'Conceal, Create, Confuse' : Deception as a British Battlefield Tactic in the First World War

Resource Information

The work 'Conceal, Create, Confuse' : Deception as a British Battlefield Tactic in the First World War represents a distinct intellectual or artistic creation found in Lane Public Library. This resource is a combination of several types including: Work, Language Material, Books.

Label

'Conceal, Create, Confuse' : Deception as a British Battlefield Tactic in the First World War

Title remainder

Deception as a British Battlefield Tactic in the First World War

Statement of responsibility

Martin Davies

Creator

• Davies, Martin, 1965-

Subject

• Deception (Military science) -- History -- 20th century
• Electronic books
• Freading Electronic Book
• World War, 1914-1918 -- Deception -- Great Britain

Genre

• Electronic books

Language

eng

Summary

This is the story of the British Army's endeavours during the Great War to deceive the enemy and trick him into weakening his defences and redeploying his reserves. In this year-by-year account, Martin Davies shows how Sir John French and Sir Douglas Haig actively encouraged their Army commanders to employ trickery so that all attacks should come as a 'complete surprise' to the enemy. The methods of concealment of real military artefacts and the creation of dummy ones were ingenious enough but the real art lay in the development of geographically dispersed deception plans which disguised the real time and place of attack and forced the enemy to defend areas threatened by fake operations. Some of these plans, such as disguising mules as tanks and creating dummy airfields bordered on the farcical but were often amazingly effective. The driving force behind the deception plans was GHQ and the Army commanders, further dispelling the myth of 'Lions led by Donkeys'. Evidence shows that the British Army employed deception to advantage in all their theatres of operation

Cataloging source

CtWfDGI

Dewey number

• 940.4/8641
• 940.4/8641

Index

no index present

LC call number

U167.5.D37

Literary form

non fiction

Nature of contents

dictionaries

Target audience

adult