| In this dissertation a provisional definition of strategic deception was provided to facilitate discussion. The first chapter discussed deception from a socio-historical perspective and through the presentation and discussion of an extensive typology of deception techniques. The second chapter reviewed the British and American literature on strategic deception which appeared between 1969 and 1981. The British literature was published for a broad, general audience and dealt largely with the history of the Allied deceptions during the Second World War. The American literature had a different audience and a different purpose. The studies composing the American literature of the period were written for policy-makers and enjoyed the financial support of various U.S. Government agencies; their distribution was not intended for the general public. The methodologies employed were decidedly less historical and more social scientific, although all of the studies depended upon previous historical research and case studies. Explicitly or implicitly the American literature sought to test the hypothesis of what was called the Munich analogy. In any event, this dissertation brought that literature together for critical review as a corpus of work. Chapters three and four were interwoven case studies. Studies of deception rarely look at the both the deceiver and the deceived. Chapter three examined the German peacetime deceptions of the British with emphasis on the 1933 to 1939 period. The fourth chapter diagnostically examined the British intelligence establishment against which German deceptions were aimed to determine what effects, if any, organizational, operational or other characteristics had on the likelihood of deception or self-deception. It was found that the decentralization of British intelligence, the lack of financial and human resources contributed to interwar intelligence and the failure by British policy-makers and planners to appreciate the importance of certain technological and economic characteristics of their time created an intelligence system susceptible not only to the deceptions of others but confusion of counsel as well. The fifth and final chapter was a conclusion in which some general hypotheses and summary observations about the relationship of deception to security, counterdeception, self-deception and the economics of deception, among other things, were discussed. |
