7 Brilliant Acts of Psychological Warfare in History

Alexander the Great was a master of battlefield strategy—but the Macedonian king also wielded psychological warfare to intimidate enemies long before swords were drawn. His most effective tool? Exploiting local superstitions to portray himself as a godlike, unstoppable conqueror. "Alexander the Great used myth-making and identity-sharing by absorbing the culture of the lands he conquered,” says psychological warfare historian Dr. James Crossland, author of Rogue Agent. That way, he could “present himself as the embodiment of local gods or the local beliefs."

In Persia, he adopted the royal customs and divine titles of the Achaemenid kings, calling himself "King of Kings" and dressing in traditional Persian royal attire. In Egypt, priests portrayed him as pharaoh, an incarnate god.

He reinforced his image with kinship myths, claiming descent from Herakles and Achilles, paragons of strength and warrior prowess. Egyptian priests even declared him the son of Zeus-Ammon, the hybrid Greek-Egyptian deity, cementing his role as a spiritual bridge between empires.

The cult of personality he created made his soldiers believe the gods favored him—and terrified his enemies. Ancient accounts say some foes threw themselves from cliffs rather than face him in battle.

Alexander’s psyops proved remarkably effective. Though Macedonia lacked the wealth or cultural clout of Mediterranean city-states like Athens, he conquered the mighty Persian Empire, and forged a vast dominion stretching to modern-day Pakistan. “I am the person you have been waiting for is a very effective narrative,” says Crossland, “because it plays to the human need to have a simple explanation for why this person has laid waste to everything in his path.”

Genghis Khan wielded terror as a calculated weapon, turning psychological warfare into a cornerstone of his conquests. “Like Attila the Hun before him and Vlad the Impaler after him, Genghis Khan used rumor to inflate his reputation ahead of whatever military operation is to come,” says Crossland.

He instilled fear in his opponents with mass killings—slaughtering nearly everyone in a city, but deliberately sparing a few. These survivors would then spread word of Mongol brutality, helping convince the next city to surrender without a fight.

On the battlefield, he unleashed sensory overload. Synchronized drums, horns and bloodcurdling battle cries created a deafening wall of sound to disorient and terrify his enemies. He attacked from multiple directions to keep an opposing army, or city defenders, tense and off-balance, unable to anticipate his next move.

His strategies were remarkably effective. Genghis Khan conquered more territory in 25 years than Rome did in 400—largely through fear. “These are classic examples of psyops, and the fundamentals have not changed since then,” says Crossland. “Genghis Khan used the marketplace to spread his rumors. We use social media.”

During World War II, many Germans unknowingly tuned in to bogus British-run radio stations created by the country's Political Warfare Executive, a clandestine body that produced war propaganda. Their mission: to manipulate public opinion, sap morale and erode faith in Hitler’s regime from within. One of its most popular voices was “Der Chef,” a fictional insider who seemed to speak with authority from within the Third Reich.

Der Chef was a fictional Nazi officer broadcast on a fake radio station called Gustav Siegfried Eins (GS1). Posing as an old-school Prussian general, he used supposed insider knowledge to rail against Nazi leaders—accusing them of corruption, buffoonery and sexual deviancy—all while claiming allegiance to the regime.

In 1945, the OSS (Office of Strategic Services, the predecessor to the CIA) took the deception further with Operation Cornflake—a bold plan to infiltrate Hitler’s mail system by air-dropping fake anti-Nazi newspapers and letters addressed to ordinary Germans. The effort fizzled in the war’s final chaos, but it remains one of the most audacious psychological stunts of the conflict.

Joseph Goebbels, the Nazis’ propaganda chief, certainly thought the fake broadcasts and newspapers were effective. “People believed it was real,” says Crossland. “Der Chef’s ability to speak German, knowledge of German culture, knowledge of the Nazis, created a convincing figure that people believed in. “He’s asking questions that ordinary folks in Germany in 1942–43 are starting to ask.”

