Ike's Spies (16 page)

Eisenhower said that would not do. If the ban were lifted Hitler would “deduce the fact that from that moment he is safe in concentrating his forces to repel the assault we have made.” Churchill responded by saying he could not agree to an indefinite diplomatic ban because of the great inconveniences and frictions which it caused. He proposed that it be continued until D-Day plus seven. Ike said that was still not good enough, and in the end he had his way. The ban continued until D-Day plus thirteen.
²⁹

With the British Government cooperating so admirably, Eisenhower could not do less. His orders on security to his commanders and their units were clear, direct, and stern. He told all units to maintain the highest standard of individual security and to mete out the severest possible disciplinary action in cases of violations. He was as good as his word.

In April, General Henry Miller, chief supply officer of the Ninth Air Force and a West Point classmate of Ike's, went to a cocktail party at Claridge's Hotel. He began talking freely, complaining about his difficulties in getting supplies but adding that his problems would end after D-Day, which he declared would begin
before June 15. When challenged on the date, he offered to take bets. Ike learned of the indiscretion the next morning and acted immediately. He ordered Miller reduced to his permanent rank of colonel and sent him back to the States—the ultimate disgrace for a career soldier. Miller protested his innocence. Ike wrote back, “Dear Henry, I know of nothing that causes me more real distress than to be faced with the necessity of sitting as a judge in cases involving military offenses by officers of character and of good record, particularly when they are old and warm friends.” But his decision stood.
³⁰

There was another flap in May when Ike learned that a U. S. Navy officer got drunk at a party and revealed details of impending operations, including areas, lift, strength, and dates. Ike confessed to Marshall, “I get so angry at the occurrence of such needless and additional hazards that I could cheerfully shoot the offender myself. This following so closely upon the Miller case is almost enough to give one the shakes.” The officer was sent back to the States.
³¹

Despite all precautions, there were more than 2.5 million men under Ike's command, and thus, inevitably, there were scares. One came in late March when documents relating to
OVERLORD
, including information on strength, places, equipment, and the tentative target date, were discovered loosely wrapped in the Chicago post office. A dozen postmen had seen some or all of the documents. The package was intended for the War Department in Washington but had been addressed to a girl in Chicago. What made it especially frightening was the fact that the sergeant who had put the wrong address on the package, Richard E. Tymm, was of German extraction. He underwent a thorough grilling; it turned out that he was not a spy, just careless. He had been daydreaming about home when he addressed the package and wrote his sister's address on it. No wonder Ike was getting the shakes and talking about cheerfully cutting a few throats himself.
³²

Security for
OVERLORD
included keeping the Germans from discovering the various new devices on which the Allies were counting for success, such as artificial harbors and swimming tanks. If the Germans learned about Mulberry (code name for concrete platforms to be floated across to Normandy, then sunk to create an artificial port), they would know that the Allies were coming across an open beach, not directly at a port city.
ULTRA
and the
Double-Cross System combined to tell Eisenhower that the Germans were unsuspecting; there was nothing about the artificial ports on German radio, and the spy masters in Berlin were not asking their spies in England for any information about Mulberry.
³³

These devices were but small aspects of the larger scene. World War II, as the phrase has it, was fought in large part on the drawing boards. All the nations involved were striving frantically to make technological breakthroughs. By far the most important of these was the development of the atomic bomb. In the United States the Manhattan Project, under General Leslie Groves, was making rapid progress toward its objective, but Groves and several of the leading scientists on the project were worried about the possibility of the Germans using radioactive poisons against the
OVERLORD
forces. Groves told Marshall there was a remote chance of it happening, and Marshall sent Arthur Peterson of the Manhattan Project to London to see Ike and explain the danger to him. Peterson emphasized the need for secrecy so strongly, however, there was little Ike could do to meet the possible threat. He did not brief his senior commanders, but he did have the medical channels informed about symptoms.
³⁴

IN MID-MAY
, Eisenhower ordered the concentration of the assault force near the invasion ports in southern England. The enormous heaps of supplies that had been gathered and stored throughout the United Kingdom then began the final move, carried by unending convoys to the south, filling all available warehouses, overflowing into camouflaged fields. Hundreds of thousands of men meanwhile traveled to tented areas in the southern counties. They were completely sealed off from the rest of the world, with barbed-wire fences stretching around their camps, keeping all the troops in and all civilians out. Some two thousand Counter Intelligence Corps men guarded the area. Camouflage was everywhere, for this was the most tempting and profitable military target in Europe, and the Germans were known to be on the verge of making their V weapons operational.

