by Warfare has been a part of deception since the days of the Trojan Horse, but by the time of World War II it seemed to have reached its peak of sophistication. And, according to Robert Hutton in this well-researched and often entertaining book, the ultimate sophisticate was Dudley Wrangel Clarke, who, thanks to influencing two senior generals – Wavell and Dill – was in charge. on the Army’s attempt to use deception to make up. from overstretching its resources.
Clarke’s father was a gold mine employee in South Africa, where Dudley was born in 1899, early in the Boer War. (It was a testament to his sense of humor that he sought to be awarded a campaign ribbon for that conflict, having been in the war zone as an infant.) His younger brother, TEB (“Tibby”) Clarke , a celebrated screenwriter at Ealing Studios, eventually having Pass to Pimlico, The Blue Lamp and The Lavender Hill Mob to his credit, Dudley shared his imaginative gifts.
He joined the Army during the Great War when he was quite old, but, to his disappointment and despite strenuous efforts, he did not see action. He managed to go to Palestine in the 1930s, where he impressed his ancestors not only with his courage as a soldier, but with his charm, intelligence and ability to think first. He managed to get out of France in 1940, and that was when Wavell – who was commander in the Middle East at the time – summoned him to Cairo.
Over the next few years Clarke employed various ways to trick the Germans (and, even more easily, the Italians) into thinking the British were striking when and where they weren’t, or when they weren’t striking. and where they were. He set up entirely imaginary military formations, including something called the Special Air Service, which had a more perceptible impact elsewhere. He appointed spies and double agents to deposit false information about these non-existent divisions and battalions; and the star invention (thought up by one of Clarke’s colleagues) was a man named Paul Nicosoff, which represents, as Hutton puts it, one of the inventor’s main interests in life.
Clarke understood that there was a fine line between giving the enemy information that was credible enough to be taken seriously, to enhance the reputation of the “agent”, and information that interfered with the Allies’ plans. He also saw that if the information passed on was consistently rubbish, the “agent” would have no point. These balancing acts, led by Clarke, were superbly done. In 1943 such a deception caused the Germans to send troops to the Balkans when the British were preparing to invade Sicily; and when the invasion of Sicily actually took place (on the southeast corner of the island) armed boats with loudspeakers pumping out the sound of men and gunfire toured the west of the island to make the Italians believe that the invasion was coming. When the Italians could not find any invasion force they assumed that they had won a great victory.
The spread of false information about possible troop movements caused the Wehrmacht to keep 300,000 men in Norway until the end of the war when 100,000 of them would be more than enough to defeat any (likely) attempt by the Allies to take the country prevent liberation, and the rest could. to be fighting to try to save Germany from destruction. And the biggest act of deception was the way in which the Germans were first persuaded to believe that the invasion of France was going to take place in Pas-de-Calais and not in Normandy and, even after D-Day, they continued imagining a second. an attack would be launched against northern France.
The main piece of the book is how Clarke, with a group of able and generous lieutenants (including at various times David Niven and Douglas Fairbanks Jr), managed to buy time first for Auchinleck and then for Montgomery before the turning tide. victory at El Alamein.
But for the most inexplicable episode of Clarke’s career, any of it might have happened. Clarke, who seemed to hit it off with the ladies, was caught by police in neutral Spain, walking down the street in Madrid dressed as a woman.
Clarke tried to convince those holding him that he was a novelist and had cross-dressed for research purposes. But he could not give any satisfactory explanation to the British authorities, once they managed to release him. About to be recalled to London to explain himself – he was a colonel, and male officers of that rank, or indeed of any other rank, were not expected to parade around in women’s clothes – because on a west-east emergency he was recalled to Cairo, where he had passed away.
As it was, Clarke remained available to the dupe Rommel. Lorries were disguised as tanks; A large number of fake wooden tanks were built to convince the Germans that they were up against a much stronger enemy than they really were. Behind the fake tanks were fake units of men, and “agents” who recognized their existence in the Cairo bars, packed as they were with German spies. It was a rare example of careless speech, properly deployed, saving lives.
The Illusionist is published by W&N for £25. To order your copy for £19.99, call 0808 196 6794 or visit Telegraph Books
