The 4 Greatest Military Masterminds Of The 20th Century

For thousands of years, the fight for land, territory, and resources has dominated the history books, as well as those commanders who fought them. But one century stands out as the bloodiest. A period full of conflicts, wars, and revolutions. The 20th century. A century which saw momentous military advances in both technology and armaments. In the air, out at sea, and on the field of battle. A century that led to a new generation of leaders, whose ideas, maneuvers, and strategies would earn them their place in history as military masterminds. Disinformation. Decoys. Traps. In war, strategy and tactics can be creative. Military deception is all about misleading your adversary as to how much you have in terms of power, of your forces, what your mission is, what your strengths are, what your strategies are. Military deception is a strategy where a false plan will deliberately be provided to an enemy via either communications that they are known to have cracked, or leaving artifacts deliberately placed as traps to inform of a diversionary plan. Deception, surprise, these are key elements in success. But behind every deception, misinformation, and masquerade are the military masterminds creating, planning, and executing each strategy to defeat an enemy. During the conflicts of the 20th century, four of the most important military strategists of those 100 years succeeded in devising plans of deception, which ultimately led them to be victorious over their enemies. Autumn, 1941, World War II. Germany had taken enormous strides towards conquering Europe. Although the winds of war didn't bode well for Britain, Prime Minister Winston Churchill had taken a stand against Hitler. We shall fight on beaches, landing ground, in fields, in streets, and on the hills, we shall never surrender. But to win against unbeatable odds, Winston Churchill knew all too well to achieve victory would mean embracing the art of subterfuge. Churchill was born in Oxfordshire, in England, in 1874, and grew up in the bosom of the British aristocracy. Churchill's father, Lord Randolph Churchill, who became a politician in the 19th century, was very influential on his upbringing and childhood. And then his mother was an American socialite, but it was very much a sort of marriage of convenience, and they had affairs galore, and all sorts of things. And so Churchill actually had a very emotionally abused childhood, I think, as we look at it now. He was completely neglected by his parents. Churchill wasn't naturally gifted academically, so his father decided to enrol him in the army. But it took Churchill three attempts to pass the entrance examination to get in to the Royal Military College. When he eventually succeeded, his writing and reading improved, and he would serve as both a soldier and war correspondent. At the turn of the century, he resigned his commission to enter politics and became a Member of Parliament in 1900. He was appointed to various posts in the government, and played an important role in developing Britain's tank technology. In 1915, he returned to the army. Now a combatant, he fought on the Western Front during World War One. It was during this time Churchill's attention was drawn to the power of misinformation in the battle for victory. He learnt that during the Sinai and Palestine campaigns of the Great War, a British colonel had devised an audacious plan. It entailed an officer pretending to be wounded, and while escaping from stalking Turkish troops, accidentally dropping his knapsack. In it were letters and money, smeared with horse's blood. It also contained false battle plans to make the Turks think that an attack would take place again in Gaza. And there was no attack planned against Beersheba. Falling for the ruse, the Turks strengthened their position in Gaza, which left Beersheba exposed and vulnerable to a successful attack. The haversack ruse ignited Churchill's great enthusiasm for military subterfuge. Having left the army after the Great War, Churchill returned to politics, and by 1940 had become prime minister, replacing Neville Chamberlain. Some people found him fascinating, passionate, engaging, a real innovator of his time, and a true leader. Others were less complimentary. But the one thing you could guarantee is that if Winston Churchill was in the room, you knew about it. A year later, having won the Battle of Britain, keeping the Nazis at arm's length across the Channel, Churchill knew he would have to come up with some clever tactics to ultimately defeat them. Churchill's relationship with covert operations in particular was always an interesting one. He was also personally very interested in deception as a whole. Churchill sanctioned the creation of the top-secret London Controlling Section. The London Controlling Section, or the LCS, was an organization, a secretive organization, that was created in order to manage, orchestrate, and implement deception plans worldwide throughout the Second World War. In 1943, the Allies were planning an invasion of Southern Europe from North Africa, via the Italian island of Sicily. Churchill knew that the only way of a successful attack was for an operation to disguise where it would take place. Churchill's discreet