The 33 Strategies of War (61 page)

Knowing how to end. Masters of the first rank are recognized by the fact that in matters great and small they know how to find an end perfectly, be it at the end of a melody or a thought; of a tragedy's fifth act or an act of state. The best of the second rank always get restless toward the end, and do not fall into the sea with such proud and calm balance as do, for example, the mountains at Portofino--where the bay of Genoa finishes its melody.

T
HE
G
AY
S
CIENCE
,
F
RIEDRICH
N
IETZSCHE
, 1882

Finally, since any ending is a kind of beginning of the next phase, it is often wise strategy to end on an ambivalent note. If you are reconciling with an enemy after a fight, subtly hint that you still have a residue of doubt--that the other side must still prove itself to you. When a campaign or project comes to an end, leave people feeling that they cannot foresee what you will do next--keep them in suspense, toying with their attention. By ending on a note of mystery and ambiguity--a mixed signal, an insinuating comment, a touch of doubt--you gain the upper hand for the next round in a most subtle and insidious fashion.

Authority: To conquer is nothing. One must profit from one's success.

--
Napoleon Bonaparte (1769-1821)

REVERSAL

There can be no value in ending anything badly. There is no reversal.

A general fighting a war must constantly search for an advantage over the opponent. The greatest advantage comes from the element of surprise, from hitting enemies with strategies that are novel, outside their experience, completely unconventional. It is in the nature of war, however, that over time any strategy with any possible application will be tried and tested, so that the search for the new and unconventional has an innate tendency to become more and more extreme. At the same time, moral and ethical codes that governed warfare for centuries have gradually loosened. These two effects dovetail into what we today call "dirty war," where anything goes, down to the killing of thousands of unwarned civilians. Dirty war is political, deceptive, and supremely manipulative. Often the last recourse of the weak and desperate, it uses any means available to level the playing field.

The dynamic of the dirty has filtered into society and the culture at large. Whether in politics, business, or society, the way to defeat your opponents is to surprise them, to come at them from an unexpected angle. And the increasing pressures of these daily wars make dirty strategies inevitable. People go underground: they seem nice and decent but use slippery, devious methods behind the scenes.

The unconventional has its own logic that you must understand. First, nothing stays new for long. Those who depend on novelty must constantly come up with some fresh idea that goes against the orthodoxies of the time. Second, people who use unconventional methods are very hard to fight. The classic, direct route--the use of force and strength--does not work. You must use indirect methods to combat indirection, fight fire with fire, even at the cost of going dirty yourself. To try to stay clean out of a sense of morality is to risk defeat.

The chapters in this section will initiate you into the various forms of the unorthodox. Some of these are strictly unconventional: deceiving your opponents and working against their expectations. Others are more political and slippery: making morality a strategic weapon, applying the arts of guerrilla warfare to daily life, mastering the insidious forms of passive aggression. And some are unapologetically dirty: destroying the enemy from within, inflicting terror and panic. These chapters are designed to give you a greater understanding of the diabolical psychology involved in each strategy, helping to arm you with the proper defense.

Since no creature can survive without the ability to see or sense what is going on around it, you must make it hard for your enemies to know what is going on around
them,
including what you are doing. Disturb their focus and you weaken their strategic powers. People's perceptions are filtered through their emotions; they tend to interpret the world according to what they want to see. Feed their expectations, manufacture a reality to match their desires, and they will fool themselves. The best deceptions are based on ambiguity, mixing fact and fiction so that the one cannot be disentangled from the other. Control people's perceptions of reality and you control them.

THE FALSE MIRROR

On November 3, 1943, Adolf Hitler had a document distributed to his top generals: Directive 51, which discussed his conviction that the Allies would invade France the following year and explained how to beat them. For years Hitler had depended on a kind of intuition in making his most important strategic decisions, and time and again his instincts had been right; the Allies had tried before to make him believe that an invasion of France was imminent, but each time Hitler had seen through the deception. This time he was not only sure that the invasion was coming, he felt he knew exactly where it would come: the Pas de Calais, the region of France along the English Channel that was the country's closest point to Britain.

In war-time, truth is so precious that she should always be attended by a bodyguard of lies.

W
INSTON
C
HURCHILL
, 1874-1965

The Pas de Calais had a number of major ports, and the Allies would need a port to land their troops. The region was also where Hitler planned to place his V-1 and V-2 rockets, soon to be operational; with these jet-propelled unmanned missiles so close to London, he could bomb Britain into submission. The English knew he was putting missiles there, and that provided them yet another reason to invade France at the Pas de Calais, before Hitler could begin his bombing campaign.

Dudley Clarke was always clear--and a little later it will be shewn to have been a pity that others were not equally so--that you can never, by deception, persuade an enemy of anything not according with his own expectations, which usually are not far removed from his hopes. It is only by using your knowledge of them that you are able to hypnotize him, not just into thinking, but doing what you want.

