Grand Illusions

During World War II, some artists and designers worked for propaganda (or war information) agencies making posters and similar graphics. But others were sent to the Western Front to deceive the Germans. THE GHOST ARMY OF WORLD WAR II: How One Top-Secret Unit Deceived the Enemy With Inflatable Tanks, Sound Effects, and Other Audacious Fakery (Princeton Architectural Press, $40), by Rick Beyer and Elizabeth Sayles, introduces readers to the very secret American Army unit whose mission was to fool the Germans — with battalions of rubber dummies and inflatable artillery — into thinking that there were huge concentrations of troops and matériel where there weren’t. These artists, the authors observe, were “plugging a hole in Gen. George Patton’s line by pretending to be the Sixth Armored Division, with all its tanks and might.” Their book is a chronicle of what became known as the Ghost Army, whose “mission bordered on the surreal.” Among the deceivers were such artists as Bill Blass, Ellsworth Kelly and Arthur Singer, along with many others who later became successful designers and illustrators.