Within the encampment, the men received their final briefings. For the first time they learned they were going to Normandy. They pored over foam-rubber models of the beaches, examined photographs, were made familiar with landmarks, were assured of overwhelming naval and air support, and finally given the overall picture,
the broad outline of
OVERLORD
. Ike's men were set to go. “The mighty host,” he later wrote, “was tense as a coiled spring, ready for the moment when its energy should be released and it would vault the English Channel.”
³⁵

Everything had been done that could be done. Would the Germans be surprised? The question could not be answered. The last-minute signs could not have been worse. At the end of May the mighty Panzer Lehr Armored Division showed up in Normandy, along with the 21st Panzer Division, which moved from Brittany to Caen, exactly to the site where the British Second Army would be landing. Even more alarming,
ULTRA
revealed that the German 91st Divison, specialists in fighting paratroopers, and the German 6th Parachute Regiment had moved on May 29 into exactly the areas where the American 82d and 101st Airborne Divisions were to land the night before D-Day. Finally, the German 352d Division, veterans of the Russian front, had moved forward from St. Lô, at the base of the neck of the Cotentin Peninsula, to the coast, taking up a position overlooking Omaha Beach, where the U. S. First Army was going to land.
³⁶

These movements gave everyone the jitters. They caused Ike's air commander, Leigh-Mallory, to urge Eisenhower to call off the landings of the 82d and 101st for fear they would be destroyed. As Ike later wrote, “It would be difficult to conceive of a more soul-racking problem.”
³⁷

He quickly got one.
SHAEF
had prepared for everything, except the weather. On June 4, a storm roared in from the northwest. Waves and wind were much too high to attempt a landing. Suddenly, the
SHAEF
weatherman became the most important intelligence officer of all.

TO HELP HIM
answer that crucial question, Stagg had six different weather services (American and British land, sea, and air) feeding him information. On the morning of June 4, to his dismay, he had six distinct weather predictions to pick from.

The Germans, too, had their problems in predicting the weather. Stagg explained their predicament in his book
Forecast for Overlord:
“Deprived of weather reports from the British Isles and the ocean areas to the west and north, German forecasters could be kept in ignorance of the development and movement of weather systems over an area which is always important for forecasting throughout north-western and central Europe—in ignorance, except in so far as the Germans organized their own reports from their own reconnaissance aircraft or submarines, and they were known to go to great lengths to do this.”
¹

Stagg was the beneficiary of the German effort, because
ULTRA
picked up the weather reports from German submarines and helped him fill in his charts. He made up his own prediction, one that drew upon all the others but was uniquely his. Despite the intense storm on June 4, Stagg predicted a break in the weather for June 6. Ike trusted his source. He decided to take the risk and go.

THE INVASION WAS UNDER WAY
. At 1
A.M
. on June 6, 1944, German agent Garbo sent to the Abwehr the most sought-after secret of the war—where and when the invasion was coming. Garbo reported that
OVERLORD
was on the way, named some of the divisions involved, indicated when they had left Portsmouth, and predicted that they would come ashore in Normandy at dawn.

The report had to be deciphered, read, evaluated, reenciphered, and transmitted to Berlin. There it was deciphered, typed up, and sent to army headquarters, then on to Hitler. The whole process was reversed to get orders out to the German forces on the French coast. The word did not arrive in time to do any good. By the time the Germans got it, they could see 6,000 planes overhead, 5,000 ships off the coast, the first wave of troops coming ashore.

But it surely raised their opinion of Garbo.
²

At dawn, June 6, Eisenhower's mighty host crossed the Channel successfully, hurled itself against the Normandy beaches, and established a beachhead. Paratrooper losses, although heavy, did not approach the 70 percent mark that Leigh-Mallory had predicted. There were many anxious moments along Omaha Beach, where the U. S. 1st Division faced the German 352d Division, but by nightfall of June 6, the Americans were there to stay. The British and Canadian forces also generally achieved their D-Day objectives.

The foul weather had been a positive help to the Allies because the Germans believed the weather was so bad that no invasion could be launched. In fact, due to the weather they canceled the customary air and sea reconnaissance missions that would have warned them of the approaching fleet. A war game at Rennes, attended by a number of army and divisional commanders from the Normandy area, went off on schedule. And Rommel, after studying the weather reports, had gone on leave!

Not one submarine, not one small boat, not one airplane, not one radar set, not one German, anywhere, detected the launching of the largest force of warships in history, or the passage of that fleet—covered by the largest force of airplanes ever assembled—across the Channel. As General Walter Warlimont, deputy chief of operations at German Supreme Headquarters, recorded, on the eve of
OVERLORD
the leaders of the Wehrmacht “had not the slightest idea that the decisive event of the war was upon them.”
³

ONE ASPECT
of Eisenhower's decision to go on June 6 that is seldom mentioned was his fear that if he postponed
OVERLORD
until the next suitable date (June 16),
FORTITUDE
might well be compromised. Tens of thousands of Allied soldiers had been told that Normandy was the site; to keep them sealed off from the outside world for two weeks seemed impossible. Further, German air reconnaissance was sure to discover the immense buildup of forces around Portsmouth and southern England. Already Rommel seemed to be reinforcing Normandy and the Cotentin Peninsula.
OVERLORD
almost had to go on June 6, if it were to go at all.

BY DAWN OF JUNE
7,
OVERLORD
had achieved its first crucial goal, to get ashore. Now began the second test: Had
FORTITUDE
convinced the Germans that Normandy was a feint? Rommel and Rundstedt greatly outnumbered Ike on the Continent. If they operated at full tilt, rushing reinforcements into Normandy with maximum speed, they still had plenty of time and opportunity to drive the Allies into the sea. Because the Germans could move by truck, tank, or railroad, while the Allied forces had to journey to the battlefield via ship and landing craft, the advantage was with the Germans. Ike had three weapons to keep the enemy away from the battlefield while he steadily brought in more units from Britain.