30 of the Biggest Bluffs Throughout History

‘Operation Mincemeat was pretty neat’
30 of the Biggest Bluffs Throughout History
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It takes some real steel clankers to bluff a poker hand with plenty of money on the table. Upgrade that to pure tungsten if what’s on the line isn’t just cash, but people, and even the future of your nation. Yet, just because the stakes are global doesn’t mean it’s not an effective strategy.

Over on Reddit, historians shared some of the biggest bluffs in history. World leaders and military minds putting aside the maps and tactics and instead daring the other side to call bullshit. 

Read on for a selection of historical all-ins that embody the phrase, “Just crazy enough to work.”

RedBeard6 . 10y ago In Britain, unlike in the US, the Manhattan project had almost no security. Instead they called the project 'tube alloys' - it was deemed that sounded so boring that nobody would investigate it. Nobody did.
Cananbaum 10y ago You know how you survive? In 1980 IBM needed an operating system, and Gates in a desperate bid for survival told IBM he had what they needed. Here was the catch though - Gates and his team had nothing. There was another two-bit company in Seattle, called Seattle Computer Products and they would sell their system (86-DOS) to Microsoft for nearly nothing - $50-75K. Microsoft would tinker with it to make it ready for IBM, call is MS-DOS and the rest is history.
cityofweasels 10y ago Columbus and the 1504 eclipse. On his fourth voyage Columbus found himself stranded in Jamaica. The locals were initially cooperative, but after a year or so got sick of Columbus' crews douchbaggery, and basically wanted them gone. Columbus had a a star almanac with him and noticed a lunar eclipse coming up, so he called the natives together and told them that his god was mad they had started to become so inhospitable, and was going to take the moon out of the sky. Sure enough, when night came the moon slowly turned red and everyone begged
yaosio 10y ago The Mig-25. In addition to what the USSR claimed, the US and allies saw the Mig-25 doing some amazing feats for the time such as going above Mach 3 and making quick maneuvers. This didn't sit well with the US, as the Mig-25 was far and away better than anything the US had. After lots of complaining about what the new plane should do and be, they decided on requirements that would eventually lead to the F-15. In 1976, the same year the F-15 entered service, a pilot defected and took his Mig-25 with him to Japan.
Basically to paraphrase the legend of Lady Caracas (One I haven't seen in the replies yet!) After five years, we were running low on resources. So what I did was, I grabbed the last pig we had, stuffed it with the last dots of corn wheat (sorry u/ankensam) we had left, and threw it over the barricades, to show our besiegers that we were far and away from starvation. They thought that if we had pigs left, and the pigs even ate corn wheat, that we surely had plenty left for years to come. As such our besiegers realized that
KillerFrisbee 10y ago Edited 10y ago I don't remember the name of the guy, but he made a whole city dissappear. During WWII the Brittish Army hired a magician, who formed a team of con artists. They were the inventors of desert camouflage (using BBQ sauce and camel poo) and built fake palm trees with radio stations. But their most impressive operation was saving a city from German air raids. Every night, the city, close to a bay with a high strategic value, would switch off every light. Then, in the next bay over, indistinguisable at night from the real
mastermoge 10y ago The Capture of Fort Detroit in the War of 1812. British general Brock took the fort (582 Regulars and 1600 militiamen) with a minimal force (50 regulars, 250 volunteers, and 200 natives) by shelling the walls, screaming, and continuously marched their men around to make it appear as though they had a force of several thousand regulars and natives. The British continued to support this by sending a letter they knew would be intercepted by the Americans that asked for no more natives be allowed into the area as there were already 5000 there. All of these
Chumpo121 a 10y ago Operation Mincemeat was pretty neat. UK intelligence dropped a dead supposed 'pilot' off the Spanish coast with false information that the allies were going to invade Greece, not Sicily. So convinced were the Nazis that, when the allies actually invaded Sicily, it was quickly overcome and served as a launching pad...for the liberation of Greece!
AnatlusNayr 10y ago One particular time in the Great Siege of Malta around 4000 Ottomans were going to charge our old poorly fortified city of Mdina. All the people living in Mdina at the time around 200 went up on the walls with around 40 knights and other mercenaries and formed a line. They got with them a statue if St Mary and started praying. The Ottomans got scared when they saw a file of people on the walls as they thought the city was heavily fortified. They could not see that half of those people were peasents, children and
