Ten daring deceptions during World War II utilized everything from forged identity papers and rubber military hardware to invented medical outbreaks, successfully opening holes in Nazi registries to help civilians evade deportation, forced labor, and capture, as detailed by Listverse and Worldnews.com.
The Bottom Line
- Resistance workshops like Amsterdam’s Persoonsbewijzencentrale manufactured roughly 65,000 forged identity documents to protect vulnerable populations under occupation.
- Tactical ruses, such as the U.S. Army’s 23rd Headquarters Special Troops, deployed inflatable tanks and sound trucks to mislead German forces and save thousands of Allied lives.
- Underground networks relied on diverse methods, ranging from Greek police chief Angelos Evert issuing false Christian identity cards to Polish doctors faking a typhus epidemic.
The Amsterdam Forgery Workshop and the Persoonsbewijzencentrale Operation
In occupied Europe, forging papers offered a direct method to counter registries controlled by Nazi authorities. The Persoonsbewijzencentrale served as one of the Dutch resistance’s largest forgery workshops, founded by sculptor Gerrit van der Veen. Beginning in 1942, members created roughly 65,000 forged identity documents and tens of thousands of other papers to open holes in a system built to track and deport people. The group also stole blank identity cards and ration coupons to provide authentic materials for their forgers. In March 1943, members participated in an attack on Amsterdam’s population registry. Although participants were arrested, other members attempted to break them out of Weteringschans prison the following year, which ultimately resulted in most of the group, including van der Veen, being shot.
The U.S. Army Ghost Army Deploying Rubber Tanks Near Viersen
Deception extended far beyond paperwork onto the battlefield through the 23rd Headquarters Special Troops, commonly known as the Ghost Army. This U.S. Army unit consisted of 1,100 men, many of whom were artists recruited from schools in New York and Philadelphia. Their arsenal included inflatable tanks, sound trucks, fake radio traffic, and uniforms for non-existent units. In March 1945, near Viersen, the unit pretended to be two full divisions comprising about 30,000 soldiers. This maneuver successfully misled German forces regarding the location and timing of the Ninth Army’s Rhine crossing. These multimedia deceptions drew German attention away from the actual crossing point and earned credit for saving thousands of Allied lives. The unit’s story remained classified for decades before Congress awarded them the Congressional Gold Medal in 2022.
Diplomatic Passports and Institutional Safe Havens Across Europe
Other rescue efforts relied on official titles and institutional shelter. When German forces seized control of Athens in September 1943, Jewish residents faced immediate deportation threats. City police chief Angelos Evert issued false identity cards identifying Jewish applicants by Greek Christian names and Orthodox religion, enabling them to hide in plain sight. A special file recorded Jews baptized as Christians to escape persecution. By the end of the war, 560 Athenian Jews and refugees from other cities survived while posing as Orthodox Christians. Concurrently, in Bern, Switzerland, Polish diplomats and Jewish representatives led by Ambassador Aleksander Ładoś and consul Konstanty Rokicki produced between 8,000 and 10,000 South American passports. These documents identified holders as citizens of neutral nations like Paraguay, Peru, Haiti, and Honduras, shielding them from immediate deportation to killing centers.
Underground Networks Led by Bishop Rémond and Consul Castellanos
In Nice during the summer of 1943, medieval literature scholar Moussa Abadi warned the bishop of the city that local Jewish residents were in danger of deportation. Bishop Paul Rémond provided Abadi and his partner, Jewish physician Odette Rosenstock, with a workspace and opened Catholic institutions across the diocese to children. Operating under the code name Monsieur Marcel, Abadi and Rosenstock created false papers and placed children in schools, convents, and other institutions. The Marcel Network ultimately saved 527 Jewish children between 1943 and 1945. Meanwhile, Jewish businessman George Mandel found an ally in José Arturo Castellanos, El Salvador’s consul general in Geneva. Castellanos appointed Mandel first secretary of the consulate in 1942, where Mandel adopted the surname Mantello. Together, they issued documents identifying thousands of European Jews as Salvadoran citizens, granting them a layer of protection as nationals of a neutral country.
Witold Pilecki Entering Auschwitz Under an Assumed Name
Volunteering to gather intelligence from inside a concentration camp required absolute deception. Polish officer Witold Pilecki used the identity of Tomasz Serafiński, a Polish reserve officer whose identity card he had found in a Warsaw apartment where he was hiding. Pilecki adopted the name when German forces arrested him during a roundup in September 1940. Registered as prisoner 4859, he spent more than two and a half years inside Auschwitz organizing a resistance network and dispatching reports to the Polish underground. He escaped in April 1943 and subsequently wrote a comprehensive account of his observations within the camp.
Medical and Consular Ruses Developed by Łazowski, Zwartendijk, and Kaminsky
Medical and administrative ingenuity created further shields against occupation forces. Polish physicians Eugeniusz Łazowski and Stanisław Matulewicz injected patients with inactivated Proteus bacteria to trigger positive results on the Weil-Felix test, allowing them to report a typhus outbreak to German authorities. Fearing the contagious disease, German forces avoided the area, helping protect Polish villagers from forced labor roundups. A 2025 medical review in Springer found the method plausible while correcting a persistent legend, clarifying that claims about saving thousands of Jews remain unsupported and that the protected individuals were Polish villagers. In Kaunas, Lithuania, acting Dutch consul Jan Zwartendijk endorsed passports for Jewish refugees by writing that they did not need a visa to enter Curaçao, a Dutch Caribbean island. Combined with transit visas issued by Japanese consul Chiune Sugihara, this paperwork enabled thousands of refugees to travel across the Soviet Union toward Japan. In France, teenager Adolfo Kaminsky applied his knowledge of chemistry from a dry cleaner’s shop and dairy laboratory to erase identifying marks from documents. Recruited by the French Resistance, his hidden workshop produced up to 500 forged papers a week, helping as many as 14,000 people disappear into new identities.
