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Loading... The Deceiversby Thaddeus Holt
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Once the Americans joined the war in 1941, they had much to learn from their British counterparts, who had been honing their deception skills for years. As the war progressed, the British took charge of misinformation efforts in the European theater, while the Americans focused on the Pacific. The Deceivers takes readers from the early British achievements in the Middle East and Europe at the beginning of the war to the massive Allied success of D-Day, American victory in the Pacific theater, and the war's culmination on the brink of an invasion of Japan.
Colonel John Bevan, who managed British deception operations from London, described the three essentials to strategic deception as good plans, double agents, and codebreaking, and The Deceivers covers each of these aspects in minute detail. Holt brings to life the little-known men, British and American, who ran Allied deception, such as Bevan, Dudley Clarke, Peter Fleming, Douglas Fairbanks, Jr., and Newman Smith. He tracks the development of deception techniques and tells the hitherto unknown story of double agent management and other deception through the American FBI and Joint Security Control.
Full of fascinating sources and astounding revelations, The Deceivers is an indispensable volume and an unparalleled contribution to World War II literature.
(retrieved from Amazon Fri, 24 Apr 2009 07:58:09 -0400)
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The structure of the book is basically linear, starting with the early British efforts, directed from Egypt, in the Middle East. If the book has a serious flaw, it is that Holt spends perhaps too much time on bureaucratic wrangling and organizational history. I understand this is necessary for following the narrative (why is so-and-so not in charge anymore) but it makes the book longer than necessary, and diverts attention from a typical reader's main interest, the actual deception campaigns themselves. (