A few years ago, some of the statues of the Terracotta Army were on loan here in Virginia, so we went to see them in person. These were clay sculptures that were buried with China’s first emperor, Qin Shi Huang around 2200 years ago.
These soldiers were incredible to see up close. Each one was a little different, with unique, individual traits like wrinkles, eye positions, the shape of the nose each being a variable. Each soldier has their own clothing style and hair preference.
If you were under the impression that these soldiers were designed to fake out a far-off enemy, those up-close details might change your mind. In fact, the Terracotta Army was built to protect emperor Qin in the afterlife, not in this one.
On the other hand, there have been some really interesting ghost armies built for exactly that purpose—to deceive one’s enemies on the battlefield. There isn’t a more famous example than the 23rd Headquarters Special Troops.
Formed in 1944, this unique unit’s sole purpose was to deliberately mislead the German Army. To do this, they built inflatable tanks and trucks—all life-size replicas—that were surprisingly convincing when viewed from the sky, where surveillance frequently took place.
Sights weren’t enough, so the 23rd also created fake sounds like troop movements and battle-chatter, making it sound as though there was a huge army at work in a particular location. They also filled the airwaves with false radio chatter designed to mislead the German army.
The 23rd came to be called the Ghost Army.
Just like with the Terracotta Army, the Ghost Army was made up of artists and engineers. Unlike them, the 23rd was doing this work during the biggest war in human history, and the stakes couldn’t have been higher.
In one operation, the Ghost Army made it look as though two divisions were about to cross the Rhine River. The German army had no choice but to divert some troops there, allowing the Allied army to cross somewhere else.
The idea of deception on the battlefield hasn’t been limited to fake armies. During the 18th and 19th centuries, something called Quaker guns became prominent in the United States.
The phrase is ironic: Quakers famously oppose war and violence, and so they were very much opposed to actual guns. By calling them Quaker guns, everyone knew what the joke was.
Patriots fighting in the American Revolution didn’t have a steady supply of weapons, and at times, they were badly outgunned by the British. To address this imbalance, they painted logs so that they looked like cannons from far away. Often enough, the enemy would see a carefully crafted scene where several cannons seemed to make a fortification seem impenetrable.
Diverting the British elsewhere served the Patriot military cause just as well as the Ghost Army served the Allied strategy. The Civil War saw this tactic redeployed as Confederate soldiers ran low on supplies.
The architects of the Ghost War certainly knew their military history. Maybe they had both the Quaker guns and the Terracotta Army in mind when they came up with the idea for an entire regimen dedicated to subterfuge.
Regardless, deception is a huge part of military strategy, and it always has been. What are your favorite examples of treachery on the battlefield?
One of my favourite examples of wartime deception is Operation Mincemeat, when Britain used a floating corpse with fake papers to convince German Intelligence that they were about to attack Greece when in fact they were going for Sicily. It's brilliantly described in the book "Operation Mincemeat" by Ben MacIntyre (and also in the movie with Colin Firth).
If we stretch the definition of 'battlefield', I think the use of click-farming and bots on the internet fits the theme. It's a lot like the Ghost Army - making the audience of a post/video appear much larger than the reality. Although, in the case of the internet, it's designed to attract real people through false confidence, rather than deter them.