The Spy with 29 Names (18 page)

Deception was vital for the success of Overlord. Without it, the US, British and Canadian troops landing on the Normandy beaches were likely to be massacred, and the invasion would fail. Amphibious operations were extremely risky and nothing had been tried on this scale before.

The Normandy coast around Caen had been chosen for the invasion because of its wide, open beaches and gaps in the sand dunes through
which the Allies could – in theory – pour men and arms without too much opposition. Yet the failure of the Dieppe Raid was uppermost in people’s minds, as were the painful memories of Gallipoli in the First World War – an amphibious assault that had ended in defeat and over 200,000 casualties. Since Dieppe, the Allies had launched amphibious landings in Sicily in July 1943, and at Anzio and Salerno on the southern Italian coast in January 1944. In both instances the invasions had been chaotic and had nearly ended in disaster. At Anzio, Allied troops were stuck in a confined area for months as resilient German forces counter-attacked their positions.

These experiences weighed heavily on the Allied commanders, particularly the British, who were reluctant to launch a full-scale invasion of France. At best, it was feared the human cost would be very high. At worst the Allies might even be defeated. This at a time when the Soviets were making clear, if bloody, progress in the east.

In theory the success of a seaborne assault depended on ‘the ability of the attacker to sustain a more rapid rate of reinforcements by sea than the defender is able to do by land’. The words ‘sea’ and ‘land’ are key here. Unless the defender was hampered by difficult terrain, he would always have an advantage over the attacker. The flat plains and gently rolling hills of Normandy, where the invasion was to take place, in no way constituted a problem for the Germans. The pressure was always going to be on the Allies to send over troops and materiel fast enough over the often turbulent waters of the Channel before the Germans could concentrate their own forces in the area of the landings.

On the face of it the Allies had much to be worried about. For centuries Britain had boasted of the natural defences provided by the sea; now it was preparing to turn the tables, to cross the waters and invade at the very point – Normandy – from which the last successful invasion of Britain had been launched, 900 years previously.

Geography and the technicalities of an attack from the sea were not the only considerations. A major worry, particularly for the British, was the German Army itself. The collapse of the British Expeditionary Force and the evacuation from Dunkirk in 1940 had caused something of a trauma for the British armed forces. The Wehrmacht, with its modern blitzkrieg techniques, had clearly demonstrated what Max
Hastings describes as its ‘institutional superiority’. A sense of military inferiority towards the enemy had developed, which victory at El Alamein in 1943 had only partially cured.

Despite reverses against the Soviets and in North Africa, the German Army was a mighty opponent, one which few looked forward to engaging in open field. It had better discipline and motivation and, apart from its artillery, was also better armed: German Panther and Tiger tanks were greatly superior to the Shermans and Churchills of the Americans and British.

The Americans were slightly less nervous about engaging the Wehrmacht – they had more men available, could absorb more casualties, and had suffered less at the hands of the Germans in the war so far. Nonetheless, no one in either the US or British commands was under any doubt as to the scale of the risk that the Normandy landings would entail.

It was to make up for some of the Allies’ military weaknesses that the deception plan was conceived. It was called ‘Bodyguard’, after a comment Churchill made to Stalin at the Tehran Conference in November 1943 that ‘In wartime, truth is so precious that she should always be attended by a bodyguard of lies.’

Within Bodyguard, the deception relating specifically to Overlord and the invasion of Normandy was called ‘Operation Fortitude’. This was then divided in two: ‘Fortitude North’ and ‘Fortitude South’. The first dealt with plans to fool the enemy into thinking that an invasion of Norway was imminent and thereby hold German troops in Scandinavia; the second was to deceive them over when and where along the French coast the main assault was to take place.

