Schwerpunkt: From D-Day to the Fall of the Third Reich Read Online Free PDF Page A

created as long as 6 months ago and the fact that various of our code words found themselves in those puzzles was nothing more than “fantastic coincidence.” Still. It gave all of us night sweats to think that it was possible our secrets were being broadcast to enemy spies by way of a London tabloid.
    So we assumed our secret was still safe and we went to elaborate lengths to make sure it stayed that way. We had to keep the real landing site secret and we had to keep the date secret. Operation Fortitude was planned and deployed to trick the Jerries into thinking Calais was the area they needed to most concern themselves with. And in what was really an interesting turn, the planners decided to twist it so that when the Normandy beach landings did take place, the Germans were to think this was just a feint and that the “real” landings were coming sometime in the near future. Since Calais is where classic military strategy dictated that the landings almost had to be made, it wasn’t hard to hoodwink the Krauts into going along with that program. Then, to bring the point home, we bombed it more heavily than the other areas of the coast. We had Hollywood and English film studios make fake staging areas complete with inflatable trucks and tanks. We had fake radio messages transmitted to and from the Calais area and we ran some spies who were highly trusted by Berlin by feeding them false information which was then dutifully forwarded on to the spymasters of the Third Reich. We made dummy parachute drops using straw “men” and threw tin foil and shredded metallic paper chaff out of airplanes around this location to give the Kraut radar something to squawk about. But probably the best part of this operation called for a whole American Army to be set for invading at this location. General George Patton to the rescue.
    Patton is just about the most famous American General ever and even the Germans knew him to be a tough nut to crack. Operation Fortitude (South) was conceived to take full advantage of his bigger than balls personality. When June 6 th ended and DDay was officially over, we still had to keep up the subterfuge. We didn’t want the Krauts to move any of their troops, who had been assigned to reinforce the Calais landing beaches, away from Calais where they were currently stationed. The fictional 30th Division, First U.S. Army Group (FUSAG) was fictitiously commanded by the very real General Patton who in reality, commanded nothing at this time. FUSAG was set to fictitiously invade the Pas de Calais area in July of 1944 giving the actual Overlord invading forces a good four to eight week head start on wresting France from German occupation. General Patton was going to lead the “real” invasion across the narrowest point of the English Channel into the French Pas de Calais beach head only no he really wasn’t. It was leaked that this would happen and a whole lot of peremptory bombing runs, plus everything else we staged, lent credence to the Pas de Calais area being the point of our strongest attack. The Krauts couldn’t afford not to keep this prime real estate defended and they kept a strong defense handy throughout this area. We were counting on them thinking we were suckers but we suckered them first because the more Krauts congregating around Calais meant the fewer Krauts defending the real landing beaches.
    We knew we were going to have enough problems with the goddamn Jerries who were already in France. We obviously didn’t want any more transferred here. Since we were already doing all we could to make them think our landing in Normandy was just the diversionary landing, we also made them think, through Operation Fortitude (North), that another, even more massive landing would take place in Norway. Fortitude North planted disinformation to lead the Germans to believe that maybe Norway was going to be the site of the “real” invasion. We led them to believe that the landings in Normandy were just a