The Magician Who Fooled Hitler

The Magician Who Fooled Hitler

Jasper Maskelyne was born in London in 1902. He was a third generation magician and from a very young age had a penchant for magic. It’s rumored that at the age of seven he was already fooling his father Nevil Maskelyne, (a famous magician in his own right) but you never can trust the word of a magician can you? By 1936 he had a book published and a movie was made about him in 1937. Life was very good for Jasper, but those damn Nazi’s brought his flourishing career to a halt. Global domination and annihilation makes people focus on other things besides magic tricks. Maskelyne involved himself in the war effort the only way he could.

Royal Engineers

You would think that a person with Maskelyne’s skills, would be more adept at entertaining the troops as his wartime service. However when the war broke out he joined the Royal Engineers. He felt that he could help design new forms of camouflage to help the military hide and protect troops and assets. The problem is that when you join the military you don’t exactly have a choice as to where you go. He was trained as an engineer but not too many people would listen to his ideas. The military had their way of doing things, and thats the way they were going to get done. The British military didn’t have the time, money, or resources to listen to a magicians silly ideas. He would have to show them. He had to convince them somehow. 

To convince the British admiralty that he should be listened to, he decided to do what he did best. He performed a magic trick. This wasn’t an ordinary trick, he made a six hundred and ten foot long German battleship appear on the river Thames, using a large mirror and an inflatable balloon model. The illusion was so convincing, that he was promoted to Major and given a unit of his own. Their mission was to fool the Nazi’s with magic and a touch of ingenious engineering. 

The A-Force

The A-force, a division of MI9, was tasked to develop evasion, escape devices, and techniques for soldiers and secret operators. Maskelyne put together a unit of artists, magicians, carpenters, electricians and criminals to develop “gadgets” and develop escape techniques for captured soldiers and resistance fighters.

Believe it or not Nazi prison camps obeyed the rules of the Geneva convention. Captured soldiers and prisoners were to be treated well and there were certain rules that had to be followed. One of those rules was the soldiers were entitled to receive humanitarian care packages, from third party or neutral groups. Maskelyne and his unit developed “gadgets” seemingly straight out of James Bond. Playing cards that had maps and escape routes printed on them. Cricket bats that had saw blades concealed in the handle, as well as the bat itself being designed in such a way that it would be an effective shovel. Shoelaces where the core of the laces, were steel cable that could be used to cut bars. A map and escape instructions embedded inside of records. Board games that contained real local currency so soldiers could bribe or barter for other things. Maskelyne’s team was able to ship over sixteen hundred gadgets into care packages that ended up in the hands of POW’s in German prison camps. 

Alexandria Harbor

Alexandria Harbor in Egypt, was a critical asset for the allies. Capturing it along with the Suez Canal, would eventually allow allied forces to enter Africa and from there march, forces north into Italy and then the rest of Europe. The problem is that Alexandria Harbor was extremely vulnerable from the air and it housed almost the entire Royal fleet so taking out the harbor would not only stop the allies from flanking the axis from the south, but also would deal a crippling blow to the British Navy. Enter Jasper Maskelyne. 

Maskelyne decided that he would make an entire Harbor disappear and make it reappear somewhere else. The Harbor and the surrounding area looked very unique from the air, however only a mile away there was an uninhabited land formation with a lake that looked very similar from the air, especially after Maskelyne was done with it. 

According to British Intelligence, they knew pretty much exactly when the Germans were planning on bombing the harbor. In the few weeks leading up to the bombing, Maskelyne and his unit transformed this uninhabited piece of land into the port of Alexandria…..from the air. Their biggest problem, was post bombing reconnaissance flights. The Germans would bomb at night and then the next morning they would fly over the next day to see if they were successful. So not only did they have to recreate the harbor, but after the bombing was concluded, they had mere hours to make the harbor look genuinely destroyed, and hide the real harbor in broad daylight. They made and painted full scale canvas ships and floated them in the harbor. They built and painted plywood buildings that were identical to their counterparts. They went so far as to recreate the lighting grid and lighthouse. From the air the dummy Alexandria harbor was completely indistinguishable from the original. Next they painted canvas sheets to look like bomb craters, and had thousands of papier-mâché bricks painted and ready to be scattered during the night following the bombing. 

