Bodyguard of Lies: The Extraordinary True Story Behind … (2024)

The title of this book is taken from a quote by Churchill...."In war-time, truth is so precious that she should always be attended by a bodyguard of lies". And this book is about those lies that were used to mislead, betray, and sacrifice during the time leading up to D-Day. The London Controlling Section (LCS) took the lead in creating full scenarios of battles that never happened and troop movements that were non-existent. They flooded Europe with rumor in bits and pieces that were intended, when taken as a whole, to convince the Nazis of operations that were fictional. For the most part it worked but it was a tricky business since double agents abounded and the LCS was never sure who to trust.....and that included the Russians. The great coup, of course, was the breaking of the Enigma code and Operation Ultra located at Bletchly Park was reading almost all of the Nazi communications. To keep Ultra a secret, Churchill had to make some heartbreaking decisions, such as not warning the city of Coventry when he knew that the horrible fire bombing was going to occur. Men's lives were sacrificed to protect the secrets of the coming invasion of Fortress Europa and where it would occur.
This is a terrific book that holds your attention from page one and reveals secrets not previously known which were protected by the War Secrets Act until the 1970s. Recommended.

Anthony Cave Brown's Bodyguard of Lies is a stunning look at World War II and all the secrets, mistakes and successes, both planned and accidental, leading up to D-Day, the invasion of Normandy and the ultimate end of Nazi Germany.
In the beginning, if it had not been for Alan Turing, a half genius, half childlike British experimenter, World War II would have been even harder for the Allies to fight and to win. Turing, whose story has been made into the movie, "The Imitation Game," broke the German code Enigma early in the war. That meant England, which declined to share this information for a very long time, had to position itself to be where needed without leaving any clues for the Germans their code had been broken.

Throughout the lead up to D-Day, Brown describes clever tricks the Allies played to distract the enemy. He also goes behind the scenes in Germany for a look at the German high command and its disenchantment and assassination attempts on Hitler. If the Allies had known who to trust and would have listened to the Germans of the Schwarze Kapelle and would have trusted Rommel toward the end, the war might have been shortened and lives saved.
The allied soldiers who fought in the air and on the ground would have had a tougher time if it had not been for the code breaking achieved by Turing.
There was also mention of the attack on the Messerschmitt factories at Regensburg and the ball-bearing works at Schweinfurt. On a personal note, this is the battle my father was involved in when his B-17 was shot down on the Swiss/German border. He survived and the mission was later remounted and successful.

The book was begun in 1963 and finally published in 1975. It shows an astounding amount of work and research. It is also well-written and interesting to read.

The title of the book comes from what Winston Churchill said to Franklin Roosevelt and Josef Stalin at their meeting in Teheran prior to D-Day. Churchill said, "In wartime, truth is so precious that she should always be attended by a bodyguard of lies." These deceptions based on the broken Enigma code aided in winning the war.

