Victory and Deceit: Dirty Tricks at War - Hardcover

Dunnigan, James F.; Nofi, Albert A.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0688122361 ISBN 13: 9780688122362

Publisher: William Morrow & Co, 1995

Synopsis

Revealing the importance of deception in ancient and modern warfare in its various guises--surprise, stealth, ambush, camouflage--an analysis by military experts explains how deception has become a media tool and how to recognize it. 20,000 first printing. $15,000 ad/promo.

About this title

From Publishers Weekly:

By the authors of Dirty Little Secrets, this useful compendium argues that deception is the soldier's most potent weapon. The book's short entries reveal how military leaders from Ramses II to Saddam Hussein have made use of concealment, camouflage, ruses, feints and misinformation. Probably the most common use of deception in warfare is the ambush; Dunnigan and Nofi offer several interesting examples, including Crazy Horse's 1866 massacre of the Fetterman cavalry column. WWII saw more deceptions than any other conflict in history: the authors describe how the war's greatest tank battle, Kursk, was won through deception and how the creation of a phantom army (Patton's "First U.S. Army Group") kept the German 15th Army pinned in position away from the Normandy invasion beaches. The major deception of the Cold War, according to the authors, was the Soviet Union's ability to look more formidable than it actually was. Finally, Dunnigan and Nofi explain how electronics and the growing influence of the mass media have combined to change the practice of military deception in the 20th century. "Deception," they conclude, "looks to be a growth industry."
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist:

Purveyors of pithy facts on things military, this duo, popular with wargamers, present instances of sublime satisfaction in tricking the enemy. The scale can be strategically gigantic (the deceptions preceding D-Day) or tactically minute (camouflaging one's foxhole), but the principles of subterfuge have been time-tested through the ages. Dunnigan and Nofi list them as concealment, camouflage, demonstrations, feints, ruses, fabricated information, and outright lies. They illustrate their principles with an engaging miscellany of examples, some drawn from the ancient wars but most from World War II up to the Persian Gulf War. Each one shows the cleverness behind the deceiver's conception and the reasons for its success (Japan's in pulling off Pearl Harbor) or failure (America's Q-ships, intended to lure U-boats into an attack). In specialized military realms, the authors will retain their readership, established by, among numerous similar titles, A Quick and Dirty Guide to War (1991). Gilbert Taylor

About this edition

• Publisher: William Morrow & Co
• Publication date: 1995
• ISBN 10: 0688122361
• ISBN 13: 9780688122362
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 350