The Army That Never Was E-Book

Taylor Downing

• Herausgeber: Icon Books
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 509

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2024

Beschreibung

On 29 May 1944 General George S. Patton gave a speech in the south-east of England to the men of his Army in which he spoke of the American desire to win and of how losing was hateful to Americans. As he rose to his crescendo, he said how much he 'pitied those sons of bitches we are going up against - by God, I do'. On that same day General Omar Bradley gave a calmer speech in Somerset to the men of his Army about how much rested on the upcoming invasion of northern France and how vital their role was in achieving victory. Apart from the very different tones of the speeches reflecting the opposite character of the two Army commanders, there was another big difference. Bradley was speaking to men who in a little over a week would be splashing ashore on the beaches of Normandy. Patton was addressing an Army that didn't exist. The Army That Never Was tells the story of the biggest deception operation of the Second World War - the plan to mislead the Germans into thinking that the invasion of Europe would come at the Pas de Calais, by inventing an entirely fake Army group in the south-east of England. Full of fascinating characters from the US, Britain and Germany, this compelling and propulsive narrative explores one of the most remarkable stories of the Second World War.

Leseprobe

 

Also by Taylor Downing

1942 – Britain at the Brink

1983 – The World at the Brink

Breakdown

Secret Warriors

Night Raid

The World at War

Spies in the Sky

Churchill’s War Lab

Olympia

Cold War (with Sir Jeremy Isaacs)

Battle Stations (with Andrew Johnston)

Civil War (with Maggie Millman)

The Troubles (as Editor)

 

 

Published in the UK and USA in 2024 by

Icon Books Ltd, Omnibus Business Centre,

39–41 North Road, London N7 9DP

email: [email protected]

www.iconbooks.com

ISBN: 978-183773-157-2

ebook: 978-183773-159-6

Text copyright © 2024 Taylor Downing

The author has asserted his moral rights.

No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, or by any means, without prior permission in writing from the publisher.

Typesetting by SJmagic DESIGN SERVICES, India

Printed and bound in the UK

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This book has been immensely enjoyable to research and write as it deals with so many remarkable characters and so many stories that read more like fiction than fact. The accounts of the complex planning for the invasion of Europe and of the actual assault on D-Day and what followed are amongst the most powerful in the Second World War. And the inventiveness and creativity of the deception teams has been a magnificent story to tell. But as always the historian is reliant upon the support and encouragement of the archivists who store, preserve and make accessible the raw material of history.

I would like to thank especially Andrew Richards at the Imperial War Museum who pointed me in the direction of many memoirs and personal accounts of those caught up in the deception campaigns around D-Day. The IWM archives are still second to none when it comes to researching the world wars. The archivists at the National Archives in Kew are always courteous and efficient and I’m grateful to them all. The material held at the Mass Observation Archive at the Keep in Sussex is a rich source for anyone studying the social aspects or reactions to events in the Second World War. And the role of the photo interpreters at RAF Medmenham is crucial in understanding the deception operations around D-Day. The Medmenham Collection is lucky in having Ruth Pooley and Tim Fryer providing access to the treasure trove of material about aerial photography and photo intelligence in the Second World War.

I’m grateful to several friends and colleagues who over the years have helped and inspired me in discovering D-Day stories. Among many others they include Sir Jeremy Isaacs, David Edgar, Chris Going, Paul Nelson and James Barker.

I’m grateful to Andrew Lownie for picking up on this project with enthusiasm and for Duncan Heath, Connor Stait and Steve Burdett at Icon/Amberley for their support and wise advice.

Finally, as always, thanks to Anne who supported and encouraged me as I re-lived the momentous events of 1944.

Taylor Downing,November 2023

CONTENTS

Prologue

Chapter 1Decision

Chapter 2Deception

Chapter 3XX: Double Cross

Chapter 4Bodyguard

Chapter 5Geheimdienst

Chapter 6First US Army Group

Chapter 7Patton

Chapter 8Shepperton

Chapter 9Scotland

Chapter 10More Tricks

Chapter 11Reactions

Chapter 12Standing By

Chapter 13The Day

Chapter 14Deception Continues

Chapter 15Evaluation

Epilogue

Appendix 1 The Order of Battle – Allied Army Structure

Notes

Bibliography

PROLOGUE

Britain was in the middle of a long, hot spell. At the end of May 1944 high pressure had descended on southern England and the Channel. For day after day the weather was warm, dry and without strong winds. The hottest day of the year so far came on 28 May, reaching what in those days was recorded as 88 degrees Fahrenheit (31 degrees Celsius). Ideal weather in which to launch an invasion. But the Allied armies were still gathering. Equipment was still being prepared and men being trained. The Deceivers were still spinning their webs of deception. They were not yet ready for D-Day.

On 29 May 1944, General George S. Patton Jr gave a speech in the south-east of England to a group of men from his army, the First US Army Group. A platform had been erected at the base of a slight hill. Men arrived and surrounded the platform, and then as more came along they spilled up the hillside, creating a natural amphitheatre. Before his arrival the scene was alive with anticipation. Silence fell as his black Mercedes finally appeared with flags flying, and he emerged surrounded by an escort of Military Police. A band played stirring marches as he strode onto the podium. All the soldiers present jumped to attention. At the centre, General Patton stood there tall and with a rod-like straight back, resplendent in a smartly tailored uniform, the epitome of a great commander. He was a three-star general who proudly displayed his trio of stars on his helmet, his shirt collar and his shoulder pads. The bevvy of medals glittering on his chest included the Distinguished Service Cross awarded ‘for extraordinary heroism’ in the First World War. He wore knee-high leather cavalry boots, complete with spurs, so heavily polished that they positively shone in the bright sun. He stood in immaculately creased riding breeches held up by a hand-tooled leather belt sporting a gleaming brass buckle. He also carried a holster which boasted a white pearl-handled revolver visible to all. He stood there facing his men, formal and totally formidable, every inch a warrior. Alongside him, standing perfectly still, as though at attention and mimicking the General, was his white bulldog terrier, Willie.

