Soviet Operational Deception: The Red Cloak
Abstract
The Red Army learned and practice the art of deception at all levels of warfare during World War II. By cloaking various force groupings and activities, Soviet military leadership, particularly in the latter stages of the war, created operational-level deceptions that surprised German intelligence and commanders. Through their empirically structured military science, Soviet researchers and doctrine writers have applied deception to the tactical, operational and strategic levels of war. While operational-level deception promotes the achievement of operational surprise, its practice provides a number of collateral effects, such as masking force ratios, delaying enemy decisions, and misdirecting the enemy's attention and commitment of forces. In 1943-45, Soviet operations were consistently successful and offer historical lessons concerning operational-level deception. A review of these lessons and a close look at the Red Army's improved capability to produce battlefield illusions during an operation in the summer of 1944 is instructive and may prove useful to current U.S. Army initiatives exploring battlefield deception. Keywords: Military history; Soviet army; Military deception tactics.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Jan 01, 1988
- Accession Number
- ADA211726
Entities
People
- Richard N. Armstrong
Organizations
- United States Army Command and General Staff College