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Military deception is an attempt to amplify, or create an artificial, fog of war or to mislead the enemy using psychological operations, information warfare and other methods. It overlaps with psychological warfare to the degree that any enemy that falls for the deception will lose confidence when it is revealed, and may hesitate when confronted with the truth.

Two notable large scale examples:

Before Operation Barbarossa, the German High Command masked the creation of the massive force arrayed to invade the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics and heightened their diplomatic efforts to convince Joseph Stalin that they were about to launch a major attack on Britain. When they instead attacked Russia in force, Stalin refused for some hours to even believe that it had happened. Soviet forces were extraordinarily poorly prepared for the attack: On the day of Barbarossa, two-thirds of the Soviet ground forces were in the Soviet Far East preparing against attack by Japan. The military deception was so successful that only If not for the extraordinary logistical skill of Zhukov, the Germans would likely have taken Moscow, consolidated Europe and won the war.

Before D-Day, Operation Quicksilver portrayed "First United States Army Group" (FUSAG), which was merely a skeleton headquarters commanded by General Omar Bradley, as in fact a large genuine army group commanded by General George Patton. In Operation Fortitude South, the Germans were then persuaded that FUSAG would invade France at the Pas-de-Calais. British and American troops used false signals and the messages of double agents (spies supposedly working for the Germans whose messages were really being sent by the Allies) to deceive German intelligence organizations and radio intercept operators. (Contrary to popular myth, dummy equipment played a negligible role in the operation, for the Germans were unable to mount reconnaissance over English territory in the face of total Allied control of the air.) This had the desired effect of misleading the German High Command as to the location of the primary invasion, thus inducing them to keep reserves away from the actual landings. Erwin Rommel and Hitler himself were the primary targets of this operation: convinced that Patton would lead the invasion, Rommel was caught off guard and unwilling to react strongly, as Patton's illusionary FUSAG had not "yet" landed. The Germans awaited this landing for many crucial weeks, finally concluding that it would not take place because of ultimate Allied success in breaking out from the Normandy bridgehead. Confidence and speed was reduced enough that the German response to the beachhead was weaker than it would otherwise have been: had Rommel reacted strongly with all he had to the initial invasion, he might have won.

These two cases alone demonstrate the extreme importance of military deception in outcomes of major historical battles.

During World War II, The London Controlling Section, a British organization, and the Joint Planning Staff, the U.S. counterpart, were responsible for devising and coordinating cover and deception plans.

• Anthony Cave Brown, "Bodyguard of Lies" (Harper and Row, 1975) ISBN 0-06-010551-8
• Sefton Delmer, "The Counterfeit Spy: The Untold Story of the Phantom Army That Deceived Hitler" (Hutchinson & Co., 1973) ISBN 0-09-109700-2
• Roger Fleetwood Hesketh, "Fortitude: The D-Day Deception Campaign" (The Overlook Press, 2002) ISBN 1-58567-075-8
• Thaddeus Holt, "The Deceivers: Allied Military Deception in the Second World War" (A Lisa Drew Book/Scribner, 2004) ISBN 0-7432-5042-7
• Michael Howard, "Strategic Deception in the Second World War: Brithish Intelligence Operations Against the German High Command" (W. W. Norton & Co., First published as a Norton paperback by arrangement with HMSO, 1995) ISBN 0-393-31293-3
• Jon Latimer, "Deception in War" (John Murray, 2001) ISBN 978-0719556050
• Dennis Wheatley, "The Deception Planners" (Hutchinson & Co., 1980) ISBN 0-09-141830-5