The Musuem
Floor Plan
 

The Dennis Wheatley 'Museum' - Dennis Wheatley in World War II: a supplement

Matters remain Top Secret...


The Imperial Defence College is forbidden to teach about Deception in 1947

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As late as 1968, the Official Historians were uncertain what the letters 'LCS' stood for, and exactly what it did

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The veil of secrecy over The London Controlling Section's activities in the War was not to be lifted for a long time, nor lightly.

As can be seen from the top exhibit, there was a high-level discussion of whether the Imperial Defence College should be allowed to teach senior officers deception a couple of years after the war. It was agreed it would not be a suitable subject for a lecture and that the History of Deception (presumably Wingate's History) should not be made available to them. Another document suggests that one of the concerns was that students would ask whether Deception was still being practised in peacetime, and that this might lead the conversation down undesirable paths.

As the second exhibit shows, as late as 1968, the secrecy of the Section was such that even senior historians didn't know what the initials 'L.C.S.' stood for, or exactly what it did. In fact, as a later exhibit shows, it was only in the nineteen-seventies that details of their activities began to be widely known.

Provenance:
Top image courtesy of The National Archives [DEFE 28/75]
Bottom image courtesy of The National Archives [CAB 164/1230]