The early years of WWII saw deception in its infancy There was codebreaking glamorous spies fake bombing sites and even inflatable tanks This global conflict began with a deadly deception inside a Polish radio station There a staged attack served as the pretext for aggression that would catalyze the hostilities leading to the war Victory was about the mastery of the art of illusion

By 1942 the deception practiced in WWII had become extremely sophisticated American arms factories were disguised as towns while double agents manipulated the enemy The most cunning operation used a deceased homeless man to trick the entire Nazi leadership These tactics of deception reveal a war fought with weapons and with wits where the ability to deceive could prove decisive as firepower

In WWII radios and transmitters were used to spread false information A ghost army employed sound effects to deceive enemy forces and the Allies deployed one of the most famous double agents of the war Through these deceptive practices the Allies were able to conserve resources exploit enemy vulnerabilities and ultimately pave the way for the successful liberation of occupied territories

The Allies are winning the war but both sides continue to use masterful deceptions to confuse and trick the other The immediate postwar years saw the US and Soviet Union begin a deadly game of espionage in the competition for atomic supremacy This led to an arms race that saw both nations amassing vast arsenals of nuclear weapons That significantly shaped international relations for decades