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A review by librarianonparade
A Genius for Deception: How Cunning Helped the British Win Two World Wars by Nicholas Rankin
3.0
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.
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.