Shortly after the end of the First World war, General Sir George Macdonagh, wartime British Director of Military Intelligence, revealed that Lord Allenby's victory in Palestine had been certain because all his opponent's cards were known to him; he was consequently able to play his own hand with perfect assurance. Seventy-five years later this book explains Macdonagh's statement. Drawing on extensive British archival documentation, as well as on Ottoman and German sources, the book examines the development and efficacy of Brtish military intelligence in the campaign against the Ottoman empire in Egypt and Palestine during the war. Sheffy explains the failure in the first battle of Gaza through inadequate British intelligence and traces its resultant improvement to the point where wireless interception, cryptanalysis and air-photography, in the later part of the war, lent British commanders a distinct battlefield advantage. He also adopts a novel approach to the traditional heroes of the campaign such as T.E.Lawrence.
This book provides a comprehensive and original study of the relationship between intelligence gathering and battle-field performance in the desert during the Great War.