The early years of the war see deception in its infancy: code breaking, glamorous spies, fake bombing sites, and even inflatable tanks; World War II begins with a deadly deception inside a Polish radio station.

By 1942, deception has become extremely sophisticated; American arms factories are disguised as towns while double agents manipulate the enemy; the most cunning operation uses a deceased homeless man to trick the entire Nazi leadership.

Radios and transmitters spread false information, and a ghost army uses sound effects to deceive enemy forces; the Allies deploy one of the most famous double agents of the war.

The Allies are winning the war, but both sides continue to use masterful deceptions to confuse and trick the other; the immediate postwar years see the US and Soviet Union begin a deadly game of espionage in the race for atomic supremacy.