An
army can help win a war without even existing. Strange as it might
seem, that was exactly what happened with the First United States Army
Group (FUSAG), a fictional formation that played a key role in the
Second World War.
Preparing for D-Day
Landing craft in Southampton ready for the invasion.By
the spring of 1944, Nazi Germany was on the retreat. The Red Army was
pushing German forces back on the Eastern Front while American and
British troops fought their way up Italy. Defeat was clearly coming for
the Germans.
But for the western powers, this created a problem.
The Germans under Kesselring were slowing their advance up Italy, and
would become even harder to fight in the mountain passes of the Alps. By
the time the British and Americans reached beyond Italy, the Russians
might have taken most of Europe, something the western nations feared.
After all, they and Russia were allies of convenience.
A
seaborne invasion was therefore needed so that they could retake
western Europe and invade Germany before it all fell to the Russians.
Hitler had built strong defences against this – the so-called Atlantic
Wall, a string of positions all along the western European coast. Facing
12,000 fortifications and 6.5 million mines, the Allies needed to
weaken the German defence as best they could.
Their solution was to spread out the German troops.
A Trail of False Information
A dummy aircraft, modelled after the Douglas A-20 Havoc, October 1943If
the Germans knew where the Allies would invade, then they could
concentrate both their construction efforts and their troops there. The
British therefore undertook a massive campaign of misinformation called
Operation Fortitude. By feeding Hitler false information, they hoped to
leave him with the impression that an invasion could arrive anywhere
along the coast, and at any time. He would be forced to spread his
troops thinly, minimising resistance when the D-Day landings came.
Three
elements were central to this scheme – double agents, radio signals and
the Enigma code. At the start of the war, the British had turned many
of the German spies living in their country. These double agents were
given false information to feed back to their Nazi spymasters.
Meanwhile, misleading radio traffic was put out for the Germans to
intercept, allowing them to believe that they were successfully spying
on Allied plans. The cracking of the German Enigma code allowed the
Allies to understand coded messages they themselves intercepted, and so
to know how effective this campaign of misinformation had been,
adjusting their plans accordingly.
An
army can help win a war without even existing. Strange as it might
seem, that was exactly what happened with the First United States Army
Group (FUSAG), a fictional formation that played a key role in the
Second World War.
Preparing for D-Day
Landing craft in Southampton ready for the invasion.By
the spring of 1944, Nazi Germany was on the retreat. The Red Army was
pushing German forces back on the Eastern Front while American and
British troops fought their way up Italy. Defeat was clearly coming for
the Germans.
But for the western powers, this created a problem.
The Germans under Kesselring were slowing their advance up Italy, and
would become even harder to fight in the mountain passes of the Alps. By
the time the British and Americans reached beyond Italy, the Russians
might have taken most of Europe, something the western nations feared.
After all, they and Russia were allies of convenience.
A
seaborne invasion was therefore needed so that they could retake
western Europe and invade Germany before it all fell to the Russians.
Hitler had built strong defences against this – the so-called Atlantic
Wall, a string of positions all along the western European coast. Facing
12,000 fortifications and 6.5 million mines, the Allies needed to
weaken the German defence as best they could.
Their solution was to spread out the German troops.
A Trail of False Information
A dummy aircraft, modelled after the Douglas A-20 Havoc, October 1943If
the Germans knew where the Allies would invade, then they could
concentrate both their construction efforts and their troops there. The
British therefore undertook a massive campaign of misinformation called
Operation Fortitude. By feeding Hitler false information, they hoped to
leave him with the impression that an invasion could arrive anywhere
along the coast, and at any time. He would be forced to spread his
troops thinly, minimising resistance when the D-Day landings came.
Three
elements were central to this scheme – double agents, radio signals and
the Enigma code. At the start of the war, the British had turned many
of the German spies living in their country. These double agents were
given false information to feed back to their Nazi spymasters.
Meanwhile, misleading radio traffic was put out for the Germans to
intercept, allowing them to believe that they were successfully spying
on Allied plans. The cracking of the German Enigma code allowed the
Allies to understand coded messages they themselves intercepted, and so
to know how effective this campaign of misinformation had been,
adjusting their plans accordingly.
Δεν υπάρχουν σχόλια:
Δημοσίευση σχολίου