organization devised a plan to mislead the Italian and German forces in Italy, codenamed Operation Mincemeat. Operation Mincemeat is a fascinating case study in the history of deception. They took the body of a homeless person who had tragically died from eating rat poison, and they filled their pockets with intelligence that said that the British and the Allies would invade Europe, liberate Europe, through Greece. Now they took this body and they placed it into the Mediterranean. The plan was that the body would wash up on the shores of an area of neutral Spain, where the London Controlling Section knew a number of German spies were operating. In the understanding that, in fact, the information that was sent with that body, it would find its way to Germany and therefore would poison intelligence sources there and mislead the German high command into believing that, rather than invading Sicily, an invasion of Greece and Sardinia was more likely. Incredibly, Churchill received a telegram, Mincemeat swallowed, rod, line and sinker. The Germans had taken the bait. And therefore, as a result of those, they put their troops in the wrong place, not in Sicily. The invasion of Sicily began in July 1943. The island was captured and the shortage of German forces had been a determining factor in this achievement. The men and equipment made their historic move upon the continent. The British were back, not as commandos, but as an army. They were back to stay. The tide had turned. But the greatest achievement of Churchill's London Controlling Section was the plan to mislead the German high command before D-Day. The D-Day landings in Normandy were, of course, an enormous undertaking. A huge amount of personnel were involved, looking at so many different aspects, all of which needed to combine in a single location on a single day. Operation Bodyguard took its name from the words of Churchill himself, who, in 1943, declared that, in wartime, truth is so precious that she should always be attended by a bodyguard of lies. Bodyguard comprised several operations in itself. The scale of the campaign was unprecedented. These were carefully orchestrated to draw the German forces to Calais, away from the Normandy coastline, in an effort to essentially make the landings easier and quicker, with fewer German reinforcements being at that area. Churchill knew that German spies would be looking out for any clues to decipher what the Allies were planning. The London Controlling Section devised Operation Copperhead, a plan that involved sending a double of General Bernard Montgomery to North Africa to meet with the troops stationed there. It was assumed that the Germans would think an invasion of Northern Europe unlikely without Montgomery spearheading the attack. Again, they were fooled. June 6, 1944. The Allied invasion fleet gathered off the coast of France. At dawn, troop-laden assault boats moved toward the Normandy beaches. The invasion of Europe was underway. Churchill hoped to delay the arrival of German reinforcements in Normandy for two weeks. No one predicted the plan would be so successful that the German army would hold back for seven weeks, still believing that there would be a landing farther north in France. The German army were convinced that the landings were going to take place at Calais, thanks to the misinformation that had been deliberately sowed by Allied forces in radio messages and actually by the French resistance as well. Churchill's strategic brilliance would play a major role in the eventual defeat of the German forces in just 11 months. Churchill moved seamlessly between military affairs and politics. For many, his sense of timing was key, buying time to develop his army while US reinforcements arrived. He was the kind of man that would be perfectly suited to leading a nation at a time of war, perhaps less so, and perhaps by his own admission as well, less interested in peacetime politics. And actually that played out in votes in 1945. Churchill lost the 1945 election, but would stay in politics and be elected as Prime Minister once again in 1951. However, having suffered from health problems, Churchill resigned four years later after a series of strokes. Impetuous soldier, statesman and orator, prolific writer and painter, war correspondent, strategist, fencer and historian, Churchill is undoubtedly one of the most important figures of the 20th century. By the early 1960s, Western Europe and the United States were divided from the East by what Churchill had referred to as an Iron Curtain, the political, military and ideological barrier erected by the USSR, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics after the Second World War. Tensions were at an all-time high in a period known as the Cold War. Despite being kept at arm's length geographically, in 1962 the USA would be caught in a deception by the USSR that would see the communist regime literally knocking on the doors of the White House. Under the noses of their enemy, the Soviet Union had secretly planted missiles on the Caribbean island of Cuba, less than a hundred miles from the United States. This provoked what would become known as the Cuban Missile Crisis, the closest the planet has ever come to World War III. And this was all down to a plan devised