This book made a good holiday read
(although how tactful it was to sit on a beach mostly full of Germans reading a
book about the British success in two World Wars might be open for comment…).
It was divided into two parts, one for each
war and in terms of the subject “deception” it quickly becomes clear that the
First War was at best a dress rehearsal for the second. Lessons were only just being learnt when
peace arrived in 1918 but many of those who had been learning these lessons were
on hand in the later thirties to pick up where they had left off.
This is a book about “British Genius” and
makes no attempt to claim to be a comparative study across the combatant
nations of either war but this leaves the claim to “Genius” feeling a little
precarious – that all the German Agents sent to Britain during World War Two
were captured and most turned into double agents is a success but given the
Germans did the same to the British Agents sent to Holland it would be hard to
claim this as an example of a particularly “British” Genius.
Overall while this is an enjoyable
collection of characters and incidents the sum fails to be greater than the
parts, we seem to jump around in time, place, and topic largely at random
(especially in the first part), without any clear organizing argument or thrust
or significant new scholarship. This is
also a good point to say a word or two about the title, “Churchill’s Wizards”,
I get the feeling this book started life as a book about deception in the Second
World War which grew to take in the First as the “back-stories” of so many of
the leading characters required tales from that War to be included. During the Second World War Churchill’s
theatrical and maverick tendencies did give fertile ground to deception,
especially around 1940 when Britain was under resourced with its back to the
wall, it seems the more outlandish the scheme the more likely it was to get a
Prime Ministerial blessing. But for most of the First War Churchill was in no
position to give such blessing and any Wizards that were around could not in
any proper sense by call “Churchill’s.
Rankin also make a spirited attempt to exonerate Churchill from the
carnage of Gallipoli, suggesting that the campaign was only a failure to the
extent and in those areas which it deviated at others command from Churchill’s
original plan. This all leaves one
wondering if someone so securely enthroned in the nation’s heart as the
greatest Briton really needs his reputation pampered and inflated any further? If
Churchill was meant to be the tread that held the whole together it didn’t come
off.
During Churchill’s time as Head of the
Admiralty the Royal Navy made the switch from coal to oil and so British
interests in the Middle East began to grow. We tend to look down smugly at the oil driven
American bungling in the Middle East - yet in so doing we deceive ourselves, the chequered map of the
region who mostly drawn with British hands (and arms) as we installed client
rulers and stirred up insurrections which are still rumbling today. While standing back from endorsing these
actions Rankin shows that these tactics and those used against the British in
rebellions across the Empire were turned and used to great effect in the fight
against Germany.Maybe this is the Genius, that the Imperial British had the spark of imagination to see that the successes of those fighting against them could be turned and used equally well for King and Empire...
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