Allied Intelligence Keeps Hitler Waiting for an Invasion That Never Came
The Western Allies’ planned amphibious invasion of France in WWII was going to be a risky affair, that could easily end in disaster. Landing troops in Normandy would just be the start of it. Ultimate success would depend on whether the Allies would be able to pour enough troops into their Normandy beachhead to make it invulnerable to counterattack, or whether the Germans would be able to nip the beachhead in the bud.
The Germans had many troops in France, and powerful panzer divisions near Normandy that could be concentrated against the Allied beachhead before it was secure. It was going to be iffy, so before giving the go ahead for D-Day, Dwight D. Eisenhower, the Western Allies’ supreme military commander in Europe, prepared a statement accepting all responsibility in case of failure.
Time for an Allied buildup in Normandy was going to be a precious commodity. To buy that time, Allied intelligence came up with Operation Bodyguard, a multifaceted and complex plan to deceive Hitler about the time and location of the invasion of Europe in 1944. The plan had three goals. First, conceal the actual time and date of the invasion. Second, convince the Germans that the main invasion would land in the Pas de Calais. Third, convince the Germans after the Normandy landings to maintain a strong defense in the Pas de Calais for at least two weeks, rather than send its defenders to Normandy.
A sub-plan of Bodyguard was Operation Fortitude, which created a fictitious “First US Army Group” (FUSAG) in southeast England under the command of general George S. Patton. Various means were used to sell Hitler and his generals on FUSAG’s existence. Fake radio traffic was used between fictitious FUSAG units. German reconnaissance planes were allowed to fly over and photograph concentrations of FUSAG tanks and transports that in actuality were just inflatable dummies. German intelligence was fed fake reports via double agents and turned spies about FUSAG’s intentions to invade the Pas de Calais, in order to tie down the German defenders there. A subsidiary, Fortitude North, created a fictitious British Fourth Army in Scotland, and convinced the Germans that it planned to invade Norway in order to tie down German defenders there.
After D-Day, Bodyguard succeeded in convincing the Germans that the Normandy landings were not the main event, but the first in a series of landings. Hitler was thus led to keep units guarding other potential landing sites. Especially the Pas de Calais, which was threatened by the fictitious FUSAG under Patton. Bodyguard had hoped to convince the Germans to stay put in the Pas de Calais for two weeks after D-Day, instead of immediately sending the units there to reinforce Normandy. The plan worked so well that the Germans stayed put in the Pas de Calais for seven weeks instead of the hoped-for two. That allowed the Allies time to build a beachhead in Normandy, before breaking out to liberate France and Western Europe. As Winston Churchill put it in his memoirs: “In wartime truth is so precious, that she should always be attended by a bodyguard of lies“.