A false flag operation is an act committed with the intent of disguising the actual source of responsibility and pinning blame on another party. The term "false flag" originated in the 16th century as a strictly figurative expression for an intentional misrepresentation of someone's allegiance, and centuries later also came to be used literally for a ruse in naval warfare whereby a vessel flew the flag of a neutral or enemy country to hide its true identity. The naval tactic was initially used by pirates and privateers to deceive other ships into allowing them to move closer before attacking them. Showing a literal false flag was later deemed an acceptable practice during naval warfare according to international maritime laws, provided that a vessel displayed its true flag before commencing an attack.
The term today extends to include countries that organize attacks on themselves and make the attacks appear to be by enemy nations or terrorists, thus giving the nation that attacked itself a pretext for domestic repression or foreign military aggressiondeHaven-Smith, Lance (2013). Conspiracy Theory in America. Austin: University of Texas Press. p. 225 (as well as to engender sympathy). Similarly deceptive activities carried out during peacetime by individuals or nongovernmental organizations have also been called false-flag operations, but are more commonly called "frameup", "stitch up", or "setup".
Use in warfare In land warfare, such operations are generally deemed acceptable under certain circumstances, such as to deceive enemies, provided the deception is not perfidious and that all such deceptions are discarded before opening fire upon the enemy. Similarly, in naval warfare such a deception is considered permissible, provided the false flag is lowered and the true flag raised before engaging in battle."the use of a false flag has always been accepted as a legitimate ruse de guerre in naval warfare, the true battle flag being run up immediately before engaging" (). Auxiliary cruisers operated in such a fashion in both World Wars, as did Q-ships, while merchant vessels were encouraged to use false flags for protection. Such masquerades promoted confusion not just of the enemy but of historical accounts. In 1914, the Battle of Trindade was fought between the British auxiliary cruiser RMS Carmania and the German auxiliary cruiser SMS Cap Trafalgar, which had been altered to look like Carmania.
Another notable example was the World War II German commerce raider Kormoran, which surprised and sank the Australian light cruiser HMAS Sydney in 1941 while disguised as a Dutch merchant ship, causing the greatest loss of life on an Australian warship. While Kormoran was fatally damaged in the engagement and its crew captured, the outcome represented a considerable psychological victory for the Germans.Squires, Nick. "HMAS Sydney found off Australia's west coast", The Telegraph, 17 March 2008.
The British used a Kriegsmarine ensign in the St Nazaire Raid and captured a German code book. The old destroyer Campbeltown, which the British planned to sacrifice in the operation, was provided with cosmetic modifications that involved cutting the ship's funnels and chamfering the edges to resemble a German Type 23 torpedo boat. By this ruse, the British got within two miles (3 km) of the harbour before the defences responded, where the explosive-rigged Campbeltown and commandos successfully disabled or destroyed the key dock structures of the port.Guinness World Records (2009), p.155Young, P (Ed) (1973) Atlas of the Second World War (London: The Military Book Society)
Air warfare Between December 1922 and February 1923, a commission of jurists at the Hague drafted a set of rules concerning the Control of Wireless Telegraphy in Time of War and Air Warfare. They included:The Hague Rules of Air Warfare, December 1922 to February 1923, this convention was never adopted (backup site).
This draft was never adopted as a legally binding treaty, but the International Committee of the Red Cross states in its introduction on the draft: "To a great extent, [the draft rules] correspond to the customary rules and general principles underlying treaties on the law of war on land and at sea", and as such these two non-controversial articles were already part of customary law.
Land warfare In land warfare, the use of a false flag is similar to that of naval warfare: the trial of Waffen SS officer Otto Skorzeny—who planned and commanded Operation Greif—by a U.S. military tribunal at the Dachau trials included a finding that Skorzeny was not guilty of a crime by ordering his men into action in American uniforms. He had relayed to his men the warning of German legal experts: if they fought in American uniforms, they would be breaking the laws of war; however, they probably were not doing so simply by wearing the American uniforms. During the trial, a number of arguments were advanced to substantiate this position and the German and U.S. military seem to have been in agreement.
In the transcript of the trial,Law Reports of Trials of War Criminals. United Nations War Crimes Commission. Vol IX, 1949: Trial of Otto Skorzeny and others. . General Military Government Court of the U.S. zone of Germany 18 August to 9 September 1947. it is mentioned that Paragraph 43 of the Field Manual published by the War Department, United States Army, on 1 October 1940, under the entry Rules of Land Warfare states: "National flags, insignias and uniforms as a rusein practice it has been authorized to make use of these as a ruse. The foregoing rule (Article 23 of the Annex of the IV Hague Convention), does not prohibit such use, but does prohibit their improper use. It is certainly forbidden to make use of them during a combat. Before opening fire upon the enemy, they must be discarded."
