- Hardcover: 1148 pages
- Publisher: Weidenfeld & Nicolson (11 Nov 2004)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0297848046
- ISBN-13: 978-0297848042
- Product Dimensions: 23.6 x 16 x 5.8 cm
- Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (1 customer review)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 920,907 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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''His fascinating account of its (allied military deception) triumph is unlikely to be bettered.' (Nicholas Rankin THE TLS )
'meticulous, encyclopaedic history of wartime deception.....a masterly study' (Max Hastings THE SUNDAY TELEGRAPH )
'The immense labour of research that Thaddeus Holt has undertaken to produce this work is proof indeed of his passionate interest in the deceivers.' (Noble Frankland THE SPECTATOR )
'THE DECEIVERS provides the first thorough survey of western Allied military deception during the second world war, and traces its development in meticulous detail. (John Latimer THE GUARDIAN )
'A masterly history of deception operations' (Michael Tillotson THE TIMES )
'meticulous, encyclopaedic history of wartime deception.....a masterly study' (Max Hastings THE SUNDAY TELEGRAPH )
'The immense labour of research that Thaddeus Holt has undertaken to produce this work is proof indeed of his passionate interest in the deceivers.' (Noble Frankland THE SPECTATOR )
'THE DECEIVERS provides the first thorough survey of western Allied military deception during the second world war, and traces its development in meticulous detail. (John Latimer THE GUARDIAN )
'A masterly history of deception operations' (Michael Tillotson THE TIMES )
Max Hastings, THE SUNDAY TELEGRAPH
'meticulous, encyclopaedic history of wartime deception.....a masterly study'
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
14 of 15 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
'In wartime,' said Winston Churchill famously, 'truth is so precious that she should always be attended by a bodyguard of lies.' 'The Deceivers' is a monumental work and clearly labour of love, which provides both its strength and its weakness. It is not the book for a reader seeking an introduction to the subject: this is a book for the serious scholar seeking detailed information, with a lengthy, minutely detailed record of virtually every deception operation carried out by the Allies, that could bewilder someone without a solid previous knowledge of the war. Fortunately for the casual reader, Mr Holt treats his subject with a lightness of touch that means it reads quite well as a novel, since one very interesting aspect of it is the attention to the personal details of the men and women behind deception operations.
Mr Holt has written a compelling account of an obscure and fascinating aspect of the war more closely related to show business than the brutal reality of killing. In what other military sphere could one hope to meet David Niven, Douglas Fairbanks Jr, magician Jasper Maskelyne, Peter Fleming (brother of Ian) and the strange writer, Dennis Wheatley? Because one purpose of deception is to beat the enemy with as little fighting as possible; to make him 'quite certain, very decisive, and wrong'. The hero of the story, if there is one, is an otherwise obscure colonel of Royal Artillery called Dudley Clarke. As Clarke wrote in the foreword to his unpublished memoirs, 'the secret war was waged rather to conserve than to destroy; the stakes were the lives of the frontline troops, and the organisation which fought it was able to count its gains from the number of casualties it could avert'. Here at last is just tribute to his efforts.
Mr Holt has written a compelling account of an obscure and fascinating aspect of the war more closely related to show business than the brutal reality of killing. In what other military sphere could one hope to meet David Niven, Douglas Fairbanks Jr, magician Jasper Maskelyne, Peter Fleming (brother of Ian) and the strange writer, Dennis Wheatley? Because one purpose of deception is to beat the enemy with as little fighting as possible; to make him 'quite certain, very decisive, and wrong'. The hero of the story, if there is one, is an otherwise obscure colonel of Royal Artillery called Dudley Clarke. As Clarke wrote in the foreword to his unpublished memoirs, 'the secret war was waged rather to conserve than to destroy; the stakes were the lives of the frontline troops, and the organisation which fought it was able to count its gains from the number of casualties it could avert'. Here at last is just tribute to his efforts.
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
14 reviews
29 of 29 people found the following review helpful
A masterpiece. One of the all-time great books on intelligen
2 Aug 2004
Format:Hardcover
This unique book is one of the handful of all-time great books on intelligence. It ranks alongside Kahn's The Codebreakers and Hitler's Spies, Hinsley's great history of British intelligence in WWII, Masterman's Double-Cross System, James Bamford's books, and some of the books by Christopher Andrew and Nigel West. And it is also a tremendous contribution to the history of World War II. The paper cover quotes two of the greatest authorities on WWII, Sir Michael Howard and Prof. Ernest May, saying that it is an essential addition to any WWII collection and they are right.
Any reader about WWII knows about a few of the deceptions the Allies brought off such as the one at D-Day and "The Man Who Never Was". Holt not only gives far more information about these than has ever been published. He also puts them into context as part of the overall history of Allied deception and how it developed from 1940 to 1945. And he has a huge amount of absolutely new information. This is especially true as far as U.S. deception, which has never been written about previously. Holt was allowed to use files in the Pentagon which had never before been declassified and he made the most of them.
As an old Naval Intelligence guy I was particularly glad to see the tremendous amount of material never before seen about the U.S. deceptions in the Pacific.
Also, the three appendixes are the kind of material for any student of intelligence history to die for, as the saying is. There is a list of all the Allied deception operations (you will be amazed how many there were), a list of all the Allied double agents and other channels that were played back to the Axis (again, you will be surprised how many of these there were), plus a list of all the phony units (army, air force, and navy, not just U.S. but British, French, Greek, etc. etc.)) that were palmed off on the enemy.
A definitely exceptional feature of this book is not only its complete and detailed history but how readable it is. It is told through the personalities of the American and British officers that conducted the deceptions and they are brought to life the way history books rarely do. One of the quotes from experts on the paper cover says it reads like a novel and this is totally true. In this field, in my experience a similar accomplishment has been managed only by David Kahn.
