Operation Bodyguard

Book excerpt: *Includes pictures *Includes accounts of the deception plan from Allied spies *Includes online resources and a bibliography for further reading *Includes a table of contents "In wartime, truth is so precious that she should always be attended by a Bodyguard of lies." - Winston Churchill During the first half of 1944, the Americans and British commenced a massive buildup of men and resources in the United Kingdom, while Allied Supreme Commander Dwight D. Eisenhower and military brass planned the details of an enormous and complex amphibious invasion of Europe. The most obvious place for an invasion was just across the narrow English Channel, and the Germans had built coastal fortifications throughout France to protect against just such an invasion. Cloaking the vastest amphibious landing in history in layers of shrouding misdirection represented an undertaking second only in ambitiousness to the grand seaborne invasion itself, yet with Operation Bodyguard, the Allies attempted precisely that task in regards to 1944's D-Day. Bodyguard would, if successful, confuse the Wehrmacht occupiers of France about the actual place where Operation Overlord would ultimately come ashore. The plan was to trick the Germans into thinking the expected invasion would come in late summer 1944, and would be accompanied by an invasion in Norway, Greece and elsewhere in Europe. The goal was to trick the Germans into defending areas away from the invasion, thus posing less threat to the success of the actual invasion, Operation Overlord. On an operational level it hoped to disguise the strength, timing and objectives of the invasion. The success or failure of these planned misdirections would have deadly serious consequences for the men wading ashore through the Normandy surf in early summer of 1944. The difference in the number and deployment of German forces facing them could determine if they successfully crashed through the west wall of Hitler's "Festung Europa" ("Fortress Europe") or found their decimated, bleeding remnants hurled back in defeat into the sea. Thanks to the misinformation, even as Nazi Germany's Atlantic Wall was strengthened, the deception tricked Hitler into keeping 13 divisions in Norway rather than reinforcing the Normandy peninsula. It had also tricked German High Command into believing that 89 Allied divisions were preparing to land, with enough landing craft to bring 20 divisions ashore. In actuality, the figures were 47 and 6 respectively. It would not have taken a genius commander to realize that an exhausted Britain and a U.S. Army fighting a multi-theatre war in the Pacific, Africa, Western Europe and Italy could not have fielded 87 divisions to attack Europe. Instead the Germans swallowed Allied misinformation hook, line and sinker. Statistics show the extent to which the German High Command were tricked by Allied deception plans. The Fifteenth Army, based at Pas de Calais, grew to a strength of 18 infantry and two panzer divisions. The Seventh Army, based in Normandy, had just 14 infantry and one panzer divisions. To make matters more complicated for the smaller force defending Normandy, the size of their theater of operations stretched for 995 miles of coastline. Rommel and von Rundstedt were both reminded of Frederick II's maxim, "He who defends everything, defends nothing." Without the deception, the Germans would have had free reign to maximize its forces at the point of attack in Normandy and with it, it is unclear whether the Allied invasion would have succeeded. Against such a formidable foe, however, the Allies needed to rely on every trick in the book. Operation Bodyguard: The History of the Allies' Disinformation Campaign Against Nazi Germany Before D-Day looks at the deception and its results. Along with pictures of important people, places, and events, you will learn about Operation Bodyguard like never before.