by the Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev. Nikita Khrushchev was born in 1894 in Kalinovka, Russia, into a peasant family. At the time of the communist revolution in 1917 he was a miner and he became communist in 1918 and moved to Moscow a decade later and gradually worked his way up through the ranks. Lazar Kaganovich, a politician who helped Stalin defeat his political opponents, also gave Khrushchev his first significant job in the Communist Party. Soon, the future leader found himself in Stalin's inner circle, something that would be key to his future. When the Soviet leader died in 1953, Khrushchev became one of the most powerful men in the Soviet Union. By 1950s, he's totally established as the premier of the Soviet Union. In terms of Khrushchev's personality, he was robust, durable, wily, not to be underestimated. He was known to have a very explosive character and also to have this very direct and undiplomatic sort of demeanor and speech. In a bizarre Cold War moment, angered by a speech that criticized his country's policies, he pounded his shoe on his delegate desk in protest in the middle of a United Nations session. He was also compulsive, a gambler, a risk-taker. The most striking famous evidence for that is his secret speech that he gave in 1956 in which he denounced Stalin and this began the process of de-Stalinization. As a leader, Khrushchev wanted to end the old ways of communism and sought to coexist peacefully with the West. He was the first Soviet leader to visit the United States in 1959 and met with President Dwight D. Eisenhower. But just months later, relations suffered a major setback when the Soviets shot down a US spy plane. Secret reconnaissance of Russia by high-flying American U-2 jets ended when one was downed deep in Soviet territory. Relations between Khrushchev and Eisenhower are very strained during the final months of the Eisenhower presidency. Khrushchev's hopes of improving relations with the next American president were dashed with the arrival of Kennedy. Kennedy introduced the biggest peacetime increase in US military spending in history up to that point. Secondly, three months later, he tried to overthrow the Cuban leader Fidel Castro at the Bay of Pigs. Thirdly, you have the Berlin crisis of the summer of 1961. That year, Khrushchev gave Kennedy an ultimatum to withdraw US troops stationed in West Berlin. But Kennedy makes absolutely clear that he's not going to back down over Berlin. The source of world trouble and tension is Moscow, not Berlin. And if war begins, it will have begun in Moscow and not Berlin. Khrushchev then made a shocking decision. On August 13th, Berliners woke up to a fence separating East and West that would soon become the iconic Berlin Wall that stopped the wave of migrants from the communist sector. The United States roundly condemned the action. And relations frayed. But soon, Khrushchev had another idea. Lying just 90 miles off the southeastern tip of the United States in Florida is the Caribbean island of Cuba, which for a number of years had been an ally to the USA. But its revolutionary leader, Fidel Castro, was becoming a concern to the White House, who wanted him gone. The first act Kennedy took almost as president was to authorize the invasion by exiles in the Bay of Pigs in Cuba in April 61. But the US invasion was a complete fiasco and a foreign policy failure which widened the political division between the two formerly allied countries and pushed Cuba closer to the Soviet Union and its leader, Nikita Khrushchev. Nikita Khrushchev was strolling along the Black Sea coast with his defense minister, a man called Malinovsky. Malinovsky pointed out that if you just looked across the Black Sea, the United States had missiles in Turkey aimed at the Soviet Union that could strike Soviet cities in six or seven minutes. It seems that this is the moment that Khrushchev came up with the idea of installing nuclear missiles in Cuba. But because he knew there'd be an American response, he decided to do it by deception. Khrushchev started planning Operation Anadyr, an ambitious covert operation that would involve more than 80 ships and the secretive movement of over 40,000 troops. The five officers leading the mission were told that Cuba was involved, but they knew little of the nature of the task. In addition, the name itself was a deception because the name is Ovo River in northeastern Russia. And so it suggested that the operation was something to do with the north or the Arctic. Khrushchev knew the key to the success of this operation was down to secrecy. The missiles were loaded onto the ships under tight security to prevent anyone from leaving the area and leaking information about the operation. This is astonishing. The commanders of the ships heading to Cuba to carry out the secret military deployment didn't even know they were going to Cuba. They were given a sealed envelope with coordinates in the Atlantic Ocean. Once they reached those coordinates, they opened the envelope to see another envelope, which told them where the final destination was. The captains also had to be prepared to destroy all documents and sink the ships if the operation failed. The first missiles arrived in Cuba through the port of Mariel, while Radio