off diplomatic relations with Germany.

he had to convince the Americans that the cable threatening to foment revolutionary war from Mexico was genuine, without letting slip that the intercept had been made in violation of US neutrality. Moreover, Hall could not allow the Germans to suspect that their codes had been broken. To camouflage his real source, the telegraph cable to the USA he was still tapping, Hall ensured that Edward Thurston, the British minister in Mexico, obtained a copy of the Zimmermann telegram in the form it had been received at the Western Union office in Mexico City. On 22 February, when Hall showed the American embassy in London the telegram dated 19 January, he could more or less honestly say that it had been obtained in Mexico and cracked in London.

on 3 March, when Zimmermann himself naïvely admitted to an American reporter in Berlin that he could not deny having written the note, the floodgates of righteous indignation opened.

A provisional government of liberals and moderate socialists was formed under Kerensky. They were, at least, parliamentarians, and the USA was the first government to recognise them, on 22 March.

King George V’s note in his daily diary is one of the first recorded usages of the French loanword ‘camouflage’ in English: ‘May & I went to Hyde Park close to powder magazine where we saw a demonstration of the use of camouflage in warfare (which is concealment) most interesting . . .’

An enormous scale model of Messines Ridge and its defences, the size of two croquet lawns, was constructed in detail from RFC reconnaissance evidence. Officers studied the model from scaffolding built up around it.

(After Baron Herbert de Reuter committed suicide in April 1915, leaving Reuters news agency financially weakened, Jones had done a deal with the British government. Using a £550,000 loan arranged by Herbert Asquith’s brother-in-law, Jones bought out Reuters, became its chief shareholder and ensured that its wartime news-gathering was presented ‘through British eyes’ and that its worldwide distribution network was available to the British government.)

war is hell, but you still have to win it.

‘The more destructive war becomes the more fascinating we find it,’

‘Hell hath no fury like a non-combatant.’

A ‘pigeon’ was a renegade German or an Englishman speaking perfect German, dressed up in German uniform and introduced into an assembly of prisoners in order to ‘direct their conversation into the proper channel’. The ‘pigeon’ would proceed to talk of forthcoming operations, or of losses, or of food and discipline or of anything else upon which he had been primed beforehand by the British Intelligence staff.

Montague thought that during WW1 ‘the art of Propaganda was little more than born’. He wondered what would be the long-term effects of another war in which propaganda had really come of age,

Military Intelligence (MI7) had regularly been using large hydrogen balloons to get agents and crates of carrier pigeons into enemy territory at night, and now they used thousands of smaller balloons to deliver paper eastwards on the wind. Some 2,000 hydrogen balloons of specially ‘doped’ paper, about twenty feet in circumference, were produced every week. Each could carry up to 1,000 leaflets, which ones depending on that night’s wind direction: The leaflets were sewn onto a slow-burning fabric fuse, which was ignited before launching. As the fuse burnt, the leaflets fell off one by one, thus serving as ballast. For the first hour or so the fuse carried leaflets designed for German troops, then some hours of leaflets for friendly civilians and, finally, leaflets for German civilians. On every suitable night millions of these leaflets were despatched by teams strung along our front line.

Late in the war, many British propaganda leaflets went by internal post all over Austria, Bavaria and Germany, thus avoiding the strict censorship of foreign mail. This happened in two ways. First, they were smuggled in bulk via the book trade, which was not closely supervised, especially if the volumes had the covers of German classics. Second, they were carried over the border from neutral Holland by Gastarbeiter and sent via the normal post inside enemy territory to neutrals, potential sympathisers, the intelligentsia and the newspapers, using counterfeit postage stamps engraved and printed by Waterlow of Watford for one of the British secret services.

Many German newspapers translated interesting pieces from the neutral press–Dutch, Scandinavian and Swiss–and such papers were skilfully bombarded with ‘camouflaged articles’ from Crewe House that, without banging a drum, showed the social, economic, commercial and scientific conditions in Allied countries in a glowing light.

