--- title: False flag url: https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/false-flag/ description: 'A false flag stages or attributes an act so it appears to come from someone else. Cases: Mukden 1931, Gleiwitz 1939, Mainila 1939, Lavon 1954.' section: Techniques --- ![Illustration: a First World War field-intelligence collage of trench maps, wireless transmission logs and aerial reconnaissance photographs.](https://propagandaarchive.org/static/generated/detail/hero-wwi.jpg) Techniques · Operational # False flag 1. [Home](https://propagandaarchive.org/) 2. [Techniques](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/) 3. False flag In brief A false flag is a propaganda technique that stages or attributes an act so it appears to come from someone else, usually to justify a response against them; the tell is documented evidence of planning or execution by a party other than the one blamed, unlike an attack that someone claims, with no evidence, was staged by the people it harmed. ![Illustration: a striped banner with one corner peeled back to show a red insignia, a figure holding a torch behind it and onlookers in front.](https://propagandaarchive.org/static/generated/technique-cards/false-flag.jpg) Illustration, not an archive object On this page - [History and effect of False flag propaganda](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/false-flag/#history-and-effect-of-false-flag-propaganda) - [How False flag propaganda works](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/false-flag/#how-false-flag-propaganda-works) - [Why False flag propaganda works](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/false-flag/#why-false-flag-propaganda-works) - [False flag propaganda examples across eras and sides](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/false-flag/#false-flag-propaganda-examples-across-eras-and-sides) - [Different from a false identity](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/false-flag/#different-from-a-false-identity) - [The opposite abuse: calling a real attack a false flag](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/false-flag/#the-opposite-abuse-calling-a-real-attack-a-false-flag) - [How to spot False flag propaganda](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/false-flag/#how-to-spot-false-flag-propaganda) - [Where False flag propaganda ends: edge cases and legitimate persuasion](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/false-flag/#where-false-flag-propaganda-ends-edge-cases-and-legitimate-persuasion) - [Sources](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/false-flag/#sources) - [The science](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/false-flag/#the-science) Related techniques [Accusation in a mirror](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/accusation-in-a-mirror/) [Big lie](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/big-lie/) [Narrative laundering](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/narrative-laundering/) [Fear appeal](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/fear-appeal/) Also called Staged pretext, Manufactured provocation, Pretext incident Stage or attribute an act so it appears to come from someone else, usually to justify a response against them. ## How to spot False flag: the tell Documented evidence of planning or execution by a party other than the one blamed. ## What False flag is not An attack claimed, without evidence, to be staged by the people it harmed. On this page ## History and effect of False flag propaganda The term comes from naval practice: a ship flew an enemy or neutral flag to approach without alarm and showed its own colours only before firing. In propaganda the flag is the attribution of an event. A shooting, an explosion, a broadcast or a forged document is arranged so that the audience reads the wrong party into it. The usual purpose is a pretext. A government that wants a war, a crackdown or a change of policy shows its own public, and sometimes the world, an injury that seems to demand it. Explain moreShow less The emotional effect depends on speed and shock. An audience that has just been told it was attacked is angry, afraid and ready to accept a response it would have questioned the week before. The staged act supplies the fear, and the attribution supplies the target. This page covers only cases established by records, admissions, court findings or the physical evidence, plus one proposal that was written down and rejected. Allegations that rest on suspicion alone do not belong here, and the last section explains