hist2004
06-12-2004, 09:36 AM
Former spy Masterman fooled the Nazis with his elaborate tricks
By S.A.L. Dunn
Snitch Columnist
Sir John Masterman’s second career as a writer of spy novels seemed destined by his previous success. His best-selling thrillers crackled with convincing details. If the plots sometimes sounded far-fetched, no one criticized the late-blooming author’s authenticity. After all, Sir John’s first successful career had been duping Hitler.
As chairman of the Twenty (XX) Committee, Masterman masterminded the passing of a complex web of lies and half-truths to Nazi intelligence. Early in the war, Cambridge mathematicians had cracked the Germans’ “unbreakable” Enigma code. The Brits kept their triumph under wraps, though, in order to eavesdrop on enemy communications.
Furthermore, nearly every German agent in Britain soon had been captured, and several converted to double-agent deception. Masterman’s Double-Crossers kept the Reich busy checking an endless stream of junk.
The XX Committee’s efforts peaked in the crucial months before D-Day.
Masterman’s plan, code-named “Fortitude,” more than answered Gen. Dwight Eisenhower’s plea to “just keep the Germans’ 15th Army out of my hair for the first two days.” Traditional military strategy dissed the Allies’ planned amphibious landing as risky and easily repelled. Only complete surprise could ensure its success.
Masterman played on his bet that a welcome lie is a believable lie. Aware that the Reich fully expected an invasion at Calais (the nearest port across the English Channel), he created a massive deception confirming the enemy’s suspicions. His job was to fool Hitler into diverting 90 German divisions, with their air and naval support, to distant Calais, far from the actual landing at Normandy.
Fortitude’s plotting overwhelmed the gullible Germans with convincing detail. Double-Cross spies reported the Dover position of a fake army, FUSAG (First U.S. Army Group), supposedly under the command of Gen. George Patton. Bad-boy George actually was sitting out the action as punishment for violently slapping a shell-shocked soldier on the battlefield.
FUSAG really consisted of a few dozen officers who wandered around a huge, phony campsite sending out radio messages for Hitler’s ears. Savvy soldiers occasionally would even “flub” with messages containing references to the supposed upcoming invasion at Calais.
Hollywood chipped in to create humongous stage sets ranging from a plywood navy to canvas-painted army bases. Whole fleets of rubber tanks and trucks faked out the German air reconnaissance flying over the fields of Dover.
Even the National Geographic entered the espionage racket. The venerable magazine published a special issue detailing American divisional insignia. A few days after its release, the issue was hurriedly withdrawn and replaced, minus several divisions. This well-planned “security breach” helped convince the Germans of the existence of FUSAG’s “secret” forces.
Capping the deception were Masterman’s Double-Crossers. Their intricate lies, sometimes salted with throwaway facts and half-truths, completed the illusion of a planned invasion at Calais.
Perhaps the greatest of the XXers was Juan Pujol. Codenamed “Garbo” (as in Greta “I-vant-to-be-alone” Garbo) because of his exceptional acting prowess, the Spanish-born spy created a fictitious network of flunkies throughout Great Britain. The diligent double-agent sent dozens of reports to German intelligence every week, providing confirmation of the Reich’s false expectations.
Pujol’s imaginary cohorts for Fortitude included Donny, ****, and Dorick (all “D’s” for D-Day). He “forwarded” their sighting of a newly operating oil dock at Dover -- actually a prop built and manned by Hollywood stagehands – as well as their confirmations of the phony troop movements being “leaked” over the radio waves.
The German high command remained completely duped even months after the D-Day onslaught. Largely due to Garbo’s compelling lies, they assumed the Normandy assault was the ploy and continued to mass their armies near Calais, awaiting the “real” invasion. Even as late as September 1944, as Allied troops were liberating France and Belgium and preparing to enter Germany itself, Hitler’s chief of staff, Alfred Jodl, insisted his armies remain concentrated on the English Channel. Later, Jodl called his decision “Germany’s fatal strategic error.”
The Reich showed its misplaced gratitude to Garbo’s ingenuity seven weeks after D-Day by awarding him the Iron Cross for “extraordinary merit.” Only a few months afterward, the Spaniard also received his membership in the Order of the British Empire. Sir John Masterman’s master spy became the only man to receive the top medals from both sides of the conflict.
After the war’s conclusion, the British public learned why the D-Day invasion had been forced to proceed on such a tight schedule. The Reich had been planning a long-range onslaught against Britain, using their newly developed V-1 pilotless missiles. The one-ton warheads had been poised at Calais, awaiting only the completion of their launch ramps to begin a merciless rain of terror.
D-Day squelched the planned German invasion. In Eisenhower’s stated opinion, Operation Fortitude played a major role in the Allied victory. Decades later, Ike crowed about the D-Day deception, “By God, we sure fooled them, didn’t we?”
