It's just days before Operation Overlord, better known in the history books as D-Day.
Over one million men from five different nations will simultaneously launch several landings
across the French coast- a military operation the likes of which has never been attempted
before.
Waiting across the English Channel are several hundred thousand German defenders, sitting
in heavily fortified bunkers overseeing beaches littered with mines, barbed wire, and concrete
tank traps.
Hitler and his generals know that an invasion is coming.
Up until now the war has been largely Britain fighting for her life, with the Soviets in
the far east being easily defeated.
The Americans have conducted several operations in Northern Africa with very mixed success,
but now the bulk of their forces are finally in Britain, eager to join the fight.
Any day now, the true battle of Europe will begin, and the Germans hold all the advantages.
Suddenly German radio operators begin picking up radio chatter from American and British
units.
The operators are quick to identify several of the Allied units broadcasting, including
several American and British infantry divisions, armored divisions, and even General Patton's
headquarters itself.
The alarm is immediately raised- something big is going down, and soon.
The luftwaffe is ordered to put recon planes up into the air, and as they make the short
trip across the channel, they take photos of column after column of tanks, trucks, and
artillery all lined up and ready to board landing craft.
German Army headquarters is immediately alerted to the pending invasion, and General Rommel
himself orders reinforcements to rush to Calais, directly across from the preparing invaders.
He even commits the bulk of his armor reserve to the area- the Allies must not be allowed
to gain so much as a toe-hold on Europe, they must be met directly on the beach and thrown
back into the ocean.
Another reconnaissance flight over the massing forces is ordered, and the pilot confirms
the location of the allied forces, reporting thousands of armored vehicles and trucks waiting
to be loaded.
As the plane turns around from overflying the massed troops, a stiff wind suddenly picks
up and one of the tanks... starts to float away.
Hurrying, a soldier ducks out from under a tent and rushes to the tank, tying it down
with rope and securing it from the stiff breeze.
Luckily, the German plane seems to have taken no notice of the peculiar incident.
As Germany prepares to defeat the largest invasion in military history, there's just
one problem- the American and British tanks and other vehicles are all made of rubber,
barely more than inflatable balloons.
The giant invasion army is fake, a ploy engineered by the British and carried out with the help
of the US's 23rd Headquarters Special Troops, and the real invasion force is massing right
now for a landing dozens of miles away in Normandy.
Known as The Ghost Army, the 23rd Headquarters Special Troops was a military outfit like
no other.
Its members were men specially recruited from the world of advertisement, visual artists
of all sorts, carpenters, and talented actors.
Their job was simple: fool the Germans by pretending to be something they were not.
The 1,100 strong unit was tasked with staging elaborate displays that would make the Germans
believe they were facing a much larger threat than they really were, making use of inflatable
tanks, rubber airplanes, and plywood artillery.
Officially known as “tactical deception”, this elite troop of soldiers would be critical
in confusing and confounding the German military throughout the course of the war.
The Ghost Army ultimately staged twenty battlefield deceptions between 1944 and 1945.
Their performances, or “illusions' as the members insisted on calling their cunning
tricks, would often take place within just a few hundred yards of enemy lines, putting
them in just as much risk as any regular soldier.
Yet unlike regular soldiers, if the enemy didn't fall for the trick, they might be left
with nothing more than rubber tanks to fight with!
In order to fool the Germans, the Ghost Army created something called “atmosphere”,
a term familiar to any theater or film artist.
In essence, atmosphere simply means creating a believable tone or impression for the audience,
and in this case the audience was German military units and undercover spies.
To do this the members of the Ghost Army would wear uniforms from different military units,
and make sure they were seen marching by enemy scouts- the scouts would then return back
to their headquarters and report that members of a specific unit were operating in the local
area, while the real unit, along with all its firepower, was in actuality somewhere
else entirely.
This would lead the Germans to deploy their forces to defend from imaginary threats, fearing
for instance an attack by an American armored division when in reality that same division
was preparing to attack somewhere else, far away.
To help sell the illusion though, the soldiers of the Ghost Army would drive trucks or tanks,
sometimes as few as just two, in constant looping convoys, creating the illusion of
a much larger unit being transported to the front lines.
The clever actors would also learn to impersonate radio operators from different units, mimicking
not just their voice but also the way that they sent morse code messages, down to every
minute idiosyncrasy of the specific operator.
All these tiny details would add up to a very convincing deception, leaving the Germans
utterly confused as to the real state of affairs across the combat front.
Ghost Army soldiers would also put their acting talents to use in person, often spending time
at French cafes near the war front where they knew they would be overheard by German spies.
The soldiers would wear the uniforms of different infantry or armor divisions, again sowing
confusion as to the true location of the real units, and they would talk loudly and openly
about upcoming tactical operations.
Commensurate actors, the Ghosters would learn their roles well, playing everything from
overexcited new recruits eager to see their first combat and accidentally spilling operational
secrets, to even high ranking generals, bragging about upcoming operations to pretty waitresses
while knowing that a German spy would certainly be within earshot.
Sometimes though it was just enough to be seen and not heard, and soldiers would often
parade around pretending to be very high ranking Allied officers, making German spies believe
that major operations must be about to take place in areas where no such operations were
being planned.
If you've ever acted in a school play and thought it was nerve-wracking, imagine trying
to play the part of a very high ranking officer in World War II, knowing that your performance
could save- or doom- thousands of lives!