در ابتدای سریال تازه شبکه نت فلیکس با نام نارکوس چنین جمله ای آمده: تعریف رئالیسم جادویی آن است که یک رویداد بسیار دقیق واقع بینانه مورد هجوم چیزی که باورش بسیار عجیب است واقع می شود. آنتونبو کیو براون نه موراکامی است نه مارکز کتاب او بادیگاردی از دروغ یا آنطور که مترجم فارسی ترجمه کرده حصاری از دروغ هم رئالیسم جادویی نیست حتی رمان هم نیست بلکه یک ماراتن نفسگیر هزار و دویست صفحه ای است بسیار ریزبینانه و دقیق، که به عملیات جاسوسی و فریبکارانه در طی جنگ جهانی دوم میپردازد. در ابتدا حجم عملیاتی که متفقین در جنگ جهانی برعلیه رایش هیتلری ترتیب دادند تا دستگاه اطلاعاتی هیتلر را بفریبند آنطور که نویسنده شرح داده بود برایم غیر قابل باور بود و به نظرم نویسنده در تلاشهای دولتهای انگلیس و امریکا غلو و بزرگنمایی کرده بود. اما اکثر قریب به اتفاق شخصیتهای پرداخته شده در کتاب در گوگل صفحاتی داشتند و عملیاتشان هم در جاهای مختلف ثبت شده بود. با وجود این که مجبور بودم وقوع بسیاری از این وقایع را بپذیرم اما همچنان نوشته های کتاب برایم قابل باور نبود و یکجانبه به نظر می رسید. تا این که در ده صفحه آخر تنها برای یکبار و اولین و اخرین بار مچ نویسنده را گرفتم. جایی که سرنوشت اسفبار تورینگ را دولت انگلستان علیرغم خدمات ارزنده این دانشمند در طی جنگ به طور مستقیم رقم زد و فشار روانی ناشی از حکم محکومیت و داروهای مصرف شده توسط او منجر به مرگش شد ،نویسنده به طور مشکوکی این حادثه را بدون ذکر عاملیت دولت انگلستان شرح داده است. اما چون ماجرا به همجنسگرایی تورینگ برمیگردد شاید مورد قلع و قمع سانسورچیان وطنی قرارگرفته باشد. میتوانید در اینترنت سرنوشت تورینگ را سرچ کنید. به هرحال کتاب یک تاریخنگاری بزرگ و دقیق و ارزشمند به نظر می رسد. و تنها می توان افسوس خورد چرا مشابه آن در تاریخنگاریهای آکادمیک و غیر آکادمیک ما به چشم نمیخورد. علاقمندان به تاریخ و مسائل نظامی و تاکتیک های روانی را به خواندن این کتاب حجیم و نفسگیر دعوت می کنم

Bodyguard of Lies is a massive brick of a book focusing on the deadly game of deceit and espionage between British and German intelligence agencies around the D-Day Landings. While Fortitude North, the well-known creation of a fake army under the command of General Patton to pin Nazi reserves as Pas de Calais during the invasion of Normandy, is the climax of the book, Brown covers everything, from the early days of the Phony War, through the desperate aftermath of Dunkirk and the clever ruses in North Africa. His command of the facts is impeccable, based on dozens of interviews and (at the time) recently declassified reports. The only area where I think material has been made available today is Bletchley Park, which was Top Secret right up until Bodyguard of Lies was published.

Brown takes a rather unique tack, focusing on the deception operation as the province of a small group of Etonian elites, the true masters of the British Empire, who orchestrated the movement of millions of men to produce a coherent and false picture for Hitler. Against them were matched the Prussian old guard, exemplified by the Abwehr spymaster Canaris, loyal to Germany and trying to move against Hitler. While the SOE was "setting Europe ablaze", a cadre of anti-Hitler German generals tried again and again to set up a coup with assurance of some sort of free Germany in the aftermath. This Schwarze Kappelle--Black Orchestra, made multiple attempts on Hitler's life, all thwarted through unlikely chances, but never achieved their political ends. The Allies already had all the intelligence they needed on Nazi intentions thanks to Ultra radio decryption, and FDR's policy of unconditional surrender made it hard to offer terms. I've divided on this stance. On the one hand, shortening the war with a surrender would have saved millions of lives. On the other hand, Aldo Raines has some good points on what Nazis deserve.

I wish there had been a little bit more on the early special forces, the SAS and SBS and SOE, and commando warfare. For all it's key importance, the XX Committee and the fact that every single Nazi spy in England was turned into a British agent didn't get a chapter to itself. But over all, Bodyguard of Lies is a detailed compilation of a very secret war.

When I arrived for my first Special Forces assignment, my battalion commander gave me a copy of this book to read. It's a superb look at the covert operations during World War II by the British and, lesser so, the Americans.
This book helped give me the paranoid mindset someone operating in the covert world needs to have. You have to consider whether every mission you are given is what it appears to be.
The title comes from a saying by Winston Churchill, that I like so much, I used it for the title of one my novels.