why that boundary matters. Lineage: Naval ruse of sailing under another flag; Gleiwitz incident (1939); Operation Northwoods proposal (1962) ## How False flag propaganda works A false-flag operation has three parts. First, an act with real or apparent victims: a bombing, a border shelling, a seized building, a forged letter. Second, a cover that points away from the real author: borrowed uniforms, an enemy's weapons, the wrong country's postmark, a staged confession. Third, a narrative fixed in advance and released fast, often before any independent investigator can reach the site. The quick public statement matters more than the act, because the act is usually small. Explain moreShow less Three features recur. The scale of the act is modest compared with the response it licenses. The blamed party is already the planned target, so the story arrives pre-fitted to existing hostility. And the sponsor controls or can block the inquiry, as when a neutral investigation is refused. When these hold, the tell in the definition is the test: later documents, testimony or physical evidence show another author. ## Why False flag propaganda works Attribution is hard to check in the first days. People judge a claimed attack by its apparent victims and by whom they already distrust, which is the pattern described in motivated reasoning research. Corrections arrive late and travel less far than the first story; see [Continued influence effect](https://propagandaarchive.org/learn/continued-influence-effect/) for experiments in which people kept relying on a claim after reading that it had been retracted. Fear raises acceptance of strong protective action ([Fear messaging](https://propagandaarchive.org/learn/fear-messaging/)), and loyalty to the in-group lowers scrutiny of claims that flatter it ([In-group favoritism](https://propagandaarchive.org/learn/in-group-favoritism/)). ## False flag propaganda examples across eras and sides Each case below is established by documents, testimony under oath or a later official acknowledgement. ![Six men at Mainila in falling snow, 29 November 1939](https://propagandaarchive.org/then-and-now/images/then-now-staged-pretexts-press-at-mainila-1939.jpg) ![Wooden radio transmission tower at the former Gleiwitz station, Gliwice, Poland](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/images/accusation-in-a-mirror-gliwice-radio-tower.jpg) **Content note:** Photograph of Adolf Hitler addressing the Nazi-era Reichstag, with swastika emblems visible. This object is shown as it was published. [Why](https://propagandaarchive.org/about/#as-it-was) ![Adolf Hitler speaking at the Reichstag session of 1 September 1939](https://propagandaarchive.org/then-and-now/images/then-now-staged-pretexts-hitler-reichstag-1939-09-01.jpg) ![Concordia Association leaflet for the fifth anniversary of 18 September 1931](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/images/concordia-association-jinzhou-leaflet-mukden-anniversary-1936.jpg) ![British forgery of a 6-pfennig stamp with Himmler's portrait](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/images/himmler-stamp-forgery-1943.jpg) ![Illustration: a microfilm reader and card-catalogue drawers with film strips and index cards.](https://propagandaarchive.org/static/generated/graphics/microfilm-archive.jpg) Illustration, not an archive object Explain moreShow less - **Mukden incident (18 September 1931, Manchuria, Japanese Kwantung Army).** At about 10:20 p.m. an explosion damaged a short stretch of South Manchuria Railway track near Liutiao Lake outside Mukden. The Japanese army blamed Chinese saboteurs and used the incident to take the city and then the rest of Manchuria; Manchukuo was proclaimed in 1932. The blast damaged only a short length of rail, and a train from Changchun passed the site and reached Mukden on schedule. Mark Peattie's study of Ishiwara Kanji shows that Ishiwara and Colonel Itagaki Seishiro, staff officers of the Kwantung Army, planned the incident, and the commander, General Honjo Shigeru, approved the military action after the event. The League of Nations Lytton Commission (1932) found that the Japanese operations that night "cannot be regarded as measures of legitimate self-defence." The Commission did not itself rule that Japan planted the bomb, and some historians dispute how far Tokyo knew in advance. Japan left the League in March 1933. - **Lavon affair (July 1954, Egypt, Israeli military intelligence).