Secret Soldiers ― How the U.s. Twenty-third Special Troops Fooled the Nazis

What do set design, sound effects, and showmanship have to do with winning World War II? Meet the Ghost Army that played a surprising role in helping to deceive — and defeat — the Nazis.

In his third book about deception during war, Paul B. Janeczko focuses his lens on World War II and the operations carried out by the Twenty-Third Headquarters Special Troops, aka the Ghost Army. This remarkable unit included actors, camouflage experts, sound engineers, painters, and set designers who used their skills to secretly and systematically replace fighting units — fooling the Nazi army into believing what their eyes and ears told them, even though the sights and sounds of tanks and war machines and troops were entirely fabricated. Follow the Twenty-Third into Europe as they play a dangerous game of enticing the German army into making battlefield mistakes by using sonic deceptions, inflatable tanks, pyrotechnics, and camouflage in more than twenty operations. From the Normandy invasion to the crossing of the Rhine River, the men of the Ghost Army — several of whom went on to become famous artists and designers after the war — played an improbable role in the Allied victory.

Paul B. Janeczko is a multitalented writer of poetry and nonfiction as well as a noted anthologist. His award-winning poetry anthologies include A Poke in the I, A Kick in the Head, A Foot in the Mouth, Firefly July, and The Death of the Hat. He is the author of Worlds Afire; Requiem: Poems of the Terezin Ghetto; Top Secret: A Handbook of Codes, Ciphers, and Secret Writing; The Dark Game: True Spy Stories from Invisible Ink to CIA Moles; and Double Cross: Deception Techniques in War. Paul B. Janeczko lives in Maine.