Anyone who has read "Thirty-six Strategies" will know that one of them is to deceive the enemy by various means, cover up their true strength and let the enemy make wrong judgments. During World War II, Americans also learned China's 36 tricks and formed a ghost army to confuse the Germans.
1944 1 month, a group of singers, illustrators and sound engineers from art colleges were recruited into the army, and the Ghost Army was established. The task of the ghost troops is not to really fight the enemy on the battlefield, but to give full play to their specialties and create illusions to confuse the Germans. They often use inflatable tanks, inflatable planes, 500-pound loudspeakers and fake wireless telegrams. By using these props, they created sound and light effects and performed them on the battlefield to confuse the Germans. In order to make up for the weakness of the defense line, they also used inflatable tanks to create the illusion, and used loudspeakers to make the sound of large troops gathering, which successfully deceived the Germans every time.
The most successful "performance" of the Ghost Army was that shortly before the end of World War II, the ninth group army of the United States crossed the Rhine River and went deep into Germany to fight. The 23rd Army was ordered to attract the attention of the Germans and distract their defensive forces. With the help of the ghost troops, the 23rd Army, with only 1 100 men, disguised itself as the 30th Division and the 79th Division. As a result, it successfully deceived the Germans and made them work. The ghost troops were also rewarded for this.
Due to the particularity of the task, the existence of ghost troops has always been in a state of high secrecy. Even most American soldiers didn't know there was such a team. Many times, American soldiers think that the inflatable tanks and inflatable planes of the ghost troops are real, and even use fake planes to park real planes. In other words, the ghost troops not only deceived the enemy, but also deceived their own people.
1945, Japan surrendered, World War II ended, and the ghost troops ended their mission and were dissolved. Those sound recorders, illustrators and singers are also required to keep it strictly confidential and are not allowed to disclose the ghost troops to family and friends. It was not until more than 40 years later that the documents were decrypted and the existence of the ghost troops was known to the world.