Operation Fortitude Lessons Learned

Operation Fortitude Lessons Learned

Abstract
Examine the importance of deception in Operation Fortitude through lessons learned. Provide an understanding of how the Allies were able to successfully deceive the enemy, what methods worked and how they were able to close loose ends without enemy knowledge. .

Operation Fortitude Lessons Learned
Sun Tzu knew early on that “all warfare is based on deception (Giles, 2000, p. 3).” So it should come as no surprise that military deception is and will always play a decisive role in warfare. The goal of deception is to make the enemy believe misinformation presented to keep them off balance. The purpose of this paper is to analyze the deception used by the Allies during Operation Fortitude and the lessons learned.
“The enemy must not know where I intend to give battle. For if he does not know where I intend to give battle he must prepare in a great many places. And when he prepares in a great many places, those I have to fight in any one place will be few (Sun Tzu, 1963, p. 66).” .Operation Fortitude was built upon a simple concept; to present supporting intelligence and evidence to the Germans to make them believe the major landing of the Allied forces would be at Pas de Calais. Although the idea sounded simple, the actual formulation of the plan came from the Twenty Committee (XX Committee) under the British Intelligence Service. The plan itself was broken into two pieces; Operation Fortitude North and Operation Fortitude South. The XX Committee is instrumental because of their development of the Double Cross System allowed them to pass misinformation to German Intelligence. Other responsibilities of the XX Committee were running radio/wireless deception plans created entirely by the United States and controlled by General Patton. This knowledge allowed the Germans (who respected Patton) to believe the validity of the misinformation.
There are so many things that could have gone wrong during the planning and execution of Operation Fortitude, however, no one has been able to truly explain how Germany missed so many flags. Of course, there is speculation, what if statements and acceptance that what the Allies did was incredible. Hesketh does a good job of providing insight into these questions. An important lesson learned from the use of the XX System was how successful the Allies were at using double agents to shape German knowledge of the battlefield.
A lesson learned from the XX Committee was Germany really did not change up much of their tactics, techniques or procedures during the buildup phase. Even after the changeover between the Abwehr (German Intelligence Service) and RSHA (Reich Security Administration) Germany operated as nothing changed. This was a surprise to the Allied Forces because normal protocol would have been to examine agents reporting, change procedures and look for leaks (Hesketh, 2000). This lack of diligence by the Abwehr allowed all agents in place to remain, unfortunately for Germany they worked for the British MI5.
Operation Fortitude North was set to make the Germans believe the Allies would attack Norway in the spring of 1944. Allied forces used double agents to transmit their story to the Germans, decoy equipment, fake camps and radio traffic to persuade Germany to view Norway as a credible threat. Operation Fortitude South consisted of two phases. The first phase briefly mention above was the attack in the Pas de Calais area and the second was to convince the Germans the invasion would occur in July. Through the creation of fake units (FUSAG) First United States Army Group, British VII Corps and other skillful arts of deception, Germany was lead to believe forces were bigger than expected and movement was genuine.
The depths of the Double Cross System are truly inspirational. Under the leadership of the XX Committee the agents were used masterfully. Germany often assisted the Allies in misleading them. In the use of agents, Germany provided them with written questionnaires. This allowed MI5 to carefully sculpt what intelligence the Germans knew as well as feed them what the Allies wanted them to know. The XX System allowed the British to control the most trusted German agents by feeding them good information to build up their credibility. It must be said to mention the XX System without mention the GARBO Network would be attempting to drive a car with no engine. GARBO was able to expand his fictitious network of sub-agents, including submitted reports to Germany increasing GARBO’s standing. The Abwehr placed complete trust in GARBO. The GARBO Network was ingenious because it also afforded Pujols protection should any information he passed be less than credible.
The most important lesson learned was that the Abwehr and Germans completely believed the deception plan because it was believable. The ability to look inside the enemies’ camp and view the battle from their side gave Allied forces an advantage. In all it was the culmination of Double Cross Agents, physical deception, wireless deception and a lack of adaption by the Germans that allowed Allied forces to completely fool Germany. The British were able to dismantle the entire German spy network operating in England, control wireless communication and in turn feed Germany the information needed to make them weak.

References
Giles, M.A., (2000). Sun Tzu on the Art of War; the Oldest Military Treatise in the World.
Hesketh, R., (2000). Fortitude: The D-Day Deception Campaign.
Masterman, J.C., (1995). The Double-Cross System in the War of 1939-1945.
Sun Tzu, (1963). The Art of War.

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[ 1 ]. Under the direction of Masterman, the XX Committee use the Double Cross System (XX System) to run deception operations with agents who were either captured or volunteering their services for British use.
[ 2 ]. MI5 is responsible for protecting the UK against threats and played a key role in combating enemy espionage during WWII. MI5 successfully intercepted communication and was able to feed misinformation back to Germany.
[ 3 ]. GARBO (Juan Pujol) was a Spaniard who was forced to join the army during the Spanish Civil War. He was not a fan of Nazism or communism and wanted to become a spy for the Brits. He volunteered himself to work for the Germans and then betrayed them by volunteering his services to the British.
[ 4 ]. GARBO Network was an entire network created by Pujol to provide legitimate source information to the Germans. The Germans had no Idea that the people named within the network were fictitious.