Customer Reviews

D-Day Deception: Operation Fortitude and the Normandy Invasion (Stackpole Military History Series)

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While I agree with a previous reviewer that this book is possibly just a rehash of a PhD dissertation, a common practice; I fail to see how, if that is the case, it ever passed a dissertation review committee. It is missing the key element that would test the validity of its premise that this operation was instrumental in the D-Day success-that of research in German military archives.

If I were trying to determine whether a military operation of deception was successful I would ask the recipients of the deception, not the deceivers. It's impossible to judge the depth of the pro and con of this argument without an equal approach to well documented history.

I am bewildered, and do not accept Ms Barbier's explanation that she can't read German. There are translated documents available.

The author challenges the widely held view that the Fortitude deception operation was completely successful and without it the allies would have been defeated in Normandy.Parts of the deception ,like the radio transmissions and the fake barges didn't register with the Germans .Real problems like limited motor transport and the poor state of the French railways hampered the movement of German units rather than the deception plan.Some of the reviewers who have given this book a low score should realize that the British official history `' British intelligence in the Second World'' vol 3 part 2 and vol 5 says the same thing.

This is a comprehensive review of the D-Day FORTITUDE deception plans, their execution and the German reaction to them. It is written in the style and language of a Phd dissertation. As to the Allied view of FORTITUDE, the book adds little to that provided in Hesketch's FORTITUDE and Brown's BODYGUARD of LIES. It's main contribution is to summarize the German reaction to the deceptions. The author also concludes the deceptions were not a large contributor to Allied D-Day success, a conclusion different from many of the Allied participants and commanders. Also, the book uses very small type which is difficult to read.

D-DAY DECEPTION: OPERATION FORTITUDE AND THE NORMANDY INVASION
MARY KATHRYN BARBIER
PRAEGER, 2008
HARDCOVER, $49.95, 269 PAGES, BIBLIOGRAPHY, NOTES, GLOSSARY, PHOTOGRAPHS


When the Allied authorities began to plan Operation OVERLORD, the Normandy landings, they accepted that they couldn't hope to conceal that the main Allied objective in 1944 was a cross-Channel invasion. In the second half of 1943, under plan COCKADE, they had simulated threats to Boulogne and Brittany and also to Norway, but the Germans hadn't been impressed. In Plan JAEL, an early sketch for deception during 1944, they toyed with the opposite thesis that the Allies hoped to bring about Germany's collapse by bombing Germany and pursuing operations in Italy and the Balkans. But they abandoned JAEL at the end of 1943 because they believed that the Allied buildup in the United Kingdom would deprive this thesis of all credibility by spring. The Plan BODYGUARD, which was adopted in January, 1944, retained the JAEL thesis but introduced the need to concentrate on deceiving the Germans as to the time, place, and scale of OVERLORD: a cross-channel assault, it suggested, would require fifty divisions, and even if the Allies could launch it in 1944, they would be unable to do so before late summer.

A detailed plan for OVERLORD called FORTITUDE, which was adopted on 23 February, took advantage of knowledge gleaned from Signals Intelligence or SIGNIT and other intelligence that the Germans were giving priority to the threat to the Pas de Calais and exaggerating the number of Allied divisions in the United Kingdom. FORTITUDE was divided into two phases. Up to the actual D-Day, FORTITUDE NORTH wouild suggest that landings in the Pas de Calais wouldn't be made until July, after the Allies had carried out diversionary operations in northern Norway in conjunction with Soviet Russia and in northern Norway in conjunction with assistance from Sweden; the landings would initially use six divisions and build up to fifty. After D-Day, FORTITUDE SOUTH would stress that the landings in Normandy were a feint, the main assault force being held back for the descent on the Pas de Calais.

Supplementing FORTITUDE was the Plan ZEPPLIN. This aimed to suggest that, as the Allies couldn't hope to carry out OVERLORD before late summer, if at all, they would meanwhile undertake large-scale operations in the Mediterranean toward the Balkans, initially from Italy and later through Crete and the Peloponnese. In May, these projects gave way to the simulation of threats to southern France and Bordeaux.

The plans were implemented through bogus radio traffic, the display of dummy tanks, planes, and installations to mislead German aerial reconnaissance, and double agents who conveyed a skillfully orchestrated stream of false reportrs on Allied int5entions and order of battle diectly to the Abwehr, the intelligence directorate of the German Commander-in-Chief West. A considerable effort had to be made to support the information reaching the Germans through these channels with diplomatic initiatives and opeational deception. Thus, actual requests for facilities were made to Sweden, Spain, and Turkey, while during the preliminary bombing campaign against communications, bases, and defenses in France and the Low Countries, the Allies attacked two targets outside the OVERLORD area for every one in it.