** An Israeli military-intelligence cell of Egyptian Jews set off bombs on 2 July at an Alexandria post office and on 14 July at American information libraries in Alexandria and Cairo and a British-owned theatre. The aim was to turn Western opinion against the Egyptian government and keep British troops in the Suez zone, with blame to fall on the Muslim Brotherhood or communists, as Shabtai Teveth describes in *Ben-Gurion's Spy* (1996). The plot was exposed, Egypt tried the agents, and the affair became a long Israeli political scandal after an inquiry could not establish who gave the order. Israel's President Moshe Katsav honoured the surviving agents on 30 March 2005, ending official denial. - **Gleiwitz (31 August 1939, Germany).** SS men in Polish dress seized the radio station at Gleiwitz in Upper Silesia, broadcast a short message in Polish and left a murdered concentration-camp prisoner as proof of an attack. Alfred Naujocks, who led the raid, swore at Nuremberg on 20 November 1945 that Heydrich ordered it so that there would be "practical proof" of Polish attacks "for the foreign press as well as for German propaganda purposes" (affidavit PS-2751). The next day Germany invaded Poland. The existing page on [Accusation in a mirror](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/accusation-in-a-mirror/) covers how the claim was then voiced. - **Mainila (26 November 1939, Soviet Union).** The Soviet government announced that Finnish artillery had killed Red Army soldiers at the border village of Mainila. Finland said the shots came from the Soviet side, proposed a joint inquiry and was refused; the Soviet Union then ended the non-aggression pact and attacked on 30 November. Finnish artillery war diaries show the guns were out of range, and historians working in Soviet archives, including the papers of Andrei Zhdanov, have concluded that the shelling was staged by the Soviet side; Finnish public broadcaster Yle reported in 2009 that Russia later acknowledged the shells came from its own territory and were used as a pretext. In May 1994 Boris Yeltsin, then Russian president, stood beside Finnish president Martti Ahtisaari in Moscow and condemned the Soviet seizure of Finnish territory. See also [Then and now: accusing the target of the attack you are about to launch (Mainila 1939, Ukraine 2022)](https://propagandaarchive.org/then-and-now/staged-pretexts/). - **British forged stamps (1942-1943, United Kingdom).** The Political Warfare Executive printed fake German postage stamps, among them a 6-pfennig stamp with Himmler's head, and counterfeit Winterhilfswerk charity stamps, to be posted inside Germany with no sign of British origin. This is the same method applied to a smaller target: a message made to look like the enemy's own. A PWE memorandum of 5 April 1943 covers sending 400 Himmler stamps to Stockholm to enter the post. - **Operation Northwoods (13 March 1962, United States, a rejected proposal).** The Joint Chiefs of Staff gave Defense Secretary Robert McNamara a memorandum titled "Justification for U.S. Military Intervention in Cuba." Among its options were a faked Cuban terror campaign in Miami and elsewhere in Florida and in Washington, sinking a boatload of Cuban refugees "real or simulated", and a "Remember the Maine" incident in which a US ship would be blown up and Cuba blamed. Records show the proposal was not carried out, and Lansdale's memorandum of a 16 March 1962 White House meeting has President Kennedy making clear military action against Cuba was not under discussion. The memorandum was released through the JFK Assassination Records Review Board in 1997. It shows what senior US officers were prepared to write down; it does not show an operation. *Six men, two in Finnish military overcoats, at Mainila on 29 November 1939, three days after the Soviet announcement. Finnish Defence Forces wartime photograph archive (SA-Kuva), "Press at Mainila". Photographer unknown. CC BY 4.0.* *The wooden transmission tower of the former Gleiwitz radio station, now in Gliwice, Poland, photographed on 4 December 2021 by Jagro. The SS raid of 31 August 1939 took place at this station. Wikimedia Commons. CC BY-SA 3.0.* *Adolf Hitler speaking at the Reichstag in the Kroll Opera House, Berlin, 1 September 1939, the day of the invasion of Poland. Photograph credited "Fot. Wag", Bundesarchiv Bild 183-E10402. CC BY-SA 3.0 DE.* *Concordia Association, Jinzhou Provincial Headquarters, Manchukuo: leaflet "Our Country Founded Five Years Ago", for 18 September 1936, the anniversary of the Mukden incident. Held by National Tsing Hua University Library (Taiwan), via TELDAP and Wikimedia Commons. Public domain ({{PD-Manchukuo}}). The leaflet marks the anniversary and does not mention the bomb.