They camouflaged the real harbor and ships, and waited for the Nazis. The night of the attack all the lights in the harbor were switched off. Maskelyne had fake anti-aircraft guns, fake fighting back at the bombers. The facade worked, not only that night but eight more nights after that. 

The Suez Canal

The A-forces next mission was to do their magic on the Suez Canal, pun fully intended. The first rule of magic as everyone knows is never reveal your secrets. The second however is never do the same trick twice. Now thats not why they didn’t make a duplicate Suez Canal. The problem is that the Suez Canal is an extremely well mapped landmark, its too large, and there were no other surrounding landmarks that were similar enough to it that could function as its doppelgänger. The only way to pull off what they did at Alexandria Harbor was to dig an entirely new fake canal, obviously that wasn’t an option.

Maskelyne’s solution was to blind the approaching Nazi bombers and confuse them enough that they wouldn’t be able to accurately drop their bombs on the canal. Maskelyne and his team set up large spinning searchlights, and directed them at mirrors. What this did was create enormous cones of light that were nine miles wide. These nine mile wide light beams would be incredibly bright for bombardiers and pilots to navigate through at even eight thousand feet. After multiple nights none of the bombers even came close to hitting the canal. Without the Suez Canal the allies would have had to go around the south of Africa to deliver troops, weapons, supplies, and vehicles. The canal was vital to the war effort and ultimately the allied victory over the Nazis. 

Operation Bertram

The allies were entrenched against the Germans in north Africa. They were fighting against the strategic legend Erwin Rommel. He knew that the British were coming. Rommel was not easily fooled and it would take more than papier-mâché, lights, and mirrors to fool him. Maskelyne and his unit were tasked with, to quote Maskelyne himself “the mass production of tricks, swindles, and devices”. The British planned to attack near the coast, at the northern most part of the Germans infantry lines. So Maskelyne camouflaged one thousand tanks to look like regular trucks. Thirty miles to the south, two thousand FAKE tanks were built. They built a fake railway and created even fake radio broadcasts and simulated sound effects to create the illusion of the noise of construction happening in the area. Most importantly, a fake water pipeline was built to supply the counterfeit armies. The intention of all this was for it to be seen from the air by German planes. The point was to not only trick the germans that the Allies weren’t ready, but also that they were in a completely different place from where they actually planned on attacking. The Germans were led to believe that the Allies would attack from the south, and based on their progress it would be sometime in late November. In fact the allies attacked from the North in mid-October and completely surprised the Germans. After a ten day battle ensued, the Nazi’s were forced to retreat, securing Northern Africa for the Allies, marking a turning point in the War for the allies, which eventually led to victory three years later. 

Maskelyne’s Vanishing Act From History

After the Battle of El Alamein in 1942, the A-force was disbanded. Maskelyne was mysteriously relegated to entertaining the troops again and his efforts and the efforts of his unit were deemed classified. What we haven’t talked about yet is Maskelyne’s flair for the dramatic and that he was notoriously pompous and arrogant, mostly about his knowledge and skills. To this day it is “fuzzy” as to why the A-force was disbanded. Clearly their results speak for themselves. After the war Maskelyne returned to the stage and in 1949 wrote a book called “Magic: Top Secret”. In fact that is where most of the information in this post came from, as well as the book “The War Magician” by David Fisher. The British government declassified these operations in the 1950’s and either diminished Maskelyne’s involvement in some operations or the significance of his in actions in others. So either he angered the wrong person in the military with his attitude or being the showman that Maskelyne was known to be, he inflated his own contributions. One writer said that “either he (Maskelyne) was absolutely central (if you believe his account and that of his biographer) or very marginal (if you believe the official records and more recent research) to the war effort.” There are many people who doubt Maskelyne’s claims are true. Unfortunately anyone that can refute or confirm Maskelyne’s exploits are dead and the government’s official accounts and records are sketchy at best. So although its indeed difficult to test the veracity of all this, Maskelyne took a lot of pictures from his time with the “The Magic Gang” as the A-force came to be known. Check out the pictures below, and you be the judge.