The Ghost Army : WW2 Unit That Deceived The German Army | Full Documentary — Transcript

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1. 0:03[music]
2. 0:04>> March 1945.
3. 0:06German intelligence is watching a
4. 0:08stretch of the Rhine River. Their
5. 0:10reconnaissance shows tanks crowding the
6. 0:12roads, radio operators filling the
7. 0:15airwaves, an entire army massing for a
8. 0:18major assault.
9. 0:19There's just one problem.
10. 0:21That army didn't exist. What the Germans
11. 0:24were actually seeing was the US Army's
12. 0:2623rd Headquarters Special Troops.
13. 0:31A secret unit so unusual that history
14. 0:33would remember them by another name,
15. 0:36the Ghost Army. They were armed not with
16. 0:39firepower, but with deception.
17. 0:42>> Well, I think we were around essentially
18. 0:44to serve as decoys. That was the [music]
19. 0:46intent of having us around, to mislead
20. 0:49the enemy. In other words, we were the
21. 0:51deceivers. I would call us the
22. 0:53deceivers.
23. 0:55>> Their mission was not to destroy the
24. 0:57enemy,
25. 0:58it was to convince the enemy they were
26. 1:00somewhere they weren't, using inflatable
27. 1:03tanks, fake radio traffic, carefully
28. 1:06staged convoys, and some of the most
29. 1:08elaborate battlefield deceptions ever
30. 1:10attempted.
31. 1:12>> The Germans
32. 1:14>> [music]
33. 1:14>> had a very structured command,
34. 1:16very brittle,
35. 1:18and they had a very low opinion of the
36. 1:19intelligence of the American soldier. We
37. 1:22had to play dumb.
38. 1:24And we gave them a lot of false
39. 1:25information.
40. 1:26>> We'd find out if like the vision or
41. 1:29a special unit had a particular song
42. 1:32that they liked to sing.
43. 1:35We
44. 1:36we get blitzed and then sing their song.
45. 1:39>> [laughter]
46. 1:46>> They fooled German commanders again and
47. 1:49again.
48. 1:51And in doing so, they may have saved the
49. 1:53lives of tens of thousands of Allied
50. 1:55soldiers who never knew their names.
51. 1:59And this is their story.
52. 2:09By the summer of 1944,
53. 2:11the Allies had cracked Hitler's Atlantic
54. 2:13Wall. But the hard part wasn't getting
55. 2:15ashore. The front stretched hundreds of
56. 2:18miles across [music] Western Europe.
57. 2:21American divisions were spread thin.
58. 2:24Every time a unit moved, to attack,
59. 2:26>> [music]
60. 2:26>> to reinforce, to regroup, it left a gap.
61. 2:31The Germans were masters of reading
62. 2:32those gaps. [music]
63. 2:34Allied commanders needed something
64. 2:36unusual.
65. 2:37Not more troops, there weren't enough.
66. 2:40Not more tanks, they couldn't be moved
67. 2:42fast enough.
68. 2:44What they needed was an illusion.
69. 2:47The British [music] had already proved
70. 2:48it could work.
71. 2:50At El Alamein in 1942,
72. 2:53Operation Bertram used dummy tanks and
73. 2:56false radio traffic to fool Rommel
74. 2:58[music]
75. 2:59about where the real attack would come
76. 3:01from.
77. 3:02It worked.
78. 3:03Now two American planners in London,
79. 3:06journalist turned officer Ralph
80. 3:08Ingersoll [music]
81. 3:09and Colonel Billy Harris, decided to
82. 3:12take that idea further.
83. 3:14On January 20th, 1944,
84. 3:17a new unit was activated at Camp
85. 3:19Forrest, Tennessee.
86. 3:21Its official name was the 23rd
87. 3:24Headquarters Special Troops.
88. 3:26Its unofficial name,
89. 3:28the Ghost Army.
90. 3:30>> One friend did recommend to me that I go
91. 3:32see somebody who was a colonel
92. 3:35on Governor's Island and he
93. 3:37said, "What do you want? Do you want to
94. 3:38get into the army? Can I help you?" I
95. 3:40said, "Yes." I went to the High School
96. 3:42of Music and Art. I You could call me an
97. 3:44artist or whatever you want. He said, "I
98. 3:46think there there is a unit
99. 3:48and it's a camouflage unit. I like that
100. 3:50a lot." I said, [music] "I want it. I'd
101. 3:52like to get into it."
102. 3:57>> When the army went looking for recruits,
103. 3:59they didn't visit rifle ranges, they
104. 4:01visited art schools.
105. 4:03The visual deception arm of the Ghost
106. 4:05Army, the 603rd Camouflage Engineers,
107. 4:09was recruited almost entirely from art
108. 4:11institutions
109. 4:12>> [music]
110. 4:12>> in New York and Philadelphia.
111. 4:16>> So, I went to this radio school and
112. 4:17graduated.
113. 4:19And at graduation time,
114. 4:22uh the fellow said, uh
115. 4:25"Okay, you've graduated.
116. 4:26Congratulations. All you people on this
117. 4:28side
118. 4:30fall out." And we went outside and he
119. 4:32said,
120. 4:33>> [music]
121. 4:33>> "You people get ready to pull out. We're
122. 4:34going to take you to
123. 4:36Camp Forrest, Tennessee."
124. 4:39>> Men who had been painters, illustrators,
125. 4:41architects, set designers.
126. 4:44Among them, a young fashion designer
127. 4:46from Fort Wayne, Indiana, named Bill
128. 4:50Blass.
