Dan Snow's History Hit - D-Day: The Deception that Made it Possible

Episode Date: June 6, 2024

Please note that this episode contains explicit language.On the 29th of May, 1944, less than a week before D-Day, General George S. Patton gave a rip-roaring speech to the First US Army Group. He spoke of the indomitable American spirit and the fear that his men would inspire in their enemies. He'd given this expletive-riddled address dozens of times, and American GIs loved him for it. But this time, there was a catch; the army he was addressing did not actually exist.Dan is joined by Taylor Downing, a historian, writer and author of 'The Army That Never Was: D-Day and the Great Deception'. Taylor takes us through this remarkable deception operation, without which D-Day may have gone very differently.Produced by James Hickmann and edited by Dougal Patmore.Enjoy unlimited access to award-winning original documentaries that are released weekly and AD-FREE podcasts. Get a subscription for £1 per month for 3 months with code DANSNOW - sign up at https://historyhit.com/subscription/.We'd love to hear from you - what do you want to hear an episode on? You can email the podcast at [e-mail] can take part in our listener survey here.

First off, a quick warning that this episode has strong language right from the beginning. Hi buddy, welcome to Dan's Notes History. On the 29th of May 1944, somewhere in South East England, a black Mercedes pulls up, surrounded by military police outriders. General George S. Patton has arrived. With around a week to go before the invasion of occupied France, Patton is here to give a rousing, memorable speech to his men of the 1st US Army Group. He strides onto the platform, his spurs clicking on his riding boots. His helmet is polished with an inch of its life. It shines.

He's got his famous ivory-handled revolver holstered at his waist. His chest gleams with medals. And then he puts his shoulders back and his voice bellows out. The Americans love a winner, he tells the audience, and cannot tolerate a loser. Americans despise cowards. That's why Americans have never lost and will never lose a war, for the very thought of losing is hateful to an American. His men, he told them, need to stay alert. Otherwise, some German son of a bitch will sneak up behind you and beat you to death with a sock full of shit. And he wasn't just talking to the fire-eating combat soldiers who'd be serving on the front line. He wanted his men to know that every one of them mattered. All the real heroes are not storybook combat fighters either.

Every single man in the army plays a vital part. Every little job is essential to the whole scheme. We have the finest food. We have the finest equipment. The finest spirited men in the world. Why, by God, I actually pity those sons of bitches we're going up against. By God, I do. And he concluded, thank God that at least 30 years from now, when you're sitting around the fireside with your grandson on your knee, and he asks what you did in the great World

War II, you won't have to say, I shoveled shit in Louisiana. It was one of the great speeches of military history. No doubt, millions of American GIs loved him for it, but hardly any of them were in the audience that day. Because the twist here, folks, and it's quite a twist, is he was delivering that speech to an army group that did not really exist. In this podcast, we're going to hear all about the story of the greatest deception campaign in military history. And frankly, it's up against some quite stiff competition. We know that the Mongols used to allow some of their skinniest and weakest horses to be captured at the beginning of the campaigning season to lure their opponents into a false sense of security that the Mongol cavalry was not ready yet to ride,

not yet fattened on the grass of spring. We know that in the American Civil War, a very talented man with a background in theatre managed to convince the US Army of the Potomac that southern defences were a lot stronger than they were in Virginia. We know that before the Battle of Amiens, I'm particularly proud of this one as a Canadian, we know that before the Battle of Amiens in 1918, the Canadians were ostentatiously paraded around in Flanders before being secretly marched to the Somme, where they would be the spearhead force that smashed through German lines on August the 8th, 1918.

They wanted the Germans to think the Canadians, the shock troops of the British Empire, were miles away in Flanders. Well, this deception campaign tops them all. This is Operation Fortitude, the deception campaign that preceded D-Day. And let me tell you, folks, it is an absolute rip-snorter. On the podcast to talk to me about it is Taylor Downey. He's a writer, historian, he's a producer. He made programs with me years ago when I was a little youngster. He's been on the pod before many times, most recently talking

about his book about 1942, Churchill's real darkest hour. But he's written another book now, The Army That Never Was, D-Day and the Great Deception. Here he is talking to us about Operation Fortitude. Enjoy. Hi, Taylor. Thanks for coming back on the podcast. You're welcome. Pleasure to be back with you. Well, this is quite a story, isn't it? There have been so many wonderful examples in the history of warfare about deception, haven't there, both in the Second World War and well beyond. But this has got to be one of the greatest examples of it, though.

