Operation Bodyguard
“In wartime truth is so precious, that she should always be attended by a bodyguard of lies” – Winston Churchill.
Operation Bodyguard was a multifaceted and complex plan to deceive the Germans about the time and location of the Western Allies’ intended invasion of Europe in 1944. The plan had three goals: conceal the actual time and date of the invasion; convince the Germans that the main invasion would land in the Pas de Calais; and convince the Germans after the Normandy landings to maintain a strong defense in the Pas de Calais for at least two weeks, rather than drain it of defenders to reinforce their troops in Normandy.
A sub-plan of Bodyguard was Operation Fortitude, which created a fictitious “First US Army Group” in southeast England under the command of General George S. Patton, and sold its existence to the Germans with a combination of fake radio traffic between fictitious FUSAG units, allowing German air reconnaissance to fly over and photograph concentrations of FUSAG tanks and transports that were, in reality, inflatable dummies, and feeding German intelligence fake reports via double agents and turned spies about FUSAG’s intentions to invade the Pas de Calais so as 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 so as to tie down the German divisions there.
After D-Day, Bodyguard prevented the Germans from committing fully to a counterattack by convincing them that the Normandy landings were not the main event, but the first in a series of landings. The German high command was thus led to keep units guarding other potential landing sites, mainly the Pas de Calais which was threatened by the fictitious FUSAG under Patton, instead of sending them to reinforce the defenders in Normandy.
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, which allowed the Allies time to build a beachhead in Normandy, before breaking out to liberate France and Western Europe.