Ghost Army soldiers used every range of their artistic talent in the fight to liberate Europe,
and this included audio engineers.
Today you might hole yourself up in your room with some music software and cook up some
sick beats to get a few Likes on Facebook, but for the soldiers of the Ghost Army, creating
convincing mixtapes made up of the sounds of different vehicles and tanks could mean
the difference between life and death.
These soldiers worked in conjunction with Bell Labs back in Fort Knox and recorded dozens
of different types of military vehicles, everything from tanks to trucks and even jeeps.
The recordings were written directly onto wire recorders, bleeding edge technology at
the time, and then transported to the battlefields of Europe.
A modern DJ may have to mix different tracks together to entertain an audience, but in
World War II the Ghost Army's own Djs would be tasked with mixing all the different recordings
of armored vehicles to create a realistic soundscape of an advancing army.
If the recordings, or the mixing, wasn't just right, the entire ploy could collapse, and
Ghost Army soldiers had to do this with primitive equipment mounted on the back of a halftrack
loaded with giant speakers.
No doubt a difficult task, the tactic was nevertheless effective in fooling the Germans
several times, and the recordings could be heard as far away as 15 miles, giving the
impression of very large forces moving through the thick woods of Europe's forests.
Another brainchild of the Ghost Army was “Spoof Radio”, and it used actors impersonating
radio operators from other units.
They would do everything from report fake troop movements, to even calling in fake radio
reports from imaginary combat zones, complete with a soundscape of battlefield noises to
make the performance believable.
Thus German units might be fooled into thinking that American forces were retreating by picking
up the broadcast of a panicked soldier calling for a retreat, when in actuality the forces
were digging in to lure the Germans into a trap, or weren't even in the area at all.
The fake battlefield broadcasts also confused the Germans, making them believe that their
own units which were not engaged in battle, had been engaged.
Confused German commanders would be forced to contact individual units to try and clear
the fog of war, leaving opportunities for Allied troops to act before the Germans could
properly react.
Spoof Radio was so successful that it even fooled “Axis Sally”, otherwise known as
Mildred Gillars, an American woman turned Nazi propagandist.
She would go on to report that an entire Allied division was preparing for battle at a place
with no troops at all.
Ghost Army soldiers would often protect other soldiers in a much more active way though.
During D-Day and several other major operations, Ghost Army artists created realistic looking
decoys that became tempting bombing and artillery targets for the Germans.
These would include artillery emplacements, fake landing barges, and groups of parked
vehicles.
The elaborate displays would sometimes even be lit up with lights, as if someone was being
accidentally careless, making them that much more tempting for the Germans to strike at.
Attacks on these fake military positions saved countless Allied lives.
Sometimes though, Ghost soldiers would simply mirror pre-existing positions such as artillery
sites, diverting fire from the real emplacement and once more saving lives.
As the fight for Europe moved east, so too did the Ghost Army.
In September after the D-Day landings, the ghost army impersonated the entirety of the
6th Armored Division, effectively plugging a gap in General Patton's assault on the French
city of Metz.
German forces looking for a vulnerability to exploit instead were faced with a continuous
line of American forces, leaving them no room to outmaneuver the American advance.
Had the Germans not fallen for the ruse, they would certainly have broken through the American
lines and flanked the real attack by General Patton, potentially dooming the entire assault.
Imagine being the German general who would learn later after the war that rubber tanks
were what defeated him in one of the pivotal battles for Europe.
Yet as impressive as the Ghost Army's deceptions were up to this point, one of their greatest
illusions would take place towards the end of the war.
In March of 1945 Allied forces were preparing to cross the Rhine river, and at last into
the heart of Germany itself.
Victory was within sight- if they could just get across the very heavily fortified Rhine.
Any attempt to cross would be bloody, with casualties projected in the tens of thousands,
and yet the attack was necessary to finally bring an end to World War II.
The Ghost Army would play their part in this attack, and were tasked with the incredible
job of simulating two entire infantry divisions- or about 20,000 men- and all their equipment,
with just 1,100 soldiers.
The Ghost Army would set upon the impossible task with gusto, calling on every ounce of
artistic creativity to fool the Germans into believing the main assault across the Rhine
would come far away form the actual attack.
To do this they ran a mounting concert of radio broadcasts, simulating troop movements
and orders between different brigade and division commanders, a performance that convinced the
Germans real units were moving into the area.
Across the river, the Ghost Army blasted its carefully mixed soundtracks of troops, vehicles
and heavy equipment, making sentries posted along the Rhine believe that just across the
river from them the illusionary divisions were prepping for an attack.
The deceit worked perfectly, and incredibly when the real American units made their crossing
of the Rhine, they encountered little if any resistance, laying bare Germany's heart.
The Ghost Army is credited with saving tens of thousands of lives and helping ensure victory
in World War II.
It's soldiers were certainly cut from a different cloth, being professional and amateur actors,
painters, and artists of all sorts, all bringing their incredible talents to their nation's
aid in one of the darkest times in modern history.
Their contribution to victory however is likely best immortalized in the results of the D-Day
invasions, when even as the main assault force was making landfall in Normandy, the Germans
refused to send reinforcements, believing the real attack to be a diversion for the
fake attack by rubber tanks waiting for them across the Channel.
Would you have liked to be a member of the Ghost Army?
What talents would you have brought to the fight?
Also, make sure you check our our other video, What if hitler had won?!
See you next time!