Oh, I think so. I think without question, the scale, the scale of the deception, the ambition of inventing a huge army, hundreds of thousands of men that didn't exist with all its dummy landing craft and tanks and so on all the sort of things we'll talk about in a moment and what's been so fascinating researching this story is finding the story of these characters these very larger than life characters many of them actually very very conventional people from conventional backgrounds but who came up with some of the most wonderfully imaginative ideas. Ideas that, you know, when you read them, they read more like fiction than fact. It's been a lovely book to research and great stories to tell as we approach

the 80th anniversary of this huge turning point in the war. And on this podcast, we've talked about Operation Mincemeat, people you're familiar with, the man who never was, the body in the Mediterranean, and Dudley Clarke, who's been immortalised in Rogue Heroes. So we've talked about them. So deception was important in the Second World War, but they decided for this invasion of Europe to take it to the next level. Is that a reflection of just how difficult it was going to be

to make an opposed crossing of the English Channel? Well, I think it was the coming together of quite a few things, actually, Dan. I mean, partly, as you were saying, the British army, the British military had realised the fantastic success that deception could bring, mostly in North Africa, with the fantastic deceptions around the Battle of El Alamein that had confused the Germans and the Italians as to where the battle was going to come, where the focus of the battle was going to be, and indeed when it was going to come. They managed to deceive the Germans and the Italians into thinking that most of the British officers were away when the battle was launched. So there'd been the deception in El Alamein, as you just said, Operation Mincemeat,

the body washed up on the Spanish coast with details not of the attack on Sicily, which was going to happen, but actually the deception that it was all going to happen in Greece and Sardinia, and the fact that the Germans didn't reinforce their garrison on Sicily. So by the end of 1943, the Allies had really got to appreciate the value of what deception could do to help bring victory on the battlefield. And I think everybody knew, I mean, you know, it doesn't take a genius to know that the invasion of northern France, wherever it was going to come, was going to be the biggest operation pretty well of the war. And so this needed deception on a grand scale, something even bigger than had gone before. And when the deception planners first started

talking about it, you know, they asked themselves, can we actually do this? Is this possible? Is the scale of the ambition? Can we really create a pretend army of 300,000 plus men that just doesn't exist? How can we do that? So it was the biggest deception challenge for the sort of biggest military operation of the war to date. And what are the ways in which you deceive? I mean, it's presumably you can do so by sending information along intelligence routes, basically, so feeding spies information, but also you can actually just build giant theatre sets, right? Well, that's exactly right. And I mean, the story of the double agents

has been told a few times now, and it's a remarkable story. You know, these men from very, very different backgrounds who the Germans sent to spy on Britain and MI5 picked them up and turned them. And there are some wonderful stories about their activities in the run-up to D-Day. The Catalan chicken farmer, Joan Pujol Garcia, who we know as Garbo, the Polish army officer,

Roman Chaniowski, who was given the code name Brutus, the Yugoslav businessman, Popov, Tricycle. These people who are feeding information or misinformation or information written by MI5 straight into the German military intelligence establishment is one thing. So that's sort of human intelligence, as it's called, human. But the other form of intelligence that I've got quite into and excited by in writing the book is the building of these dummies that, as you say, dummy tanks, dummy landing craft, dummy aircraft. That wasn't done for the first time in the run-up to D-Day, but again, it was done on a much bigger scale in the run-up to D-Day. And who did the military turn to to come up with these dummies?

