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The Gliwice radio tower, site of the staged 1939 Gleiwitz incident
The Gliwice radio tower, site of the staged 1939 Gleiwitz incident. Photo: Kritzolina · CC BY-SA 4.0 · via Wikimedia Commons
Secrets & power · Worldwide · 1931 – 1964

False Flag Operations

Established1931 CE – 1964 CEGliwice (Gleiwitz), Poland

Some attacks really were staged to justify war. Knowing the documented cases is the best defense against inventing new ones.

A false flag is an attack staged to look like the work of an enemy. History has real examples. On the night of 31 August 1939, SS men disguised as Polish insurgents seized the German radio station at Gleiwitz; Hitler used the incident the next day to justify invading Poland. The SS officer who led it, Alfred Naujocks, described the operation in a sworn affidavit at Nuremberg. In 1931 Japanese officers blew up a section of railway near Mukden and blamed Chinese forces, giving Japan a pretext to occupy Manchuria. In 1962 the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff sent the Secretary of Defense Operation Northwoods, a set of proposed pretexts for invading Cuba; it was never carried out.

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9/11: What the Investigations FoundSame open question · False-flag claims are central to 9/11 conspiracy theories.

See False Flag Operations in the discovery universe →

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EstablishedSupported by strong, converging evidence.
ContestedEvidence exists but qualified scholars disagree.
UnresolvedThe question is open; evidence does not settle it.
LegendComes from myth, literature or tradition, not physical evidence.
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Hero image: The Gliwice radio tower, site of the staged 1939 Gleiwitz incident. Photo: Kritzolina · CC BY-SA 4.0 · via Wikimedia Commons. Evidence labels describe the written claims, not the image. Version 1 · updated 2026-10-22.