M
ASTER OF
D
ECEPTION
,
D
AVID
M
URE
, 1980

In Directive 51, Hitler warned his commanders to expect the Allies to wage a major deception campaign to cloak the time and place of the invasion. The Germans had to see through these deceptions and repel the landing, and despite recent setbacks in the German war effort, Hitler felt supremely confident they could. Several years earlier he had commissioned the construction of the Atlantic Wall, a line of forts up and down the coast from France to Norway, and he had over 10 million soldiers at his disposal, a million of them in France alone. The German armaments industry was churning out ever more and better weapons. Hitler also controlled most of Europe, giving him enormous resources and endless options for moving his troops here and there.

Finally, to invade France the Allies would need a massive armada, which, once assembled, would be impossible to conceal. Hitler had infiltrated agents into all levels of the British military, who supplied him with excellent intelligence--they would forward to him the time and location of the invasion. The Allies would not surprise him. And once he had defeated them on the shores of France, England would have to sue for peace; Roosevelt would certainly lose the upcoming U.S. presidential election. Hitler could then concentrate his entire army against the Soviet Union and finally defeat it. In truth, the invasion of France was the opportunity he craved to turn the war around.

Themistocles therefore had two urgent and simultaneous problems to solve. He must take
effective
action, not only to block any projected withdrawal by the Peloponnesian contingents, but also to ensure that they fought where and when he planned that they should; and he must somehow tempt Xerxes into making the one move which might lead to a Greek victory--that is, ordering his fleet to attack
in the Salamis channel....
The device Themistocles finally adopted--what Plutarch calls "his celebrated trick with Sicinnus"--is one of the most enigmatic episodes in all Greek history. Evidence for it goes back as far as Aeschylus's
Persians,
performed only eight years after Salamis.... What seems to have happened was this. At some point during the long argument over final strategy, Themistocles, anticipating defeat, slipped away from the conference and sent for his children's tutor, "the most faithful of his slaves," an Asiatic Greek named Sicinnus. This man was given a carefully prepared message, or letter, to deliver to Xerxes, and sent off across the straits in a small boat, probably just before dawn on 19 September.... The substance of the message was as follows. Themistocles sent it under his own name, as commander of the Athenian contingent: he had, he told Xerxes, changed sides, and was now ardently desirous of a Persian victory. (No real reason is given for this
volte-face,
though disgust at the attitude of the Peloponnesian contingents would provide a strong enough motive to carry conviction.) The Greek allies were at each other's throats, and would offer no serious opposition--"on the contrary, you will see the pro-Persians amongst them fighting the rest." Furthermore, they were planning a general withdrawal from Salamis under cover of darkness, to be carried out the following night.... If Xerxes struck at once, on the divide-and-rule principle, he could forestall such a move. "Attack them and destroy their naval power, while they are still disorganized and before they have joined forces with their land army"
[
Plut.
Them.
12.4
].
The conquest of the Peloponnese would then become a comparatively simple matter. On the other hand, if Xerxes allowed the various Greek contingents to slip through his fingers and disperse homewards, the war might drag on indefinitely, since he would have to deal with each separate city-state in turn. Sicinnus's arguments impressed the Persian admirals, and they duly passed them on to the Great King himself. Xerxes, we are told, believed the report because it "was in itself plausible"--and also because it was just what he
wanted
to hear: there was trouble brewing in Ionia and the empire, and the sooner this Greek expedition was wound up, the better. Themistocles, always a shrewd judge of human nature, knew very well that after so many days of delay and frustration, the Great King would grasp at anything which seemed to offer a quick solution to his problem.

T
HE
G
RECO
-P
ERSIAN
W
ARS
,
P
ETER
G
REEN
, 1996

Hitler's commander in Western Europe was Field Marshal Gerd von Runstedt, Germany's most respected general. To further solidify the defensive position in France, Hitler made General Erwin Rommel the commander of the forces along the French coast. Rommel proceeded to make improvements in the Atlantic Wall, turning it into a "devil's garden" of minefields and fire zones. Rommel and Runstedt also asked for more troops to ensure that the Germans could repel the Allies at the water's edge. But the Fuhrer denied their request.

Hitler had lately come to mistrust his top staff. In the past few years, he had survived several assassination attempts that had clearly originated among his officers. His generals were increasingly arguing with his strategies, and in his mind they had botched several battles in the Russian campaign; he saw many of them as incompetents or traitors. He began to spend less time with his officers and more time holed up in his Bavarian mountain retreat at Berchtesgaden, with his mistress, Eva Braun, and his beloved dog, Biondi. There he pored over maps and intelligence reports, determined to make the important decisions himself and to manage the entire war effort more directly.

This caused a change in his way of thinking: instead of making quick, intuitive choices, he was trying to foresee every possibility and was taking longer to make up his mind. Now he thought Rommel and Runstedt--in their request for more troops to be transferred to France--were being overly cautious and even panicky. He alone would have to foil the Allied invasion; it was up to him to see through his generals' weaknesses and the enemy's deceptions. The only downside to this was that his workload had increased tenfold, and he was more tired than ever. At night he took sleeping pills, by day whatever he could get his hands on to keep him alert.