As pretexts for war
Russo-Swedish War In 1788, the head tailor at the Royal Swedish Opera received an order to sew a number of Russian military uniforms. These were then used by Swedes to stage an attack on Puumala, a Swedish outpost on the Russo-Swedish border, on 27 June 1788. This caused an outrage in Stockholm and persuaded the Riksdag of the Estates, the Swedish national assembly, who until then had refused to agree to an offensive war against Russia. The Puumala incident allowed King Gustav III of Sweden, who lacked the constitutional authority to initiate unprovoked hostilities without the Estates' consent, to launch the Russo-Swedish War (1788–1790).
Franco-Prussian War
On 13 July 1870, Otto von Bismarck published the Ems Dispatch, an internal message from King Wilhelm I to Bismarck regarding certain demands made by the French ambassador. In the version purposefully released to the public, Bismarck instead made it sound like the King had gravely disrespected the ambassador – a ploy to trick Emperor Napoleon III into declaring war on the North German Confederation, with the end goal of unifying the northern and southern German states. This ploy would be successful, as Napoleon III would declare war six days later; and six months later, the Confederation would win and unify the German states.
Second Sino-Japanese War
In September 1931, Seishirō Itagaki and other Japanese mid- to junior-grade officers, without the knowledge of the Tokyo government, fabricated a pretext for invading Manchuria by blowing up a section of railway. Though the explosion was too weak to disrupt operations on the rail line, the Japanese nevertheless used the Mukden incident to seize Manchuria and create a puppet government in the form of the nominally independent state of Manchukuo.
World War II Gleiwitz incident
The Gleiwitz incident in 1939 involved Reinhard Heydrich fabricating evidence of a Polish attack against Germany to mobilize German public opinion for war and to justify the war against Poland. Alfred Naujocks was a key organiser of the operation under orders from Heydrich. It led to the deaths of Nazi concentration camp victims who were dressed as German soldiers and then shot by the Gestapo to make it seem that they had been shot by Polish soldiers. This, along with other false flag operations in Operation Himmler, would be used to mobilize support from the German population for the start of World War II in Europe.
The operation failed to convince international public opinion of the German claims, and both Britain and FrancePoland's alliesdeclared war two days after Germany invaded Poland.
Winter War On 26 November 1939, the Soviet army shelled Mainila, a Russian village near the Finnish border. Soviet authorities blamed Finland for the attack and used the incident as a pretext to invade Finland, starting the Winter War, four days later.
Cuban regime change
Operation Northwoods
Operation Northwoods, a 1962 plot proposed but never executed by the U.S. Department of Defense for a war with Cuba, involved scenarios such as fabricating the hijacking or shooting down of passenger and military planes, sinking a U.S. ship in the vicinity of Cuba, burning crops, sinking a boat filled with Cuban refugees, attacks by alleged Cuban infiltrators inside the United States, and harassment of U.S. aircraft and shipping, and the destruction of aerial drones by aircraft disguised as Cuban MiGs. These actions would be blamed on Cuba, and would be a pretext for an invasion of Cuba and the overthrow of Fidel Castro's communist government. It was authorised by the Joint Chiefs of Staff, but then rejected by President John F. Kennedy. The surprise discovery of the documents relating to Operation Northwoods was a result of the comprehensive search for records related to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy by the Assassination Records Review Board in the mid-1990s. Information about Operation Northwoods was later publicized by James Bamford.
Russian invasion of Ukraine In January and February 2022, U.S. officials warned that Russian operatives were planning a false flag operation in Ukraine in order to justify a military intervention. In the days leading up to the Russian invasion of Ukraine on 24 February, the Russian government intensified its disinformation campaign, with Russian state media promoting false flags on a nearly hourly basis purporting to show Ukrainian forces attacking Russia, in a bid to justify an invasion of Ukraine. Many of the disinformation videos were poor and amateur in quality, with mismatching metadata showing incorrect dates, and evidence from Bellingcat researchers and other independent journalists showed that the claimed attacks, explosions, and evacuations in Donbas were staged by Russia.
Operation Southern Spear
During Operation Southern Spear, Venezuela claimed to have prevented several false flag attacks planned by the United States and the Venezuelan opposition. On 7 October 2025, the American embassy in Caracas was reinforced following tips concerning a bomb plot, while on 26 October, four allegedly CIA-backed mercenaries that had planned to attack the USS Gravely while it was docked in Trinidad and Tobago were captured.
As a tactic to undermine political opponents Lermontov detachment During the Caucasus War a Russian imperial army special unit named "Lermontov detachment" (for a few months it was headed by Mikhail Lermontov) operated behind enemy lines disguised as the insurgents. An insider account reported that "they shaved their heads, grew beards, dressed them Circassian style, and armed them with double-barreled shotguns with bayonets".Davies, Jessie. (1989) The Fey Hussar: The Life of the Russian Poet, Michael Yur'evich Lemontov, 1814-41 to Commemorate the 175th Anniversary of the Poet's Birth. Liverpool: Lincoln Davies & Co., pp. 346-347.
Soviet covert operations on German-occupied territories during World War II
During World War II Soviet airborne units, operating on enemy-occupied territory, posed as German Wehrmacht personnel using Wehrmacht uniform.
Soviet covert operations in Ukraine