They initially tried the companies that produced the aircraft and the landing craft and the tanks themselves. And they tended to produce things that were massively over-engineered very very complicated designs and these are all to be seen by aircraft reconnaissance aircraft from above but for instance the people who built the first model dummy aircraft you know built really accurate versions of the wheels of the landing wheels underneath of course that's complete waste of time if you're photographing it from above you might as well just put it on a pile of milk bottles or something, you know, I mean, it just wasn't necessary. So quite quickly, the military realised that they needed to find somebody else, not the people who actually built the genuine tanks or aircraft or landcraft,

but somebody else to build these dummies for them. And they eventually turned to the film industry. What does the film industry do? Well, the props masters, the cameramen, the designers, the technicians, the carpenters, they produce things that look good on camera. That's exactly what they do. And that was what the military needed with its dummy tanks and dummy landing craft and so on. And a particular association was built up with Shepperton Studios, just to the west of London. Shepperton had been one of the big studio, complex studio bases before the Second World War,

producing lots of movies, developed quite a broad base of talented technicians and designers and so on. But when the war came, most of the British industry closed down. Shepparton was too near an aircraft, a Vickers Armstrong aircraft factory. It was actually bombed by the Germans who were aiming at the aircraft factory in 1940. So it was soon realised that it wasn't going to be a place to produce movies anymore. But there was still this pool of talent there, used to, as I say, disguising sets to look like the real thing. And so it was Shepperton that started to produce all the dummies that come 1944 were needed in huge numbers. And I think it's just rather lovely that Shepperton goes to war, not in producing celluloid fantasies, but actually in

producing the tanks and the landing craft that are going to deceive the Germans of the existence of this huge army in the southeast of England. And so the key thing is therefore not people wandering by on the narrow lanes of Kent and gossiping and somehow that all getting back by osmosis to occupied Europe to Germany, but it was specifically reconnaissance flight, German reconnaissance flights. And so they're still happening by this stage of the war. They're still nipping over and taking pictures of the British countryside. Well, yes and no. The RAF have pretty well complete aerial supremacy over the UK. But when they decide to invent this army in the southeast of England, the first US Army Group, as it was called, in Kent, Essex and Suffolk,

the areas where an invasion would be launched if it was going to attack across the shortest part of the channel. This was the basic concept, that they would pretend the invasion was not going to come in Normandy, but was going to come across this sort of narrow 20, 22 mile strip of the channel against the Pas de Calais. Where would an army assemble to launch that sort of invasion? Well, it would be from the southeast of England, as I say. So the first US Army group is invented as a completely fake unit to exist in the southeast. And I mean, over 250 large landing craft were produced. These are giant in 170 feet by 30 feet monsters, giant canvas and wood structures floating on

empty oil drums. Hundreds and hundreds of dummy tanks were produced and so on that were all basically canvas shapes around a metal frame. And you just brought in an air pump and inflated the whole thing. Churchill visited one of these at one point and saw four men lift up and carry away a tank, which amused him a great deal. You know, the tank that would have weighed 30 tons just becomes something like a toy that you can pick up and run around a field with. So all of this material is gathered in the southeast. And what they decide is they will follow a policy of discrete display. I think that's rather a nice phrase, discrete display. In other words, they will allow occasional German reconnaissance aircraft to sort of get through the defences

to photograph what appears to be going on 30,000 feet below. Whereas in the southwest of England, from sort of Hampshire, Portsmouth west Westwoods, where the British and the Americans were assembling for the real invasion, then that would happen with complete secrecy. There would be no allowance of reconnaissance aircraft to penetrate that area. The guys there who were assembling in their camps were told to use smokeless fuel so that there's no sign of sort of smoke coming up. They were told to use brown and green towels rather than white military towels so that they wouldn't be seen and so on. Whereas in the southeast, this pretend army, units were sent in to brew up every morning by their tanks and by their equipment

so that if an aircraft flew over, as they often did in the early part of the day, then they would see smoke coming up alongside. They were told to erect clotheslines and put out underclothes and towels on the line. So any aircraft flying over, taking an image, you know, and it's sort of thousands of a second image, would capture what looked like huge gatherings of men alongside the tanks to make it look as authentic as possible. So it wasn't that the Germans were able to just sort of break through willy-nilly. There was a certain element of control about where reconnaissance aircraft would be allowed to go. Again, very, very clever level of the deception, but an essential part to make it all work. No point doing all this if the Germans don't know about it. You listen to Dan Snow's history,