The key to a successful invasion would be to prevent the Germans from quickly sending reinforcements to Normandy from other parts of western Europe once the landings began. Largely stationary infantry divisions were dotted in and around the coast in preparation for the coming assault. They would be relatively slow in responding. The real danger came from the reserves – the highly mobile Panzer, or armoured, divisions – which would be able to descend on the Allied forces at great speed. Particularly feared were the Waffen-SS Panzer divisions, filled with true fanatics, brutal and ruthless defenders of Nazi ideology armed with powerful mechanised weaponry. ‘They were convinced of Germany’s rightful dominance and in “final
victory”,’ historian Antony Beevor writes of them. ‘It was their duty to save the Fatherland from annihilation.’

The Waffen-SS divisions had already shown their capabilities in various theatres during the war, not least in the Balkan campaign in 1941 and in the German recapture of Kharkov on the Eastern Front in 1943. Slowing them down in their response to the Normandy landings would be crucially important.

The Allied deception plan, therefore, needed to achieve three things: firstly, to keep the enemy guessing about when the landings would take place; secondly, to make them think that the invasion would occur along the Pas-de-Calais coastline; and thirdly, once the assault had begun in Normandy, the Germans needed to be convinced that this was a feint, intended to draw their best forces away from the Calais area so that the Allies could subsequently launch the main force of the invasion there.

The first of these objectives was relatively straightforward, a case of fooling the Germans about the Allies’ state of readiness. The other two were more complicated.

The deception planners were assisted, however, by the fact that the Germans themselves thought that the invasion would come in the Pas-de-Calais. Militarily it made sense: providing a shorter distance to cross by sea, and a chance for greater cover from air forces. It was also a better position for striking into Germany itself once a foothold had been established.

Calais was also the obvious site for a landing because of its major sea ports. The Germans knew that one of the Allies’ main difficulties would be to send in men and materiel fast enough once the invasion had started. Which was why, they reasoned, they would have to attack and capture a port.

But here the Allies had a major secret up their sleeve: the Mulberry harbours.

Another of the many lessons learned from Dieppe was the near impossibility of capturing a port from the Germans. Even if one could be taken, the thinking went, it would suffer so much damage in the attack that it would take months to repair and be ready for use. The answer, therefore, was to make a floating harbour in various pieces, drag it over the Channel and construct it off the Normandy beaches ready for disembarking the men and equipment needed for
continuing the invasion after the initial attack. In the end, two such secret harbours were made, and they were given the code name ‘Mulberry’.

The existence of the Mulberries meant that the Allies could launch the invasion where the Germans did not expect them. The Normandy coast from Caen stretching west towards the Cherbourg peninsula is a sleepy, rural stretch of shoreline dotted by a handful of villages. Most of it is quite flat, while a section in the middle rises up to cliff faces with grassy fields tumbling down behind them. It lies roughly 100 miles from the southern English coastline. There are no ports and, apart from Caen, no major cities to speak of.

The Germans had built powerful defences along the entire French coastline, even in Normandy: they knew that the invasion was coming. The strongest of these defences, however, were in the Pas-de-Calais.

Again, convincing the enemy of something which they are already convinced of, while having its own complications, is relatively easy. The real success or failure of Bodyguard would depend on the accomplishment of the third objective: making the enemy think that Normandy was a feint.

Deceiving the Germans about the timing and the place of the invasion was, in effect, about creating the surprise. But once the landings had begun, the questions of where and when would be answered, and the Germans could then respond. Surprise itself was not enough. The enemy’s strength and capability was such that they could still beat the Allies once their powerful Panzer reserves had been mobilised and brought in to deal with the invasion.

For Normandy to succeed, the surprise had to continue well beyond D-Day, which was where deception really came in. How could the Allies keep the Panzer divisions and other units from descending on them once the assault had begun? The answer, they hoped, would be to make them think that the invasion was a trick.

It was, in fact, a trick within a trick, a deception within a deception. The Germans needed to believe that the Allies were trying to fool them. Which indeed they were. But not in the way the Germans thought.