Regards & Thanks,
Hist2004
By S.A.L. Dunn
Snitch Columnist
Sir John Masterman’s second career as a writer of spy novels seemed destined by his previous success. His best-selling thrillers crackled with convincing details. If the plots sometimes sounded far-fetched, no one criticized the late-blooming author’s authenticity. After all, Sir John’s first successful career had been duping Hitler.
As chairman of the Twenty (XX) Committee, Masterman masterminded the passing of a complex web of lies and half-truths to Nazi intelligence. Early in the war, Cambridge mathematicians had cracked the Germans’ “unbreakable” Enigma code. The Brits kept their triumph under wraps, though, in order to eavesdrop on enemy communications.
Furthermore, nearly every German agent in Britain soon had been captured, and several converted to double-agent deception. Masterman’s Double-Crossers kept the Reich busy checking an endless stream of junk.
The XX Committee’s efforts peaked in the crucial months before D-Day.
Masterman’s plan, code-named “Fortitude,” more than answered Gen. Dwight Eisenhower’s plea to “just keep the Germans’ 15th Army out of my hair for the first two days.” Traditional military strategy dissed the Allies’ planned amphibious landing as risky and easily repelled. Only complete surprise could ensure its success.
Masterman played on his bet that a welcome lie is a believable lie. Aware that the Reich fully expected an invasion at Calais (the nearest port across the English Channel), he created a massive deception confirming the enemy’s suspicions. His job was to fool Hitler into diverting 90 German divisions, with their air and naval support, to distant Calais, far from the actual landing at Normandy.
Fortitude’s plotting overwhelmed the gullible Germans with convincing detail. Double-Cross spies reported the Dover position of a fake army, FUSAG (First U.S. Army Group), supposedly under the command of Gen. George Patton. Bad-boy George actually was sitting out the action as punishment for violently slapping a shell-shocked soldier on the battlefield.
FUSAG really consisted of a few dozen officers who wandered around a huge, phony campsite sending out radio messages for Hitler’s ears. Savvy soldiers occasionally would even “flub” with messages containing references to the supposed upcoming invasion at Calais.
Hollywood chipped in to create humongous stage sets ranging from a plywood navy to canvas-painted army bases. Whole fleets of rubber tanks and trucks faked out the German air reconnaissance flying over the fields of Dover.
Even the National Geographic entered the espionage racket. The venerable magazine published a special issue detailing American divisional insignia. A few days after its release, the issue was hurriedly withdrawn and replaced, minus several divisions. This well-planned “security breach” helped convince the Germans of the existence of FUSAG’s “secret” forces.
Capping the deception were Masterman’s Double-Crossers. Their intricate lies, sometimes salted with throwaway facts and half-truths, completed the illusion of a planned invasion at Calais.
Perhaps the greatest of the XXers was Juan Pujol. Codenamed “Garbo” (as in Greta “I-vant-to-be-alone” Garbo) because of his exceptional acting prowess, the Spanish-born spy created a fictitious network of flunkies throughout Great Britain. The diligent double-agent sent dozens of reports to German intelligence every week, providing confirmation of the Reich’s false expectations.
Pujol’s imaginary cohorts for Fortitude included Donny, ****, and Dorick (all “D’s” for D-Day). He “forwarded” their sighting of a newly operating oil dock at Dover -- actually a prop built and manned by Hollywood stagehands – as well as their confirmations of the phony troop movements being “leaked” over the radio waves.
The German high command remained completely duped even months after the D-Day onslaught. Largely due to Garbo’s compelling lies, they assumed the Normandy assault was the ploy and continued to mass their armies near Calais, awaiting the “real” invasion. Even as late as September 1944, as Allied troops were liberating France and Belgium and preparing to enter Germany itself, Hitler’s chief of staff, Alfred Jodl, insisted his armies remain concentrated on the English Channel. Later, Jodl called his decision “Germany’s fatal strategic error.”
The Reich showed its misplaced gratitude to Garbo’s ingenuity seven weeks after D-Day by awarding him the Iron Cross for “extraordinary merit.” Only a few months afterward, the Spaniard also received his membership in the Order of the British Empire. Sir John Masterman’s master spy became the only man to receive the top medals from both sides of the conflict.
After the war’s conclusion, the British public learned why the D-Day invasion had been forced to proceed on such a tight schedule. The Reich had been planning a long-range onslaught against Britain, using their newly developed V-1 pilotless missiles. The one-ton warheads had been poised at Calais, awaiting only the completion of their launch ramps to begin a merciless rain of terror.
D-Day squelched the planned German invasion. In Eisenhower’s stated opinion, Operation Fortitude played a major role in the Allied victory. Decades later, Ike crowed about the D-Day deception, “By God, we sure fooled them, didn’t we?”
Regards & Thanks,
Hist2004