Patton’s Ghost Army: BODYGUARD, and OPERATION FORTITUDE

In late 1943, Allied leaders Franklin D. Roosevelt, Winston Churchill, and Joseph Stalin decided in Tehran, Iran, from November 28th to December 1st, that the time had come for an invasion of the European continent, and that this operation was critical to the advancement of the war effort and to finally breaking Germany's hold on the lands that they had occupied. The decision was made due in large part to the fact that “the Germans had lost the initiative in Russia, had been forced from Sicily and were decisively engaged in Italy.” At the Tehran conference, plans were set into motion for the greatest military undertaking ever in the history of warfare, the amphibious invasion of Nazi-occupied Europe.

The invasion plan was to be code named OPERATION OVERLORD and its objective was the invasion and conquest of Nazi-occupied France. The logic for selecting Normandy was pointed out by Bevin Alexander, author of the book, How Wars Are Won when he noted that any landing the Allies undertook would have to fall within the umbrella of available fighter cover which was 200 miles making Normandy a perfect choice. However, before the Allies could invade Fortress Europe, a plan for deceiving the Germans and misdirecting their fortifications had to be undertaken. This deception campaign was to be called BODYGUARD and under this umbrella were the deception operations code named OPERATIONS FORTITUDE NORTH and FORTITUDE SOUTH. In relation to Patton’s command of the 1st U.S. Army Group, (FUSAG) many have opined that the placement of Patton in charge of FUSAG was designed to keep the Germans concentrated on Patton’s movements and off the real plans of the Allies, this was not necessarily true. While the German high command considered Patton an important and respected Allied commander, Patton was not a major selling point for the Germans in reaction to OPERATION FORTITUDE.

From its beginning stages, the planning for OPERATION OVERLORD had always included plans for a deception operation. In April 1943, British Lieutenant General Fredrick E. Morgan was assigned as the Chief of Staff to Supreme Allied Commander designated (COSSAC) where, on April 26th, he began the planning for OPERATION OVERLORD including the initial planning for OPERATION FORTITUDE. In the plans for OPERATION OVERLORD, General Morgan; had included;

a short paragraph stressing three salient points: first, the German high command must be induced “to believe that the main assault and follow-up will be in or east of the Pas de Calais area”; second, the enemy must be kept “in doubt as to the date and time of the actual assault”; third, after D-Day, FORTITUDE must “contain the largest possible German land and air forces in or east of the Pas de Calais area for at least fourteen days

Part of the stated purpose of the deception plan BODYGUARD, and by proxy OPERATIONs FORTITUDE NORTH and SOUTH was to;

Persuade the enemy to dispose his forces in areas where they can cause the least interference with OPERATIONS OVERLORD [the Normandy invasion] and ANVIL [the invasion of Southern France] and with operations on the Russian front, and tactical[ly], to deceive the enemy as to the strength, timing and objective of OVERLORD and ANVIL

General Morgan and his staff finished up the plans for OPERATION OVERLORD and submitted them for review in July 1943. From this point forward, the planning for OPERATION FORTITUDE was turned over to OPS-B group under British Lieutenant Colonel John Jervis-Reed. This group would later be renamed Committee of Special Means (CSM) with Special Means activities under the direction of British Colonel Roger F. Hesketh. The final merger of command structure took place when General Dwight D. Eisenhower took command of the Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force (SHAEF) in January 1944. SHAEF absorbed COSSAC and “relationships were formalized between SHAFE Ops-B/CSM, British Intelligence (MI-5 and MI-6), American Joint Security Control (JSC), the XX-committee (double-cross committee) and the London Controlling Section (LCS)”.