A German trench newspaper appeared, Heer und Heimat, with a picture of the Kaiser between two oak-leaf clusters, and a subtitle Der Ruf zur Einigkeit, ‘The Cry for Unity’, which featured a front page cartoon showing the German political parties at home fighting each other rather than the enemy. This paper looked and seemed thoroughly German, but it too was produced by Crewe

After the Russian Revolution of October 1917, the Bolsheviks had reneged on Russia’s alliance with Britain and France and sought a separate peace with Germany at Brest-Litovsk.

Their attitude boiled down to ‘the French are cleverer than the Boche, so how could they do anything better?’

As soon as WW1 ended, propaganda became a dirty word. Crewe House was shut down and cleared by Sir Campbell Stuart by 31 December 1918, and the government hurried to wash its hands of its own publicity machine.

a land of rampant inflation where just to buy a cabbage, your money was not counted but weighed. When inflation ended on 20 November 1923, one US dollar was worth 4,200,000,000,000 marks. But Delmer thought inflation was partly a matter of self-interest. Because the war debt was computed in marks, inflation freed Germany from its reparations; it was also something that could be blamed on the wicked Versailles Treaty, democracy and the Jews.

Delmer watched Hitler switching his emotional magnetism on and off like an actor.

Delmer was sure that this was not just an act; Hitler and Göring really did fear a possible coup by the Communists.

Hitler fell back to walk with Delmer. ‘God grant that this be the work of the Communists. You are now witnessing the beginning of a great new epoch in German history, Herr Delmer. This fire is the beginning.’

Delmer did not believe that the Reichstag fire was set by the Communists, as the Nazis said, or by the Nazis themselves, as the Communists said. He thought the lone Dutch eccentric, Marinus van der Lubbe (later executed for the act), was probably responsible. But he was in no doubt that this was exactly the kind of excuse that Hitler needed to strike out against his enemies.

the Germans, who were secretly assisting the rebel Nationalists, Generals Franco and Mola.

British diplomats, naval attachés and secret agents worked together to delay the process; meanwhile they used the BBC news, diplomatic and dockside gossip and talk on telephone lines they knew were tapped to suggest that a large British fleet, including the aircraft carrier Ark Royal, was just over the horizon, when in fact it was five days away. The Graf Spee’s skipper, Captain Langsdorf, a decent man, was deceived into thinking he had no chance of escaping to the high seas. He released his crew, scuttled the Graf Spee, went ashore at Buenos Aires and, wrapped in his navy’s ensign, shot himself.

The Home Guard harassed innocent citizens for their identity cards

[Alistair Edwards · Rating 2 out of 5]

Anyone looking through my reading list might think that I have something of an obsession with World War II. I would deny this, but I do have a certain level of interest, particularly because my parents participated in it my Dad as a Spitfire pilot. Nevertheless, I would claim to be a pacifist. That is one reason that this book appealed to me - because it is about a branch of warfare that does not involve killing people, not directly anyway.

Evidently deception has a number of roles to play in warfare - and has done at least as far back as the Greeks leaving a giant hobby horse outside the gates of Troy. Often these tactics have had the effect of reducing casualties, so that's okay, isn't it.

As implied by the title, Rankin has covered the history of the use of deception by the British from the First World War through to the end of the Second. It is comprehensive and apparently well-researched, but for me that is probably its weakest point. It's too long. I wanted to read about the clever and daring deceptions, and not so many details of the individuals involved and their careers.

At the same time I would have liked to know more about how to make a deception work. For instance, a double-agent (and most of the Nazi spies were 'turned') cannot simply feed their handlers with incorrect, misleading information that suits their 'other employers' without (eventually) losing all credibility. So, how can they be seeded with correct, but worthless information? There was one instance of this where an agent passed on the fact of the D-day invasion - eight minutes after it had started. I'd have liked to learn more about this.

Nevertheless, I did make it to the end of the book.

[Jack Trifts · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is a detailed account of military deception and propaganda during the WWI and WWII. The key word here is “detailed.” My problem is that the detail often detracts from the overall story. For example, when discussing a meeting that took place, the author repeatedly had to provide minute detail about each participant, the background, and connections to others even remotely related to the event along with the location, etc. I found myself being grateful that history apparently did not record the menus for dinner meetings lest the reader be required to endure discussions of over seasoned soup or slightly tough Sunday roast. Overall, I think there is a wonderful 250 page book buried in the 421 pages. Perhaps my view of this book is partially driven by having just completed Helen Ryan’s The Walls have Ears, about British intelligence gained through bugging POWs. Fry also provides great detail and is equally well researched but her choice of detail draws one into the overall story rather than postponing the story while the the author makes use of all the notes at his disposal.