This is a well written and researched history book that reads like a thriller. Essentially, it is a sad story of people scurrying around trying to avoid World War 2. They fail and the resulting war is catastrophic for the tens of millions of people killed, maimed, displaced, and destroyed. Surprisingly, the saddest figures are the anti Hitler German Generals who tried to overthrow the madman. They kept trying to bring England into their plots but were rebuffed because they weren't trusted and sadly because England had its own agenda. Most of these Germans died horribly because of their failure. They also, before war broke out, kept trying to get the Western Powers to stand up to Hitler so they could use that as an excuse to overthrow him. Unfortunately, the west kept giving into him, first about Austria, then the Sudatenland, and then Czechoslovakia. How could they engineer Hitler's ouster when he kept winning victories without even having to fight.
The bulk of the book is about the secret war waged by the British to confuse, outsmart and trick their German adversaries. They broke the Germans codes almost as the war started and were able to read their enemy's mind throughout the entire war. They were clever and, at times brilliant.
However, it still took almost 6 years and millions of deaths to defeat
Hitler. If only they had been as brilliant and perhaps, as courageous before the war started when they had willing partners on the German General Staff who reached out because they know the horror that was coming.

This book is not one to be breezed through, but to be savored and slowly digested. As other reviews have described, the book is packed with information which the author artfully ties together, integrating details of spy tradecraft, the art of subterfuge, personalities and personnages that will fascinate. The book, while ostensibly about Enigma, the ultrasecret, so vital to the Allied victory in WWII, there is so much more. For example, there is a great deal about Canaris, whom I'd heard of, but had no idea of his immense courage in working for the defeat of Hitler and the Nazis. He was the head of a group in the German Army (he was the head of German military intelligence) who clearly saw that Hitler's actions, beginning with his invasion of Czechoslovakia and Poland, would ultimately destroy Germany. He was not alone, and by the time of the D-Day invasions, no less a military superstar than Rommel, was on the verge of turning to the Allies. The author carefully evaluates the very real possibility that if the Allies had been more willing to share information with Canaris' group, there may not have been the need for the very costly (in blood and treasure) D-Day invasion.
This is but one facet of a book which describes in detail how spy networks operated in occupied France, including an interesting section on the role of a convent in Paris that worked with British intelligence in transmitting messages, among other things. I truly can't over-estimate my valuation of this brilliant book.

Incredibly comprehensive and well written. Truly stunning even trying to imagine the extent of the deceptions used. Brings a new perspective on the success of the allies in the euro theatre. EG the role of Canaris, head of the Abwehr (German military intelligence service,) was HUGE. EG how we shunned the Schwarze Kapelle (a group of anti-Nazi conspirators that contained many high ranking officers, and that executed the attempted assassination of Hitler and Valkerie.) EG the role of ULTRA. EG the coordination w/ Stalin and Russia. EG the range of deception strategies and tactics, and their coordinations and extents. EG the role of de Gaulle (bozo) and the French reseaux. on and on.

The book lacks detailed diagrams so I printed out some that I referenced as I read.

(confession: i thought it was so good I read it twice.)

The tag line 'The extraordinary true story behind D-Day' hints at only small part of the amazing content of this masterpiece by Anthony Cave Brown. It was first published in 1972 and my early and tattered copy is a treasured possession. I believe it to be one of the first publications to divulge the breaking of the German Enigma codes and also discusses amazing misinformation operations such as Mincemeat and other daring ideas dreamed up by SOE.
Heydrich, Canaris and others come under the microscope in this lengthy and beautifully crafted book which will serve WW2 fanatic very well.

Was originally going to give it four stars, one off because of the author's tendency to devote a page or more in backstory for every character he introduced and to make obscure historical references to past battles and meetings when introducing a new location. Three stars because in the epilogue 1) he rather lazily defended use of the bomb against Hiroshima and Nagasaki, 2) completely ignored the role Britain's forced chemical castration of Alan Turing played in his suicide, and 3) fell back on the tired cliché that if we only knew what intelligence agencies did for our freedom, we would have more respect for them. All in all, a fascinating book, but I don't believe the author and I would see eye to eye politically speaking

A masterpiece that captures how critical intelligence and deception were to the success of the Allies in World War 2.

An amazing account of the events and planning that led to the D-Day invasion at Normandy. There were several deception operations underway to prevent the Nazis from discovering the true location and time of the invasion, in order to give the Allies a chance to succeed. Operation Mincemeat is one of the more famous deception plans, whereby the British took a patriotic corpse (with the family's permission), dressed him in a British military uniform, and gave the body a briefcase full of war plans for the invasion, albeit in a far different location than Normandy. The British then took the body in a submarine and released it where the ocean currents would carry it into German territory, successfully delivering the deception to Hitler and his generals. As a direct result of this piece of deception, the Nazis did not send reinforcements to the troops at Normandy. This was only a part of the Bodyguard of Lies, the rest of which is detailed on this book. It's a massive book, so get the paperback version to save your legs from falling asleep.