The plans depended for their credibility on the fact that, as the Allies knew from signals intelligence, the Germans were unable to check false reporting because of the poverty of their intelligence. In particular, they couldn't correct the greatly exaggerated notion of the Allied order of battle that deception had built up for them since 1942. The Germans believed that there were fifty-five divisions in the United Kingdom in January (actual: thirty-four) and seventy-nine in May (actual: fifty-two), and their estimates for the Mediterranean were almost equally inflated.

The deception program wasn't wholly successful. Of the several largely fictional army groups and armies in the United Kingdom and the Mediterranean to which the Germans gave credence, only the First U.S. Army Group (FUSAG), which they thought waited between the Thames and the Wash Rivers under General George S. Patton, Jr., seriously worried them. FUSAG was highly suitable for its fictional role. It had been set up as a skeleton headquarters in the United Kingdom in October, 1943 with the intention that it would assume command of the American armies in France after the consolidation of the lodgment area. This task was transfered to the 12th U.S. Army Group and FUSAG's fictional role was built up when signals intelligence revealed that the Germans had located FUSAG in the United Kingdom and were associating it with General Patton.

Historians analyzing the Normandy invasion frequently devote some discussion to Operation FORTITUDE. Although they admit that FORTITUDE NORTH didn't accomplish all that the Allied deception planners had hoped, many historians heap praise on FORTITUDE SOUTH, using phrases such as, "unquestionably the greatest deception in military history." Many of these historians assume that the deception plan played a crucial role in the June, 1944 assault.

In D-DAY DECEPTION: OPERATION FORTITUDE AND THE NORMANDY INVASION author Mary Kathryn Barbier has done a re-examination of the sources and suggests other factors contributed as much, if not more, to the Allied victory in Normandy and that Allied forces could have succeeded without the elaborate deception created by the London Controlling Section of LCS. Moreover, the persistent tendency to exaggerate the operational effect of FORTITUDE on the German military performance at Normandy continues to draw attention away from the other, technical/military reasons for the German failures there.



Lt. Colonel Robert A. Lynn, Florida Guard
Orlando, Florida

I happen to know more than the average person about decpetion in WW2, and have read through the entire FORTITUDE plans. I can say that decption is a difficult subject to tackle due to the classifications and unavailability of information. That is not the problem here.

However, this book shows serious flaws about some basic miolitary natters, as well as well readily available decption material. First, I am totally stunned that every illustration int he book is of one of the American inflatible vehicle decoys which played no part what so ever in FORTITUDE. The only decoys utilized were landing craft and aircraft.

The book is heavily skewed to the British side of thgins (to be fair they did run most of it), but the role of the American 23rd Special Troops is totally incorrect, and the Senior American Decption Officer (Col. Billy Harris) is mentioned once when he is apointed and then forgotten. This is topped off by much about the British troops building the decoy landing craft, but not one mention of the American 602nd Engineers who were awarded a unit cittation for the speed and quality of their work.

There are some minor issues that might be chalked up to editorial problems General Crow instead of Grow, and Rhine ferries instead of rhino ferries, but when the German 91st Air-landing Division is called a luftwaffe unit it shows there is a problem.

One of the main theories put forth as to why the Germans did not reinfoce Normandy was there were no decent transportation routes left after allied bombing. Interesting theory, however previously we are shown how no units were to be moved without Hitler's direct permission, and he was not known for worrying about such matters. If he wanted a unit moved it was ordered to be moved.

I just cannot help but feel the author, who seems to have tried, just does not have the period military backlground to get involved with such a complcated subject.

D-Day Deception explores one of the myth's of World War II. The myth is that the Allies won the battle of D-Day by fooling the Germans through a plan of deception. Dr. Barbier explores all angles of this myth.

Her conclusion is particularly interesting. She proves that the Germans accepted to some degree the misinformation that D-Day was not the main invasion. However, in the end the military situation dedicated the German response. Allied air power did more to slow the German response to the invasion of France that General Patton sitting home in England with the "real" invasion force.

D-Day Deception raises the question about just how many myths about World War II are accepted as the truth. Hopefully, Dr. Barbier will be willing to tackle more of these World War II myths.