In 1943, the Spanish authorities found the body of “Major William Martin” of the Royal Marines off the coast of Spain. He carried theater ticket stubs, love letters, a photograph of his fiancée—and classified documents suggesting the Allies would invade Greece, not Sicily.

The British pleaded for the documents’ return. Convinced by the deception, the Germans redeployed troops from Sicily to Greece.

But “Major Martin” never existed. The body was that of Glyndwr Michael, a homeless man who had died from rat poison. The scheme—Operation Mincemeat—helped the Allies conquer Sicily in just a month and paved the way for the invasion of Italy.

Operation Mincemeat was a highly successful "act of misdirection, using one of the cleverest ploys ever devised,” says Crossland. “It worked because it made sense to the Germans at the time that the body was found by the Spanish, and with all the evidence suggesting he would have had access to these plans.”

In 1944, Adolf Hitler knew the Allies would invade France—but not where. He suspected the Pas-de-Calais, the English Channel’s narrowest point. Normandy and Norway were also options. The Allies decided to convince Hitler that he was right.

As part of Operation Fortitude, they staged a massive hoax: Hundreds of inflatable tanks were set up in Kent, across the Channel from Calais, alongside the fictional First U.S. Army Group, allegedly led by General George S. Patton. Fake radio chatter completed the illusion.

Meanwhile, double agent Juan Pujol García (codename: Garbo) fed Berlin a steady stream of false intelligence from a network of entirely fictional spies.

The ruse worked. The 150,000 German forces stayed pinned at Calais even after D-Day, letting the Allies establish their beachhead in Normandy. According to Crossland, Operation Fortitude worked on several levels. “There was deception; the inflatables were a neat trick. It was also playing on Hitler’s pre-existing belief that the Allies would invade in the Pas-de-Calais, and then inflated that belief, and distorted reality around it.”

During the communist Huk rebellion in the Philippines, the Filipino army—assisted by the CIA—weaponized folk superstition in one of history’s bloodiest psyops.

To exploit local fears of the asuang, a vampire-like shapeshifting monster from Filipino folklore, army “psywar” squads spread rumors that one was stalking the hills controlled by Huk rebels. They gave the tale five days to take root in nearby villages and mountain camps.

Then, under cover of night, they set an ambush. As the Huk patrol passed by, the squad silently snatched the last man. They punctured his neck with fang-like wounds, drained his blood and left his body on the path for his comrades to discover—evidence, it seemed, of a supernatural predator.

The vampire psyop appeared to work. When the Huks found the bloodless corpse, they abandoned the area—unsure whether the threat was an asuang or violent American operatives.

Though it appears to have been just a single operation, the Huk rebellion became a “laboratory” for psychological warfare. Other tactics included flying over rebel territory while broadcasting curses at farmers suspected of aiding fighters, and painting ominous symbols—like “the eye of God”—on the homes of suspected sympathizers. In the end, it was more traditional tactics, and mounting fatigue, that finally brought the conflict to a close in 1954.

During the night of February 10, 1970, eerie cries and shrieks echoed through the jungle surrounding a U.S. Army base in Hau Nghia Province, South Vietnam. Hidden loudspeakers projected ghostly voices sobbing in Vietnamese, “My friends, I have come back to let you know that I am dead… I am dead! It’s hell… I’m in hell!”

This was the Wandering Soul tape, a psychological weapon designed to exploit Vietnamese spiritual beliefs about death and burial. Many Viet Cong feared dying far from home and becoming cursed “wandering souls,” forever trapped in the jungle without proper rites.

The tape's effectiveness is hard to measure. “It certainly exploited the Vietnamese’s pre-existing beliefs about the importance of a proper burial and combined it with the reality of that war and used audio recordings to enhance it,” says Crossland. “There were some instances of Viet Cong sending out burial parties, or defecting.” Around 150 Viet Cong fighters defected one night when the psyops unit mixed the ghost tape with the sounds of tigers from Bangkok zoo.

Wandering Soul may have rattled nerves and stirred superstitions—but, as Crossland points out, “by itself, it didn’t win America the war.”