When he began to address the troops he spoke in a rather high-pitched voice, not the deep drawl that might have been expected to come from such a striking figure. But the words he used silenced everyone. In hushed anticipation every man present strained to hear what this magnificent-looking figure had to say. First he told them, ‘At ease,’ and that they could sit down. Then, after a pause, he began his peroration, which was full of profanities. But he was accustomed to inspiring his listeners on the eve of battle.1

He spoke first of the American desire to win, whether in sport or at war. ‘Men … when you were kids, you all admired the champion marble player, the fastest runner, the big league ball players, the toughest boxers,’ he began. ‘The Americans love a winner, and cannot tolerate a loser. Americans despise cowards … That’s why Americans have never lost and will never lose a war, for the very thought of losing is hateful to an American.’ He talked about how all men show signs of fear when they first experience combat. ‘But the real man never lets fear of death overpower his honour, his sense of duty to his country, and his innate manhood.’ He told his audience that every one of them had to be alert at all times. If not, ‘some German sonofabitch will sneak up behind and beat you to death with a sockful of shit.’ This roused a laugh and a cheer.

Patton carried on: ‘All the real heroes are not storybook combat fighters either. Every single man in the Army plays a vital part. Every little job is essential to the whole scheme.’ He spoke of the truck drivers who continued to bring up supplies despite being under fire, of the quartermasters who delivered the food and clothing, and of the cooks and washers-up who kept the men fed and watered. He talked of a man whom he discovered in the heat of battle up a telegraph pole under heavy fire, repairing a wire. He asked him if it wasn’t a little unhealthy up there now. ‘“Yes, sir,” the soldier replied, “but this goddam wire has got to be fixed.”’ The General continued: ‘Each man must not only think of himself, but think of his buddy fighting alongside him. We don’t want yellow cowards in the Army. They should be killed off like flies. If not, they will go home after the war, goddam cowards, and breed more cowards. The brave men will breed more brave men.’ A few men were shocked by this. But most applauded loudly.

As he continued Patton bellowed out proudly, ‘We have the finest food, the finest equipment, the finest-spirited men in the world.’ Then he rose to his crescendo: ‘Why, by God, I actually pity those sons of bitches we are going up against – by God, I do.’ The men clapped and cheered. Giving his words a Shakespearian tone reminiscent of Henry V’s speech on the eve of Agincourt, Patton concluded, ‘Thank God that, at least thirty years from now, when you are sitting around the fireside with your grandson on your knee and he asks what you did in the great World War Two, you won’t have to say “I shoveled shit in Louisiana.”’ The men roared with approval. They loved the earthy prose, the profanities and the sense that everyone relied upon everyone else. It made them feel good, part of something big and important. Patton knew how to command men and marshal his words for battle.

On 23 May, a short while before Patton gave his rousing speech, another general addressed a group of his officers, who were part of the 21st Army Group. He was speaking in the south-west of England. This commander was General Bernard Law Montgomery, the great victor and hero of Alamein and North Africa. He too was a great orator who had the ability to get through to his men. He did not use swear words, however. He spoke in short, staccato sentences. He called on God to support the Allied mission and spoke with an evangelical passion, almost as though he were leading a crusade. He expressed his faith in the good and righteous in their struggle to overcome the bad and evil. He was shorter and far less physically impressive than the American general. Nor did he dress flamboyantly. Unlike Patton, he wore simple khaki battledress like his men and usually sported a plain black tanker’s beret. The traditional view of British generals, mostly left over from the First World War, was that they were rather pompous and stiff, and lived behind the lines grandly in splendid chateaux. This was not the case with Montgomery, universally known as Monty. He lived very simply, and when in the field he used a set of caravans which comprised his map room, his office and his bedroom.2

From January 1944 onwards, Monty had carried out a series of visits to the troops under his command. This was part of a campaign he called ‘Salute the Soldier’, and these visits were intended to raise the morale of fighting men whom Montgomery realised were growing weary after four years of war. They needed a lift before the upcoming new offensive. Most of the men in his Army Group had never met their new commander before. His fame preceded him, but they did not know what it was like to be in his Army. He wanted to impress every one of them with a sense of mission. Monty had a dedicated train on which he travelled up and down the country to give dozens of talks. Sometimes he spoke to a battalion, sometimes a regiment or a brigade. On occasions he spoke to an entire division. Monty would address up to 30,000 men in a single day. The purpose of the talks was for his men to be able to see and hear him as much as it was for the General to meet them.

The sequence of events usually followed the same pattern. He would arrive at a unit in a humble jeep and summon the troops around him by loudspeaker. He would then walk down the ranks of the assembled men, staring into their eyes. Army Intelligence reports had concluded that many soldiers expected to die in the invasion of Europe. So Monty would often begin by picking out a single infantryman and asking him, ‘What is your most valuable weapon?’ The soldier would always reply, ‘My rifle, sir.’ Monty would respond, ‘No, it isn’t, it’s your life, and I’m going to save it for you. Now listen to me …’3 He would usually conclude his speeches with encouraging words. ‘We’re going to finish the thing off … you and I together … with God’s help we will see the thing through to the end.’ One journalist who heard some of his talks said that he ‘made the soldiers feel that they were embarked upon something which made them larger and finer and more commanding human beings than they were before’.4 A junior officer who heard one of Monty’s pep talks probably summed up the view of many when he wrote, after hearing him, that ‘I fell completely under his spell and had no further doubts about the outcome of the war in Europe.’5

In addition to speaking to the troops, Monty also addressed industrial workers, who were facing more austerity and another bleak year of restrictions and drabness. He spoke to railway workers, miners, dockers and munitions workers. He visited factories and football grounds. At Hampden Park in Glasgow he was cheered when he entered the ground. To everyone he urged further effort to sustain the final struggle that was still to come. ‘Keep on working,’ he encouraged them. ‘We British have had many disasters in this war; they have been due to neglect.’ He said Britain had not been properly prepared for war when it came in 1939, and to the country’s shame ‘we sent out soldiers into this most modern war with weapons and equipment that were hopelessly inadequate … We must never let that happen again. Nor will we.’