* *British Political Warfare Executive forgery of the 6-pfennig Deutsches Reich stamp with Himmler's head, two printings (December 1942 and April/May 1943). British Government, via forgery.de and Wikimedia Commons. Public domain (UK Crown copyright expired).* ## Different from a false identity Some operations hide the sender without staging an attack. Between 2014 and 2017 the St Petersburg Internet Research Agency ran Facebook pages and rally posters that posed as American activists, documented in the House Intelligence Committee's 2018 report and the Special Counsel's 2019 report. That is a false-identity operation ([Astroturfing](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/astroturf/)). It shares the disguised author but not the staged pretext, and the two reports describe no staged attack. ## The opposite abuse: calling a real attack a false flag The same phrase is used to deny real events. After a shooting, bombing or massacre, some commentators say the victims were actors and the event was staged to move policy. A claim of this kind borrows the credibility of the cases above while meeting none of the tests in "The tell." Explain moreShow less The best-documented example is Sandy Hook. On 14 December 2012 a gunman killed 20 children and six educators at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut. Radio host Alex Jones then described the shooting as a hoax staged with "crisis actors." Families of victims sued him for defamation. A Connecticut court entered a default judgment on liability in late 2021, a jury awarded about $964 million in 2022, and further punitive damages brought the total to $1.4 billion; the US Supreme Court declined to hear his appeal on 14 October 2025. Courts found the claims false, and the people harmed were the families of the dead. The difference is in the evidence. Mukden, Gleiwitz, Lavon and Mainila rest on the planners' own papers, participants' sworn accounts, physical facts and later official acknowledgement. The Sandy Hook claims produced no document, participant or physical fact showing a staging, and the courts found them false. The label "false flag" proves nothing in either direction; only the evidence does. ## How to spot False flag propaganda - Who first announced the incident, and who controlled access to the site? A refusal of a joint or neutral inquiry is a warning. - Does the response match a plan that already existed, such as troops massed at the border or a decree drafted in advance? - Does the physical evidence fit the story? Check range, damage, timing and the condition of the supposed attackers. Show all 6Show fewer - Is the attribution settled by records, sworn testimony, forensic work or a court, or only by assertion? - When the claim is that the event was staged, ask the same questions in reverse: where is the document, the participant or the physical fact? - Beware of treating a historical false flag as a general rule. That one such operation happened proves nothing about the next claim. ## Where False flag propaganda ends: edge cases and legitimate persuasion 4 items · Deception in open warfare, such as a decoy fleet, a feint or a ruse of war, is lawful… - Deception in open warfare, such as a decoy fleet, a feint or a ruse of war, is lawful when it does not claim a protected status. Perfidy (feigning civilian or protected status to kill) is prohibited under Article 37 of Additional Protocol I to the Geneva Conventions; a decoy that misleads about where forces are is not the same act. - Sealed intelligence operations that conceal a sponsor, without staging an attack to justify a response, are covert action and not this technique, though they can be abused in the same way. - A government that acts on a false report has not necessarily staged anything. NSA historian Robert Hanyok concluded that no second North Vietnamese attack on US ships took place on 4 August 1964, that signals intelligence was mishandled and "skewed", and that there was an effort to make the intelligence fit the claim of an attack, but he found no "smoking gun" of a staged incident. The record supports misreporting and shaped intelligence, not a staged attack, so it is not counted among the cases above. - A "false flag" accusation made in good faith can be wrong. Treat it as a hypothesis until records, testimony or physical evidence support it. Sources and further reading ## Sources 15 items · Hanyok, Robert J. "Skunks, Bogies, Silent Hounds, and the Flying Fish: The Gulf of Tonkin… - Hanyok, Robert J. "Skunks, Bogies, Silent Hounds, and the Flying Fish: The Gulf of Tonkin Mystery, 2-4 