we're talking about the great deception of World War II. More coming up. I'm Matt Lewis. And I'm Dr. Alan Orjanaga. And in Gone Medieval, we get into the greatest mysteries. The gobsmacking details and latest groundbreaking research. From the greatest mysteries, the gobsmacking details and latest groundbreaking research from the greatest millennium in human history. We're talking Vikings, Normans, Kings and Popes, who were rarely the best of friends,

murder, rebellions, and crusades. Find out who we really were by subscribing to Gone Medieval from History Hit, wherever you get your podcasts. I was in Edinburgh the other day, and there's a little, as you know, very highly fortified island just in the Firth of Forth off Edinburgh, and it was mentioned when I was reading about it that that had been a centre for radio operations

during this gigantic misinformation, this deception campaign. And so presumably as well as physical objects for spotters to have a look at, there's sort of radio traffic. There has to be enough buzz around these places to make them seem real. Absolutely right.

Yes, that was an essential part of it. Whole signals units were allocated simply to generate the sort of radio traffic that an army of this size would naturally generate. So there are messages going sort of from pretend core headquarters to divisional headquarters, from divisional headquarters to brigade and so on down the line and then back the line. And again, these were done very imaginatively. You know, it wasn't just pretend exercise. You know, on the 15th, you will report or your unit will report here and do a dummy landing there and so on and so on.

There was also sort of gossip about officer promotions. And one very bright guy in one of the units started complaining about the lack of dentists in his unit and could something be done to supply more dentists. So when the Germans pick up on this, sometimes they actually were able to intercept the messages and listen in. Other times they just picked up the volume of traffic, of radio traffic that was being generated. But either way, it signified to the Germans, again, another way of indicating that huge numbers of men were assembling in the southeast of England. You mentioned Edinburgh because there was also another deception.

The south of England, the first US Army group deception was called Operation Fortitude South. But there was another operation called Operation Fortitude North. Get it? North, get it? Which was actually based in Edinburgh, which was another army, the 4th Army, under British command, was apparently gathering to attack Norway. And again, this was quite a successful operation, lots of different levels to it. There was no overflying there. There was no reconnaissance. German reconnaissance aircraft didn't operate over Scotland. So there was no need for sort of dummy tanks and all of that stuff. But there was the radio traffic, they were completely invented units. The Allied deceivers came up with, I think it was the 58th Highland Division, and they needed to find an insignia for it. So they invented the

insignia of two antlers, you know, which was sort of very appropriate for a Scottish Highland Division. So again, very detailed, very accurate. And what happened, the Germans have a large garrison in Norway, about 250,000 men, probably at least 100,000 more than they need to occupy Norway. But in the course of 1944, they don't remove a single soldier from Norway. All these soldiers that could have been fighting on the eastern front or could have been stationed somewhere in France, you know, sitting, eating Norwegian cheese and admiring the fjords and the mountains, completely wasting their time. So again, the Scottish deception campaign was another aspect of this huge operation before D-Day. There are so many stories around whether or not the Germans believed, fell for these deception campaigns. Your Norwegian garrison fact suggests they did believe that one. Do we have

evidence, for example, from Enigma decrypts or from the way the Germans were talking about their expectations? Do we think these deception campaigns worked? Yes, I think they certainly did. In the months before D-Day, in the couple of months before D-Day, there's a big debate amongst the German high command as to where the invasion is going to be, of course, and when it's going to come. We know that different commanders took different views at different times. Von Rundstedt, the overall commander of armies in the West, took the view that it was definitely coming in the Parc de Calais. Hitler, who, of course, can't forget the Fuhrer, was actually the commander in chief as well. So whatever he thought was going to be very significant, he took different views

at different times. At one point, he argued it was going to come in Brittany, then he thought it was going to come in Norway, then he said it was probably going to be the Pas de Calais. And I think probably looking back on that now, we can probably say that Hitler wanted to predict it will be anywhere. So wherever the invasion actually came, he could turn around and say, there, I told you so all along, you know, I said it was going to be Brittany or the part of KLA or whatever. But the critical piece of information, I think, that proves how successful Operation Fortitude, the deception operation was, was on the 27th of May. So we're talking just 10 days before the invasion itself, Hitler meets with the Japanese ambassador, Baron Hiroshi Oshima. I'm not sure I've got that pronunciation absolutely right, but