Such was his crusading charisma that his message went down well everywhere. Posters went up in city centres showing him smiling down. But in Westminster, people began to wonder if this was not a military campaign but a political one. Did Monty have his eye on Downing Street after the war? The papers were told discreetly to stop reporting his factory visits. The BBC did not ask him to broadcast on the radio. When it was suggested he should stop the lecture tour, he refused. He insisted his talks were doing good and said, ‘I will go through with it because I am informed that it will be of value in heightening morale.’6

Monty’s exact words on 23 May 1944 were not recorded, as Patton’s had been. But from his notes we can get the gist of what he said to the senior officers present. He told them, ‘We are going to be involved in great events.’ He said that everyone must know each other and what their task was to be. He added that it was also, ‘Very important that you should know my views on things. In the business of war, very clear thinking is required.’ He put great emphasis on training and on having men who were at the peak of their condition. He underlined what he called ‘the Human Factor’, telling his officers, ‘It is the man that counts and not the machine. If you have got men who are mentally alert, who are tough and hard, who are trained to fight and kill, who are enthusiastic … and you give these men the proper weapons and equipment – there is nothing they cannot do. Nothing. Nothing.’

As he approached his peak, he went on: ‘If you tell the soldier what you want and you launch him properly into battle, he will always do his part – he has never let the side down. The British soldier is easy to lead; he is very willing to be led; and he responds at once to leadership. Only from an inspired nation can go forth an inspired army … And then as the sap rises, the men will feel themselves to be the instrument of a new-born national vigour.’ Returning to his Christian theme he concluded: ‘“Let God arise and let His enemies be scattered” … The Promised Land is not now far off; if necessary we have got to hazard all, and give our lives that others may enjoy it.’ He finished with an analogy of pulling on a rope. ‘How long will the pull last? No one can say for certain; it may last a year; it may take longer. But it will [end in] a magnificent party. And we shall win.’ All the officers who heard Monty’s talk felt invigorated, enlivened and, most importantly of all, confident in victory.7

Despite the very different way in which the two generals expressed themselves, in reality Patton and Montgomery shared many characteristics. Neither man lacked in personal confidence when it came to the rightness of his beliefs. Both could be stubborn and vain. Both men believed totally in their command abilities. The two generals went to great lengths to be seen and heard by their men, and both sought to build a cult of personality around themselves. In the Eighth Army in North Africa from August 1942 onwards, and in the 21st Army Group in the run-up to D-Day, all soldiers came to know they were part of Monty’s Army. And in Sicily in spring and summer of 1943, every soldier in the US Seventh Army knew they were one of Patton’s men. Both generals sought publicity, dressed distinctively, if very differently, and were happy to pose for photographers. Their armies had fought battles alongside one another. Indeed, over the previous year the two generals had become rivals.

Apart from the very different tones of the speeches from the two commanders, there was another big difference. Montgomery was speaking to men who in a little over a week would be splashing ashore on the beaches of Normandy to launch the invasion of Occupied Europe. Patton, however, was in command of a hoax army. He was addressing an army that didn’t exist.

Concealment has always been an essential part of military strategy; whether concealing from the enemy your own plans, like where you intend to attack, or not allowing the enemy to know your real strengths or weaknesses, concealment can make the difference between victory or defeat. The lesson was always to keep the enemy in the dark about your intentions. Through concealment an army could exploit the benefit of surprise. And surprise was behind many of the great victories in history, from Napoleon’s advance into Italy in 1796, surprising the Austrians and Piedmontese, to the launch of the German attack upon Belgium, Holland and France in May 1940. ‘Surprise,’ wrote the great theorist of war Carl von Clausewitz, ‘becomes effective when we suddenly face the enemy at one point with far more troops than he expected. This type of numerical superiority is quite distinct from numerical superiority in general: it is the most powerful medium in the art of war.’8

In the Second World War, due to a remarkable set of circumstances, the process of concealment and surprise was very effectively taken a stage further into deception. Army commanders came slowly to realise that if they could deceive the enemy into believing an untruth, if they could convince Axis commanders into thinking one thing while they were actually planning another, then they could hopefully gain an advantage that would help bring victory on the battlefield. But a successful deception relies on several factors being in alignment. It requires an understanding of the psychology of the enemy, what they are likely to believe and what they would never accept. Additionally, it requires complete control over the sources of intelligence that the enemy are likely to pick up and interpret. This is incredibly hard, almost impossible, to achieve. There were various ways in which the Nazi intelligence establishment could gather information about Britain during the war. These included aerial reconnaissance, communication intercepts, open sources like contemporary newspapers and broadcasts, and, of course, the statements from agents or spies in Britain.9

However, Britain enjoyed a high level of security during the war in which the country’s island status became a key feature of its defence, not only against invasion but also in the control of information. Britain’s coast was to all intents and purposes impenetrable. Also, despite pretences of independence and objectivity, its press and public broadcasting system were in fact carefully controlled by the Ministry of Information. As we shall see, the agents that were sent into Britain by the enemy were almost all ‘turned’ and reported back only what British intelligence bosses wanted the enemy to hear. These circumstances were unique, however. They never prevailed, for instance, in the decades of Cold War that followed on from 1945.10

The final element of deception that was unique to the latter part of the Second World War was that the code breakers at Bletchley Park, initially aided by the Poles and the French, had managed to decrypt the cyphers used by the German government and its military high command. As a consequence, British commanders were able to read and to understand German plans and objectives, both strategic and tactical. From this they were able to build up a deep understanding not only of what Axis capabilities in Europe were, but also of how the German leaders and the nation’s military chiefs thought. And in one further and vital development, they were able to read how the misinformation that was being fed to them was being received and interpreted. This was such an unusual circumstance that it gave the Allies an extraordinary advantage. When a deception campaign was conducted it was possible to see if the enemy were taking it up, if they were believing it or dismissing it, how they were reading the disinformation that was being fed to them. As it was once reported to Churchill, Allied intelligence could see if the enemy were or were not swallowing it ‘rod, line and sinker’.11

The story of the double agents who played a central role in deceiving the enemy in the run-up to D-Day has been excellently told in several popular histories.12 Their activities will, of course, form an essential part of this story. But the central element of The Army That Never Was lies elsewhere, in the brilliant and ingenious use of other remarkable devices to deceive the enemy.