129. 4:51A minimalist painter from Brooklyn named
130. 4:53Ellsworth Kelly.
131. 4:55A photographer named Art Kane, [music]
132. 4:57who would later shoot some of the most
133. 4:59iconic images in American rock history.
134. 5:03But the Ghost Army wasn't just artists.
135. 5:06It needed engineers for sound, radio
136. 5:09operators for deception,
137. 5:11actors, impersonators,
138. 5:14men who could walk into a town and
139. 5:16convincingly pretend to be generals.
140. 5:20>> I was designated a regimental commander
141. 5:22of the 199th Regiment in the 30th
142. 5:25Division. I was a really a captain,
143. 5:27[music]
144. 5:28but I was impersonating a colonel, a
145. 5:30full colonel, as the
146. 5:32regimental commander.
147. 5:34>> They also did more of
148. 5:36making sure you were seen in local
149. 5:38French pubs
150. 5:40with a a new patch on your shoulder,
151. 5:41[music]
152. 5:42so that
153. 5:44spies, wherever they might be lurking,
154. 5:46would be able to report in, "Hey, the
155. 5:48Third Army division is here. We didn't
156. 5:50know they were around."
157. 5:51>> Their weapon wasn't firepower, it was
158. 5:54theater.
159. 5:55And their audience was the German army.
160. 6:01Imagine a Sherman tank that weighs 93
161. 6:04lb.
162. 6:06The Ghost Army's inflatable vehicles
163. 6:08were manufactured by the US Rubber
164. 6:10Company in Rhode Island, assembled in
165. 6:12part by local teenagers earning 49 cents
166. 6:16an hour after school.
167. 6:18Deflated, a tank fit in the back of a
168. 6:21truck. Inflated, it was
169. 6:23indistinguishable from the real thing on
170. 6:26aerial reconnaissance.
171. 6:28A small team could deploy an entire
172. 6:30armored division,
173. 6:32dozens of tanks, artillery pieces,
174. 6:35jeeps, half-tracks in a matter of hours.
175. 6:39>> And so, several of us could sit down
176. 6:42blowing nozzles which inflated tubes
177. 6:45and which formed ultimately
178. 6:48uh the shape of a tank or a gun or
179. 6:50truck.
180. 6:52>> But the visual deception was only one
181. 6:53layer.
182. 6:55The second weapon was sound.
183. 6:57>> The sonic people had the
184. 7:00at that time wire recorders and they
185. 7:02were pretty effective and pretty good.
186. 7:04And their speakers were just
187. 7:07state of the art.
188. 7:08>> They played pre-recorded [music] tracks
189. 7:10of armored columns, bridge construction,
190. 7:13massed infantry, sounds designed to
191. 7:15convince German listeners that thousands
192. 7:18of troops were moving in the dark.
193. 7:20Those sounds could be heard 15 miles
194. 7:23away.
195. 7:24The third weapon was radio.
196. 7:27Ghost Army radio operators didn't just
197. 7:30broadcast false traffic,
198. 7:32they studied the specific fist, the
199. 7:34unique tapping rhythm of the real
200. 7:37operators they were replacing.
201. 7:39Every genuine unit had a recognizable
202. 7:42signal signature.
203. 7:44The Ghost Army copied [music] it.
204. 7:46>> They all had their system. Like the
205. 7:48Fourth Armored Group did did did did.
206. 7:50[music] That'd be four.
207. 7:52Really didn't big deal, but it was their
208. 7:54identifier.
209. 7:55>> To German intelligence listening on the
210. 7:57other end, nothing had changed.
211. 8:00The division was still there.
212. 8:03But it was never there.
213. 8:13>> [music]
214. 8:15>> By March 1945,
215. 8:17the Ghost Army had run more than 20
216. 8:19deception operations.
217. 8:21They had impersonated armored divisions.
218. 8:24They had held dangerously undermanned
219. 8:26sections of Patton's front line with 500
220. 8:29men pretending to be 8,000.
221. 8:32But what came next was their
222. 8:34masterpiece.
223. 8:36The US Ninth Army needed to cross the
224. 8:38Rhine, the last major natural barrier
225. 8:41before the heart of Germany.
226. 8:43The crossing point was 10 miles north of
227. 8:45where the Ghost Army would make the
228. 8:47Germans think it was.
229. 8:49Operation Viersen.
230. 8:52The Ghost Army deployed over 600
231. 8:55inflatable [music] vehicles.
232. 8:57Fake radio traffic filled the airwaves.
233. 9:00>> [music]
234. 9:00>> Sound trucks played recordings of bridge
235. 9:02construction, pontoons being lowered,
236. 9:05engines churning night after night along
237. 9:08the decoy stretch of river.
238. 9:11They impersonated two full divisions,
239. 9:13roughly 40,000 soldiers conjured from
240. 9:16thin air by 1,100 men with speakers,
241. 9:20rubber, and nerve.
242. 9:22The Ninth Army crossed the Rhine with
243. 9:25almost no resistance.
244. 9:27The official Army post-war assessment
245. 9:29was unambiguous.
246. 9:31Rarely, if ever, has there been a group
247. 9:33of so few men which had so great an
248. 9:36influence on the outcome of a major
249. 9:38military campaign.
250. 9:40Historians estimate the Ghost Army's
251. 9:43operations saved the lives of between
252. 9:4615,000 and 30,000 American soldiers.
253. 9:51None of those soldiers ever knew why
254. 9:54they made it home.