The south of England
had become a vast military camp, jam-packed with
hundreds of thousands of soldiers, all planning on a trip to the Normandy
beaches in the early summer. The job of
the British Security Service, MI5, was to make sure that, on D-Day, the
Germans were looking the other way. If they failed,
tens of thousands of men would die. This episode
is sponsored by Wargaming! New players
can download World of Tanks and use the code NEPTUNE
for free goodies. Link in the description! In August 1942,
desperate to score a success in the face of an unending string
of military setbacks and defeats, the Allies carried out a daring raid
on the French port of Dieppe. But the Germans were ready for them,
fortified and prepared for the attack. It was an unmitigated disaster, leaving almost 4,000 Canadians
dead on the beaches. This catastrophe convinced everybody that when
the real invasion of France came, the Germans must not be prepared
for it, or D-Day would mean destruction. This was, of course,
going to be a little tricky. By 90 days after D-Day,
the US army alone planned to have 1.2 million men
with all of their equipment in France. You can't just hide that
under a bit of camouflage netting. And so was born Operation Fortitude, the most ambitious deception plan
in military history. The operation wouldn't pretend
that there was to be no invasion, that would be impossible.
Instead, their goal would be to fool the Germans about how many
were coming, when they would land, and where they would land. Army groups were positioned
around Britain to confuse the Germans. The British 4th army
was stationed in Scotland, supposedly preparing to attack Norway. General George Patton
became the proud commander of the 1st US Army Group stationed on the English coast
opposite the Pas de Calais, the closest crossing to France. The British 4th and the US 1st
were somewhat unusual armies in that there were
no actual people in them. They were completely fake,
made up, non-existent. The allies had no real soldiers to spare, they were all needed in France
for the ACTUAL invasion. So to get the Germans
to fall for this massive bluff, the film industry was called in. They created a brilliant illusion,
an entire dummy army, wooden aircraft, inflatable tanks,
250 fake landing craft. Two fake corps headquarters
were invented, pouring out
a constant stream of radio drivel. At one point, King George VI
even made an official inspection visit, solemnly inspecting row after row
of blow up tanks and real troops who had bussed in for the day, all while the daily news reel
broadcast this inspection to the world. George even managed
to look thoroughly impressed. And, because you might as well
go big or go home, this inflatable 1st US Army was
presented not just as a threat, but as the threat, the primary invasion force
to be launched at the Pas de Calais. The Germans already considered this the most likely destination
for the Allied attack; now the Allies just had to make sure the
Germans CONTINUED to believe that. And so was born
MI5's Twenty Committee, so called for the XX Roman Numerals…
Double Cross. Double Cross fed the Germans a
constant stream of highly credible intel, a combination of utter rubbish
and brilliant information delivered just too late to be useful. Back in 1939, the British had turned
a German agent into a double agent. He was pretty useless, but he had told
MI5 everything they needed to know about how the German secret service
communicated with their agents. The Twenty Committee
used this information to create an entire network of double agents. By D-Day,
Germany's network of spies in Britain was owned by the Twenty Committee. One agent was a Catalan,
code named GARBO. Garbo created a completely
fictitious network of 27 agents who bombarded the German embassy
in Madrid with messages, presenting an utterly convincing,
and utterly false, picture. The REAL attack, they said,
would come in the Pas de Calais; any other perceived invasions such as,
I don't know, Normandy, whatever, those were feints.
If you hear any guns or shouting, just relax, it's just the neighbours again.