All of this did not come about by accident. It was the result of the extraordinary achievements of a remarkable group of men and women. They were inventive, creative, hard-working and often eccentric. They had the sort of brains that didn’t always follow the rule book. They had the ability to think up entirely new scenarios and to work them through step by patient step. One of the pioneers of deception in the Second World War was Colonel Dudley Clarke, who ran ‘A’ Force, based out of Cairo. We will hear a good deal about him and his achievements. In the mid-1950s he wrote up his memoirs, but publication was prohibited by an establishment that still cherished its secrets. In his unpublished memoirs Clarke wrote of what he called a ‘Secret War’ that was ‘waged rather to conserve than to destroy … and the organisation which fought it was able to count its gains from the number of casualties it could avert’. He further wrote that this Secret War ‘was a war of wits – of fantasy and imagination, fought out on an almost private basis between the supreme heads of Hitler’s Intelligence (and Mussolini’s) and a small band of men and women’.13

It is the story of this small band of men and women, from a variety of different backgrounds, and of their inventiveness that is at the heart of this book. If some of it reads like a fiction, that’s because it seemed like one at the time and still does today.

Chapter 1

DECISION

‘I have never seen him in better form. He ate and drank enormously all the time, settled huge problems, played bagatelle and bezique by the hour and generally enjoyed himself.’1 So wrote a future British prime minister about his predecessor at the Casablanca conference in January 1943. Harold Macmillan, Minister in charge of Mediterranean affairs at Allied Headquarters, wrote these words after observing Prime Minister Winston Churchill and US President Franklin D. Roosevelt getting on famously and planning wartime strategy for the year ahead.

Churchill had had a torrid twelve months. Initially, when the Japanese attacked the US Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbor in December 1941, he was euphoric. He was convinced that with the United States in the war as an ally and with the Soviet Union engaged with Nazi Germany in some of the biggest land battles in history, victory was inevitable. What he had entirely failed to realise was how bad the situation would become first, before reaching the long road to final victory. Only three days after Pearl Harbor, the Royal Navy lost two of its most powerful ships, the battleship HMS Prince of Wales and the battlecruiser HMS Repulse. They were sunk in the sea off Malaya by Japanese torpedo bombers, with massive loss of life. Moreover, it was Churchill who had ordered the two warships to proceed to Malaya without an air escort as a sign of British naval power and as a deterrent to the Japanese. ‘In all the war I never received a more direct shock,’ he later wrote of his reaction to the news.2

One disaster followed another. The Japanese army fought its own form of blitzkrieg down through the Malayan peninsula, surrounding, isolating and forcing into retreat tens of thousands of British imperial troops. In a matter of weeks the Japanese had reached the mighty fortress of Singapore. This had been built up as a naval stronghold for nearly twenty years, a symbol of British power in the region. But its big guns pointed out to sea, and when the Japanese attacked they came from the landward side. After a week of fighting, a British-led force of nearly 100,000 men surrendered to a Japanese force of about one quarter that number. Photos of Lieutenant-General Arthur Percival, the commander-in-chief, walking out to surrender accompanied by a white flag went around the world. As well as being the largest British surrender in history, it was an imperial humiliation of epic proportions. Britain’s power and prestige in Asia was shattered for ever. Churchill did not make light of the disaster, saying in a speech to Conservative party members, ‘Singapore has been the scene of the greatest disaster to British arms which our history records.’3

Another humiliation came when three German warships sailed up the Channel and through the Straits of Dover in broad daylight. Despite attacks from the navy and the air force, and shelling from the heavy guns in Dover, the Scharnhorst, the Gneisenau and the Prinz Eugen got through and finally reached their Baltic ports. The press were up in arms. The normally loyal Daily Mail led the attack, comparing the Channel Dash with the Spanish Armada nearly four centuries before. Sir Francis Drake had stopped the Armada then; why couldn’t the Royal Navy stop just three ships in 1942? Sir Alexander Cadogan of the Foreign Office wrote in his diary, ‘The blackest day of the war yet … We are nothing but failure and inefficiency everywhere.’4

And so it went on. The biggest defeat in British history was followed by the longest retreat, as the Japanese army pushed imperial forces back 900 miles across Burma. Another Asian capital, Rangoon, fell in March, and imperial troops retreated across the mountains, reaching the borders of India in May. The Japanese Navy moved into the Bay of Bengal and attacked merchant shipping, sinking more naval vessels there, including two cruisers, a light carrier and a destroyer. Mostly these were old ships, and once again they had gone into action off the Ceylonese coast (today Sri Lanka) without sufficient air escort. It was another embarrassment for the Royal Navy and resulted in the loss of many more lives at sea.

In North Africa, vast reinforcements were sent out to the newly created Eighth Army, but at the Battle of Gazala in May–June 1942, Rommel outwitted Lieutenant-General Neil Ritchie, captured Tobruk and forced the Allied troops to retreat at speed into Egypt. Churchill was in a meeting at the White House with Roosevelt when news came through that the large garrison at Tobruk had surrendered to a much smaller Axis force. Once again, Churchill felt humiliated, but this time in the presence of the President and his chiefs of staff. ‘I did not attempt to hide from the President the shock I had received,’ he later wrote. ‘Defeat is one thing. Disgrace is another.’5

Across Britain, the opinion-recording organisation Mass Observation reported a tsunami of hostility rising up towards the government, who were held responsible for the humiliations. And for the first time Churchill himself, who had been lauded for saving the nation two years before during the Battle of Britain, became the focus for much of this hostility. A young WAAF officer on an RAF station in Lincolnshire recorded for Mass Observation that, ‘Up to now the government has been criticised often, but always with the reservation “Churchill’s all right”. But now Churchill is condemned with the rest.’ One of her friends was reported as saying, ‘He roars all right in his time, but he’s outlived it.’6 A fifty-year-old man was recorded commenting, ‘I reckon Churchill’s got too much on his hands to conduct the war properly.’7 There were hundreds of similar accounts of such thoughts being overheard.

