The War Magician by David Fisher is about a famous London-based stage magician, Jasper Maskelyne, who volunteered his services to the British Army during World War II and was dispatched to Egypt where he used his skills as an illusionist to fool the Germans by ‘hiding’ the Suez Canal, camouflaging trucks to look like tanks and vice versa and even making an entire harbour ‘disappear’.
Maskelyne won the trust of military officers who were sceptical about his abilities when he created an illusion of a German warship on the Thames by using mirrors and other props. This would be the beginning of a series of bigger conquests in the theatre of war. One of his notable accomplishments was disguising the Suez Canal, a vital supply route for the Allies and one of the world’s most used shipping lanes, through a series of dazzle lights. This not only protected the waterway but also helped gun down some Nazi planes.
When the Alexandria harbour came under threat, the Army once again turned to Maskelyne and his ‘Magic Gang’ which came out with an audacious solution: Simply make the harbour vanish. The Gang would then build a dummy harbour, mainly made of cardboard and canvas, at Maryut Bay miles away complete with fake docks and ships. When supply ships arrived at Alexandria, the lights there would be switched off and the ones at Maryut turned on to confuse Nazi pilots.
Maskelyne was fully aware of the consequences. If the German bombers did not fall for his bait, Alexandria harbour would be devastated and the British supply line would be shattered. The Suez Canal and billions of gallons of oil would be within the Nazi grasp. However, Maskelyne’s gamble paid off handsomely.
The magic gang
Maskelyne is also credited with playing an extremely crucial role in the victory of the Allies in the Battle of El Alamein by outfoxing the invincible German Field Marshal Eric Rommel. Codenamed Operation Bertram, an entire dummy army with tanks and trucks was created in the middle of the desert, along with a water pipeline to give an impression of an impending attack from the South. While Rommel prepared for the onslaught, the British took him by surprise by charging from the North. The success of the operation inflicted severe damage on Germany’s dreaded Afrika Korps.
The Magic Gang had become professionals in the world of make-believe and derived great satisfaction from the knowledge that their small group could create war machines that no other army in military history had ever imagined, not to mention decoy submarines and a 720-foot long warship, all built out of scrap.
Fisher claims his work is the “incredible story of the illusionist who changed the course of the war,” but it does not take long for the reader to realise that the author has been rather liberal with his own imagination, thus obfuscating the thick dividing line between fact and fiction. The book was first published in 2004.
Later accounts based on declassified war documents have, however, questioned the book’s authenticity. For a work that claims to be a true story, research is completely lacking, nor is there any reliance on official records or other credible sources to bolster claims about the magician’s stellar role in the war. Fisher is accused of being overly influenced by Maskelyne’s book, Magic: Top Secret published in 1949, and liberally reproducing his extravagant claims without the slightest of scrutiny. Some critics even go on to describe the wartime adventures as completely fake with most stories either false or wildly embellished.
In a series of 21 articles published in an Australian magazine, magician Richard Stokes concludes that the operations described in Maskelyne’s book were pure invention and that no unit called ‘Magic Gang’ ever existed. According to him, the illusionist’s role in the war was only marginal.
For all his ‘heroic deeds’, Maskelyne received no official recognition, nor was he knighted or conferred with military honours. If The War Magician was intended to be an authentic narrative of WW II, it is not. It is at best a novel with all the trappings of a Hollywood movie.