August 1964." *Cryptologic Quarterly*, National Security Agency, 2001 (declassified 1 December 2005; National Security Archive summary, https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB132/press20051201.htm). - International Military Tribunal, Nuremberg. Affidavit of Alfred Helmut Naujocks, 20 November 1945, document PS-2751. Harvard Law School Nuremberg Trials Project, https://nuremberg.law.harvard.edu/documents/1202-affidavit-concerning-the-staging - Joint Chiefs of Staff. "Justification for U.S. Military Intervention in Cuba," Top Secret memorandum, 13 March 1962. National Security Archive, George Washington University, https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/news/20010430/ - League of Nations. *Report of the Commission of Enquiry* (Lytton Report). Geneva, 1932. - Peattie, Mark R. *Ishiwara Kanji and Japan's Confrontation with the West*. Princeton University Press, 1975. - Teveth, Shabtai. *Ben-Gurion's Spy: The Story of the Political Scandal That Shaped Modern Israel*. Columbia University Press, 1996. - "Israel honors 9 Egyptian spies." Reuters / Ynetnews, 30 March 2005. - Yle (Finnish Broadcasting Company). "Mainila shelling," 26 November 2009, https://yle.fi/a/3-5935607 - EUvsDisinfo. "DISINFO: Finland provoked the war against Soviet Union in 1939," https://euvsdisinfo.eu/report/finland-has-started-the-war-against-soviet-union-in-1939/ - "Supreme Court denies Alex Jones' appeal, upholds $1.4B Sandy Hook defamation ruling." WJLA / Scripps News, 14 October 2025, https://wjla.com/news/nation-world/supreme-court-denies-alex-jones-appeal-upholds-14b-sandy-hook-defamation-ruling-scotus-voting-rights-act-newtown-connecticut-emotional-distress-bankruptcy-infowars - U.S. House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. *Report on Russian Active Measures*. 2018. - U.S. Department of Justice, Special Counsel's Office. *Report on the Investigation into Russian Interference in the 2016 Presidential Election*, vol. I. 2019. - Protocol Additional to the Geneva Conventions of 12 August 1949 (Protocol I), Article 37. 1977. - Wikipedia contributors. "Operation Northwoods," "Shelling of Mainila," "Mukden incident" and "Lavon Affair," consulted for the Lansdale memorandum of 16 March 1962, the 1997 release, the Yeltsin press conference of 18 May 1994, the Mukden timeline and the Lavon dates; the primary and scholarly sources above carry the claims. - Then and now: accusing the target of the attack you are about to launch (Mainila 1939, Ukraine 2022), this archive, for the Finnish artillery diaries and the Zhdanov papers (citing Manninen, 1995). ## The science Research on the psychology this technique relies on, from the Learn library: Research on the psychology this technique relies on, from the [Learn](https://propagandaarchive.org/learn/) library: - [Continued influence effect](https://propagandaarchive.org/learn/continued-influence-effect/) — Continued influence effect - [Fear messaging](https://propagandaarchive.org/learn/fear-messaging/) — Fear messaging - [In-group favoritism](https://propagandaarchive.org/learn/in-group-favoritism/) — In-group favoritism - [Motivated reasoning](https://propagandaarchive.org/learn/motivated-reasoning/) — Motivated reasoning ## False flag propaganda examples in the collection [False flag in the collection](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/technique/false-flag/) - [BCRA forged Vichy 30c Pétain-Laval stamp, sheet of twenty (London, 1942-44)](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/bcra-petain-laval-forged-30c-stamp-1943/) (Free France · 1943 · Transfer, False flag) - [Himmler-head forgery of the 6-pfennig Deutsches Reich stamp](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/himmler-stamp-forgery-1943/) (United Kingdom · 1943 · Transfer, Narrative laundering, False flag) - [Forged Winterhilfswerk stamp booklet (British black propaganda for Germany)](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/whw-stamp-booklet-forgery-pwe-1943/) (United Kingdom · 1943 · Transfer, Narrative laundering, False flag). Content note: Counterfeit Nazi charity stamp booklet carrying caricatures of Nazi figures, including a soldier with a smashed face. ## Propaganda techniques related to False flag [Accusation in a mirror](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/accusation-in-a-mirror/) [Big lie](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/big-lie/) [Narrative laundering](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/narrative-laundering/) [Fear appeal](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/fear-appeal/)