While all this strategic planning was underway, personnel had to be moved into place to control and command these operations. This started in January 1944, as mentioned above, with the appointment of General Eisenhower as the Supreme Commander of Allied Forces in Europe. In addition to Eisenhower, Lieutenant General Omar Bradley, who had been in place since October 1943 commanding the U.S. First Army was present, along with British Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery who had arrived in early January 1944 and took charge of the British 21st Army Group. Major General George Patton arrived in London later, on January 26th, having been sent on a tour from Corsica, to Malta, and then on to Cairo with four of his staff officers by Eisenhower on October 28, 1943. This “tour” was ostensibly set up by U.S. Commanding General George Marshall to gauge the Germans’ interest in Patton’s movements. Patton was also not on Eisenhower’s good side due to the incident where Patton was visiting a field hospital in Sicily and slapped a soldier suffering from battle fatigue and this “tour” that he was sent on was in great part to keep Patton out of the limelight for a while. From the Germans’ perspective, Patton was just a “blip in the noisy pattern of very dangerous enemy commanders” and to be totally honest, not one of the more important blips. Montgomery’s defeat of German Field Marshal Rommel in North Africa and General Zhukov’s repelling of German forces from penetrating into Moscow were much more important to the Germans. However, General Marshall and the other commanders in Washington, D.C. thought Patton garnered enough attention to successfully hold the Germans’ attention in command of OPERATION FORTITUDE SOUTH.

Meanwhile, at SHAEF headquarters in London, the plans for the deception operations of OPERATION FORTITUDE were in full swing. The British “Twenty (XX) Committee” were deep into executing and planning many methods of deception to include what was termed the “Double Cross System”. The “Double Cross System” entailed British intelligence turning German intelligence agents in England to work for the British Secret Intelligence Service (MI6) through the British Security Service (MI5) (explained in more detail later). In being able to control the German agents, the British could skillfully manipulate the information the agents reported to Berlin and thereby could control what the German High Command knew or did not know about the upcoming invasion. With the XX Committee lay the “impressive radio (wireless) deception plan” which was the genesis for creation of the Patton’s ghost army, the First U.S. Army Group (FUSAG). In a quiet deal struck between Patton and Eisenhower, Patton agreed to “take command of the fictional army and stay out of trouble, and when the U.S. Third Army actually invaded France, he’d be given the reins”. Another form of deception which the XX Committee used was what was called the “closed loop deception system” which allowed them to not only feed false information to the Germans but also to gauge the extent to which the Germans believed the information. Tavares explains the mechanics of the “closed loop system” by stating:

To do this, the XX Committee first fabricated information to be fed to the double agents and to the wireless deception units. The agents then passed the information to their German controllers whose wireless units broadcast the lies, anticipating German Radio Intelligence interception. As the information filtered up through the convoluted German intelligence system, the XX Committee was able to use Ultra intercepts of the Enigma-coded messages, allowing them to evaluate the effect of the deception stories and modify those stories that the Germans did not believe. (Ultra was the security caveat given to the system of decrypting the German coded messages. Enigma was the brand name of the actual coding machine.).





From its inception, BODYGUARD and its supporting plans were built around five strategic themes/lies;

That the Allies firmly believed they could eliminate Germany's warfighting ability through heavy bombing alone (OPERATION POINTBLANK);

That to gain access to Germany, the Allies would attack in the spring of 1944 via Norway;

That the Allies intended to improve support to on-going operations in Italy and the Eastern Front by launching supporting attacks against the Balkans

That Russia would not launch a major summer offensive in the Eastern Front until July 1944.

That the British and Americans believed that "Fortress Europe" was so well defended that it would take at least 50 Allied divisions to assault it .

Using these themes/lies was the basis for all the plans that were executed in relation to the buildup for the real invasion at Normandy in June 1944. The Allies knew from early on that any successful plan for the invasion of the European mainland would have to involve denial and deception on a massive scale to keep the Germans from massing their forces strategically to block the invasion. As Donovan explained, “In total, OPERATION BODYGUARD would consist of more than 35 subordinate plans and operations all focused on the common goal of paralyzing the ability of the Germans to react to Allied actions in a decisive and effective manner”.

For the execution of OPERATION FORTITUDE to be successful, there were three primary objectives which had to be met:

Deceive the Germans about the timing and location of the Allied invasion and make them believe that Norway was the initial target of any invasion from the United Kingdom.

When it was impossible to hide the buildup of forces in Southern England, convince the Germans that the invasion site was to be the Pas de Calais area.