In addition, there was a vote of no-confidence in the House of Commons at the end of January and a vote of censure in June. Churchill won both easily. It would have been remarkable if he had not. But both debates allowed the opposition to Churchill to air its voice and for literally dozens of MPs to express the general sense of grievance felt across the country. Churchill had only himself to blame. Uniquely, when appointed Prime Minister in May 1940, he had also appointed himself Minster of Defence. So, at this point, there was no one else to blame for military failures. In the House of Commons debates, many MPs called for the appointment of a new minister of defence, or at least a minister of production to buck up a national war effort that was demonstrably overstretched and failing in so many directions. Churchill himself, of course, shared some of this sense of frustration, openly humiliating his Chief of the General Staff in front of Cabinet colleagues by demanding forcefully, ‘Have you not got a single general in that army who can win battles? Have none of them any ideas? Must we continually lose battles?’8

This annus horribilis all changed when Lieutenant-General Bernard Montgomery finally did bring a resounding victory, at the Second Battle of El Alamein in early November 1942. And four days after this success was reported, US troops entered the war for the first time in a vast amphibious landing in north-west Africa known as Operation Torch. Three large naval task forces brought men and materiel from the United States and the United Kingdom to co-ordinate landings on three separate beaches, near Casablanca in the west, and at Oran and Algiers further east on the Mediterranean. Some 125,000 men stormed ashore on the first D-Day of the war in the west. It was a genuine Anglo-American combined operation, another first of the war. The Royal Navy supplied most of the escort vessels and the US provided most of the invasion troops. The landings were successful, and within a few days all three cities and their surrounding airfields were in Allied hands. Now they could start to move eastwards across North Africa. And a few days later, Montgomery’s Eighth Army, advancing westwards through Libya, recaptured Tobruk. The Allied armies were on the march and Churchill ordered the church bells to be rung again. They had been silenced at the beginning of the war, and in 1940 their ringing would have been a signal of a German invasion. Now their tolling was a sign of victory.

In Britain, confidence was once again restored in Winston Churchill as war leader. Mass Observation noted a boost in morale and that ‘cheerfulness changed to an optimism that was often exaggerated. There was talk of the end of the war being in sight.’9 An opinion poll in December indicated that satisfaction in his leadership had risen to an extraordinary 93 per cent.10 Now, at last, maybe the Allies could plan for victory.

It was in this context that Churchill and Roosevelt, with their substantial military entourages, travelled to Casablanca to plan strategy. At last the Allied leaders felt they could choose the time and place to take the war to the enemy. Although there was still a lot of fighting ahead in North Africa, Rommel had been resoundingly defeated and the ultimate expulsion of Axis forces from that continent looked increasingly certain. Additionally, the Red Army was in the process of surrounding and cutting off the mighty German Sixth Army at Stalingrad. In the Pacific the wave of Japanese expansion had been stopped, and although fighting was still raging in Guadalcanal, the prediction was that enemy forces would soon be expelled from the island.

The warm winter sunshine in Casablanca brought relief to the atmosphere within the closely guarded villas where the Allied political and military leaders met. ‘Bright sunshine, oranges, eggs and razor blades,’ wrote John Martin, Churchill’s principal private secretary, describing items that were in abundance in Casablanca but which were in short supply in wartime Britain.11 The genial social atmosphere, however, could not hide deep divisions between the two Allies.

The British military brass was led by Chief of the Imperial General Staff General Sir Alan Brooke. He was a tough Ulsterman who came from a family that had a long tradition of army service. He was single-minded and determined to do the best thing for the British Army, of which he was effectively the head. He was as tough as nails and his nickname in the Cabinet Office was ‘Colonel Shrapnel’. Moreover, he was one of the few generals who could stand up to Churchill’s bullying and interference in military matters. No detail was too small to attract the Prime Minister’s interest. Churchill was, in today’s parlance, a micromanager. But Brooke felt that Churchill meddled in detail of which he did not have full knowledge or competency. Aides frequently reported hearing a shouting match coming out of the room in which they were meeting. But despite raised voices, both men still held each other in great respect. Churchill admired Brooke’s professionalism and never overruled him when faced with a clear, determined and persuasive case. Moreover, Brooke not only had the courage to stand up to Churchill but had the capacity for, as one observer noted after a particularly bruising encounter with the Prime Minister, ‘shaking himself like a dog coming out of water’, recovering quickly and carrying on without holding a grudge.12 And Brooke knew that Churchill had extraordinary qualities of leadership that marked him out from other politicians. After one especially loud and infuriating encounter Brooke was overheard to murmur, ‘That man!’ But then with a sigh to continue, ‘But what would we do without him?’13

Brooke, along with Air Chief Marshal Sir Charles Portal and Admiral Sir Dudley Pound, the chiefs of the RAF and the Royal Navy, had prepared their position well for Casablanca. They had discussed their views repeatedly and at the conference were in agreement with the Prime Minister. The British position was that 1943 should see a continued emphasis on the fighting in the Mediterranean theatre in the hope of knocking Italy out of the war and undermining the Axis alliance. This would force Germany either to abandon its southern flank or to bring in reinforcements to shore up the Mediterranean and weaken the fighting forces on the Eastern Front, thus helping Stalin’s Red Army in its titanic struggle.

