Customer Reviews

Strategic Deception in the Second World War

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This book describes the dark alleys of second world war in a very academic fashion. Who is interested by facts will find this book very well done. If you are looking for James Bond-type romance, this is simply the wrong reading.

There is some underlying humor, especially with the depiction of Agent Garbo wild imagination and the credulity of supposed senior German Intelligence officers.

I understood that deception and spycraft is a very thorough work with little place for intuition. It introduce a scientific approach to the art of lying.

If you have a politician amongst your friends, do not give him this book!

If you were expecting an exciting, hold-your-breath account of British spies doing dangerous and crazy things and commando frogmen sneaking up enemy rivers and blowing up German ships, you are in for quite a disappointment. This book is simply a long-winded description of the organizational structure and strategic planning and strategy of British deception intelligence agencies during the war with Germany.

But, to be honest, the book does what it proposes to do: tell the story of British deception practices from an organizational standpoint, all of which is very boring to the average reader looking for spy adventure, but perhaps quite valuable to a serious student of World War II or a person who themselves participated in the British deception practices since the book mentions every possible name, committee, group, office, MI5, MI6, Sir this, Sir that, people such as Lt. Col. Strangeways, Major General Sir Frederick Morgan, etc. involved in the effort . (Very dry stuff, I dare say...) On top of that, on every page occurs the word notional or notionally, which is very strange usage of English to an American reader, as is the use of the word Schwerpunkt, used occasionally.

Overall - for the average reader this is a TWO STAR book - there is some very interesting information in this book which will expand your knowledge of World War II deception practices by our friends the Brits; however, I found myself skipping a paragraph here and there, and then a page or two, and several times my eyes glazed over. But, for the professional researcher, this is a FIVE STAR BOOK containing a lot of basic information about the spy business. What worked and what didn't, and why. How is strategy developed, coordinated, implemented. Can it come back and bite you? How do you confirm the effectiveness of your deception efforts. And so on. I should think it would be a required reading (text) for a course given by the CIA or NSA.

If you were expecting an exciting, hold-your-breath account of British spies doing dangerous and crazy things and commando frogmen sneaking up enemy rivers and blowing up German ships, you are in for quite a disappointment. This book is simply a long-winded description of the organizational structure and strategic planning and strategy of British deception intelligence agencies during the war with Germany.

But, to be honest, the book does what it proposes to do: tell the story of British deception practices from an organizational standpoint, all of which is very boring to the average reader looking for spy adventure, but perhaps quite valuable to a serious student of World War II or a person who themselves participated in the British deception practices since the book mentions every possible name, committee, group, office, MI5, MI6, Sir this, Sir that, people such as Lt. Col. Strangeways, Major General Sir Frederick Morgan, etc. involved in the effort . (Very dry stuff, I dare say...) On top of that, on every page occurs the word notional or notionally, which is very strange usage of English to an American reader, as is the use of the word Schwerpunkt, used occasionally.

Overall - for the average reader this is a TWO STAR book - there is some very interesting information in this book which will expand your knowledge of World War II deception practices by our friends the Brits; however, I found myself skipping a paragraph here and there, and then a page or two, and several times my eyes glazed over. But, for the professional researcher, this is a FIVE STAR BOOK containing a lot of basic information about the spy business. What worked and what didn't, and why. How is strategy developed, coordinated, implemented. Can it come back and bite you? How do you confirm the effectiveness of your deception efforts. And so on. I should think it would be a required reading (text) for a course given by the CIA or NSA.

Michael Howard's 1990 "Strategic Deception in the Second World War" is the official British history, based on records that were then still classified, of deception operations against Germany during the Second World War.

Howard, a distinguished historian, offers a workmanlike survey of deception operations in Europe, North Africa, and (briefly) the Far East. Among the highlights are the Mediterranean strategies that protected the invasions of Sicily and Italy, and the Fortitude Operations that protected D-Day. Through these operations, Britain was remarkably successful in deceiving the German intelligence services about the size and intentions of British and allied forces.

As Howard makes clear, success was founded on three key pillars. First, from 1940 on, Britain's MI-5 and MI-6 exercised a virtual stranglehold over information reaching Germany from inside the UK. Second, British Signals Intelligence provided the necessary feedback loop to determine the succcess or failure of various deception schemes. Third, from early in the war, staff officers at theater and army level worked deception as a full-time job, integrated into all operations planning.

Remarkably, inside the UK, the integration of intelligence and deception operations was accomplished in informal coordination bodies which functioned largely without written charter. Outside the UK, interaction was effected under military command direction, to which American staff officers were added when the United States entered the war.

Howard notes that the German intelligence services, although plagued by inefficiency, politics, and a dependence on single-source reporting, were most likely to be fooled when the proffered deception matched their own expectations of allied intentions. Conversely, the Germans normally refused what was unlikely or impossible.

"Strategic Deception in the Second World War" is highly recommended as an authoritative academic source on deception, still useful for its lessons, if possibly slightly dated in its content.

There are four essential accounts of deception in World War II: this is one of them. The other three are Michael I. Handel (editor), "Strategic and Operational Deception in the Second World War;" Anthony Cave Brown's best-selling history, "Bodyguard of Lies;" and Colonel David Glantz's definitive, "Soviet Military Deception in the Second World War."
What distinguishes these volumes from deception accounts is their analysis of the deception process. That is, they go beyond simply detailing deception history to explain how deception planners adjusted and adapted their gambits throughout the war based on their successes and failures in fooling their Nazi enemy.
Basically, the Americans and British succeeded in convincing the Nazis throughout the war that they were far stronger than they truly were, while the Russians continually fooled the Nazis into thinking they were far weaker than was the fact.
Publication of Howard's official WWII deception history was held up for a decade by British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, who, according the M.R.D. Foot, "saw no reason to explain to potential enemies how Britain might fight them." Once (now) Lady Thatcher left office, the deception history was published.
Perhaps one of the most interesting aspects of Howard's history is its account of deception's deep roots in British tradition. Both Professor Handel and Sir Michael credit General Edmund Allenby in the First World War with laying the groundwork for the remarkably successful strategic deceptions of the Second World War. Handel wrote "For Allenby, unlike almost every other general of the Great War, [deception] plans were a key element of every operational plan. As T.E Lawrence [i.e., "Lawrence of Arabia;" Colonel Lawrence's Arab Desert Strike Force executed many of Allenby's deceptive stratagems] remarked, 'Deceptions, which for the ordinary general were just witty hors d'oeuvres before battle, had become for Allenby a main point in strategy.'...Allenby's ... operations closely resembled the more complex schemes devised during the Second World War." Howard notes that Allenby's deception staff in WWI included General Archibald Wavell, who in World War II used Allenby's methods successfully against the Italians and Germans in the Western Desert, at one point defeating 250,000 of the enemy with a British force of only 50,000. General Wavell and his deception planner, Brigadier Dudley Clarke, recommended these methods, leading to establishment of the London Controlling Section (LCS), the Allied D-day deceivers. Allenby is truly the father of the 20th century grand military deception.