[Robert · Rating 4 out of 5]

The winners of any war always proclaim their superior bravery, skill and intelligence as the means of defeating the inferior enemy. Despite all the glories listed in the official description of this book, the more detailed story paints a less stellar picture. No surprises there. Still, the accounts of the experiments and successful illusions made for an interesting read. The detective series I recently finished, The Magic Men, had its roots in one group of fictional tricksters who developed some of those deceptions (though things weren't quite as straightforward as that). There's another book, The War Magician, that talks about the similar exploits of real life magician Jasper Maskelyne. I'll be rereading that book, and reviews of it, as I remember years ago reading that that book was more fanciful than accurate. I'll let you know.

[Andy Horton · Rating 3 out of 5]

I enjoyed this, though I found it a bit more diffuse in what it covered. I was expecting deception and misdirection operations but it covered propaganda, camouflage, intelligence and special forces too. Lots of portraits of interesting characters, some I had heard of and others who were new to me. Artists, soldiers, spies, scientists…covers a lot of ground, though not in depth. I really liked the epilogue on how people’s lives played out post-war - in reality and in fiction.

[Toby White · Rating 4 out of 5]

A most excellent book for anyone fascinated in warfare and more importantly espionage or black ops. This covers primarily World War 1 and earlier but also a large part of the more important operations during World War 2. I’d definitely recommend this for anyone who’s interested in the art of deception.

[Popup-ch · Rating 2 out of 5]

A panegyric to British inventiveness and cunning, as opposed to German trickery and deceit.

Camouflage was invented in France during WWI, and came to be used by the British in various ways - from making tree-like lookout posts to using nets to cover artillery and dazzle-camouflage, where the goal isn't to hide, but to confuse.

It's rather too jingoistic, though.

[ben c · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very interesting, the way towns faked. Fake divisions and supply lines in north africa. Re-Re revisionists say it this sort of thing never happened. Mar Dhea. D-Day would never have happened more likely if there wasn't a ghost invasion east of normandy which delayed sufficiently the commitment of axis forces, to a counter attach..

[Tero Moliis · Rating 3 out of 5]

Although the title and general theme of this book captivated me fully, the whole experience was not as good as I anticipated. Very high expectations are usually hard to match, even if you were deceived at first. Pun intended! Even so, a valuable book with a lot of interesting information, especially if you are into understanding more about deception in war, and peace.

[Joe Blow]

Absurd must read

WW2 WAS WON BY BRITISH BRAINS, USA TREASURE AND USSR BLOOD. WITHOUT THE BRAINS BEHIND TREASURE AND BLOOD I WOULD NOT WRITING THIS REVIEW. READ THE BOOK AND SEE FOR YOURSELF.

[Mark · Rating 5 out of 5]

Thoroughly Researched and Brilliantly Told

What a cracker of a book, and so thorough in its telling of the subterfuges used in WW1 and WW2.

I was fascinated from beginning to end. Wholeheartedly recommend to anyone with a passing interest in the history of this practice.

[David · Rating 4 out of 5]

There is a good amount of research and collection of scarce and ambiguous information for this book. The way the author has ended the book is another thing I liked about this book. Could have included more photos. If you want an adventure packed novel experience, it is not the book for you.

[Daniel · Rating 4 out of 5]

A slow start, but at about the halfway point, this book really rewards you for sticking through it.

[Occhi Aperti · Rating 4 out of 5]

One of the best books about ww1, ww2, intrigue and espionage. Lots of detail and entertaining tidbits.
The mix of personalities, challenges and events make it a page-turner for world war buffs.

[Jennifer · Rating 3 out of 5]

The first half was really interesting, but then there were so many different organizations and acronyms and names of people that I lost interest.

[Thomas Mcdonough · Rating 5 out of 5]

Just amazing! Read this book. Now!