Several years ago, while perusing my dad's excellent library, one filled with biographies of MacArthur and Eisenhower, memoirs of Kissinger and Churchill; books by all the players in the Watergate scandal, Truman, etc., a library where fiction dare not tread, I asked him, what he would recommend for me. He stood and thought for just a moment and then pulled down a huge book filled with fine print and handed it to me. 'Bodyguard of Lies' If you could only read one of these books, this is the one to choose. Don't try to remember all the names and people, but push through it. Due to it's size and the time commitment required, I thanked him and did not tackle it until this year.

Thank you for telling me to read this book. Don't get lost in the amount of detail in this book. It is worth every bit of it. I want to add more stars to my review!

This well-written tome details the striking brilliance of D-Day and its years of planning and laying of the most complicated groundwork imaginable. I was amazed at the patience, intricacy and secrecy of the operation. There were so many important details I didn’t know. While the book is a bit daunting in page count, it reads like a novel. I cannot recommend this more highly for any student of history, and especially WWII.

"In wartime, truth is so precious that she should always be attended by a bodyguard of lies." The quote by Winston Churchill gave this book its title. Within, Anthony Cave Brown details the secret war of spies, decryption, deception, and misinformation that ultimately led to the Axis downfall in World War II.

Brown used recently declassified documents enhanced with interviews with the people who were there to put together a blow-by-blow of the intelligence that Allies used to make every major decision throughout the war. It becomes obvious that the allies would have had a much tougher time winning, and could have faced defeat, without their superior clandestine skills. The key to everything was Ultra, the Allied intelligence project that not only decoded the German Enigma communications but kept that knowledge hidden from Germany and the world until years after the war. With Ultra, Allied leaders knew nearly every move of the German and, later, Japanese forces were going to make.

Also detailed is the high-level German conspiracy to remove Hitler from power, through coup or assassination. Could the war have ended much earlier with more US and British support for the plotters? It's an interesting question.

A majority of the book looks at the use of agents and double-agents, along with large scale deception that kept German forces off-balance and tied up and away from the Allied landing site during D-Day and after. Through the use of fake radio chatter, inflatable tanks and aircraft, and other deceptions, Germany was never able to mount a strong enough counter-offensive in the right area that would have driven US and British forces from Western Europe.

It's interesting to consider whether these deceptions during World War II gave Russia the idea to beef up their own spy and misinformation abilities that led to the Cold War and some of the issues we face with them today. Throughout, these questions and more are considered with Brown providing his own views backed by available evidence.

This is longer than most of my book reviews, yet I've only scratched the surface. This is a long and well-researched book that is a must-read for anyone with an interest in D-Day or World War II.

I have to admit that this book has sat on my shelf, unread, for years. I was intimidated by its length. The cover says it's about hiding the secrets of D-Day from Hitler. How could such a long book about one aspect of D-Day keep my interest?

It turns out that the book is about quite a bit more than the deceptions around the Normandy landing. I might suggest the book is mostly about two topics.

The first topic can be distilled to a single word: stratagem. A stratagem is a plan or scheme, especially one used to outwit an opponent or achieve an end. The Casablanca Conference in January 1943 was attended by American, British, and French leaders for the purpose of planning strategy for the next phase of the war. They came to 6 conclusions. The last of them was to "continue and expand a campaign of political warfare, subversion, economic warfare, and deception in order to undermine the German will and ability to fight."

The second topic is the Schwarze Kapelle ("Black Orchestra"). That's the group of German Generals who plotted to kill Hitler. (Not to be confused with Rote Kapelle ["Red Orchestra"], the communist underground in Berlin.)

That's the subject. The timescale is from the mid-1930s to mid-August of 1944 (ending with the action in the Falaise Gap). The geographic scope covers action in North Africa, Italy, and France. It is filled with stories of SIGINT (signals intelligence) and HUMINT (human intelligence) and how they helped win the war.