The American position was instead to plan for a cross-Channel invasion in northern Europe as soon as possible. General George C. Marshall, the Chief of Staff of the US Army, was a cool customer by comparison to his British equivalent. There were no shouting matches when Marshall was around. But he had a sort of quiet charisma that made other military men listen to him and follow his lead. He inspired men and had a clear vision of how to achieve victory, but he also knew that the President, as Commander in Chief, always had the final say. On a couple of occasions in the war to date, Marshall had disagreed with Roosevelt but still went along with what the President had resolved. His clear sense of duty always overcame his own feelings or beliefs. Marshall’s principal conviction was that to defeat Hitler it was essential to launch a major landing in Occupied Europe, almost certainly France, and then sweep through France and advance into Germany. Only this could strike at the heart of the German war machine and bring victory over Nazism. Everything else he regarded as something of a sideshow to what he called ‘the main plot’. On the other hand, Admiral Ernest J. King, the Chief of Naval Operations for the US Navy, argued that if agreement over strategy in Europe could not be reached then priority should be given to the war in the Pacific, and shipping resources, in particular landing craft, should be diverted to this theatre. The British chiefs met daily at the Casablanca conference, and the Americans and British chiefs met together twice a day. Both sides reported back to their political bosses every evening.

For several days the British and American military leaders were locked in disagreement. The British argued forcefully that 1943 was too soon to mount a cross-Channel invasion. Firstly, the U-boat menace in the Atlantic had to be defeated so that sufficient supplies of men and materiel could be brought across the Atlantic from America to launch an invasion of France. Secondly, aerial supremacy over northern Europe needed to be won. Attempting a dangerous amphibious operation without securing these two factors would without doubt spell disaster, they argued. Brooke believed the Americans did not yet realise the strength of the German enemy that they were up against. Marshall resented Brooke’s arrogant attitude. In his diary, General Brooke recorded ‘very heated’ meetings with the American top brass that seemed to be ‘making no headway’. On the fifth day he wrote, ‘A desperate day! We are further from obtaining agreement than we ever were!’14 The British feared that the Americans would give up on the European theatre and concentrate on the Pacific. The Americans thought the British obsession with the Mediterranean was some sort of imperial hangover in which its leaders were preoccupied with their traditional concern to protect the Suez Canal and the route to India. Making light of these fundamental differences, one senior member of the British military delegation concluded that all they had to do ‘was to convince the Americans that ours [ideas] were right and theirs were wrong’.15

Meanwhile, Churchill and Roosevelt were getting on wonderfully well in their seaside villas surrounded by palm trees and sweet-smelling bougainvillea. They discussed a wide range of issues. Roosevelt suggested that the ultimate war aim of the Allies should be the ‘unconditional surrender’ of their enemies. Churchill agreed. Sensing that the Americans were fearful that Britain would pull out of the war after the defeat of Hitler, Churchill on his part agreed to commit to the war in the Pacific after the war in Europe was over. Surrounded by his generals and in daily contact with the President, Churchill was in his element. And Roosevelt seemed less concerned about continuing the war in the Mediterranean than his chief of staff.

After a week of intense arguments, Field Marshal Sir John Dill managed to negotiate a compromise between the British and American military chiefs. Dill was a brave soldier and an inspiring leader of men. He had been Chief of the Imperial General Staff earlier in the war but Churchill found him too cautious and ungenerously nicknamed him ‘Dilly Dally’. The Prime Minister eventually sacked him and sent him to head up a liaison unit with the Americans in Washington. Dill both understood the US position and was well respected by the Americans, but he also realised that a premature cross-Channel invasion in 1943 would spell disaster. The compromise thrashed out still put the defeat of Germany as the first priority for the Allies. It was decided to continue with the war in the Mediterranean, and it was agreed that the alternative of a cross-Channel assault was not viable during the next twelve months. After the defeat of the Allied forces in North Africa and the capture of Tunisia, there would be an invasion of Sicily, initially scheduled for July. There was no formal agreement as to what would follow the occupation of Sicily, but the British hoped that it would be an advance on to the Italian mainland with the intention of knocking Italy out of the war.

The build-up of American troops in Britain had so far only brought a small number of American soldiers and airmen across the Atlantic to sample British weather, English hospitality and warm beer. And many of these had now been sent on to participate in Operation Torch.16 But it was agreed that the build-up should continue and scale up considerably during the next twelve months. Additionally, a new plan for stepping up the bombing of Germany was endorsed. RAF’s Bomber Command and the US Eighth Army Air Force would carry out a combined bombing offensive to destroy the German ‘military, industrial and economic system’ and undermine German civilian morale to the point at which it would be ‘fatally weakened’.17

The military agreements were rapidly endorsed by Churchill and Roosevelt. It was the high-water mark of British influence over the planning of the war. From this point onwards the vast scale of the US war programme would begin to dwarf Britain’s. Whatever Brooke and the other military chiefs felt about the Americans and their failure to understand wartime strategy, Churchill and the British chiefs would soon become junior partners in the relationship. But at Casablanca the American commanders still felt they had been outmanoeuvred, and so finally a momentous decision was made, as something of a sop to them. It was agreed that preliminary planning would begin for a cross-Channel invasion of northern Europe in the spring of 1944.

Although the British war leaders went along with this decision, the Americans felt that their hearts were not really in it. It would be a recurring issue in American thinking that while they were convinced that the Allies had overwhelming firepower and final victory was certain, the British were scared of an invasion that might fail. Nevertheless, the decision to start planning for a major cross-Channel amphibious operation was a crucial moment in shaping the future strategy of the war in Europe, not just for 1943, but for the remaining years of the conflict.

Following the Casablanca conference, a small planning unit was to be established to report to the Combined British and American Chiefs of Staff. Brooke argued that no field commander could be appointed this far ahead, but that a chief of staff could begin planning and that ‘a man with the right qualities … could do what was necessary in the early stages’.18 The search for the man with the right qualities began almost as soon as the chiefs of staff returned from Casablanca.

