Normandy, Allied Invasion of

Allied forces invaded the beaches at Normandy, France, on June 6, 1944, surprising German commanders who anticipated landings at the Pas-de-Calais, France, the narrowest point of the English Channel. The success of the invasion followed years of British and American planning for Operation Overlord and two lesser-known cover efforts code-named Operation Bodyguard and Operation Fortitude.

In 1943, planners at the Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force (SHAEF) realized that the German command would anticipate and plan for an invasion of Europe, so the Allies needed to influence German planning. The London Controlling Section commanded by Colonel John Bevan and the chief of staff of SHAEF, General Frederick Morgan, devised a deceptive invasion plan: Operation Fortitude, which shadowed the real Allied invasion plan. Allied planners sought to make the German command believe that the attack at Normandy was a diversion and the attack would come elsewhere. This would tie up large numbers of German forces and allow the Allied landings to get a firm hold on the beachhead before the Germans realized their mistake.

Operation Bodyguard was designed to tie up German forces in four separate areas so they couldn't group in one place. Allied diversions led Germans to believe that invasions would come in Scandinavia, the Pas-de-Calais, the eastern Mediterranean, and the south of France in the late summer and that the Allied priority was on air offensives.

Operation Fortitude South at Pas-de-Calais was created to appear as the real location of the [Page 724]attack and to lead the Germans to believe that the Normandy landings were just a diversion. Allied planners used Ultra messages to confirm the successful acceptance of information by the Germans; Ultra was an intelligence program that enabled the Allies to decode and read German war communications. The diversion at Calais included false orders of battle and published division and corps dispatches of nonexistent airborne troops. A false First U.S. Army Group was activated under General George Patton, who was seen in public as often as possible.

German reconnaissance found dummy encampments along the east coast of England that included false radio traffic to attract German signal units, and fake equipment that looked like convoys and other heavy trucks. Additional bombing of the Pas-de-Calais area contributed to the diversion. These operations were collectively called Operation Quicksilver and effectively masked the real invasion forces building up in western England. The success of this operation was due to the inability of the Germans to verify by air reconnaissance the information they received because of Allied air superiority in Germany.

Phase two of the plan, Operation Fortitude North, involved making the Germans believe the invasion would take place in the Scandinavian countries. The Germans anticipated a landing in the autumn of 1944, and the purpose of this operation was to convince the Germans that a cross-channel invasion would not be attempted. Instead, Allied forces would move from the northern areas of Scotland and Ireland and invade German-occupied Norway. Agents also made sure that the Germans believed that Allied bombing runs had precedence over a land invasion. This operation was successful in that it kept over 300,000 Germans stationed in Norway until the end of the war.

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