“Know your enemies” doctrine

The “Know your enemies” doctrine is Dalby’s theory that visual familiarity with the people of espionage would help his staff anticipate their thinking. Put into practice through films shown to his students, it turns observation into a form of professional preparation, while the narrator’s reservations leave its claims deliberately uncertain.

Rationale

Dalby believed that if his staff knew the low-life of espionage visually, they would stand a better chance of predicting its members’ thoughts. The doctrine thus treats images not merely as entertainment or records, but as a way of learning to recognize and mentally model adversaries. Its premise is that watching can prepare an intelligence worker to infer how an opponent may think.

Dalby supported this theory with the example of Montgomery having a picture of Rommel over his bed before winning at Alamein. The anecdote presents intimate visual study as a possible source of strategic insight, linking the act of looking at an enemy to success against him. It is Dalby’s illustrative claim, rather than an established explanation of the victory.

Training Practice

The doctrine shaped the films Dalby chose for his students. Chico operated the projector, and the programme included films showing Jay, sometimes accompanied by Housemartin. Dalby’s stated reason for occasionally inserting crisp Charing Cross Road movies featuring nude women was to keep the students awake during the viewings. The screenings therefore combined sustained exposure to espionage figures with material intended to hold the audience’s attention.

The practice gave the theory a concrete, collective setting: staff watched images selected for them as part of their training. Dalby’s aim was not simply to display the people under study, but to make visual knowledge useful for anticipating their behavior. The films made the doctrine a routine of looking, even as their varied contents complicated any simple distinction between instruction and diversion.

Skepticism and Limits

The narrator reports Dalby’s Rommel-and-Montgomery example without accepting its causal logic. The narrator instead assigns considerable value to the additional 600 tanks. That qualification shifts the emphasis from the commander’s study of an adversary to material force, exposing the gap between Dalby’s memorable teaching story and the narrator’s more practical explanation.

The doctrine consequently remains a theory rather than a proven method. Its central claim—that seeing an adversary can improve one’s ability to predict his thoughts—drives the screenings, but the narrator’s caveat prevents Dalby’s example from settling the question. The contrast gives the principle its tension: visual familiarity may be useful, yet the book leaves its strategic power open to doubt.