[Neal · Rating 2 out of 5]

Most of this book was about the history of people who had anything to do with camouflage. About 10% of the book was actually interesting and very little was new information.

[Crissy · Rating 4 out of 5]

informative regarding aspects of fooling the enemy in a variety of ways. Amusingly written.

[ElegantJo · Rating 4 out of 5]

Excellent read, if rather long. Well-researched and very "readable"

[Hans · Rating 3 out of 5]

In the world of deception honor and praise are rare and few emerge to be celebrated as heroes. Instead of the imagery of the brave soldier and their heroic deeds and sacrifice that can be easily pointed to, the warrior who fights in the shadows is rarely hailed a hero. Where the measure of a man is normally tallied by his deeds, those who specialize in cunning and deceptions are ones who achievements are difficult to measure. Where a soldier can claim to have single-handedly killed 24 enemy combatants, the ones who fight in the shadows can only claim to have possibly saved lives but without hard evidence even this claim is hard to demonstrate.

History naively passes over the importance of these operations and how much they contribute to the final outcome. History text books are replete with stories of epic battles and struggles that would convince the reader that bravery, boldness and brute force has been the primary force that conquerors used to win. This unfortunate bias paints a very inaccurate picture since deception through camouflage, propaganda and misinformation all have an almost immeasurable effect in the overall outcome and yet psychological warfare is where the mind can defeat even the strongest brute force.

As anyone who has spent any time in a barracks or in the field can attest, soldiers will grumble and gossip. Deprive them of food, sleep, adequate equipment and leave them out in the elements and they will quickly start to focus on all of the things wrong with their situation. The skillful use of propaganda is akin to throwing more fuel on that fire stirring the soldiers discontentment to the breaking point where they become reluctant to fight. At times the best propaganda is the rumor of the humane treatment of prisoners. This can make soldiers start to consider it a better alternative to their current situation. News from the Russian front terrified most German soldiers for they knew the Russians were bent on vengeance and they were not feeling very compassionate towards Germans. This caused many German soldiers to eagerly surrender to the British and Americans. The British and Americans used this to their advantage and used propaganda to ensure the German soldier knew it too.

One of the cleverest forms of camouflage was not just hiding men and equipment, but also blatantly trying to make them seen to inflate the perception of a larger force. The British and Americans used dummy army's and equipment to not only make the size of their force appear more formidable but to throw off the Germans from knowing planned invasion routes. All analysts know to look for the build up of men, equipment and arms near a border or staging point as a clear signal of an impending invasion. The British and Americans did this with their dummy armies. Adding credibility to this with increased radio traffic and using famous Generals like Patton and Montgomery (Ranklin, 2009).

Of all techniques though, misinformation is the most cunning. The British and Americans were fighting at a disadvantage when they began their efforts to take back the lands that Germany had conquered. They found themselves stuck on the periphery trying to find a weak point where they could get a foot hold. Defenders normally have an advantage as they are able to dig in and fortify their positions thus creating a force multiplier that makes the attackers pay in lives and destroyed equipment. Keeping the allies out of Europe meant not letting them get a beach head from where they could move further inland. If the Germans had known the Allies plans to invade Sicily and Normandy they could have easily fortified those positions and most likely repelled the invading armies. This is where misinformation had its greatest affect, keeping the Germans off balance so they never knew for certain what the Allies intentions where and stationed men and equipment far from the actually landing point. These clever misinformation campaigns saved the lives of countless thousands, prevented any significant battle losses that may have damaged overall morale, and sped the war to its conclusion even quicker. Though the Germans as the defenders had the advantage they were kept off guard through the skilled application of misinformation fed through misinformation thus saving countless men, equipment and momentum.

Overall a decent chronological history of deception. The weakness of the book is that the author wrote it chronologically instead of thematically.

[Joel Heming · Rating 5 out of 5]

From the advent of camouflage in WW1 to the usage of spy networks in WW2, this book covers a broad range of tactics used by the allies in both world wars to deceive the enemy and the pioneers behind them. A fascinating insight into the intellect of those that devised various schemes and the results of their deceptions. One question was raised after reading this: Is there a difference between moral deception and amoral deception? One to ponder over perhaps…