THE STORY BEHIND D-DAY Those of us who became teenagers during World War II have many memories of life during those years - victory gardens, ration books, collecting scrap of all kinds, war bonds, and always following the war news. We all remember the 6th of June as D-Day, that day in 1944 when the allies crossed the English Channel to establish a beachhead on the coast of Normandy launching the long awaited Western Front against Nazi Germany. The landing was amazingly successful. The allied invasion force was enormous, including an invasion fleet of more than 5,000 ships and with the support of more than 10,000 aircraft. Yet this gigantic fleet of ships crossed the channel overnight and by dawn ground forces were hitting the beach before they were detected by a lone German soldier on patrol. How was this possible? The story is revealed in Ben Macintyre’s fascinating 2012 book, Double Cross: The True Story of the D-Day Spies. Before and in the early years of the war German Intelligence recruited spies to infiltrate England and gather intelligence on Allied military operations. They chose their agents from the occupied or neutral countries so they would seem to be plausible refugees to the British. The gullibility of the German handlers is astonishing; virtually everyone they recruited immediately defected to the Allied side once they were in England. Their they were organized into a counter-intelligence group to feed false information back to Germany. The false reports they fed back were totally believed by the German High Command as vital information on Allied operations. The Allied handlers very cleverly leaked out valid intelligence along with the false intelligence to deceive the Germans, often sending vital information that was received just a little late to be of real use. In the early planning of the Allied invasion, the counter-spy team was put to work to pull off a stunning deception: to convince the German High Command that any invasion of Normandy would be merely a diversion; the real landing would be miles away near Calais. A totally fictitious invasion force was created based in the east of England and intelligence on its buildup was fed to Germany. Finally, when the invasion of Normandy really happened, the Germans were still deceived for weeks while they waited in force to repel the allies at Calais. It is truly amazing that the deception was so utterly successful.
Posted on: Thu, 06 Jun 2013 21:50:27 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015