Japan, of course, is Hitler's closest ally at this point, and Oshima had had many meetings with the Fuhrer over the years. When they meet on the 27th of May, Hitler goes into a long, long explanation of what he thinks is going to happen. And he says very clearly to Oshima, he says, if the Allies invade in Brittany or Normandy, we know it's just going to be a feint, because the real invasion will be coming across the Pas-de-Calais sometime afterwards. Oshima, a good ambassador, makes a detailed note of his conversation, then sends that by wireless traffic to Tokyo. It's intercepted by the Americans who decode it, decipher it, and pass on the information. And the Allied deceivers, the deception planners, just cannot believe their luck. Here is Hitler. Here's the man at the top

actually falling rod line in sinker for the deception. He genuinely believes that wherever the invasion comes, it's only going to be a sideshow because the real one is going to come at the Pas de Calais. Of course, that's what the whole deception operation was about to do. The Germans had reinforced that part of the coast very heavily, the Atlantic Wall, you can still see bits of it today. They had a whole army there, the 15th Army, two panzer divisions and several infantry divisions. And the point of the deception plan was to keep those men, keep those troops in the Pas de Calais, keep them out of Normandy where the real battle was going to take place. And with Hitler saying, wherever they invade, we know the real show is coming in the Parc de Calais, is just what the Allies wanted to hear. The deception plan had been a

success. So my answer to your question, Dan, is that yes, it did succeed. And it went right to the top, right to Hitler himself, the deception, the concept behind the deception. And in the days that followed, the days and weeks that followed D-Day, the fact that all those troops were anchored and perhaps the gaze of the German high command was on the Pas de Calais, that must have, on the margins, that must have had a very useful effect. Absolutely. Yes, yes, indeed. I mean, we know D-Day itself, of course, was a great success. By the end of the day, 155,000 odd men are there with all their tanks and vehicles and support and everything else. But we know then that the battle to break out from Normandy

is one of the toughest battles of the Second World War. I mean, it's almost on First World War type level with lines of troops facing each other, battle-hardened troops from the Eastern Front, SS troops brought in. And the battle for Normandy is a very tough one. Had the 150,000 men who were twiddling their fingers in Calais, had they been sent in as well, I think it's quite possible to say that the Allied landings would have been reversed, would have been thrown off. So deception was absolutely vital to the planning and the operation of D-Day. And I argue it was absolutely essential. Its success was absolutely essential in the victories that followed.

We've established a background deception. What about the days and hours before H-Hour, before the actual launch of the invasion itself? There was quite a lot of activity going on in the Narrows, weren't there, in the Pas de Calais, the Dover Straits? So there's another part of the invasion itself, there was quite a lot of activity going on in the Narrows, weren't there, in the Pas-de-Calais, the Dover Straits? So there's another part of the deception planning, which is the sort of science of deception, if you like, or the scientific deception would be a better way of putting it.