TomtheWonderDog 10y ago During the opening years of the Japanese Sengoku Jidai, a small clan, the Matsudaira, offer themselves as vassals to the more powerful Imagawa Clan for protection. The deal requires the Matsudaira heir to live as a hostage of the Imagawa, but their mutual enemy, the Oda, kidnap him and threaten to kill the boy unless the two clans end their alliance. The lord of the Matsudaira's response was, Do it. Не said that if the Oda killed his son, he would still remain allied to the Imagawa. Losing his only heir would prove to his new allies
rep_movsd 10y ago https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George Psalmana zar Не pretty much conned most of Europe and wrote a book, a completely fictitious account of Formosa (Taiwan). Не even concocted a fake language to seem legit. The book contained many gems like how Formosans would suck the warm blood of a viper every morning, and how during a festival, the hearts of 100 virgin boys would be burnt daily at an altar for 7 straight days.
02XXX 10y ago Maybe | missed it, but I'm partial to GEN H. Norman Schwarzkopf deception of the Iraqi military during Operation Desert Storm. Essentially, the U.S. Intelligence Community had reason to believe top Iraqi leadership watched CNN and took it as gospel. The U.S. Set up a large amphibious landing demonstration which they let he press attend. Iraqi leadership saw this as CNN presented. They understood this as a rehearsal for the the Coalition's plan. To cement the thought process, the U.S. dropped leaflets depicting death from the sea. Saddam then reorganized his troops along the coast for the
MRiley84 10y ago During the Peninsula Campaign in the Civil War the Confederate army successfully stalled McClellan's advance on Richmond by marching some soldiers in circles all day so it'd look like a constant stream of reinforcements were arriving. This gave them time for actual reinforcements to arrive and possibly save Richmond.
BakedMofoBread 10y ago 1775, just outside Boston. Washington takes high ground known and Dorchester Heights and fortifies it. Benedict Arnold had just captured the Fort Ticonderoga and its large supply of cannons. Over horrible terrain, the continental army was able to get these cannons to Washington. Unfortunately, Washington had neither the powder nor the shot to actually do much with his cannons. It didn't matter; the British commander of Boston didn't want to risk losing his ships to the cannons, and didn't want a repeat of Bunker Hill. So he retreated.
IrishCrazy . 10y ago Hitler was pretty much bluffing when he took Poland. Не was banking on the allies continued appeasement. Germany had fewer tanks and soldiers than France and the blitz being so successful was never seen a forgone conclusion.
torcsandantlers . 10y ago The Cold War in general. We'll blow it all up, we swear! Not if we blow it all up first!
Turborg 10y ago The ghost army used by the Us army in WWII. Basically they used inflatable tanks, sound trucks and fake radio transmissions to stage more than 20 battlefield deceptions, often operating very close to the front lines. They used inflatable tanks, cannons, jeeps, trucks, and airplanes that the men would inflate with air compressors, and then camouflage imperfectly so that enemy air reconnaissance could see them. They could create dummy airfields, troop bivouacs (complete with fake laundry hanging out on clotheslines), motor pools, artillery batteries, and tank formations in a few hours. Many of the men in this
Whiskey_McSwiggens 10y ago Victor Lustig. Не bluffed his way into selling the Eiffel Tower....twice. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victor Lustig
10y ago I remember hearing a story once in history class, about a medieval ruler whose castle was under siege. The siege had been going on for a long time, and they were just about out of food and would have had to surrender. They had one cow left alive, and they decided to do the one thing that may break the siege. They catapulted the cow over the wall. Then, they stood on the top of the wall yelling, We have so much food, we can throw cows over the walls!. The enemy was so demoralized that they
tomorrowsanewday45 10y ago Edited 10y ago Did anyone mention Vlad Dracula? Despite only having a relatively small army, by using psychological warfare, he was able to fend off or avoid war with the ottoman empire. Edit: I say psychological warfare because even though he did defeat some enemies, he bluffed the ottoman empire by lining a field with spiked enemies, making it appear that vlad was more dangerous then he actually was, when in fact he was greatly outnumbered and if the ottomans weren't so thrown off by the display, they probably would have wiped vlad and his people off.
