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A Memorable History of Deception and Spy Capers

Khalid Elhassan June 7, 2020 34 min

Operation Mincemeat - World War II — Items recovered from Major Martin and his briefcase. BBC

13. Arminius’ Great Deception

In 9 AD Arminius (circa 18 BC – 19 AD), a German leader of the Cherusci tribe who served in the Roman military, pulled off one of history’s greatest deceptions and most momentous betrayals. It transformed him into a Roman villain, and a German national hero. Arminius’ gigantic statue and memorial, the Hermannsdenkmal, stands today near Detmold in Westphalia, close to the site of that deception.

A Romanized German who rose to command an auxiliary cohort, Arminius won the admiration and confidence of the Romans. They granted him citizenship and high social status, enrolling him in the equestrian, or knightly, class. He was posted to the Rhine, where he served under Publius Quinctilius Varus, a Roman general related by marriage to Emperor Augustus, who tasked Varus with completing the conquest of Germania up to the Elbe River. Varus was heavy handed, however, and heavily tasked the German tribes. So they rebelled. That was when Arminius decided he was more loyal to his fellow Germans than to his Roman employers.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.