First United States Army Group

They literally fabricate an entire phantom army out of thin air.

FUSAC, the first U.S. Army group.

Yeah, and they place this fictitious army right in the fields of Kent, directly across the channel from Calais.

It's like a magician forcing a card on an audience, right? You don't hide the deck.

In the spring of 1944, as the Allies prepared for D-Day, Patton was made the centerpiece of a deception operation.

He was placed in command of a fictitious army, the First US Army Group, FUSAG, designed to convince the Germans that the main invasion would land at Pas-de-Calais, not Normandy.

Inflatable tanks, dummy camps, fake radio traffic, and at the center of it all, Patton, thundering and posturing like a man who hadn't just been benched, but promoted.

The ruse worked.

It's almost letting them in partly on the plan, but double bluffing.

The biggest deception here was the creation of the first United States Army Group, FUSAG.

And that was created in 1943.

At that point, it is a fictional division.

They create this fake wing of the army.

It's populated by a skeleton formation.

So there are personnel in FUSAG, but not at all the numbers they claim to be in the unit.

By the time the plan was to unfold, FUSAG was now entirely phantom.