Secret Soldiers, Paul B. Janeczko
Secret Soldiers, Paul B. Janeczko
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Secret Soldiers
How the U.S. Twenty-Third Special Troops Fooled the Nazis

Author: Paul B. Janeczko

Narrator: Ron Butler

Unabridged: 5 hr 29 min

Format: Digital Audiobook (DRM Protected)

Published: 04/23/2019

Synopsis

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.

About Paul B. Janeczko

Paul B. Janeczko (1945-2019) was a multi-talented 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, The Death of the Hat, and The Proper Way to Meet a Hedgehog and Other How-To Poems. He also wrote 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.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Gary on May 22, 2020

Secret Soldiers is a detailed account of how various American World War II military units used deception, camouflage, and trickery to fool the Nazis about troop whereabouts and maneuvers. The tactics are more prominent than the people in these accounts, and that might be off-putting for many readers......more

Goodreads review by Alicia on January 19, 2020

It tries really hard to be informative without being dense, but for someone with interest in military history without being obsessed with it, it was dry in parts. Certainly though the book is not for the lack of interesting strategies for how the US fooled military operations against the Nazis with......more

Goodreads review by Linda on April 27, 2019

In addition to Paul B. Janeczko's love of poetry and teaching poetry, he also was highly interested in the secrets of World War II. Earlier, he published 'Top Secret' about codes and ciphers and more recently, 'Double Cross', deception techniques in war. This time, the focus lies on the Twenty-Third......more

Goodreads review by Mary on August 08, 2020

Interesting concept that I had never heard of before - soldiers with backgrounds in art, stage, design, and sound created a “fake” unit to confuse the Germans and draw them to other areas while the Allies battled in strategic zones. The unit created fake equipment, fake towns, dummies, and even soun......more

Goodreads review by American on October 02, 2019

Secret Soldiers: How the U.S Twenty-Third Special Troops Fooled the Nazis by Paul Janeczko is a nonfiction book about Allied deception efforts during World War II. Also known as the "Ghost Army", these troops brought a new perspective to warfare and were a key part of the Allied victory. Janezco goe......more

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