The D Is For Deception
World War II was hell on Gen. George S. Patton Jr. In August 1943, General Eisenhower had put "Old Blood and Guts" on probation for slapping two battle-fatigued soldiers in Sicily and made him apologize in public. Then, early in 1944, came word of his next assignment. The man known for brilliance on the battlefield was going to take command of the 1st U.S. Army Group, a force that existed mostly on paper. His job duties: criss-crossing Britain on phony troop visits, sitting in on "planning sessions" with Eisenhower, and hobnobbing at garden parties with the English nobility. The 58-year-old general was the highest-profile cog in Operation Fortitude, the most elaborate and successful deception in military history.
Hitler was the target of the hoax. He knew that 2 million Allied troops were massing in England to assault the Nazis' vaunted "Fortress Europe." But he didn't know everything. "It is evident that an Anglo-Saxon landing in the West will and must come," Hitler told his commanders in March 1944. "How and where it will come no one knows." Operation Fortitude's goal was to make sure he didn't find out that the largest armada in history was soon to descend on Normandy's shores.
Allied planners wanted the Germans to believe that Patton's "massive" army would lead an offensive in France. To make sure Berlin knew about Patton's movements, the Allies fed information to a network of Nazi spies whom the British had captured and turned into double agents, and given such code names as Bronx, Lipstick, and Garbo.
Another key Fortitude player was Col. Rory MacLeod, a battle-scarred veteran of World War I with a silver plate in his skull to show for it. When Supreme Allied Headquarters summoned the British officer in March 1944, MacLeod went with hopes of leading troops in the impending invasion of France. Instead, the 52-year-old soldier was sent to Scotland to command an army that didn't exist.
In the months that followed, MacLeod and his aging officers flooded the airwaves with phony requests for a major attack on Nazi-occupied Norway. The phantom British 4th Army needed training for rock climbing and manuals on engine maintenance in extreme cold. They asked for thousands of crampons and ski bindings, essential for any army traversing the Nordic terrain. They leaked to the press about "4th Army football matches." One newspaper wrote of a "major in the 4th Army" getting married. The Allies knew Berlin was paying attention.
No tanks. Fortitude's success depended on two crucial deceptions. Allied war planners needed to convince the Germans not only that the invasion would come somewhere besides Normandy but also that when the Allies did land on D-Day, the Normandy invasion was only a minor part of a larger attack that would come in future weeks. This would tie down the 90 German divisions scattered around northern Europe and keep German war planners from reinforcing troops at Normandy. If the deception failed, German panzer tanks were quite capable of destroying Allied troops soon after their beach landing.
As for Patton, he did have some actual troops under his command, yet the Allies designed fake division patches and built dummy landing craft to give the illusion of a larger force. The ruse worked, reinforcing what the Germans already believed: Patton was the Allies' best commander. It was inconceivable that he would be left on the sidelines during the war's most important campaign--or that the Americans would demote their military genius for the minor offense of slapping a couple of grunts. Meanwhile, the outspoken general had to hold his tongue. "Think before you leap, George," Ike told the arrogant Patton, who hated being used as a decoy, "or you will have no one to blame but yourself for the consequences of your rashness."
Channel switch. The location of Patton's headquarters at Dover confirmed a German hunch: that the Allies would invade France at Pas-de-Calais, just across the English Channel from Dover. Not only was Calais located at the channel's shortest crossing point; it gave the Allies the shortest route for an eventual march on Germany. It was also where the Germans had constructed ramps to launch their fearsome V-1 and V-2 rockets on London. Despite the doubts of some senior officers, most in the German high command believed Calais was the likeliest target on the French coast. For good measure, in the weeks before D-Day, Allied aircraft dropped more bombs on Calais than any other target in France.
The German commander responsible for defending France's coastline was Patton's old nemesis from North Africa, Field Marshal Erwin Rommel. The "Desert Fox" spent the frantic months before D-Day driving his Mercedes up and down the coast, obsessing over every detail of Hitler's "Atlantic Wall." He knew what was at stake. Unless the Germans correctly picked the Allied invasion point and won a decisive battle immediately, he was convinced, all would be lost. If the Allies were allowed to reach shore and reinforce their divisions, there would be no stopping their inevitable march to Berlin. And Rommel had his doubts that the Allies would choose to invade at Calais. The wily general knew it would be foolish to attack at the point where German defenses were strongest. Where they would attack, the Desert Fox could only guess. At 7 a.m. on June 6, 1944, the massive German guns defending the coast at Pas-de-Calais lay silent. Yet 150 miles to the west, thousands of men had already waded ashore at Normandy. The liberation of Europe had begun. "They came, rank after relentless rank, 10 lanes wide, 20 miles across, 5,000 ships of every description," wrote one reporter at the scene. The Germans, however, moved few of their divisions to the point of attack. Operation Fortitude had caused them to so greatly overestimate Allied strength (the Germans believed there were 89 divisions in Great Britain, instead of the actual 47) that they were certain the Normandy attack was a mere diversion. German intelligence concluded that few of Patton's armies around Dover had moved since June 6, leading them to conclude that the 1st U.S. Army Group was still waiting to pounce at Calais. The hoax was a stunning success.
Being taken in by Operation Fortitude was, in the words of Hitler's Chief of Staff Alfred Jodl, the Nazis' "fatal strategic error." But the Wehrmacht was hardly the first army to fall for a clever ruse. Indeed, deception has been an essential tool in combat even before the Greek Army got its wooden horse into Troy. "All warfare is based on deception," wrote Chinese military theorist Sun Tzu. Yet Operation Fortitude set a benchmark for acts of military cunning; indeed, many of the tactics used in the weeks before D-Day are still taught to young officers. "No other military deception plan was as detailed and intricate," says Gen. John Brown of the U.S Army's Center of Military History. "And no other plan was as consequential to a campaign's outcome."
Three days after D-Day, Garbo cabled German Supreme Command. The Nazis considered the master spy their most reliable agent. Because of the large concentrations of troops in southern England who had not been part of the Normandy offensive, he wrote, "these operations are a diversionary maneuver designed to draw off enemy reserves." Hitler's top military advisers endorsed the conclusion and passed the message to the Fuhrer. They would wait for Patton to come.
This story appears in the August 26, 2002 print edition of U.S. News & World Report.