33strats-ch31-destroy-from-within

DESTROY FROM WITHIN THE INNER-FRONT STRATEGY 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 trapdoor 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 trapdoor 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 trapdoor, 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. THE GREEK MYTHS, VOL. 2, ROBERT GRAVES, 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. For the next few years, Breton’s strategy seemed to be working. Dali’s scandalous paintings were the talk of Paris. His exhibitions caused riots. Suddenly everyone was interested in surrealism again, even younger artists. But by 1933, Breton was beginning to rue his inclusion of Dali. He had begun to get letters from the Spaniard expressing great interest in Hitler as a source of paranoiac inspiration. Only the surrealists, Dali felt, were capable of “saying pretty things on the subject” of Hitler; he even wrote of sexually charged dreams about Hitler. As news of Dali’s infatuation with the Fuhrer spread within the movement, it provoked a great deal of argument. Many surrealists had communist sympathies and were disgusted by the Spanish artist’s musings. To make matters worse, he included in one enormous painting an image of Lenin in a grotesque pose–exposing oversized buttocks (nine feet long), propped on a crutch. Many in the surrealist group admired Lenin; was Dali being deliberately provocative? After Breton told Dali he disliked this rendition of the human buttocks and anus, a delirious profusion of anus images suddenly began to populate the artist’s paintings. Throughout his revolutionary and missionary travels, Hasan [leader of the Nizari Ismailis] was searching for an impregnable fortress from which to conduct his resistance to the Seljuk empire. In about 1088, he finally chose the castle of Alamut, built on a narrow ridge on a high rock in the heart of the Elburz Mountains in a region known as the Rudbar. The castle dominated an enclosed cultivated valley thirty miles long and three miles across at its widest, approximately six thousand feet above sea level. Several villages dotted the valley, and their inhabitants were particularly receptive to the ascetic piety of Hasan. The castle was accessible only with the greatest difficulty through a narrow gorge of the Alamut River…. Hasan employed a careful strategy to take over the castle, which had been granted to its current Shiite owner, named Mahdi, by the Seljuk sultan Malikshah. First, Hasan sent his trusted dai Husayn Qai-ni and two others to win converts in the neighboring villages. Next, many of the residents and soldiers of Alamut were secretly converted to Ismailism. Finally, in September 1090, Hasan himself was secretly smuggled into the castle. When Mahdi realized that Hasan had in fact quietly taken over his fortress, he left peacefully…. THE TEMPLARS AND THE ASSASSINS, JAMES WASSERMAN, 2001 By early 1934, Breton could stand no more, and he issued a statement, cosigned by several members, proposing Dali’s expulsion from the surrealist group. The movement was split down the middle; Dali had both supporters and enemies. Finally a meeting was called to debate the issue. Dali had a fever and a sore throat; he came to the meeting wearing half a dozen layers of clothing and with a thermometer in his mouth. As Breton paced the room, listing the reasons for his banishment, Dali began to take off and put on his overcoat, jacket, and sweaters, trying to regulate his temperature. It was hard for anyone to pay attention to Breton. Finally Dali was asked to respond. “I had painted both Lenin and Hitler on the basis of dreams,” he said, the thermometer in his mouth making him spit many of his words. “Lenin’s anamorphic buttock was not insulting, but the very proof of my fidelity to surrealism.” He continued to put on and take off clothing. “All taboos are forbidden, or else a list has to be made of those to be observed, and let Breton formally state that the kingdom of surrealist poetry is nothing but a little domain used for the house arrest of those convicted felons placed under surveillance by the vice squad or the Communist Party.” The members of the circle were perplexed to say the least: Dali had turned their meeting into a kind of surrealist performance, both making fun of the creative freedom they advocated and claiming it for himself. He had also made them laugh. A vote to exclude him would only confirm the accusations he had leveled at them. For the time being, they decided to leave him alone, but in the meeting’s aftermath it was clear that the surrealist movement was now more divided than ever. At the end of that year, Dali disappeared to New York. Word came back to Paris that he had completely conquered the art world in America, making surrealism the hottest movement around. In the years to come, he would actually emigrate to the United States, and his face would grace the cover of Time magazine. From New York his fame spread far, wide, and around the world. Meanwhile the surrealists themselves faded quietly from public view, marginalized by other art movements. In 1939, Breton, disgusted by his lack of control over Dali, finally expelled the Spanish artist from the group, but by then it hardly mattered: Dali himself had become synonymous with surrealism, and it would stay that way long after the surrealist movement had died. Interpretation Salvador Dali was an extremely ambitious man. Although he appeared eccentric to say the least, his