Early in 1944 key information arrived in Hitler's hands: a German agent in Turkey stole classified documents confirming that the Allies would invade France that year. The documents also indicated plans for an imminent invasion of the Balkans. Hitler was particularly sensitive to any threats to the Balkans, a valuable source of resources for Germany; a loss there would be devastating. The threat of such an attack made it impossible to transfer troops from there to France. Hitler's agents in England also discovered plans to invade Norway, and here Hitler actually reinforced his troops to ward off the threat.

By April, as Hitler pored over intelligence reports, he began to feel increasingly excited: he discerned a pattern in the enemy activity. As he had thought, everything pointed toward an invasion of the Pas de Calais. One sign particularly stood out: indications of an enormous army forming in southeastern England under the command of General George Patton. This army, called FUSAG (First United States Army Group), was clearly positioned for a crossing to the Pas de Calais. Of all the Allies' generals, Hitler feared Patton the most. He had proven his military skill in North Africa and Sicily. He would be the perfect commander for the invasion.

Hitler demanded more information on Patton's army. High-flying reconnaissance planes photographed enormous military camps, docking equipment, thousands of tanks moving through the countryside, a pipeline being built to the coast. When a captured German general who had been imprisoned in England was finally repatriated, he caught glimpses of massive activity in the FUSAG area on his trip from his internment camp to London. Agents in Switzerland reported that every map of the Pas de Calais area had been mysteriously bought up. The pieces of a giant puzzle were coming together.

Now only one question remained: when would it happen? As April turned to May, Hitler was deluged with all kinds of conflicting reports, rumors, and sightings. The information was confusing, taxing his strained mind, but two nuggets of intelligence seemed to clarify the picture. First, a German agent in England reported that the Allies would attack Normandy, southeast of the Pas de Calais, between June 5 and 7. But the Germans had strong indications that this man was operating as a double agent, and his report was clearly part of an Allied disinformation campaign. The attack would probably be coming at the end of June or beginning of July, when the weather was generally more predictable. Then, later in May, a series of more reliable German spies spotted Britain's top general, Sir Bernard Montgomery, in Gibraltar and then in Algiers. Montgomery would certainly command a large part of any invading force. The invasion could not be imminent if he was so far away.

On the night of June 5, Hitler pored over the maps. Maybe he was wrong--maybe the plan was for Normandy all along. He had to consider both options; he would not be fooled in what might be the most decisive battle of his life. The British were tricky; he had to keep his forces mobile in case it was Normandy after all. He would not commit himself until he knew for sure. Reading the weather reports for the Channel--stormy that evening--he took his usual sleeping pill and went to bed.

Early the next morning, Hitler woke to startling news: a massive invasion was under way--in southern Normandy. A large armada had left England in the middle of the night, and hundreds of parachutists had been dropped near the Normandy coast. As the day progressed, the reports became more exact: the Allies had landed on the beaches southeast of Cherbourg.

A critical moment had come. If some of the forces stationed in the Pas de Calais were hurried to the beaches of Normandy, the Allies could be pinned and thrown back into the sea. This was the recommendation of Rommel and Runstedt, who anxiously awaited Hitler's approval. But through the night and into the following day, Hitler hesitated. Then, just as he was on the verge of sending reinforcements to Normandy, he received word of increased Allied activity in the FUSAG area. Was Normandy in fact a giant diversion? If he moved his reserves there, would Patton immediately cross the Channel to the Pas de Calais? No, Hitler would wait to see if the attack was real. And so the days went by, with Rommel and Runstedt fuming at his indecision.

After several weeks Hitler finally accepted that Normandy was the real destination. But by then he was too late. The Allies had established a beachhead. In August they broke out of Normandy, sending the Germans into full retreat. To Hitler the disaster was yet another indication of the incompetence of those around him. He had no idea how deeply and decisively he had been fooled.

Interpretation

In trying to deceive Hitler about the Normandy invasions, the Allies were faced with a problem: not only was the Fuhrer suspicious and wary by nature, he knew of previous attempts to mislead him and knew that the Allies would have to try to deceive him again. How could the Allies possibly disguise the actual goal of a vast armada from a man who had reason to believe they would try to mislead him and was scrutinizing their every move?

Fortunately, British intelligence had been able to provide the planners of the D-Day landings, including Prime Minister Winston Churchill, with information that would prove invaluable to them. First, they knew that Hitler was growing paranoid; he was isolated and overworked, his imagination overheated. He was prone to emotional outbursts, and he was suspicious of everyone and everything. Second, they knew of his belief that the Allies would try to invade the Balkans before France and that the landing site in France would be in the Pas de Calais. He almost seemed to want these invasions to happen, as proof of his superior reasoning powers and foresight.