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.

Binding Type: Hardcover
Publisher: Candlewick Press (MA)
Published: 04/23/2019
ISBN: 9780763681531
Pages: 304
Weight: 1.20lbs
Size: 9.10h x 5.90w x 1.30d

Review Citations: Kirkus Reviews 03/15/2019
School Library Journal 04/01/2019 pg. 98
Shelf Awareness 05/10/2019
Hornbook Guide to Children 07/01/2019 - Recommended, Satisfactory

Accelerated Reader Quiz #/Name: 501511 / Secret Soldiers: How the U.S. Twenty-Third Special Troops Fooled the Nazis
Reading Level: 9.1 / Interest Level: Middle Grade Plus / Point Value: 11