Major-General Sir Frederick Morgan was one of the few senior figures in the British Army who did not come from a family with a military background. His father, a wood trader, decided his eldest son should join the army as a sapper because this was the only part of the Edwardian British Army where the pay was sufficient to cover an officer’s expenses. Following his father’s wishes, Morgan was commissioned into the Royal Field Artillery in 1913 and survived four years as a staff officer on the Western Front, serving in Flanders and on the Somme but suffering nothing more than mild shell shock early in the war and a bout of influenza, Spanish flu, at its end. After the war he volunteered to stay in the army and served in India for many years. Morgan was clever and witty, with a fine sense of humour and a willingness to consider techniques that were new and unorthodox in an army that was still governed by an obsession with tradition. He also had a fine mind and the ability to see issues clearly and to plan ahead effectively. In the late 1930s, as he rose through the ranks he chaffed against the army and the War Office, who seemed to be marching complacently towards war. He later wrote that as an officer not yet in the highest ranks, ‘It was not ours to reason why. There was a mighty job to be done in trying to get my little army fit to meet whatever it might be called upon to meet.’19 And that was what he concentrated on as the clouds of war gathered.

In 1940, Morgan led an artillery brigade that was sent to France to try to rescue the main force of the British Army that was retreating hastily to Dunkirk. It failed miserably and had to evacuate via Cherbourg. Back in England he was promoted through a round of tasks: preparing to throw any invaders who got ashore in Kent back into the sea, defending the coast of Norfolk, commanding British forces in Devon and Cornwall and preparing them to repel any invaders in the south-west of England. Then he was given command first of a division and then of a new corps, I Corps, that was formed to provide support for the Torch landings in November 1942. They were not needed, and despite his extensive planning for amphibious operations in the Mediterranean, despite learning how vital were details like the slope of landing beaches and the range of the tides, and despite having worked alongside senior American generals, including General Dwight D. Eisenhower, his corps was disbanded and Morgan found himself surplus to requirements.

In early 1943, Morgan was put on a list of senior officers looking for roles to fulfil. Being asked by the chiefs of staff to outline the qualities he thought the chief planner for an upcoming invasion should have, he chatted away to them happily about the need to work with the Americans in a truly combined operation and the necessity of coming up with a plan that was detailed, sound and do-able, and not simply a theoretical paper for future debate. It was not just a map problem, but what was needed was a realistic plan of action. He talked of the necessity of formulating an effective organisation of command and ensuring there was a totally reliable supply system backed with adequate stocks of everything that would be needed in such a complex operation. He spoke honestly and forcefully, drawing upon his own recent personal experiences of planning for the Torch landings, but with no thought that he was actually being interviewed for the job himself. However, he clearly articulated exactly what the chiefs wanted to hear, and to his great surprise Morgan was offered the position. This was confirmed after a lunch with the Prime Minister at Chequers. No longer a conventional soldier with a rising career, Morgan was being thrust forward to the cutting edge of the war, reporting to the highest military grouping among the Allied forces. His life was about to change for ever.

Morgan was given the somewhat cumbersome title of Chief of Staff to the Supreme Allied Commander (Designate), which was better when abbreviated as COSSAC. There was no Supreme Allied Commander at this point and would not be for many months to come. But it was assumed that he would be a British general and so his chief of staff, in the normal run of things, would also be British. Morgan seemed the ideal man for the job.

Among the bountiful oranges and warm winter sunshine of Casablanca, a historic decision had been made. The Allies would begin to plan in earnest for the liberation of Europe and an end to the war with Nazi Germany. The plan would soon be named Operation Overlord. It would be one of the biggest, most ambitious and most daring operations of the war. Brooke was still uncertain as to whether it was viable and said to Morgan after his appointment, ‘Well, there it is. It won’t work but you must bloody well make it.’20 A plan to invade northern Europe would need to draw on all the tricks of the trade to pull it off successfully.

Chapter 2

DECEPTION

Despite the enormity of the task that lay ahead, Morgan initially was given the barest of resources. In fact, to begin with, the team alongside him consisted of just one aide-de-camp and two batmen. He also inherited a car and driver from his previous position in the headquarters of I Corps. It was a slow start. But he was joined in early March by his deputy, an American, to represent the US in this multi-national operation. General Ray W. Barker had fought in the First World War and, like Morgan, was an artillery man. He was also an anglophile and rapidly came to understand British eccentricities like their passionate diffidence, the habit of understatement and an abhorrence of enthusiasm. American qualities, on the other hand, included a strong spirit of can-do and a passion for talking up a project and displaying great outgoing support for it. Morgan and Barker got on well together and made a splendid team. Before long Morgan was accused by British officials of having ‘sold out to the Yanks’, while Barker earned the reputation among his compatriots of being ‘sold out to the British’. Thus the two men worked in double harness and created a genuinely combined Allied team.1

COSSAC was given premises in Norfolk House in St James’s Square, a fashionable corner of London’s West End near the headquarters of MI5 and the Secret Intelligence Service, MI6. There were huge decisions that General Sir Frederick Morgan and his small staff had to make. From the beginning he took the view that COSSAC was not just a planning operation but had an executive function to prepare an effective plan of action. He told his team, ‘“Planning staff” has come to have a most sinister meaning – it implies the production of nothing but paper. What we must contrive to do somehow is to produce not paper: but action.’2

Morgan’s unit soon began to grow like Topsy. Within weeks it consisted of five branches, for the Army, Navy, Air, Intelligence and Administration. Each branch was made up of both British and American planning staffs, and before long the team had grown to several hundred. They were relatively self-contained in Norfolk House and its satellite buildings. Everything about the unit was, of course, Top Secret, which meant no one could tell their friends or family what they were doing. For some this level of secrecy came easily. For others it was a continuing struggle. COSSAC had its own mess and bar, which was important, as everyone could enjoy a good, well-lubricated meal within the security curtain. It helped to bring cohesion to the unit of many disparate talents, and Morgan remembered that ‘pre-prandial and post-prandial discussion seemed at least as productive as more formal sessions round the conference table’.3

The problems ahead were enormous. The landings in Europe would prove to be the biggest amphibious operation ever mounted. They would require vast supplies of men and all the materiel of war, including everything needed to feed a growing army and care for the wounded. There were multiple political problems to address. How would the liberation of conquered territory be handled? But most importantly there were the three leading military questions of When, Where and How to launch the invasion?