OVER THE COURSE
of the war, MI5 ran almost forty double agents. Many of them were reluctant collaborators, fooling their German masters to save their skins. Others were in it for the money or the sense of adventure, or were just barking mad. A good number had to be ‘liquidated’ – their cases closed – before the end of the war owing to weaknesses in their cover stories, or because they had been compromised in some way. In the end, of the dozens of such agents, only three were to play a critical role in the D-Day deception – the crowning moment of the double-cross system. Their code names were ‘Brutus’, ‘Tricycle’ and ‘Garbo’.

Brutus was a diminutive Polish former fighter pilot called Roman Czerniawski who had escaped Poland after the German and Soviet invasions in 1939 and made his way to France, where he independently set up an intelligence-gathering organisation known as the Interallié. Betrayed by an associate, he was imprisoned by the Germans in November 1941. He led them to believe, however, that he would be willing to change his allegiances, so in the spring of 1942 he was released – the Germans pretending that he had escaped – and sent to Britain. Soon after he arrived, he got in touch with British intelligence, offering to work for them, and was taken on by MI5 under the code name Brutus.

Tricycle was a gregarious, womanising Yugoslav lawyer named Dusan ‘Dusko’ Popov who was recruited into the Abwehr in August
1940. His sympathies, however, always lay with the Allies and he immediately told the British that he had been taken on by German intelligence. From then on he acted as a double agent, passing between Lisbon and London, telling the Germans that he was working on an escape route for Yugoslav airmen, when the truth was he was handing over their secrets and passing back deception material dreamed up in London. He was given the code name ‘Tricycle’ because, it has been claimed, of his fondness for
ménages à trois
. MI5 regarded him as their second-most valuable double agent; he has been named as one of the possible inspirations for Ian Fleming’s James Bond.

Of the three agents, however, Brutus’s loyalties were always first and foremost to Poland, while Tricycle had effectively been taken off Fortitude in the months before D-Day owing to doubts over his cover. Garbo was the most important.

‘Garbo was the man who developed into our real star,’ wrote Ewen Montagu, ‘probably out-doing even Tricycle.’

The official historian of MI5, Christopher Andrew, agrees: ‘The double agent who contributed most to the success of the Fortitude deceptions was . . . Garbo.’

A fan of cricketing analogies, John Masterman described Garbo in the following terms, comparing him with one of the earlier – and ultimately disappointing – double agents, ‘Snow’: ‘If in the double-cross world SNOW was the W.G. Grace of the early period, then GARBO was certainly the Bradman of the later years.’ International cricket was suspended during the war, but Australia’s Donald Bradman was the leading batsman of the day. Today, he is not only regarded as the finest cricketer ever, but possibly the greatest athlete of any sport. Masterman was describing his double agent in the most flattering terms he could think of. The Garbo case, he concluded, was nothing short of ‘the most highly developed example’ of the art of deception.

By early 1944 the Germans knew that some kind of Allied invasion would be forthcoming over the course of the year; what they did not know was where or when. In January they instructed Garbo to find out as much as he could about the Allied plans, suggesting he send sub-agents from his network to cover areas around the south coast. Which was just as well, because that was precisely what Harris and Pujol were intending to do anyway. Not in order to tell Kühlenthal
what was really going on there, but gradually to feed disinformation that would seep into the German military command structure.

Harris later described the process: ‘The procedure at the beginning was to ensure that the percentage of checkable truth should be high, so that the falsehoods inserted into the reports would, on the principle of all Intelligence appreciation, have to be accepted. Gradually we were to increase the percentage of false in our mixture until the entire substance of our reports would be based on the false or the notional.’

And there were now plenty of fictional sub-agents to send around the country to keep an eye on the relevant patches of coastline. In Scotland, Garbo’s deputy, Agent 3 – Pedro the Venezuelan – was keeping an eye on movements in and around the Clyde. One of his sub-agents – Agent 3(3), a Communist Greek seaman who thought Pedro was working for the Soviets – was looking after the eastern Scottish coast. Between them they reported material to back up Fortitude North – the supposedly imminent invasion of Norway that was holding down around half a million German armed forces personnel in Scandinavia – a figure that never dropped below 400,000 during the rest of the war.