Trojan Horse Deception

The Trojan horse is perhaps one of the best-known battles in ancient history, even though many believe it to be just a legend. Exhausted of a long war against the Trojans, the Greeks left a large, wooden horse outside the city gates and filled it with soldiers while the rest sailed away. The Trojans saw the horse and brought it into their city celebrating, but at night, the Greeks opened the gates of Troy and attacked, burning the city to the ground. While battles since have involved trickery, not many made to the level of the Greeks. Perhaps the most common battle strategy has been attacking, using numbers and the element of surprise to the advantage. However, it is not always possible to have the army size to conduct such a plan, and attackers need deception.

Both groups based their tactic on the Trojan horse strategy, entering under false pretenses, and all three attackers; the Greeks, Hastein, and the Allies, were successful in the execution of their plan. Although they all entered their battles differently, the Trojan horse, Hastein's breach of Luna, and the D-Day invasion of Normandy share many parallels including persuasion efforts, opposing sides ignorance, and initial reactions.
The Greeks, Hastein, and Allies put an extraordinary effort into their strategy and deception that fooled the opposing side so they lacked suspicion. In the mythical Trojan horse battle, Laocoon warned the Trojans that "Greeks are hiding" and that "the enemy's sailed away" (qtd. in Kline). This would have been a major problem for the Greeks, yet the brilliant Odysseus had created a background plan; he would leave one of his own soldiers to 'sell' the story. For this plan, Odysseus left Sinon, a Greek soldier, to "[explain] that the horse was the Greek's atonement for having [stole] the Palladium" (qtd. in Kline). The other groups, however, could not use their enemies' exhaustion against them. When Hastein was trying to raid Luna, he realized that he