To the first question, ‘When’, they had been given an answer by the decisions reached at the Casablanca conference: the spring of 1944. ‘Where’ was a massive question. There were options all the way from the Norwegian coast, through Denmark and Holland, to the Pas de Calais and the entire French coast westwards, including Normandy and Brittany, down to the coastline along the Bay of Biscay, from Bordeaux to the Pyrenees. There had been a disaster at Dieppe the previous August, when an ill-planned Anglo-Canadian operation had gone disastrously wrong, leading to the death, wounding or capture of two thirds of those who landed. The fiasco had taught the planners many lessons. These included an appreciation of the need for split-second co-ordination of timing, excellent intelligence and, most of all, the impossibility of trying to seize a well-defended major port town.4 After an appeal for people to send in personal photographs, picture postcards or other memorabilia about the beaches from Bergen to Bordeaux, the planners were overwhelmed with a mass of evidence showing the slope of the beaches, the scale of the promenade and the existence of seaside buildings, shops, cafes, hotels and villas along the coast. Added to this was an abundance of aerial photographs that were being collected. As well as studying beach defences and the construction of German fortifications along the coast, the photo interpreters were able to assess the steepness of the beaches with the tides in and out, and the ability of the shoreline to support armoured vehicles and supply trucks. It was the beginning of a huge operation to survey from the air hundreds of miles of coastline.5

The question of ‘How’ was even bigger and more challenging. The initial concept was to get something like 30 divisions or 450,000 men ashore over a period of several days. With them would be needed all the materials required to keep an army on the move – ammunition, vehicles, fuel, food and medical supplies. Much of this had to be transported across the Channel in landing craft of one sort or another, not the most seaworthy of vessels, in sometimes stormy seas. The naval support required to protect the invasion fleet from enemy attacks, whether on or below the surface of the water, had to be considerable. And the air cover necessary both to weaken the defences in advance of the landings and then to cover the beaches and the bridgehead as the troops made their way inland was enormous. Would the resources needed for such a combined operation ever be available? The scale of the problems facing Morgan and his growing team of planners was immense.

Several areas could be ruled out quickly as potential landing zones. The Norwegian coast with its mass of fjords would be an impossibly difficult area to land huge numbers of troops. Likewise, the Danish and Dutch coasts, behind which were areas of great sand dunes, would make it difficult to move troops off the beach to advance inland, and in any case they were also out of range of fighter escorts. The Belgium coast offered relatively few good landing opportunities, as did Brittany, where high cliffs favoured the defenders. And the beaches along the Bay of Biscay, although good for possible troop landings, were, again, out of range of the fighter aircraft that would be needed to cover a landing. That left two possible stretches of beach, the Pas de Calais and the Normandy beaches around Caen. The Pas de Calais, the stretch of coast from Calais to Boulogne, had the advantage of offering the shortest crossing route over the Channel and a good starting point for a liberation of occupied France and passage into Belgium, Holland and ultimately into Germany itself. But it was strongly defended from cliffs that overlooked many of the possible landing beaches. Normandy had the disadvantage of being further to get to across a choppy Channel and posed a longer route for an army to advance into the heart of the Third Reich. But its beaches were more suitable for landing men and machines, and there were gaps in the dunes for an army to progress inland. Additionally, on the Cotentin Peninsula, there was the possibility of capturing a port, Cherbourg. After pouring over the details it was clear to Morgan and his team that the choice was between the Pas de Calais and Normandy. After Dieppe, the Allies knew that making this decision was crucial. The right choice could provide a clear route to victory over Nazi Germany and an end to the war in Europe. The wrong choice could realise British fears that a failed invasion would prolong the war for some years.

To assess the number of men that were needed for a successful landing proved an even more tricky calculation. Partly it required an intelligence assessment of the size of the enemy forces that would be defending the beaches. But how could that be predicted one year in advance? Who could guess what numbers would be needed to overcome the unknown? Another way of looking at it was to assess how many landing craft would be available, ranging from smaller LCIs (Landing Craft Infantry) capable of bringing a single platoon of men ashore, to the large LSTs (Landing Ship Tank) that brought armour, vehicles and supplies onto the beaches. From the assumed availability of these vessels it could be calculated how many men could be carried ashore. General Barker wrote that the ‘Provision of landing craft … constitutes a continuing bottleneck which … must be overcome.’6 Looking at the challenges from this angle resulted in a scaling down of the landing operation to ten divisions: six to land on the beaches and four airborne divisions to protect the flanks, more like 150,000 men. By the late spring of 1943 some pragmatic refinements to the original plan, with a focus on areas for the invasion, were slowly coming into focus.

Morgan and Barker received their formal orders from the Combined Chiefs of Staff in April. They were tasked with three principal objectives. Firstly, to prepare a ‘full scale assault against the Continent in 1944’. Secondly, to make plans for a ‘return to the Continent in the event of German disintegration at any time from now onwards with whatever forces might be available at the time’. And thirdly, they were charged with creating ‘an elaborate camouflage and deception scheme over the whole summer with a view to pinning the enemy in the west and keeping alive the expectation of large-scale cross-Channel operations in 1943’.7 So, from the very beginning, camouflage and deception were part of the central plan for Operation Overlord.

By 1943, the British military were becoming very familiar with deception planning. In the early part of the war there had been attempts at several deception operations, necessarily of a defensive nature. Colonel John Turner was the first to actively promote the idea of deception at a senior level. He was an unlikely figure in this science. He had served most of his career in India as a civil engineer before joining the Air Ministry as Director of Works and Buildings in 1931. He was closely involved with the planning and construction of new RAF airfields in the rapid re-armament of the late 1930s and finally retired from his career as a bureaucrat in 1939. Outwardly, his career had been entirely conventional and, frankly, rather dull. But he had several qualities of imagination and vision of which only those who had worked with him closely were aware. Turner was called out of retirement on the declaration of war to run a programme to build decoy airfields to distract enemy bombers. His newly created unit was so secret that it was given no name, simply being called ‘Colonel Turner’s Department’.