World War II

The Allies' Deceptive Tactics

During the war, both sides employed numerous operations and missions aimed at deceiving the enemy. Operation Bodyguard was an Allied plan launched during the buildup to the 1944 D-Day invasion of Normandy. The actual goal was to mislead the German command about the location and date of the invasion. Axis leaders—especially Adolf Hitler—were well aware that some form of invasion was likely to happen as a result of their actions in the region. As a result, coastal defenses were not particularly strong as Hitler aimed to defend every part of Europe from a possible attack. By convincing Hitler that Normandy was just a diversion, it would deflect crucial manpower from that area and make the invasion far easier on Allied soldiers. The Allied forces were successful in convincing Axis leaders that the invasion would come later and that it would be far more likely to occur through the [Page 949]Pas-de-Calais, Balkans, or Norway. Once the invasion began in Normandy, Hitler still refused to move all troops from Pas-de-Calais, thinking that the Normandy landing was just a diversion. This was one of the most—if not the most—successful missions of World War II.

Operation Copperhead was run by British forces and inspired by the 1943 movie Five Graves to Cairo. Its mission was to contribute to the success of Operation Bodyguard by misleading German intelligence about the whereabouts of General Bernard Montgomery. Because Montgomery was a field marshal and one of the more well-known Allied leaders, German intelligence expected him to play a key role in any invasion. So British troops arranged a body double and had him make a series of high-profile appearances in Gibraltar and Algiers leading up to the invasion. The British hoped that if the Germans saw someone they thought was Montgomery in those locations, they would assume an invasion must not be imminent. While there is no clear proof that the operation had any great impact, it is one of the more creative efforts to deceive the enemy witnessed in World War II.

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