The 33 Strategies of War (82 page)

If a man says or writes something that he considers revolutionary and that he hopes will change the world and improve mankind, but in the end hardly anyone is affected in any real way, then it is not revolutionary or progressive at all. Communication that does not advance its cause or produce a desired result is just self-indulgent talk, reflecting no more than people's love of their own voice and of playing the role of the moral crusader. The effective truth of what they have written or said is that nothing has been changed. The ability to reach people and alter their opinions is a serious affair, as serious and strategic as war. You must be harsher on yourself and on others: failure to communicate is the fault not of the dull-witted audience but of the unstrategic communicator.

Authority: I cannot give birth to wisdom myself and the accusation that many make against me, that while I question others, I myself bring nothing wise to light due to my lack of wisdom, is accurate. The reason for this is as follows: God forces me to serve as a midwife and prevents me from giving birth.

--Socrates (470-399
B.C.
)

REVERSAL

Even as you plan your communications to make them more consciously strategic, you must develop the reverse ability to decode the subtexts, hidden messages, and unconscious signals in what other people say. When people speak in vague generalities, for example, and use a lot of abstract terms like "justice," "morality," "liberty," and so on, without really ever explaining the specifics of what they are talking about, they are almost always hiding something. This is often their own nasty but necessary actions, which they prefer to cover up under a screen of righteous verbiage. When you hear such talk, be suspicious.

Meanwhile people who use cutesy, colloquial language, brimming with cliches and slang, may be trying to distract you from the thinness of their ideas, trying to win you over not by the soundness of their arguments but by making you feel chummy and warm toward them. And people who use pretentious, flowery language, crammed with clever metaphors, are often more interested in the sound of their own voices than in reaching the audience with a genuine thought. In general, you must pay attention to the forms in which people express themselves; never take their content at face value.

A war can only really be fought against an enemy who shows himself. By infiltrating your opponents' ranks, working from within to bring them down, you give them nothing to see or react against--the ultimate advantage. From within, you also learn their weaknesses and open up possibilities of sowing internal dissension. So hide your hostile intentions. To take something you want, do not fight those who have it, but rather join them--then either slowly make it your own or wait for the moment to stage a coup d'etat. No structure can stand for long when it rots from within.

Athene now inspired Prylis, son of Hermes, to suggest that entry should be gained into Troy by means of a wooden horse; and Epeius, son of Panopeus, a Phocian from Parnassus, volunteered to build one under Athene's supervision. Afterwards, of course, Odysseus claimed all the credit for this stratagem......
[
Epeius
]
built an enormous hollow horse of fir planks, with a trap-door fitted into one flank, and large letters cut on the other which consecrated it to Athene: "In thankful anticipation of a safe return to their homes, the Greeks dedicate this offering to the Goddess." Odysseus persuaded the bravest of the Greeks to climb fully armed up a rope-ladder and through the trap-door into the belly of the horse.... Among them were Menelaus, Odysseus, Diomedes, Sthenelus, Acamas, Thoas, and Neoptolemus. Coaxed, threatened, and bribed, Epeius himself joined the party. He climbed up last, drew the ladder in after him and, since he alone knew how to work the trap-door, took his seat beside the lock. At nightfall, the remaining Greeks under Agamemnon followed Odysseus's instructions, which were to burn their camp, put out to sea and wait off Tenedos and the Calydnian Islands until the following evening....... At the break of day, Trojan scouts reported that the camp lay in ashes and that the Greeks had departed, leaving a huge horse on the seashore. Priam and several of his sons went out to view it and, as they stood staring in wonder, Thymoetes was the first to break the silence. "Since this is a gift to Athene," he said, "I propose that we take it into Troy and haul it up to her citadel." "No, no!" cried Capys. "Athene favoured the Greeks too long; we must either burn it at once or break it open to see what the belly contains." But Priam declared: "Thymoetes is right. We will fetch it in on rollers. Let nobody desecrate Athene's property." The horse proved too broad to be squeezed through the gates. Even when the wall had been breached, it stuck four times. With enormous efforts the Trojans then hauled it up to the citadel; but at least took the precaution of repairing the breach behind them.... At midnight...Odysseus ordered Epeius to unlock the trapdoor.... Now the Greeks poured silently through the moonlit streets, broke into the unguarded houses, and cut the throats of the Trojans as they slept.

T
HE
G
REEK
M
YTHS
,
VOL
. 2, R
OBERT
G
RAVES
, 1955

THE INVISIBLE ENEMY

Late in 1933, Adolf Hitler appointed the forty-six-year-old Rear Admiral Wilhelm Canaris chief of the Abwehr, the secret intelligence and counter-espionage service of the German General Staff. Hitler had recently won dictatorial powers as the ruler of Germany, and, with an eye on future conquests in Europe, he wanted Canaris to make the Abwehr an agency as efficient as the British Secret Service. Canaris was a slightly odd choice for the position. He came from the aristocracy, was not a member of the Nazi Party, and had not had a particularly outstanding military career. But Hitler saw traits in Canaris that would make him a superior spymaster: cunning in the extreme, a man made for intrigue and deception, he knew how to get results. He would also owe his promotion exclusively to Hitler.

