The Illusionist: The True Story of the Man Who Fooled Hitler by Robert Hutton

In December of 1940, Colonel Dudley Clarke arrived in Cario as ‘Personal Intelligence Officer (Special Duties)’ to the commander-in-chief of forces in the Middle East, General Archibald Wavell. Clarke spent the previous twenty years in various military posts throughout the empire, including Palestine where Wavell was his commanding officer.  He was trustworthy and resourceful with a bit of an excentric streak, which made him an ideal candidate for the job.  The job was deception.

Misleading the enemy through trickery has been practiced by military commanders for eons, and one year into the war, the British could use all the tricks they could get as the war was, to put it mildly, not going their way. One of the few places that the British army had boots on the ground was North Africa. This was where Clarke and his ‘A Force’ initiated a strategy of double agents, elaborate stagecraft, and strategic rumors which led to the German Commander Erwin Rommel’s defeat.

The tactics employed by Clarke and his men in ‘A Force’ served as an inspiration and playbook for other wartime operations such as ‘Operation Mincemeat,’ a bold deception carried out in 1943 and detailed in Ben Macintyre’s excellent book of the same name and ‘Operation Bodyguard’ the elaborate ruse to deceive the Axis regarding the D-Day invasion.

A must read for WWII aficionados.