Go back to bed. Garbo was good at his job. So good, in fact, that the Germans
awarded him with the Iron Cross for his invaluable services. But the danger was that even if they
fooled the Germans before the invasion, once the Allies landed,
the deception would be over. All German military strength in France
would be concentrated on Normandy; and the Allies would then no doubt
be driven back into the sea. So a series of new operations were
concocted to convince the Germans that other invasions would follow
the first all along the coast of France. Secrecy was critical. To help the invading forces, a complete photographic map
of all of the beaches was needed. The RAF and USAAF
ran hundreds of photographic missions, but they needed more. So the public were asked to send in
all of their holiday beach photos. Then the toy maker Chad Valley
was commissioned to take this intel and make a vast map
of the operational area in jigsaw puzzle form for easy mobility. The jigsaw map was delivered
by two men in two pieces, neither of them knew
which was the real one, and, once the delivery was complete, neither was allowed to leave
headquarters until D-Day was over. The British armed forces
were obsessive about security. They arranged for 30 members
of the women's Auxiliary Air Force to dress in civilian clothes and visit pubs close to where
the British commandos were staying. Their job: to flirt with the men
and try to get them to spill information about their mission. To everybody's amazement and delight,
the commandos kept quiet. MI5 still worried
that the news was out, though, and that the Germans
would be ready and waiting. Back in 1942, the crossword in the Daily Telegraph
newspaper had included a clue answered by the word "Dieppe", just one day before
the Dieppe raid had taken place. Worrisome. And now, on May 2nd, in the same crossword section
came the clue "One of the U.S.", and the answer was Utah, the code name for one of the beaches
the Americans were to land on. Then on the 22nd of May,
came the answer "Omaha", another beach, and then later
"Mulberry", "Overlord" and "Neptune". All code words
for various D-Day operations. Finally, MI5 descended in a fury
upon Leonard Dawe, the school master
who wrote these crosswords. Turns out that it was all just
an extraordinary series of coincidences. But the big question remained: had all
of this deception and secrecy worked? And how would the Allies know if it had? They needed to be able to read
German communications to be sure. The Germans used an extraordinarily
complex encoding system: Enigma. The codes were changed daily, and there were 159 million million million
possible permutations. German messages
should have been impossible to read. But the British thought
they could crack the code. They assembled a team of
brilliant mathematicians like Alan Turing at Bletchley Park to do it. Then the allies had a lucky break. In May 1941, a British ship
forced a German U-boat to the surface. The Germans abandoned their
sinking craft, but in the final moment, the British sailors managed to board and capture
the most unimaginable treasure: a completely intact
code machine and codebooks. Soon,
and for much of the rest of the war, the British were routinely
reading German messages. One estimate has suggested that
the intelligence gained from this find may have shortened the war
by more than 2 years. It was through that intelligence
the Allies learned that the Twenty Committee
had been stunningly successful. When the balloon finally went up,
every key German commander greeted the news of operations
in Normandy as an invasion, but not the invasion.
Critical German focus, men and material remained on
the Pas de Calais even after D-Day, confusing, slowing and weakening
the German response. It was little short of a miracle. And so D-Day began
for the British and Canadian forces. The British beaches
were called Gold and Sword, and the Canadian beach, Juno. Churchill had insisted on proper names
rather than silly code names, saying that no mother wanted
to hear that her son had given his life at the "Bunnyhug" landings. The British parachute drop,
despite massive confusion, achieved most objectives
in the face of incredible odds. 700 men
and a complete glider train of artillery were supposed to be sent
to capture a critical German battery. But when all of the equipment and
most of the men were lost in the landing, the 150 remaining soldiers, armed only with rifles and Sten guns,
took the battery none the less. It's 7:25am at Sword beach.
Mine clearing tanks thrash the sand, sappers run beside them
to disable mines and obstacles, frequently falling to enemy fire
along the way. Then come tanks and flamethrowers throwing themselves
at the German defences on the dunes. And only then come the landing craft
to release their cargos of men. In the chaos, the schedule
collapses in only half an hour. The beach has become a tangle of men,
machinery, twisted wreckage, a chaos of dead, dying and living. The air is filled with the roar of gunfire. Every moment is a drama of comedies,
tragedies and moments of heroism. But despite the cost, the landing
at Sword was remarkably successful. By 9:00pm, many units were off
the beaches and moving inland. At Juno, Canadian losses were heavier, but they soon broke through the coastal
defences, as did the British at Gold. The landing plan had worked
amazingly well, considering. Almost everywhere, the German
coast lines had been rolled up. And the allies had
complete control of the air. The Luftwaffe was nowhere to be seen. Now was the time to strike hard
and fast into the interior, to exploit the Germans' shock
and seize the vital objectives, including the major town of Caen.
There was a period of calm as men brewed up
to recover from the initial assault, and then they moved inland
to link up with the airborne units. Unfortunately, the beach heads
behind them were a massive traffic jam. The roads were chaos,
and their armour support was still fighting their way
through that traffic to reach them. And the Germans continued
to fight hard; key strongpoints resisted and slowed the British and Canadian
infantry's advance. At 6:00pm, a unit of
the King's Shropshire Light Infantry came under heavy fire 3 miles
short of Caen and dug in for the night. With little armoured support, pressing the attack and capturing
the town was not an option. That night, men lay across
a 60 mile stretch with their weapons, peering into a darkness
lit by flares, tracer and shells. D-Day had been a remarkable success; but as
elite German divisions approached, the fight for Normandy
was about to begin, and it would be
harder than any could imagine. Thanks again to Wargaming for
sponsoring this Extra History episode. If you happen to be
watching from Europe, check out
the Extra Credits' Choice Bundle in the World of Tanks premium shop.
Link in the description!