They attack and largely destroy the 600 or so radio and radar transmitters that the Germans have along the coast, right from the southwest in the Biarritz region right the way up to the Norwegian coast so right the way along the north French coast the Belgian Dutch Danish coast and so on they've got radar stations all along the way and most of them have been destroyed by allied air attacks but again the allies have left one or two of these radar stations operating for a purpose, because the scientific deception is that they find this way of flying squadrons of aircraft, and it was 617 Squadron, the famous

dam busters, that by this part of the war were led by Leonard Cheshire, who flew very precision flying, dropping what the British call window, the Americans call chaff, which is aluminium foil. It's about half the length of the wavelength of the radar stations that they operate on. By dropping this window, as we called it, chaff, as the Americans did, it was able to look on the radar screens as though an enormous fleet supported by aircraft was actually crossing the channel. There was also something called moonshine, which was a way of reflecting the German radar signals back on themselves, suggesting a large armada was crossing. So in the run-up to the actual landings down in Normandy, on the Pas-de-Calais stretch

of coast, they've kept one or two stations, radar stations, operating so they can pick up these signals and predict that huge resources are coming across the channel towards the Pas-de-Calais. And, you know, on the morning of the 6th of June itself, Berlin radio, the German radio in Berlin, reports at 8 o'clock in the morning that landings are taking place. And where do they say those landings are taking place. And where do they say those landings are taking place? They report on the radio that the landings are happening in the Pas-de-Calais. Completely wrong, 200 miles away from the real landings. That's because the whole German sort of establishment was expecting them at that point, and these deceptions, these scientific deceptions, had already reported back that large fleets were coming across the

channel from the Kent coast to the Calais coast. I guess we should say that one other big piece of evidence, as I mentioned at the beginning, but General Patton, the Germans thought he was, what, probably the best Allied field commander, and so he was kept up there in southeast England, and that's a pretty powerful indicator where the focus would be. Yes, absolutely, yes. Once the Allies create this first US Army group, they allocate all these fictional units to it. They give it all this dummy equipment, tanks and landing craft, as we've been talking about. But really, to complete the picture, the first US Army group's got to have a commander,

got to have somebody who the Germans believe in could actually spearhead an invasion. And General Patton is around in Britain in the early months of 1944. He's in disgrace after a sort of series of slapping incidents where he, he breaks and actually physically abuses men who are suffering from what we would now call a post-traumatic stress disorder. This was in the Sicily campaign in the summer of 1943. You know, he threatens he's going to shoot them unless they go back into the line. So he's in disgrace. A lot of Americans said he should have been recalled to the United States, but Eisenhower keeps him on, hoping that a job will eventually come for him. And when they're looking to put somebody in command

of the first US Army group that seems the right sort of fellow, their point, Patton. Now, no doubt Patton would have rather been running in command of a real army planning for a real invasion. But actually, he plays the part very well. He's quite a showman, is Patton. And he parades around Kent and Essex. Everywhere he goes, he's surrounded by photographers. He makes lots of speeches to units that don't exist,

all of which are reported. He inspects armoured units that don't exist. On one or two occasions, he even met the king and the sort of king accompanied him on some of these inspections. And again, all this is picked up and reported through the double agents, reported sometimes in the press that the Germans pick up and say, aha, you see, they've got probably their best general, their best tank commander, they put in charge of this army group in Kent and the southeast of England. So it all adds the science, the dummy tanks and landing craft pattern parading around, followed by photographers everywhere he goes. It all adds to this picture of a huge army group, the Army That

Never Was, assembling in the southeast of England. Well, it's definitely one of the most important armies that's never existed in our history. So thank you, Taylor Downey, for coming on the podcast telling me all about it. What is the book called? The book is called The Army That Never Was, D-Day and the Great Deception. And it's been a real pleasure to write. It's great to have you back on the pod. Thank you very much, Dan.

Thank you for listening to that one. If you've enjoyed this series so far, please leave us a review or write and tell us which World War II battles or stories that took place between now and V-Day that you want us to cover. The email is ds.hh at historyhit.com. Join me on the 6th of June

for another incredible D-Day story. Against all odds, a band of brave airborne troops launched an astonishing glider-borne assault to capture the so-called Pegasus Bridge. It was led by the fearless Major John Howard, and their mission was to secure the eastern flank of the Normandy invasion zone, stop German counterattacks, and link up with Allied airborne troops that dropped further inland. It's an epic tale of courage and determination. It was a pivotal moment,

and it helped swing that particular battle in World War II. Our D-Day to Berlin series continues on June the 6th with the incredible story of Pegasus Bridge wherever you get your podcasts. you