Moscow announced that Cuba was receiving tools, wheat, fertilizers and machinery. The levels which Khrushchev went to to ensure secrecy were absolutely incredible. In fact, by the time the Cuban Missile Crisis started in October 62, there were more than 40,000 Soviet troops in Cuba. But the bases could not remain hidden for long. On the morning of October 14th, an American U-2 spy plane found something unusual on the Caribbean island. In just six minutes, it took almost 1,000 photographs. Kennedy is lying in bed around nine o'clock in the morning when his national security adviser, McGeorge Bundy, comes into the bedroom and tells him there are Soviet missiles in Cuba. Kennedy received the information. He didn't go public with it. He wanted to know how he should respond before he made any announcement. He didn't want to be rushed into a hasty response. But six days on from the discovery, Kennedy addressed the nation. Neither the United States of America nor the world community of nations can tolerate deliberate deception and offensive threats on the part of any nation. Kennedy ordered a swift blockade of the island. As it was feared additional missiles and military equipment could be delivered to Cuba, any Soviet ships would now be faced with the power of the US Navy to make them turn back. And then everybody sort of held their breath to see what would happen, because if the Soviet ships try to get through the blockade, you could have a major incident at sea. Diplomatic negotiations began immediately while the world trembled at the thought of a nuclear war. As frenzied letters were sent between the country's leaders, the conflict took a terrifying turn when an American plane was shot down over Cuba, killing the pilot. War suddenly appeared imminent, as Kennedy remarked, we are now in an entirely new ballgame. However, the American president concluded that Khrushchev had not given the order to shoot down the plane and there was no retaliation. The incident had made both leaders realize the gravity of a situation that had spiraled dangerously out of control. A day later, on October 28th, an agreement was reached and the world breathed a sigh of relief as the Soviets agreed to dismantle the bases on the island. Kennedy publicly promises not to invade Cuba, and privately, off the record, lets Khrushchev know he will remove missiles from Turkey. The result was a great triumph for Khrushchev. Although his missiles were withdrawn from Cuba, the Americans also removed theirs from Turkey. Khrushchev played an ambivalent role in the Cold War. At one level, he brought about this escalation of the Cuban missile crisis. On the other hand, he introduced Soviet audiences to completely new aspects of Western cultural life. So in some ways, Khrushchev was responsible for the greatest level of Americanization, to some extent, of Soviet society, while also bringing to a head the conflict, particularly with the US. Khrushchev would stay in power for just one more year after the Cuban missile crisis, as hardline communists in his party disapproved of his reforms and eventually had him removed. But he had achieved what no other military strategist in history had ever accomplished, bringing a nuclear threat within a few miles of the United States. Long before Khrushchev's presidency, one American general had warned of the danger the Soviets posed to the United States. After the Second World War, he advised not to forget their Russian ally, as one day they might have to fight them in a conflict that would cost six million lives. It was General George Patton, a World War II hero. However, one of his greatest victories wasn't down to his tactics or strategy, but down to the mere fact that he was considered by all, including his enemies, to be a military mastermind. By 1943, the Allies had defeated Germany in North Africa, and the Italian dictator Mussolini had fallen. But Germany had plenty of oxygen left. The Allied powers were now planning an operation which would be both dangerous and critical to the state of the war. It was the beginning of the liberation of France, and it could not fail. Again, it was Churchill's London controlling section that would be tasked with the campaign of deception against the Nazis. In 1944, Operation Fortitude, which consisted of two parts, North and South, was devised. The North, to make the enemy believe an assault on Norway was imminent, and South, a fictitious assault into Nazi-occupied France via Pas-de-Calais, to take focus away from Normandy, the intended target more than 100 miles away. But for the Operation Fortitude's South deception plan to succeed, they needed a military mastermind to ensure its success. American commander George Patton would play an essential role. Patton was born on November 11, 1885, in San Gabriel, California, into a wealthy military family. In 1903, he entered the Virginia Military Institute, like his father and grandfather, and in 1909, he graduated from the prestigious Military Academy of West Point. Patton was never a hugely academic young man. What he lacked, though, in academic ability, he made up for in passion, determine and drive. And his entry into West Point was really a formative part in his life, albeit having to actually stay back for an extra year due to failing