User:ErrantX/Essays/Down the rabbit hole

Piecing together the "truth" from multiple sources

A popular Wikipedian refrain is "verifiability, not truth". Unfortunately, in many areas of military history this can be a problematic approach. How far can we, as editors, go in confirming facts without violating the spirit of original research? And should we?

I was introduced to the problem of inaccurate sources back in early 2012. I caught a BBC documentary about Operation Bodyguard, the major Allied deception operation covering the Normandy Landings. The documentary cited an intriguing book, Bodyguard of Lies by Anthony Cave Brown. Surprisingly this area of Second World War history was poorly covered, so I grabbed a copy and set to work. Brown's book is hefty, and extremely detailed. You can feel the weight of research, quite literally, in the work. What I didn't realise was how deeply inaccurate it was.

My first inkling came while expanding Wikipedia's article about the book; some very respected historians were ripping into Brown's work. A respected author himself, he was criticised not only on grounds of factual accuracy but also the conclusions he drew. Why, then, had a competent writer produced such an inaccurate book? It didn't take long to find out where the problems lay. Brown was writing in 1975, at which time most of the deception material was still highly classified. Relying on what he could prise from the US archives (he was denied access to the British archives) and from oral interviews, his material was very often second or third hand.

The clearest example of the problems associated with Bodyguard of Lies is in Brown's characterisation of the German bombing of Coventry in November 1940. The popular historical viewpoint at that time held that Ultra intercepts had given the Allies forewarning of the raid, but that commanders chose to do nothing, so as to protect the source. Brown based significant analysis on this view, bolstered with oral evidence. Only a year after publication, however, it was shown to be untrue.

That's not to say the work was poor; Brown's writing is strong and he puts forward analysis that sounds downright reasonable. This isn't a positive thing, however, as the author completely fails to recognise the weakness of his sourcing. And, so, the book seems stronger than it in fact is. Or, as Russell J. Bowen backhandedly describes the book: "an outstanding example of scholarly investigative journalism applied to the field of oral military history".

It would seem, then, that writing even 30 years after the war is dangerous if your topic is still top secret. During the 1970s and '80s significant portions of the Allied archives relating to deception were declassified, and slowly the shaky foundations of Brown's work came apart.

Perhaps the solution is to look for the most recent material? Often that does work. Deception has sparked a lot of interest in the last couple of decades (and since 2000 several excellent books have been written). But you should still not feel safe. Recently, whilst working on an article about Ops (B) I came across a particularly tangled error that exists in all of the most recent books. Thaddeus Holt's 2004 book The Deceivers positively identifies Antony Jervis Read as the first head of the section. However a cursory glance at this prominent Army officer suggests, strongly, that at the time Holt places him safe behind a desk in London, he was in fact fighting in East Africa and Burma.

It took an earlier book to pick up the discrepancy; David Mure, who was actually part of the London deception establishment, mentions a "J. V. B Jervis Read" in his 1980 book Master of Deception. Finally I had a thread to pick at, and extensive research in the London Gazette turned up trumps. In 1963, there is record of a "Brigadier John Vaughan Bruce Jervis-Read OBE" retiring from the Army. Next stop was The National Archive where I turned up his 1945 citation, which makes specific mention of his work with Ops (B) and deception. Mystery solved, and I could happily put correct information into the article.

But this raises a broader question. At least three books, written since Holt's, contain the same error, while older works contain inaccuracies through the lack of declassified sources or narrow viewpoints (Mure, for example, was a close friend of Dudley Clarke and idolises him in Master of Deception). Pick any article within the deception topic area and you will find discrepancies and disagreement between every single source. The examples above are only the tip of the iceberg. Exactly which dates and times are accurate in D-Day naval deceptions, did James join Montgomery's staff for Operation Copperhead or merely pose as a journalist? (This latter was especially hard to decipher).

So, how far can we and should we go in unpicking the "truth"? With the First and Second World War we are most fortunate. They produced an almost endless mound of paperwork which, while often incomplete, is at least detailed. But if we as editors go digging into this primary material at what point do we become the peers of the secondary authors we are analysing? The balance between accurate articles and original research is tenuous.

To date I've not found a happy compromise. The best advice, I think, is to make sure you have the widest array of sources possible - both primary and secondary - and to compile the most accurate picture you can from their collective consensus.