Once forces began landing at Normandy, convince the Germans that the Normandy landing was a deception.

FORTITUDE-NORTH would orient on accomplishing objective 1 while FORTITUDE SOUTH

would focus on satisfying objectives 2 and 3.

One vital element of OPERATION FORTITUDE was kept classified for some 40 years after the war ended. That element was part of Patton’s fictitious FUSAG, the 23rd Headquarters Special Troops – The Ghost Troops. The 23rd was supported by the 603rd Engineer Camouflage Battalion which was responsible for all the inflatable dummy trucks, airplanes, tanks and other equipment needed to keep the German aerial reconnaissance off balance and the 3132nd Signal Service Company which was responsible for the “audio trickery” including fake radio traffic, tank sounds, troop drill sounds and other forms of sounds meant to simulate the sounds a real unit would make. The idea of the 23rd was to use all three weapons at their disposal, visual, sonic, and radio, to the best use and to make each performance “spot on”. In the conduct of their duties, the men of The Ghost Troops periodically moved some of the mocked-up tanks and trucks, and created tracks in the fields to make it look as if they were moved, conducted routine, but false, radio traffic which they knew would be intercepted by German intelligence, and generally made it appear to any spies or anyone else who came into the area that actual operations of the FUSAG were taking place.

Another vital component of the deception strategies of OPERATION FORTITUDE was the “Double Cross System”, explained earlier, which entailed British intelligence turning German intelligence agents to work for MI6 through MI5. This system of turning German agents into double agents had actually begun several years before the invasion of Normandy or OPERATION FORTITUDE were ever considered. In 1938, a German agent named Arthur Owens offered his services as a double agent to MI5 and was designated Agent SNOW. Agent SNOW’s loyalties were sometimes questioned by his handlers but his importance was that he laid the groundwork for recruitment of future German agents. Following this plan, by August 1940, every German agent in England was a British-controlled double agent, and. they passed on only the information, real or faked, that the British wanted them to.

It was from these beginnings that the German double agent network would be formed. However, one of the most valuable double agents the British ever had actually volunteered for the duty. The man who was destined to become one of the most successful double agents (codenamed GARBO) working for the British was “Juan Pujol was a Catalonian Spaniard who was forced to join the Republican Army during the Spanish Civil War, though he did so with the intent of deserting to the Nationalists at the first opportunity”. As it turned out, Pujol was equally as antagonistic toward Nazism and Communism as he was toward the Spanish Republican Army which made him the perfect agent for the British. Pujol convinced the Germans that he wanted to work for them spying on the British in Lisbon but the Germans would only accept him if he could make his way to England and spy from there. Pujol had no way of making it to England so he set up shop in Madrid and started sending fabricated messages to the German intelligence agency, the Abwehr. The British later intercepted messages sent from Madrid to Berlin which they knew were total fabrications. Pujol finally convinced MI5 that he would be a good double agent because he had the total trust of the Abwehr so the British took Pujol to England where he became Agent GARBO. GARBO spent the war providing Germany with the same bogus messages he had started in Spain but only now he was working for the British against Germany.

Even though everyone concerned, including the Germans, knew that any successful attack and invasion of occupied France from England by the Allied Forces would occur at one of three strategic locations, Pas-de-Calais, Normandy, or the Cherbourg Peninsula, the actions undertaken as part of OPERATION FORTITUDE proved invaluable in providing deception and denial of the actual location long enough for the Allies to be successful. The strategies of OPERATION FORTITUDE NORTH and SOUTH were successful in the deception that they were meant to create for the German Army and the German High Command in Berlin. Because of the deceptions created by OPERATION FORTITUDE the Germans built many bunkers and reinforced the Atlantic Wall along the Côte d’Opale, in Pas-de-Calais and directly after the Normandy invasion had already happened, fearing a massive invasion in the Pas-de-Calais area, Hitler cancelled movement orders for the 1st Panzer Division to Normandy and held back seven other offensive divisions to defend Pas-de-Calais.