mathematics. We know without a doubt that Patton was intelligent. He was actually dyslectic. I'm sure this was embarrassing to him, but he persevered because he wanted to be a soldier above all else. A believer in telepathy and reincarnation, Patton was convinced he had lived many lives, always as a soldier. He, as we say, didn't lack self-confidence. He was a cavalryman as the branch he served in early in his career. And that was the thrusting, dashing cavalier branch of the armed services. And that melded into the concept of tank warfare. And Patton, in fact, commanded the very first American major armored units in World War I. Less than a month before the war ended, Patton was badly injured by a machine gun bullet. He lay wounded for hours before it was safe to evacuate him. But he refused to be taken to the hospital until he had reported to his commander. After recovering from his injuries, he remained in the army and during World War II continued with his use of tank combat. He was also tasked with training American soldiers ready for war and was famous for his blood and gut speeches. Then we passed over a lot of oceans. Unfortunately, there were no Germans to kill in the ocean, so we couldn't tell what it would look like when the Navy works on it. But we know from experience that when the Navy works on things, the things are damn well worked over. He sought to present an image of himself as a striking leader, which demanded the attention of his troops. Patton had become known for his tough and strict personality. However, his brash actions and unpredictable changes of temper led to numerous controversies during his career. On a number of occasions in Sicily in 1943, he was actually disciplined for slapping a couple of men whilst visiting military hospitals. Those men had been suffering from battle fatigue and Patton felt that there was nothing wrong with them. But albeit Patton was a highly controversial character, he was still highly regarded by his men and they fully respected him for his straightforward way of talking. When preparations for the Normandy invasion finally began, Patton was tasked with Operation Fortitude South. Fortitude South was designed to convince the German defenders that in fact the main thrust of the Allied invasion was to take place in the Nord-Pas-de-Calais, the shortest route across the English Channel. Fortitude South was facilitated by a number of things the British had done. First of all, they had gained control of all the German agents that Germany had attempted to infiltrate into Great Britain and could use them to send back false information to Germany. To send a message to enemy intelligence, they publicly assigned Patton to command the First United States Army Group, FUSAC, a very special military force. Patton was both feared and respected most by the German high command and therefore he would most likely be put in charge of an invasion force. But Patton's role within the invasion was all part of the Mammoth Deception Plan. It was a phantom or a ghost army. They were created by using things like inflatable tanks, fake landing craft, vehicles which didn't have engines in, didn't run anywhere, communications which were created and put out onto the airwaves for the Germans to pick up, which in fact were only going between operator to operator and had no real military purpose other than deception. To further cement the ruse, Patton was photographed touring these fake FUSAC camps and the Allies made sure those pictures would eventually be shown to the Germans. If the point of military deception is to deceive your enemy into the location, the size and the intent of your military force, then Operation Fortitude South is a textbook example of this. As D-Day began, the FUSAC went into action and the mirage was like something out of a film. Contingents of harmless dummies landed east and west of Normandy by parachute to simulate an invasion. There was actual bombing in the areas around Calais to further convince the Reich that this was the real objective of the landing. Allied aircraft also bombed areas with aluminium strips to make it appear to German radar that a large air force was in operation over the area. The success of Operation Fortitude South can be measured not in what the Germans did, but in fact what they didn't do. In the lead up to the Normandy invasion, they'd stationed a number of units around the port of Calais, including some pretty impressive and well-armed panzer divisions. Hitler's forces were genuinely confused. Meanwhile, the largest maritime attack in history was headed for Normandy. The Germans continued to believe, even after Normandy, that Normandy was probably a fake. But absolutely the linchpin of Fortitude South was George S. Patton. Although commanding a phantom army was not his greatest show of skill, his mere presence saved many lives and gave the Allies a foothold in Europe. Once Patton returned to his actual units in August 1944, his legend as a masterful tactician started to push back the Germans. After one month of fighting, Patton had liberated 873 French towns and 1,600 square miles. The Third Army, under his command, had killed or wounded more than 85,000 enemy soldiers and taken another 30,000 as prisoners. That incredibly swift and surprising