(NEXSTAR) – Many people don’t know, but there was a secret non-combat unit trained to subvert Nazi troops. And they never lifted a gun.
A 19-year-old art student, Bernie Bluestein, saw a job posting outside a college classroom in Cleveland. The year was 1943, and the U.S. was tapping young men for a new top-secret unit, a non-combat unit.
“They told us we were going to do camouflage work, all the details of how they were going to use us and everything else was never explained to us,” said Bluestein.
He was placed with 1,100 other young men in the 23rd Headquarters, Special Troops.
“My parents never knew where I was. I mean, we weren’t able to tell them our location,” said Bluestein.
The unit was made up of artists, engineers and architects. Their mission was to build a dummy army which was all part of a strategic plan to trick the Nazis.
Their mission was subterfuge, “Camouflage equipment, how to make fake equipment,” described Bluestein.
They became known as the ‘Ghost Army’. They carried out more than 20 missions, perhaps their most famous, on D-Day, was called “Operation Fortitude.”
“The purpose of this was to deceive the Germans,” said Bluestein.
Their final elaborate hoax was in March of 1945, known as ‘Operation Viersen’. The secret unit distracted the Nazi’s to mask Allied troop movements.
“There were a lot of soldiers coming into town. Word finally did get back to the Germans because the following morning, lo and behold, we were shelled by the Germans,” said Bluestein.
The real troops crossed the Rhine with little resistance.
“We all knew it was a success,” said Bluestein.
The veil of secrecy was finally lifted in 1996 when the records were unsealed. It wasn’t until this past March that Bluestein and other members of the Ghost Army were awarded the Congressional Gold Medal.