This book is a good companion to And I Was There: Pearl Harbor and Midway--Breaking the Secrets by Edwin Layton. That book covers wireless intelligence in the Pacific. Between the two books, one gets an encyclopedic look at how intelligence helped win the war.

4.5 stars

I was first intrigued by the spy shenanigans in WW2 because of an Imgur post that outlined some of the more bewildering use of agents and deception tactics. One of the comments recommended this book and man, do you get spy shenanigans and more.

I am in awe of the tactics carried out -some of them had me laughing out loud with its sheer audacity... and the fact that it worked!!

I couldn't help but feel a sense of useless frustration and dismay for the Schwarz Kapelle. They tried so hard!! I am bitter at the fact that the war could have ended so much earlier - so many lives needn't to be wasted - but for indifference and self-serving politics. Look, I get it the self-serving part (why not let the two big armies butt heads and come in later to clean up the mess) - it's the indifference of the Americans and their bloody Unconditional Surrender policy that really, really pissed me off.

It's quite amazing Germany was so powerful and was able to hold off the Allied for so long. I wonder what it would have been like if they didn't trust Engima so blindly and if Hitler was a bit more rational with some of the battles he engaged in... I mean, they almost overwhelmed the West several times if it weren't for Ultra unbuttoning their messages, as well as having a spy master who actively worked against / subverting Hilter's orders.

I also am stunned by the sheer magnitude of organising and carrying out Neptune.

I am also flabbergastered that the French make for some very bad spies.

While this book was an incredibly long book my attention never waned - it honestly was so interesting.

Just don't quiz me on any names or dates.

I think this probably sat on my shelves for over ten years - bought on a whim from a newsletter recommendation and then intimidating me with its 800+ pages.
It took me a month to read, but this was compelling reading for someone who knows very little about the Second World War or D-Day. Full of detail about the main characters on both the Allied and Axis side, major and lesser well-known, and the decisions that were taken, particularly in the year before and weeks after D-Day.
For a book with so much information, it was compelling reading, it was more like a John Le Carre novel than a dry history text, meaning I learnt a lot more, although of course with the caveat that this involved real people and decisions made meant life or death. There is information about the cover and deception schemes, Enigma / Ultra, and the use of espionage within occupied countries. There is also a lot about the rebellion formed by the German commanders, culminating in their attempt to assassinate Hitler.
Using documents pulled from various repositories, some more difficult to obtain than others, he has pieced together the story of the behind the scenes build up, particularly the deceptions used by the secret services to make sure Hitler did not guess the place of the D-Day landings. In places there has been some speculation as to whether spies were double agents, whether either of the secret services knew more than was assumed, but at all points the reader is presented with what is known and potential explanations, rather than being told something is fact.
For anyone with an interest in history, or espionage this is a must read book

When a book has one single chapter that was made into a blockbuster movie and every other chapter is just as fascinating and could become its own movie too, you’ll have this gem of a book. It comes from Churchill’s quote “In wartime, truth is so precious that she should always be attended by a bodyguard of lies.” Completed in 1975, over 30 years after World War II, it contains a great deal of information that was only declassified and released long after the war. Much of it is only known by a small group of people today, mainly those who seek the information out and study it. At over 900 pages this book is a behemoth of information, meticulously researched and documented. The author started writing the book in 1961 up until 1975 when it was published. You will see the behind the scenes of so many conflicts and deception operations before and during WWII, including D-Day and all the intelligence work that went into it. You’ll learn about Ultra and the Turing machine, used to crack the Enigma ciphers, you’ll learn details about the Schwarze Kapelle, a group of conspirators, including senior officers in Nazi Germany who had the goal to overthrow and remove Hitler. You will see how far governments go to deceive the enemy. How unusual alliances are formed and much more. It will make you rethink what you see on the news today and wonder what’s really happening behind scenes. This book is one of the best I’ve read. If you give it a chance, you won’t be disappointed.

