This book looks at deception in warfare, its theory and practice and also at examples from history from the Trojan Horse to the contemporary battlefield. The relevance of deception is considered in... This description may be from another edition of this product.
I'm not a military historian of any type and am in fact just starting to read up on the subject for a project I'm working on. I'm finding descriptions of battles rather boring, but this book is different. It's mostly 20th century stuff but the first chapter talks about the psychology of what we choose to believe and how to convince the enemy of what you want them to believe. Really interesting stuff. Chapter 2 is examples from pre-WWI history (which is what I was looking for.) Things like the Duke of Marlborough in 1711 tricking the French into destroying one of their own forts for him (he took it, then let the French win it back. The French destroyed it, assuming it was vital to his plans. What was vital to his plans was it's destruction, but he didn't want the French to know that because then they would know what he was up to.) I've laughed out loud at some of the cunning, conniving tricks. This side of strategy and tactics is far more interesting to me that battlefied maneuvers.
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