sweep, in only one month of fighting, was indeed the most spectacular moment of his military career. But it would not have been possible without the success of Operation Fortitude South. Patton's tactics showed a wise, analytical and creative military mind. But they were also based on an aggressive strategy. Retreat, for Patton, was never an option. The great honour you have done me belongs to those men who I now salute. In December 1945, Patton left for a hunting trip in Germany. In a tragic twist of fate, the limousine he was in drove into an army truck and he eventually died from his injuries. Although historians generally agree that Patton was one of the greatest military leaders that the United States has ever seen, he is also one of the most complex and contradictory. He was a forward-thinking, direct, straightforward guy who was beloved by his troops, controversial always, a polarising figure, but no doubt a single-minded, determined officer who was always keen to lead from the front, to lead by example and always get the job done. Three years after the Second World War, the United Nations voted to partition Palestine, to create the State of Israel in an attempt to put an end to the ongoing clashes between Jews and Palestinians. But this only fuelled the fury of Palestinians, who felt their land had been stolen from them. Tensions escalated as other Arab nations became involved in the throes of the conflict. After multiple clashes between Israel and its Arab neighbours in 1967, the Israelis launched a pre-emptive strike against Jordan, Syria and Egypt, as they feared a build-up of forces surrounding the state. The 1967 war, what came to be known as the Six-Day War, surprised everyone as it came out of the blue. This resulted in Israel occupying part of the Golan Heights in Syria, and the Gaza Strip and the Sinai Peninsula in Egypt, establishing a chain of fortifications along the Suez Canal called the Bar Lev Line, which was considered impregnable. After the defeat, Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser launched a war of attrition against Israel that remained until 1970. That year, Nasser died, and a key figure for the Egyptian military future, Vice President Mohamed Anwar Sadat, took over. He would lead Egypt into further confrontations against Israel, but would also become the first Arab leader to try to broker a peace deal with the Jewish state. Sadat was born on December 25th, 1918, in the Sultanate of Egypt, and grew up in a Muslim family as one of 13 siblings. Anwar Sadat came from a humble background, from a small village. Nobody expected a lot from Anwar Sadat. He went to school. He did have some military education, and in 1952, he joined a group of officers. The leading character in the three officers was someone by the name of Gamal Abdel Nasser, who would become the President of Egypt. Nasser was incredibly ambitious, and Sadat followed his influence closely. In 1952, as part of the Free Officers Movement, both men took part in a successful coup d'état against the ruler of Egypt, King Farouk, and the Republic of Egypt was established that same year. Sadat assumed various political roles within the new government that allowed him to climb the ranks swiftly. He became Vice President in 1964, and was later re-elected in 1969. And this is the main reason why Sadat, when Nasser died in September 1970, became the President of Egypt. In his new position, Sadat faced great economic difficulties. The Arab-Israeli conflict was bleeding the nation dangerously dry. Anwar Sadat is a fascinating military figure and a political figure. He knew how to meld and mould warfare to achieve political ends. In 1971, Anwar Sadat said, this is the year of decision. New Israel must get out of our land. Israel, led by Prime Minister Golda Meir, refused to do that. Leaving Sadat with no other option but to go to war. He defies a plan of deception. He clubbed together a military coalition between Syria and Egypt. But Israel was very strong. And it was necessary to find a way to deceive them, so that the Israelis will not be prepared when the Egyptian and the Syrian attack comes. The attack, aiming to recover the territories lost during the Six-Day War in 1967, would take place on the holiest day for the Hebrews, hence the name of the conflict that was about to begin. The Yom Kippur War. On Yom Kippur, the radio is off. Television is off. Everything is off. The people are in synagogues. What Sadat wanted is a situation where, when he does attack on the 6th of October 1973, the Israelis will not be prepared. The necessary numerical superiority of the Arab forces would only be possible as long as Israel did not mobilize its reserves. A quick offensive was extremely important so that the Israelis would have no time to react. Sadat's goal was to strike such a decisive blow that Israel would be forced to withdraw from the occupied territories. To deceive the Israelis before the 1973 war, before the actual attack, and part of the Egyptian Badr plan was to move the forces in the direction of Israel and back. In all, the Egyptian army did this 22 times before the actual attack. The Israelis were successfully misled. Before the offensive, Israeli intelligence had also detected Syrian forces on the border, but put the movement