Strategic Deception: OPERATION FORTITUDE

Lt.-Col Michael J. Donovan

• Publisher: Lucknow Books
• Year: 2014
• eBook ISBN: 9781782897170
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: European History
• Index: History

The Allied leaders decided to conduct the cross-channel invasion of Hitler's Fortress Europe in the first half of 1944 during the Tehran Conference held in November 1943. To support this invasion they also decided to implement a comprehensive deception campaign given the cover name BODYGUARD. The goal of BODYGUARD was to deceive Hitler and his senior military commanders about the location and timing of Allied offensive actions. Under the BODYGUARD umbrella, operation FORTITUDE was specifically designed to support the invasion of Normandy. FORTITUDE consisted of two primary operations. FORTITUDE-NORTH was designed to convince the Germans that the Allied invasion in 1944 would come through Norway and Sweden vice France. FORTITUDE-SOUTH was developed to convince Hitler and his staff that the primary invasion site in France would be Pas de Calais and other potential invasion sites, such as Normandy, were only diversions. The BODYGUARD and associated FORTITUDE operations were quite successful in fixing German forces, causing reserves to be committed piecemeal and basically paralyzing Hitler's decision making ability during the time of the Normandy landings and for weeks afterwards. The principles of current joint deception doctrine were applicable and utilized by the deception planners of General Eisenhower's staff long before the current Joint doctrine (Joint Publication 3-58, Joint Doctrine for Military Deception) was ever written.

STRATEGIC DECEPTION: OPERATION FORTITUDE

The enemy must not know where I intend to give battle. For if he does not know where I intend to give battle he must prepare in a great many places. And when he prepares in a great many places, those I have to fight in any one place will be few...And when he prepares everywhere he will be weak everywhere.—Sun Tzu

STRATEGIC SITUATION

The tide had changed in Europe and by the fall of 1943 Germany was losing the war. The rapid successes that Hitler had enjoyed during the early years of World War Two were now a thing of the past. Army Group Africa had surrendered, the Germans had lost the initiative in Russia, had been forced from Sicily and were decisively engaged in Italy.

To decide the future of the war in Europe, President Roosevelt, Prime Minister Churchill and Premier Stalin met at Tehran in late November 1943. The purpose of their meeting was to ensure the proper coordination and synchronization of the major Allied operations they would conduct against the Nazis in 1944. The American position at the meeting was to rapidly invade northern France with a supporting attack into the French Riviera. The British were not directly opposed to the cross-channel attack but wanted to first strengthen the ongoing Italian campaign and conduct supporting operations through the Balkans. The Soviet position was crystal-clear Stalin needed the additional front opened in France to remove pressure from his forces engaged on the Eastern Front and his future plans for the Balkans did not include the presence of British and American forces. After much debate, Stalin sided with Roosevelt and the three eventually came to agreement that the focus of effort for the first half of 1944 would be OPERATION OVERLORD, a cross-channel invasion of Hitler’s “Fortress Europe.”{1}1

Immediately following the decision to conduct OVERLORD, Churchill began to brief and sell his plan of deception operations to confuse the Nazis and ensure surprise for the Allied landings at Normandy (NEPTUNE). British planners had been developing the deception plan since the summer of 1943 and were waiting for the leaders’ concurrence at the Tehran Conference in order to complete and begin implementation of the plan. OPERATION JAEL, the British deception operation being conducted at the time, was expanded and renamed OPERATION BODYGUARD. BODYGUARD became the umbrella cover name for a whole series of deception operations designed to deliberately deceive Hitler and the German Armed Forces High Command (Oberkommando der Wehrmacht—OKW) as to the true intentions and objectives of Allied operations throughout 1944. Churchill had been heard to say “In wartime truth is so precious that she should always be attended by a bodyguard of lies.”{2}2 While the Allied leaders all agreed to participate in and share information in support of the deception operation, Churchill did not really trust Stalin. It would turn out that only limited sharing and coordination was actually accomplished between London and Moscow.{3}3

OPERATION BODYGUARD

The Allied leaders had decided to conduct an invasion of France sometime in 1944 during the Casablanca Conference held in January 1943. In April of 1943, British Lieutenant General Fredrick E. Morgan was assigned as the Chief of Staff to Supreme Allied Commander designates (COSSAC). On 26 April 1943 he was tasked to begin the planning for what was to become OPERATION OVERLORD, the cross channel attack into France. Explicit in his tasking was the requirement to plan for deception. The OVERLORD plan was completed by General Morgan and his staff in July 1943 and submitted for review. It was at this point that work began in earnest on the OVERLORD deception plan by the OPS-B group under British Lieutenant Colonel John Jervis-Reed. OPB-B would later become known as the Committee of Special Means (CSM) with Special Means activities under the direction of British Colonel Roger F. Hesketh. In January 1944, the COSSAC staff was absorbed in to the Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force (SHAEF) as General Eisenhower took command. Relationships were formalized between SHAEF Ops-B/CSM, British Intelligence (MI-5 and MI-6), American Joint Security Control (JSC), the XX-committee (double-cross committee) and the London Controlling Section (LCS). The XX-committee’s purpose was to review what truthful elements of friendly information could be leaked to the Germans in order to develop and maintain double agent creditability. The committee consisted of representatives of interested parties from British and US intelligence, state and military departments. Churchill established the LCS in 1941 as an element of the British Joint Planning Staff to exercise control over and assist in the implementation of strategic and operational deception operations. The LCS was under the direction of British Colonel John Bevan and provided the conduit for information exchange between all Allied government agencies involved in deception planning and execution while at the same time approving and coordinating their activities.{4}4

In the winter of 1943-44 Hitler was faced with very real threats from the Russians in the east, the Allies attacking from the south through Italy and significant Allied f...

Table of contents

• Title page
• TABLE OF CONTENTS
• ABSTRACT
• STRATEGIC DECEPTION: OPERATION FORTITUDE
• REQUEST FROM THE PUBLISHER
• BIBLIOGRAPHY