However, not all the German command hierarchy had been fooled by OPERATION FORTITUDE. Field Marshal Erwin Rommel reported to Berlin in late May 1944 “From the Allied point of view, the number one objective is to get firmly ashore. This is improbable on the Pas de Calais coast, which is strongly defended, but is possible on the Normandy coast which is barely fortified”. It is fortuitous that Hitler did not agree with Rommel or the invasion of Normandy could have gone horribly wrong.

Overall, OPERATION FORTITUDE accomplished most all the goals that were set for it from the inception of the plan as a part of OPERATION OVERLORD. Even judging OPERATION FORTITUDE by modern standards, it passes muster. Current guidance for military deception operations includes the following principles:

Focus: The deception must target the adversary decision-maker,

Objective: The objective of the deception must be to cause an adversary to take (or not take) specific actions.

Centralized Control: A deception operation must be directed and controlled by a single element.

Security: Knowledge of the intent to deceive and the execution of that intent must be denied to the adversary.

Timeliness: Deception operation requires careful timing.

Integration: Each deception must be fully integrated with the basic operation it is supporting.

Judging by these standards, OPERATION FORTITUDE fulfilled these requirements in every way which was quite an achievement for its day. Considering that it was written over 74 years ago, the level of command and control, combined with flawless execution is why this operation is still studied by military commanders around the globe.

Works Cited

Balkoski, Joseph. “A Bodyguard of Lies: Operation Fortitude Fools the Germans.” The Liberation Trilogy website. Retrieved from http://liberationtrilogy.com/the-road-to-d-day/a-bodyguard-of-lies/. Accessed on February 20, 2017.

Barbier, Mary. D-day Deception: Operation Fortitude and the Normandy Invasion. Westport, Conn: Greenwood Publishing Group, 2007. eBook Collection (EBSCOhost), EBSCOhost. Accessed February 19, 2017.

Beyer, Rick. “Attack of the Ghost Army.” WW2 Live website. Retrieved from http://ww2live.com/en/content/world-war-2-attack-ghost-army-rick-beyer. Accessed February 20, 2017.

“D-Day Deception.” History.com website. Online video, 3 min 24 secs, Retrieved from http://www.history.com/topics/world-war-ii/d-day/videos/d-day-deception. Accessed February 20, 2017.

Donovan, Michael J. “Strategic Deception: Operation Fortitude.” Retrieved from www.dtic.mil/cgi-bin/GetTRDoc?AD=ADA404434. Accessed February 20, 2017.

Joint Chiefs of Staff. “Joint Pub 3-58 Joint Doctrine for Military Deception.” (Washington, D.C.: 1996), A-2. Retrieved from https://fas.org/irp/doddir/dod/jp3_58.pdf. Accessed February 21, 2017.

Kloeber, Leonard, Jr. “Operation Fortitude: The Art of Deception.” Victory Principles website. Retrieved from http://www.victoryprinciples.com/2010/03/operation-fortitude-the-art-of-deception/. Accessed February 20, 2017.

“Operation Fortitude.” World War II Heritage website. Retrieved from http://www.worldwar2heritage.com/en/timeline-details/14/Operation-Fortitude. Accessed February 20, 2017.

Soniak, Matt. “FUSAG: The Ghost Army of World War II.” Mental Floss website. Retrieved from http://mentalfloss.com/article/30447/fusag-ghost-army-world-war-ii. Accessed February 20, 2017.

Tavares, Ernest S. “Operation Fortitude: The Closed-Loop D-Day Deception.” Retrieved from http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/pais/people/aldrich/vigilant/tavares_fortitude.pdf.

Yeide, Harry. Fighting Patton. Osceola: Zenith Press, 2011. Accessed February 19, 2017. ProQuest Ebook Central.

Deadline is approaching?

Wait no more. Let us write you an essay from scratch

Receive Paper In 3 Hours
Calculate the Price
275 words
First order 15%
Total Price:
$38.07 $38.07
Calculating ellipsis
Hire an expert
This discount is valid only for orders of new customer and with the total more than 25$
This sample could have been used by your fellow student... Get your own unique essay on any topic and submit it by the deadline.

Find Out the Cost of Your Paper

Get Price