down to defense exercises. At 2pm on October 6th, 1973, Sadat ordered for the attack to begin. The Egyptian army fired towards the east bank of the Suez Canal while its air force bombed Israeli bases on the peninsula. Simultaneously, the Syrians attacked the Golan Heights with its air force and artillery, their mechanized and armored units attacked by land. To cross the Suez Canal, Egyptian infantry fired smoke bombs to cover their advance and managed to get tens of thousands of soldiers across in rubber boats. Israeli military had previously calculated that it would take the Arabs at least 24 hours to cross the canal. But they had underestimated Sadat's meticulous planning. Within a few hours, the Egyptians, as well as their troops, had around 800 armored vehicles on the other side. With high-pressure water pumps, they had destroyed the sandbanks that Israel had built along the bank, cutting through the supposedly impassable Israeli Bar Lev defense line. But here, Sadat ordered his troops not to continue any further. He had no intention whatsoever to destroy Israel. He knew it was impossible. The only thing Sadat wanted to do, he wanted his forces to cross the Suez Canal and to stop. 10, 15 kilometers into the desert. Sadat's sudden stop hinted at a bigger plan. The intensity of the battles began to exhaust Israel's reserve stock of munitions, and they therefore turned to the USA for aid. The Soviet Union subsequently commenced supplying weapons to the Egyptians and Syrians. This was the plan. Sadat wanted to create a diplomatic crisis. The war had now drawn both superpowers into indirect confrontation. What Sadat wanted to do was to have a crisis, a big attack on the Israelis, which would force the superpowers, Washington and Moscow, to sit together and to start a peace process. He wanted to give the Israelis a bloody nose to surprise them. The United Nations called for a ceasefire, and with international pressure, the war finally ceased on the 26th of October. The success of the war was undeniable for Sadat, who would write that this contest exploded forever the myth of an invincible Israel. There were negotiations after the war, and in 1974 and 1975, in what came to be known as the Sinai I and Sinai II Agreements, the Israelis started to withdraw from the Sinai. In 1977, Sadat reinitiated peace efforts and was the first president of the Arab world to visit Jerusalem. The following year, a pair of preliminary agreements called the Camp David Accords were reached with the Israelis, and Sadat received the Nobel Peace Prize for the initiatives. They resulted in a peace treaty that ended three decades of hostilities and made Egypt the first country in the Arab world to make a lasting peace with Israel. Sadat, however, did not live for much longer. In the Middle East, it is not a good idea to be a peacemaker, because there is a good chance that you will be assassinated, and for that, Sadat paid a heavy price. On the 6th of October 1981, in a parade to commemorate the 1973 war, Sadat was assassinated by elements of the Muslim Brotherhood, an opposition force in Egypt. It's a tremendous loss. I found him such a unique head of state. He took decisions that other people have been afraid to take. If he felt something had to be done, he said, right, I'll do it. For his detractors, Sadat was a traitor to the Arab cause. But for the rest, he was the hero of the crossing, a name he earned after his successful attack on the Suez Canal. A brilliant statesman who ensured peace after an unavoidable war. The Middle East was in shock when Anwar Sadat was assassinated, and there was shock in the Arab world, in Egypt and in Israel proper, and a great fear that after this assassination, the peace process will stop, that peace will be buried with Sadat himself. Churchill, Khrushchev, Patton and Sadat, four ingenious strategists who knew how to use cunning as well as force. But any deception technique that is used too frequently will lose effectiveness, and thus new ones are being devised constantly. Deception as a military strategy has very much changed as technology has changed in our society. We've all heard of fake news. This can be propaganda that goes on on Twitter, on news websites. Fake stories can be deliberately leaked to the media, and oftentimes if these things aren't fact-checked by proper news organisations, they can take root. The reach of the internet and influence social networks have over public opinion are immensely powerful. Geolocation and the great advances in fields such as artificial intelligence and nanotechnology are opening up a whole new universe of possibilities for the evolution of military deception, which will become increasingly sophisticated in terms of diversity, ingenuity and effectiveness. You've got to think that when it comes to trying to launch effective military deception, you have to have control over a monopoly over the information you supply to your enemy. But with new technologies like the internet leading to everyone having access to open-source intelligence, from war being televised through social media into our homes, you start to see how a nation-state can perhaps distort the narrative. What will military deceptions look like in the future? Only after they are executed will we ever know.