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D-Day’s Black Barrage Balloon Operators and Other Lesser Known WWII Facts

Khalid Elhassan November 11, 2019 27 min

2. The Massive Allied Deception Campaign to Wrong-Foot the Germans

The amphibious invasion of France in WWII in the teeth of German resistance was going to be a risky affair – one that could easily end in disaster for the Allies. Landing troops in Normandy would just be the start of it. Ultimate success would depend on whether the Allies would be able to pour enough troops into their Normandy beachhead to make it invulnerable to counterattack, or whether the Germans would be able to nip the beachhead in the bud. The Germans had many troops in France, and powerful panzer divisions near Normandy that could be concentrated against the Allied beachhead before it was secure. It was going to be iffy, so before giving the go-ahead for D-Day, the Allies’ supreme commander in Europe, General Dwight D. Eisenhower, prepared a statement accepting all responsibility in case of failure.

Time for an Allied buildup in Normandy was going to be a precious commodity. To buy that time, Allied intelligence came up with Operation Bodyguard, a multifaceted and complex plan to deceive Hitler about the time and location of the invasion of Europe in 1944. The plan had three goals. First, conceal the actual time and date of the invasion. Second, convince the Germans that the main invasion would land in the Pas de Calais. Third, convince the Germans after the Normandy landings to maintain a strong defense in the Pas de Calais for at least two weeks, rather than send its defenders to Normandy.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.