OBNurseScarlett 10y ago Edited 10y ago Certainly not the biggest in history, or the biggest in anything, for that matter, but an interesting bit of trivia and history that most people don't know... Newburgh, Indiana, a little town right on the Ohio River in southwestern Indiana, was the only first town north of the Mason-Dixon line to be captured by the Confederates during the Civil War. The small group of raiding Confederate soldiers crossed the river from Kentucky and carried stove pipes to look like cannons...and it worked. They occupied the town for a couple hours. If I remember correctly
TheMeaningOfLeif 10y ago Genghis Khan did a good bluff. Under the siege of a Chinese fortress he announced that he would end his siege in exchange for a gift of one thousand cats and ten thousand swallows. The fortress commander gratefully complied. After the animals arrived in the Mongol camp, Genghis Khan ordered his men to tie a small cotton- wool tuft to the tail of each creature then set the tuft afire. When the panicked and frightened animals were turned loose, they made directly for their nests and lairs and igniting hundreds of small fires. While the defenders were
jdh423 10y ago My grandma used to work for IBM as a programmer. She told me this story once: There was a project comissioned to them by the core of engineers to write a program that would check the water levels, flow rate, and similar pieces of information from all of the damns on the Columbia river. The best programmer my grandma knew was the lead on the project and when it was finished the core of engineers said it was no good, that the program ran too fast and there was no way the data could be accurate. So
S 10y ago Both instances of Come and Take It. The first happened during the American Revolutionary War, as the British Colonel Fuser laid siege to Fort Morris outside the abandoned town of Sunbury in Georgia. The American forces were outnumbered at least four to one, and Col. Fuser demanded that the Americans surrender the fort. Despite the fort being in bad repair, and their forces being grossly outnumbered, the American Colonel John Mclntosh refused, saying: As to surrendering the fort, receive this laconic reply: COME AND TAKE IT! The British, believing that Col. Mclntosh had to have reinforcements
7yphoid 10y ago Ever heard the old saying that carrots improve your vision? Well, you can thank the con-artists known as the Brits for that one too. During World War II, the British Air Force managed to develop radar before the Luftwaffe did. As a result, during the Battle of Britain, the British fighters always seemed to know where the Germans were coming from, especially during the night. And, being the cheeky cunts that the are, in an effort to turn the Luftwaffe's attention away from the technology at work, the British Air Force started a propaganda campaign, saying they
fattymcribwich 10y ago Edited 10y ago Nathan Mayer Rothschild pretty much taking control of London after the battle of Waterloo. There is speculation as to whether or not it's true, but I believe it is. Не had the knowledge of the outcome of the battle a full day before government messengers. Не began to dump stocks signaling that the French had won the battle, and in a panic other traders began to do the same. Actually, the British won the battle. The resulting Stock Market crash let Rothschild and his accomplices buy up the London Stock Market essentially for nothing
firewall245 . 10y ago D-Day. The allies had Hitler so convinced that it wasn't going to happen that he apparently thought he was getting false information when told, and proceeded to go back to sleep.
Thousandtreads 10y ago Napoleon marching into Austria, His men couldn't get across a bridge, so he had his officers cross the bridge laughing and joking and had then tell the Austria army on the other side that an treaty had been signed. The Austrians believed them due to a lack of communication and allowed the army to cross. Napoleons army them encircled and captured the Austrians army. I'm not sure of all of these details, but feel free to research and correct my mistakes (it's what I remember from AP European history)
Ask_if_Im_a_giraffe 10y ago Joshua chamberlain's bayonet charge at the battle of Gettysburg saved the flank and possibly the entire union line. This guy was a commander put in charge of the runaways in general Meade's army. Не was ordered to hold the flank at Little Round Top at any and all costs. His troops hold off the the confederates attacks for a while until they completely run out of ammo. So this guy is up on a hill with his group of runaways heavily outnumbered and little to no ammo remaining. What does this Fucker do? НЕ ORDERS A GODDAMN
Kabukikitsune 10y ago The two atomic bombs. Historically, the only reason Truman was willing to use both of them to force the Japanese to capitulate, and to effectively scare the beejeezus out of the Soviets, was because he knew that doing so would make it seem to outside sources that the United States had enough of a stockpile of the weapons that they would think nothing of using them. Thing is, the US only had the two, and it would have taken several months, if not upwards of another year to build a third.

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