70 Years Ago Today - Part 2

Greetings:

Location:  Normandy, France, and Southampton, England
May 23, 1944:

Arabel, the German code name for a spy in England, reported back

. . . .V BENEDICT, UNDERTAKING ARABAL 10/5 from England via FELIPE: . . . . I estimate that up to 1100 hours more than a bde. of the div. had landed. Landing of troops was continued in a similar way.
Apart from the transports which brought the landing craft I was able to see another 10 transports, which lay in the neighbourhood and were doubtless connected with the exercise. One of these transports flew the flag WHITESIGN (sic) had a remarkably large number of aerials on board and continually sent light signals with searchlights to the shore.
The exercise lasted until the 11/5.
General impression gained by the VM on the basis of what he ascertained during the exercises and former information about this division is that it is intended for action in Norway as the division is continually receiving training in mountain warfare and all its equipment points to the probability of its going into action in northern regions. Have taken all measures to continue to watch every movement of transport fleet and troops.

Benedict was a complete work of fiction by British Intelligence; they called Arabel "Garbo" and were using him as a double agent to feed false information to the Germans.  By now, the Germans were totally convinced that there was to be an attack on Norway followed by a complete invasion at Calais by Gen George Patton.  Everything about Patton and all his divisions were a complete fabrication to tie up the Panzer units formed across the channel to stop him.  All of the boats and tanks were just shells, some made from rubber, just to convince the Germans that there was indeed a complete U S Army at Dover ready to invade Calais.  They even fabricated an immense amount of coded messages back and forth - but they knew that the Germans already had "broken" this particular code.  And it worked.  Hitler did not release the Panzers from Calais until the second week of the Normandy invasion.

More to to come this year at we remember our fallen heroes in the Greatest War Ever Fought.

Shalom,
Yaakov