Posted on 01/26/2011 8:08:04 PM PST by decimon
It was an audacious double-cross that fooled the Nazis and shortened World War II. Now a newly-released document reveals the crucial role played by Britain's code-breaking experts in the 1944 invasion of France.
All the ingredients of a gripping spy thriller are there - intrigue, espionage, lies and black propaganda.
An elaborate British wartime plot succeeded in convincing Hitler that the Allies were about to stage the bulk of the D-Day landings in Pas de Calais rather than on the Normandy coast - a diversion that proved crucial in guaranteeing the invasion's success.
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Behind the story of this crucial message and its global impact lies Juan Pujol Garcia, an unassuming-looking Spanish businessman who was, in fact, one of the war's most effective double agents.
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To establish his credibility, he sent advance warning ahead of the Normandy landings on 6 June 1944 - but too late for the Germans to act on it.
Then, in the days afterwards, he fed them entirely fictitious intelligence from his fake "agents" that the invasion had been a red herring and "critical attacks" would follow elsewhere - most likely down the coast in Pas de Calais. He also reported, again falsely, that 75 divisions had been massed in England before D-Day, meaning that many more were still to land in France.
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(Excerpt) Read more at bbc.co.uk ...
Unless the tanks were hull down and well concealed, they wouldn't have lasted long.
I don’t get the “History Channel” but have been getting “The Military Channel” for free for the last few weeks. Not sure when it will end but there has been some interesting stuff along with some not so interesting.
There was a very good one about the tank battles at the Golan Heights. The Jewish Col. they had on said they were impressed by the Syrians courage. They were dying to a man and just kept coming.
I did not know the Syrians actually prevailed to start with. They also had a good one on tonight about the battle of the bulge. One thing I never knew was the Germans had very large and heavy tank destroyers called JagTigers or something like that. They had huge 125mm guns and would easily destroy a Sherman at up to two miles.
One German told how his Panther was hit by American phosphorus shell which knocked the track off. They were hit more than 20 times before one of the shells got to some fuel and the tank caught fire.
If you want to get into the tactics, the best War series of all time was “Battlefield”. The D-Day episode was very good. Usually ‘Battlefield’ was shown on PBS.
“I thought the dead “spy” that the British had floated off Gibraltar had the more realistic effect.”
Also VERY important in all of this was the chaos going on at the time in the German Intelligence services, with the firing of Canaris in late Feb., and the absoption of the Abwehr in to the RHSA/SD.
This led to a breakdown in the ability to centralize intelligence, as the different party’s within the intelligence system were all at each others throats at the time of the landings.
The Germans were getting all kinds of conflicting information from numerous sources, and there was really no organization dedicated to sorting out the strictly military intelligence.
It wasn’t so much a case of compartmentalized info not being passed on, as it was too much information in the hands of too many people, and no one able to clear it up.
I seem to remember a scene in The Longest Day that shows numbers of ships appearing on the horizon from the surprised viewpoint of the Germans.
“I have a paperback around somewhere which was written by a German soldier who was at Normandy”
Interssting side note:
How many know that over half the German Soldiers fighting at Normandy on D-Day itself were RUSSIANS??? They were in Units called OstBattalions, one per two-battalion fortress divisions.
Also, The much-feared Chinese/Japanese/Korean Volunteer Wehrmacht Unit, Battalion 43, was present at Normandy on D-Day, refitting from the Eastern front. They fought to almost the last man, and ceased to exist by the end of the day.
It says right here that if Rommel had sensed the need for Panzers at Normandy, he would have placed them where they could create frightful devastation while protecting them at least until that devastation had pegged the devastation meter. The invaders created a target rich environment.
D-day worked with such a miniscule loss of life because Normandy was the last place the good guys would invade in the bad guys estimation.
Correctionm they were Ukrainians, and they hated the Russians. The Russians starved at least 10 mullion Ukrainians to death 12 years before.
Problem was, the SS Panzers weren’t under Rommel’s operational control. Now, he may have been able to force control over them on D-Day, but he wasn’t present to do so.
Maybe the H-P digitizing is new, but the deception on Normandy and the Spanish double-agent has been on the public record for many years.
Give the Brits lots of credit. They understood that Hitler was an idiot who would always go with gut feelings. They played to his gut knowing full well he would ignore the wise advice of his generals. He was an ego mainiac, and they used that fact to destroy him.
Many were also freed Ex-Soviet Army prisoners. The Allies later repatriated them back to Russians, were almost all were killed.
That is a popular belief I have never subscribed to. Allied air superiority was such that no German vehicle in the Normandy area could move by daylight. Allied destroyers and frigates actually moved in so close to shore providing direct fire support that their hulls scraped bottom. Only a suicidal panzer commander would expose himself to direct naval gunfire.
D-day worked with such a miniscule loss of life because Normandy was the last place the good guys would invade in the bad guys estimation.
Actually, the Germans in all their arrogance planned for the Allied invasion with their own experiences from Operation Sea Lion in mind. In Sea Lion, the Germans couldn't figure out how to invade England via the shortest Channel route and couldn't believe the Allies were capable of much better.
Allied destroyers and frigates actually moved in so close to shore providing direct fire support that their hulls scraped bottom.
I have heard this somewhere, but every book I have read about D-Day fails to mention it. Can you tell me a good source for this? Perhaps on the internet.
I believe there was some film footage of the destroyers moving in close in one of the documentaries on D-Day.
bump for later
this happens in peter tsauras’ (sp?) book DISASTER AT D-DAY. it is a work of historical fiction or alternate history. great read.
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