“Factory girls “by Paul Crystal the history goes back so far we even learn why “traditional“ women’s work was was considered to be in the home. It’s packed full of the different work women did throughout early history and even into World War II. In the back of the book they have photos actually showing the different women in the different roles. It talks about how women’s work has changed throughout the years and how in someways it stayed the same. It explains how modern inventions affected the work women did in the many different opportunities it gave them. I truly enjoyed this book and highly recommend it. I love history in this book totally entertain me I think it was well researched and with the personal stories and poems the author put in the book also made it very entertaining. Please forgive any mistakes as I am blind and dictate my review but all opinions are totally my own. I was given this book by Ned Galli but I am leaving this review voluntarily. #FactoryGirls, #PaulCrystal, #NetGally

Wow. I had not yet read a book written by Paul Chrystal and did not know what to expect from Factory Girls. What I found was a detailed looked at the working lives of women and children throughout history that was well-written and included a multitude of primary sources. This book doesn't shy away from the hard truths of the working lives of those living in England and goes into great detail about the job, it's impact on the health and well being of the person and the family unit overall. I was blown away by the research and empathy included in each and every page. As a historian I loved the detailed footnotes and images included at the end of the book as well as the rich and varied primary sources throughout the book.

Thank you, NetGalley, for an advanced copy of this book.

Excellent history of the Second World War. Published in 1975, it focuses mainly on the numerous important ways that espionage and deception assisted the Allies in defeating Hitler. Anthony Cave Brown (who died in 2006) is a great narrator, and in many places the book reads like a good spy novel. Yet it also reads like an authoritative history, as the level of detail and analysis provided is incredible. It's a fairly long book, not a quick read, but highly recommended for anyone interested in WWII and/or espionage.

Over 800 pages. This is not a book for the casual reader of WWII. Well researched and documented, Brown traces the military steps the Allied and Axis powers took that led to D-Day. Brings out the competing personalities and motivations of the war's leading politicians, generals, and military staff. Discusses the political situations that forge alliances and create surrenders. A real eye-opener of the "business of war." A long read, a detailed read, but I think a must-read for people today as we grapple with a new era of alliances and superpower/global politics.

4 out of 5 stars

Informative, centred on women's and children's experiences, and detailed but concise research analyses. When learning about the Industrial Revolution, the voices of women often go unheard, but this book puts their stories/experiences/hardships right in front of us. This book delves into the lived realities of what it meant to be in the informal and formal sectors of the economy as a woman.

I recommend this book to anyone who wants to learn more about the Industrial Revolution, women and the economy in the early twentieth century.

Quite interesting but incredibly dry, this thing took me well over a year to read and it's not as though I wasn't interested. I think a little bit more conciseness and a clearer sense of direction would have benefitted the writer. I would have ranked this book lower based on the endless struggle it was to finish it but certain parts were terribly interesting. Historical figures such as Patton, Churchill, Rommel, and Canaris all rank significantly higher in my interest to learn more about after reading this book.

I haven't read tons and tons of books on history, but this one is perhaps the best I've committed to. Comprehensive to the nth degree, drawing on sources never seen at the time of its publication, and written in a direct, unprepossessing style. Published in the late 1970s and still a benchmark. Highly recommended.

Incredibly detailed portrait of the Allied strategic, tactical and operational deceptions and campaigns leading up to D-Day. Poignantly illustrates the historical characters involved on all sides, especially Menzies, Churchill, Roosevelt, and Montgomery on the Allied side, and the entire Schwarze Kapelle (German General Staff conspirators against Hitler).

This was an excellent read! Anthony Cave Brown is a fantastic writer and a thorough researcher. This is by far one of my favorite books on European WW1-WW2 that I've read. To me he is the gold standard for modern historians. I highly recommend this book. You will not be bored or disappointed. It's a great read that will keep you interested throughout all of its 800 or so pages.

A daunting but worthwhile read. I purchase this based on Ryan Holiday’s recommendation. A fascinating account of the deception strategy that was critical to the Allied victory in Europe. At over 800 pages it took me a year and a half to read (I should have read it continuously versus in bite sized chunks). Ironic I finished it on the 76th anniversary of DDay. Highly recommended

Wonderful book
Historic honouring the amazing women who worked through terrible conditions just because they needed to eat etc
This book shows how lucky our generation is