It may be impossible to win a war without firing a shot, but there are moments in war that an enemy can be defeated through such impossible methods. As Sun Tzu once noted, “All warfare is based on deception.” Deception is precisely how enemies can be defeated without bloodshed, and Robert Hutton makes this abundantly clear in his latest book “The Illusionist: The True Story of the Man Who Fooled Hitler.”
As tends to be the case with World War II, there’s always another interesting person to write about. Col. Dudley Clarke, a member of British Intelligence during the war, is one such person. Unsung heroes from this war come to the surface because either they’ve hidden their stories until late in life or their stories are hidden for reasons of national secrecy. Clarke happens to be in the latter camp.
A Visionary
In addition to Clarke’s overall story during World War II, Hutton makes a very interesting claim: Clarke was the originator of the special operation force.
According to Hutton, Clarke’s vision of the Commandos was “little teams of men with ‘dash’ who thought for themselves, attacked out of nowhere and then disappeared.” Although it was David Stirling who began the Special Air Service (SAS), it seems to have been based largely on Clarke’s vision. Additionally, Clarke was one of Stirling’s earliest confidants about launching SAS.
As seems fitting for Clarke’s story, much of it takes place while he is stationed in Cairo, a city that proves nearly as intriguing as Clarke himself. His first operation with his group of intelligence officers known as A Force was against the Italians, who had taken British Somaliland.
Later, his efforts focused against Gen. Erwin Rommel during the North African Campaign, ultimately resulting in success at El Alamein. The results against the Italians and Rommel varied. What it proved to Clarke and to the intelligence community involved with his work was that deception needed to be elaborate, yet believable; it couldn’t be heavy-handed; spies needed to be placed; lies needed to be whispered in the right ears; and most importantly, those lies needed time to build up and interconnect into a specific false mosaic in order to be believed.
Creating the mosaic—the picture Clarke and British intelligence wanted the enemy to see and act upon—was a difficult undertaking that didn’t always bring the desired results. But when it did, and it did often enough, the results were astounding.
Clarke, as Hutton describes him, understood the power of a story. He also understood the power of subtlety, and how tidbits of information, such as rumors and messages allowed to be decoded, could lead the enemy to act or not act. Regarding the latter, when the British retreated from Greece to Cyprus, the island was defended by a single brigade—hardly a formidable force.
A Team of Deceivers
Of course, these deceptions didn’t all come from the mind of Clarke. Hutton brings to the forefront other military leaders, spies, and fellow deceivers (or illusionists, as Hutton often refers to them). One group used extensively was what Hutton termed as camoufleurs—artists who drew on the ground, on buildings, or made certain matériel, like tanks, appear as something else. Clarke and those within A Force understood the power and usefulness of distance. When enemy reconnaissance pilots flew over areas, they saw what the British wanted them to see, such as a destroyed facility that was only painted to look so, or hundreds of trucks that were actually tanks.
Some of the Allies’ greatest triumphs, such as Operation Husky and Operation Overlord (D-Day) were greatly assisted by deception. As Hutton notes in his book, “a British analysis concluded that deception operations had tied down the equivalent of 50 German and Italian divisions in 1942 and 1943, and around 40 divisions in the build-up to D-Day in 1944.”
These deceptive tactics make for thrilling reading. Along with this, though, are the fascinating characters. “The Illusionist” is full of the debonair, the uptight, the courageous, and the odd. Hutton’s work is a fine addition to World War II and secret intelligence history and very much worth reading.
