![]() Military deception is as old as war itself, but the idea the Allied planners came up with represented something new: a mobile, self-contained deception unit capable of staging multimedia illusions on demand. Impressed by tactical British deception efforts in North Africa, they brainstormed how best to equip American armies with a deception capability. Now the Allies were preparing an invasion of Europe that they hoped would be a devastating blow to Hitler’s Third Reich, but they understood that defeating the German Army would be a Herculean task and sought to give the attacking troops every possible advantage. ![]() Included in its ranks were art students, sound engineers and Hollywood writers, and its ultimate goal was to use creativity, performance, and sleight of hand to save lives and help win the war.īy late 1943, the Second World War had been going on for four years, easily the biggest and most calamitous event in the history of humankind. That, in a nutshell, was the mission given to the 23rd Headquarters Special Troops, also known as the Ghost Army, one of the most unusual units to serve in the United States Army during the Second World War. Also, imagine that next week you will be asked to do it again. Further imagine that your workspace is in the middle of a war zone, and that thousands of lives depend on your success. Imagine that it must convince an attentive and discerning audience to believe in and interact with something that is not really there. Imagine being assigned to create a massive trompe l’oeil, and not just a painting, but a complex, 3-D, multimedia installation spread out over many kilometres.
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