This book is a 100% "must have" for anybody seriously interested in WWII or intelligence.
Any reader about WWII knows about a few of the deceptions the Allies brought off such as the one at D-Day and "The Man Who Never Was". Holt not only gives far more information about these than has ever been published. He also puts them into context as part of the overall history of Allied deception and how it developed from 1940 to 1945. And he has a huge amount of absolutely new information. This is especially true as far as U.S. deception, which has never been written about previously. Holt was allowed to use files in the Pentagon which had never before been declassified and he made the most of them.
As an old Naval Intelligence guy I was particularly glad to see the tremendous amount of material never before seen about the U.S. deceptions in the Pacific.
Also, the three appendixes are the kind of material for any student of intelligence history to die for, as the saying is. There is a list of all the Allied deception operations (you will be amazed how many there were), a list of all the Allied double agents and other channels that were played back to the Axis (again, you will be surprised how many of these there were), plus a list of all the phony units (army, air force, and navy, not just U.S. but British, French, Greek, etc. etc.)) that were palmed off on the enemy.
A definitely exceptional feature of this book is not only its complete and detailed history but how readable it is. It is told through the personalities of the American and British officers that conducted the deceptions and they are brought to life the way history books rarely do. One of the quotes from experts on the paper cover says it reads like a novel and this is totally true. In this field, in my experience a similar accomplishment has been managed only by David Kahn.
This book is a 100% "must have" for anybody seriously interested in WWII or intelligence.
18 of 18 people found the following review helpful
The Definitive Account of Military Deception in WW II
23 Oct 2004
Format:Hardcover
Mr. Holt has written an impressive and exhaustively long account (over 1,100 pages) of the use of military misinformation during the Second World War. Well-written and researched, the narrative itself is over 800 pages with 300 pages of documentation and indexes. This is not the book for a reader who is seeking an introduction to the subject -- it is more an encyclopedia for the reader who enjoys the nuts and bolts of spycraft.
The book covers the tactics of all the Allies and Axis powers, focusing on the brilliant exploits of the masters of the game, the British. One of Mr. Holts thesis's is that the Allied sucess in the use of military misinformation gave them a major tactical advantage over the Germans, Japanese and Italians (as was proven in the sucess of the D-Day invasion and other operations).
This is the book for the serious WW II scholar who seeks information on this little known (and written about) topic. The sheer volume of characters, events and facts is a testament to the research skills of Mr. Holt who waded through thousands of recently declassified government documents. For the causal reader, "The Deceivers" is best read as a novel for those specific sections of interest to the reader : covering the French efforts in this area under Charles de Gaulle, or the American ruses in the Pacific or the complicated deceptions involved in the Normandy invasion.
The book covers the tactics of all the Allies and Axis powers, focusing on the brilliant exploits of the masters of the game, the British. One of Mr. Holts thesis's is that the Allied sucess in the use of military misinformation gave them a major tactical advantage over the Germans, Japanese and Italians (as was proven in the sucess of the D-Day invasion and other operations).
This is the book for the serious WW II scholar who seeks information on this little known (and written about) topic. The sheer volume of characters, events and facts is a testament to the research skills of Mr. Holt who waded through thousands of recently declassified government documents. For the causal reader, "The Deceivers" is best read as a novel for those specific sections of interest to the reader : covering the French efforts in this area under Charles de Gaulle, or the American ruses in the Pacific or the complicated deceptions involved in the Normandy invasion.
27 of 33 people found the following review helpful
Heavy Going
30 Oct 2004
Format:Hardcover
This is a strange piece of work. Holt kicks things off with a chapter extolling British general Dudley Clarke as World War II's master of deception without bothering to explain why he merits that status.
The book proceeds with a lengthy, minutely detailed record of virtually every deception operation carried out by the Allies, covering who was involved (and sometimes who wasn't), who came up with what idea and how, what resources were used, where they got them, how they got them where they were needed, at times down to the point of how the desks were arranged at headquarters, all without a single effort made to relate any of this frantic activity to the progress of the war at large or, for that matter, any external events whatsoever. An endless parade of odd operational names trundles by one after the other with no context, and, for the majority of readers, no meaning. Anyone coming to this book without a solid previous knowledge of the war would be completely lost. Beyond that, divorcing the strategic deception story from the war's larger context undercuts Holt's argument that deception was a crucial element to Allied victory, an argument I would have thought could be made with all the difficulty of falling off a chair.
"The Deceivers" is a pure example of the streetcar-transfer school of history, a historian getting so bogged down in the minutiae of his field of interest that he forgets there's a world out there. Compare this to David Kahn's masterly "Hitler's Spies" and "The Codebreakers", both dealing with closely related topics, both examplars of the historian's art.
The book proceeds with a lengthy, minutely detailed record of virtually every deception operation carried out by the Allies, covering who was involved (and sometimes who wasn't), who came up with what idea and how, what resources were used, where they got them, how they got them where they were needed, at times down to the point of how the desks were arranged at headquarters, all without a single effort made to relate any of this frantic activity to the progress of the war at large or, for that matter, any external events whatsoever. An endless parade of odd operational names trundles by one after the other with no context, and, for the majority of readers, no meaning. Anyone coming to this book without a solid previous knowledge of the war would be completely lost. Beyond that, divorcing the strategic deception story from the war's larger context undercuts Holt's argument that deception was a crucial element to Allied victory, an argument I would have thought could be made with all the difficulty of falling off a chair.
"The Deceivers" is a pure example of the streetcar-transfer school of history, a historian getting so bogged down in the minutiae of his field of interest that he forgets there's a world out there. Compare this to David Kahn's masterly "Hitler's Spies" and "The Codebreakers", both dealing with closely related topics, both examplars of the historian's art.
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