Operation Fortitude was a large scale deception by the Allies to trick Germany into thinking that they would land anywhere but the beaches of Normandy. This operation was split into two sections, fortitude south and fortitude north.
In Fortitude South, the initial plan was convoluted and unrealistic. It involved the British General Montogomery controlling two invasions simultaneously, as well as creating six fictional divisions to attack at Calais. However, it was changed to become much simpler and involved just implementing one skeleton division that carried around fake tanks, aircraft, and ships. Additionally, the allies would leak fake info to the Germans, and also would have double agents feed false information to German officers. One particularly notable double agent was named Juan Pujol Garcia. He was employed by the British as a double agent and somehow succeeded in convincing the Germans that he controlled 27 other spies, all of which were fake. After D-day, he was awarded both the Iron cross by Germany and the MBE (Most excellent order of the British Empire) by Britain.
Fortitude North was similar but involved the deception that the allies would invade through Norway. The British public supported the fictional armies headquartered them by radioing football scores and news. This was so successful that Hitler eventually sent 13 German divisions up North to defend against the invasion. Fortitude North was carried one step farther, and British marines actually raiding German territory to fake preparations for a full-scale invasion.
D-Day was won not just by sheer military power. Instead, it was won by the in-depth planning and deception, so that the Germans would be unable to retaliate at full strength when the allies invaded.
Ha I really like what you did with the title here it's kinda like a parallel to what the allies did to the Germans making them wonder what the allies would do Nice job.
ReplyDeleteI actually wrote the title before coming up with a title, but forgot to change it after writing the actual blog post. But I like your thinking so I'm going to keep the title as it is.
DeleteI really like the title and after reading about Operation Fortitude, I now understand it's purpose. I also think that it's crazy that Juan Pujol Garcia got recognized for an award in both Britain and Germany for being a spy. An interesting fact about the army that had fake weapons and tanks is that they were called the Ghost Army, also known as the 23rd Headquarters Special Troops. They staged 20 deceptions, starting in Normandy and ending in the Rhine River. http://www.ghostarmy.org/bio
ReplyDeleteYour title was very secretive...ahahhah. Operation Fortitude was the biggest hoaxed that war had ever seen. Without them thinking that the US was not going to land on the Normandy beaches D day would have failed. So all of the acting and scheming that went along with this operation was necessary. Also Tanshi thanks for sharing about the ghost army, I didn't know that it was called the 23rd Headquarters. But I did know they used rubber tanks so from a far it looked like it was real. I just think its funny that how most of war is mostly hear say or theatrics especially in such a big war as world war II.
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