In the years to come, Hitler would have reason to feel proud of his choice. Canaris rigorously reorganized the Abwehr and extended its spy networks throughout Europe. Then, in May 1940, he provided exceptional intelligence for the blitzkrieg invasion of France and the Low Countries early in World War II. And so, in the summer of that same year, Hitler gave Canaris his most important task to date: providing intelligence for Operation Sealion, a plan to conquer England. After the blitzkrieg and the evacuation of the Allied army at Dunkirk, the British seemed deeply vulnerable, and knocking them out of the war at this point would ensure Hitler's conquest of Europe.

A few weeks into the job, however, Canaris reported that the Germans had underestimated the size of the English army and air force. Sealion would require resources much larger than the Fuhrer had anticipated; unless Hitler was willing to commit many more troops, it could turn into a mess. This was highly disappointing news for Hitler, who had wanted to knock out England in one quick blow. With his eye on an imminent invasion of Russia, he was unwilling to commit large numbers to Sealion or to spend years subduing the British. Having come to trust Canaris, he abandoned the planned invasion.

That same summer General Alfred Jodl came up with a brilliant plan to damage England in another way: using Spain as a base of operations, he would invade the British-owned island of Gibraltar, cutting off England's sea routes through the Mediterranean and the Suez Canal to its empire in India and points east--a disastrous blow. But the Germans would have to act fast, before the English caught on to the threat. Excited by the prospect of ruining England in this indirect way, Hitler once again asked Canaris to assess the plan. The Abwehr chief went to Spain, studied the situation, and reported back. The moment a German army moved into Spain, he said, the English would see the plan, and Gibraltar had elaborate defenses. The Germans would also need the cooperation of Francisco Franco, dictator of Spain, who Canaris believed would not be sufficiently helpful. In short: Gibraltar was not worth the effort.

There were many around Hitler who believed that taking Gibraltar was eminently realizable and could mean overall victory in the war against Britain. Shocked at Canaris's report, they vocally expressed their doubts about the intelligence he had been providing all along. His enigmatic nature--he spoke little and was impossible to read--only fueled their suspicions that he was not to be trusted. Hitler heard his staff out, but a meeting with Generalissimo Franco to discuss the Gibraltar plan indirectly corroborated everything Canaris had said. Franco was difficult and made all kinds of silly demands; the Spanish would be impossible to deal with; the logistics were too complicated. Hitler quickly lost interest in Jodl's plan.

In the years that followed, German officials in increasing numbers would come to suspect Canaris of disloyalty to the Third Reich, but no one could pin anything concrete on him. And Hitler himself had great faith in the Abwehr chief and sent him on critical top-secret missions. One such assignment occurred in the summer of 1943, when Marshal Pietro Badoglio, the former chief of the Italian General Staff, arrested Benito Mussolini, dictator of Italy and Hitler's staunchest ally. The Germans feared that Badoglio might secretly open talks with General Dwight D. Eisenhower for Italy's surrender--a devastating blow to the Axis that Hitler could forestall, if necessary, by sending an army to Rome, arresting Badoglio, and occupying the capital. But was it necessary?

Hitler's armies were needed elsewhere, so Canaris was dispatched to assess the likelihood of Italy's surrender. He met with his counterpart in the Italian government, General Cesare Ame, then arranged for a meeting between high-ranking members of both countries' intelligence services. At the meeting, Ame emphatically denied that Badoglio had any intention of betraying Germany; in fact, the marshal was fiercely loyal to the cause. And Ame was very convincing. Hitler accordingly left Italy alone. A few weeks later, however, Badoglio indeed surrendered to Eisenhower, and the valuable Italian fleet moved into Allied hands. Canaris had been fooled--or was it Canaris who had done the fooling?

General Walter Schellenberg, chief of the foreign intelligence branch of the SS, began to investigate the Badoglio fiasco and found two men in Ame's service who had listened in on one of Canaris's talks with their boss. Canaris, they reported, had known of Badoglio's intentions to surrender all along and had collaborated with Ame to deceive Hitler. Surely this time the Abwehr chief had been caught in the act and would pay with his life. Schellenberg accumulated a thick dossier of other actions that cast more doubts on Canaris. He presented it to Heinrich Himmler, head of the SS, who, however, told his subordinate to keep quiet--he would present the dossier to Hitler when the time was right. Yet, to Schellenberg's dismay, months went by and Himmler did nothing, except eventually to retire Canaris with honors from the service.

Shortly after Canaris's retirement, his diaries fell into the hands of the SS. They revealed that he had conspired against Hitler from the beginning of his service as Abwehr chief, even plotting to assassinate the Fuhrer in schemes that had only barely misfired. Canaris was sent to a concentration camp, where, in April 1945, he was tortured and killed.

Interpretation

Wilhelm Canaris was a devoutly patriotic and conservative man. In the earliest days of the Nazi Party's rise to power, he had come to believe that Hitler would lead his beloved Germany to destruction. But what could he do? He was just one man, and to raise his voice against Hitler would get him no more than a little publicity and an early death. Canaris cared only about results. So he kept quiet, and, when offered the job of Abwehr chief, he seized his opportunity. At first he bided his time, gaining credibility by his work in the Abwehr and getting to understand the inner workings of the Nazi government. Meanwhile he secretly organized a group of like-minded conspirators, the Schwarze Kapelle (Black Orchestra), who would hatch several plots to kill Hitler. From his position in the Abwehr, Canaris was to some extent able to protect the Schwarze Kapelle from investigation. He also quietly gathered intelligence on the dirtiest secrets of high-ranking Nazis like Himmler and let them know that any move against him would result in revelations that would ruin them.

Assigned to prepare for Operation Sealion, Canaris doctored the intelligence to make England look much more formidable than it was. Assigned to investigate an invasion of Gibraltar, he secretly told the Spanish that to let Germany use their country would spell disaster: Germany would never leave. Hence Franco's alienating treatment of Hitler. In both of these cases, Canaris exploited Hitler's impatience for quick and easy victories to discourage him from ventures that could have easily and irrevocably turned the war in his favor. Finally, in the case of Badoglio, Canaris understood Hitler's weak spot--a paranoid concern with the loyalty of others--and coached Ame on how to appeal to this weakness and make a show of Italy's devotion to the Axis cause. The results of Canaris's work from the inside are astounding: one man played a major role in saving England, Spain, and Italy from disaster, arguably turning the tide of the war. The resources of the German war machine were essentially at his disposal, to disrupt and derail its efforts.

As the story of Canaris demonstrates, if there is something you want to fight or destroy, it is often best to repress your desire to act out your hostility, revealing your position and letting the other side know your intentions. What you gain in publicity, and perhaps in feeling good about expressing yourself openly, you lose in a curtailment of your power to cause real damage, particularly if the enemy is strong.

Instead the ultimate strategy is to seem to stay on the enemy side, burrowing deep into its heart. From there you can gather valuable information: weaknesses to attack, incriminating evidence to publicize. Here subtle maneuvers, like passing along false information or steering your opponent into a self-destructive policy, can have large effects--much larger than anything you could do from the outside. The enemy's powers become weapons you can use against it, a kind of turncoat armory at your disposal. It is hard for most people to imagine that someone who outwardly plays the part of a loyal supporter or friend can secretly be a foe. This makes your hostile intentions and maneuvers relatively easy to cloak. When you are invisible to the enemy, there is no limit to the destructive powers at your command.

Speak deferentially, listen respectfully, follow his command, and accord with him in everything. He will never imagine you might be in conflict with him. Our treacherous measures will then be settled.

--Tai Kung,
Six Secret Teachings
(circa fourth century
B.C.
)

THE FRIENDLY TAKEOVER

In the summer of 1929, Andre Breton, the thirty-three-year-old leader of Paris's avant-garde surrealist movement, saw a private screening of a film called
Un Chien Andalou
. It was directed by a Spanish member of the group, Luis Bunuel, and its first image showed a man slicing open a woman's eye with a knife. This, Breton exclaimed, was the first surrealist film.
Un Chien Andalou
generated excitement in part because of the contribution to it of a new artist on the scene, Salvador Dali, a friend and collaborator of Bunuel's. The director spoke highly to Breton of his fellow Spaniard, whose paintings, he said, could certainly be considered surrealist and whose personality was supremely peculiar. Soon others, too, were talking about Dali, discussing what he called his "paranoid-critical" method of painting: he delved deep into his dreams and unconscious and interpreted the images he found there, no matter what their content, in delirious detail. Dali still lived in Spain, but Breton was suddenly seeing his name everywhere he went. Then, in November 1929, the twenty-five-year-old Dali had his first major show in a Paris gallery, and Breton was transfixed by the images. He wrote of the exhibition, "For the first time the windows of the mind had opened wide."

The late 1920s were a difficult period for Breton. The movement he had founded some five years earlier was stagnating, its members constantly bickering over ideological points that bored Breton to tears. In truth, surrealism was on the verge of becoming passe. Perhaps Dali could offer the fresh blood it needed: his art, his ideas, and his provocative character might make surrealism something people talked about again. With all this in mind, Breton invited Dali into the movement, and the Spaniard happily accepted. Dali moved to Paris and established himself there.