This project included
a fictitious scenario depicting an enemy agent's acquisition of critical
military information from the Supreme Headquarters, Allied Expeditionary
Force (SHAEF), General Eisenhower's headquarters for commanding the
combined Anglo-American forces against Nazi Germany in Northwest Europe
in 1944-45. To develop this scenario we should ask the question: what
intelligence coup by the Germans would have enabled them to inflict
maximum damage on the Allied military effort in Europe during World
War II? The Library staff believes that if the Germans could have covertly
acquired the plans for Operation OVERLORD, including deception plans
and simultaneously learned of ULTRA, the name give to intelligence acquired
by the Americans and British from intercepting and decoding German military
messages, the enemy could have done great damage to Allied military
operations. The results might have been as follows:
1. The Germans learn
of the Allied plan to launch a major amphibious assault on specified
beaches on the Normandy coast during the late spring of 1944.
2. German forces
are secretly deployed in order to stack the defenses overwhelmingly
along these beaches.
3. German Intelligence
learns of the ULTRA system so German military codes are secretly changed,
rendering ULTRA worthless.
4. The Germans engage
in their own deceptions to encourage the Allies to believe the Germans
are planning for an Allied assault at Pas-de-Calais and fuel these deceptions
by sending messages which the Allies are allowed to intercept.
5. The Anglo-American
assault is launched on June 6, 1944, as planned, on the Normandy beaches,
meeting unexpectedly heavy resistance and is defeated disastrously with
heavy losses.
6. The opening of
the second front in Europe is delayed indefinitely. The Germans bring
into operation during the summer of 1944, the guided V-1 and V-2 missiles,
which make the rebuilding of decimated invasion forces infinitely difficult.
7. The Germans then
shift massive forces to the Eastern front, launch a major offensive
against the Russian forces, inflicting huge losses. Joseph Stalin, under
tremendous pressure within the Kremlin because of these setbacks and
incensed because of the failure of the Americans and British to establish
a beachhead on the French coast, makes peace with Germany. Germany then
can concentrate on making Fortress Europe virtually impregnable.
8. Eventually, the
Allies do defeat Germany but not before England is devastated with a
barrage of V-1 and V-2 rockets. More resources are poured into the Manhattan
Project, which then is able to speed up its scheduled production of
the atomic bomb. In the summer of 1945, the first atomic bombs fall
on Germany instead of Japan. Germany then surrenders but only after
the country is in total ruins and much of Europe, including Italy and
France, is totally impoverished and is left teetering on the brink of
communist domination.
INTRODUCTION:
Before moving into
the scenario let us first look briefly at Operation OVERLORD and at
ULTRA to understand their significance. OVERLORD was the code name for
the largest of a series of amphibious operations launched by the United
States and Great Britain against the Axis Powers (Germany, Italy and
Japan) during World War II. It was the Allies' supreme effort in Western
Europe to defeat Germany by striking directly at her forces.
THE DILEMMA OF A CROSS-CHANNEL INVASION:
Plans for possible
Anglo-American military collaboration against Germany were laid at least
a year or more before the United States became directly involved in
the War in December, 1941. From the time the British forces were evacuated
from the clutches of the German Army at Dunkirk, France, in May, 1940,
British and American planners contemplated a future cross-channel attack
on the German forces with many of these planners believing such an attack
to be essential to victory over Germany. During the years 1942-43 planning
went on as American forces were built up in Great Britain and as the
United States, Great Britain and Russia waged war on Germany on other
fronts. Russia bore the brunt of the ground military action during these
years and consequently suffered heavy casualties. It should not be surprising
to note that Russian ruler Joseph Stalin urged the United States and
Great Britain to relieve some of the pressure by opening another front
against Germany in Western Europe.
After considerable
deliberation and after much pressure from Stalin, the British and United
States in November 1943 formally committed themselves to launching Operation
OVERLORD in 1944. Even before that time, the organization known as COSSAC
(Chief of Staff to the Supreme Allied Commander ETO [designated] and
his invasion planning staff) had developed a plan calling for an Allied
assault on selected beaches on the coast of Normandy in France. This
plan was approved by the Anglo-American Combined Chiefs of Staff and
during the early months of 1944 the logistics and other details necessary
for implementation were worked out.
PLANNING OPERATION OVERLORD:
Throughout their
elaborate planning, the Allied leaders knew that launching the attack
would not be easy. The Germans fortified the European coasts from the
Franco-Spanish border to Norway and made plans to defeat any assault
at the beaches. Consequently, the Americans and British had to keep
the enemy guessing where and when the attack would come so that Germany
would keep its forces spread out. The Normandy coast was the assault
target but the Allies devised elaborate deception plans intended to
make the Germans believe the assault would come at the narrow point
in the English Channel at Pas-de-Calais, France or elsewhere. The deception
plans called for feinting actions aimed at Norway and other places to
divert enemy attention from the assault area. Finally, a ghost army
of 50 divisions and a million men under the command of General George
Patton was created on paper and in the message traffic to also keep
the enemy off balance.
INTELLIGENCE:
The Allies were
assisted in their deception plans by ULTRA, the name given to the intelligence
obtained by the British from intercepting, decoding, and reading German
enciphered radio communications. Early in the war, British intelligence
broke the German military codes and the Allies relied heavily on this
intelligence information. By reading intercepted German messages during
the spring of 1944, the Allies knew their deception plans were justified
as they were informed on German uncertainty as to where the expected
Allied assault would land.
SECURITY:
Security was absolutely
essential to the success of OVERLORD since the Allies depended on surprise
and deception as important elements of the operation. If the Germans
had learned of the locations and approximate date of the assaults on
the Normandy beaches, they could have strengthened defenses there, increasing
their chances of defeating the invasion. If the enemy found out about
the Allies' ULTRA capability, they would have quickly changed their
codes, rendering this intelligence system worthless. Thus strict security
measures were imposed as plans for the invasion developed. Documents
pertaining to invasion plans were highly security-classified and access
to these was limited to a selected number of people with a clearly designated
need to know. Such invasion documents were slugged with the control
marking BIGOT, which indicated, even more that the classification marks
TOP SECRET or SECRET, the restricted nature of the information.
Tight censorship
on correspondence, including diplomatic correspondence, was imposed.
Civilians were prohibited from entering the southern beach areas of
England where the invasion forces were gathering. General Eisenhower
issued strict orders for his commanders to keep their mouths shut about
invasion plans. Violation of the orders, even inadvertently, by any
American officer resulted in a swift reduction in rank and a trip back
to the United States in disgrace with the officer's military career
probably ruined.
THE ALLIES PREVAIL:
The results of Operation
OVERLORD are now history. On D-Day, June 6, 1944, an invasion force
of over 156,000 Americans, British, Canadians, and other nationalities
successfully landed at five beaches code named OMAHA, UTAH, GOLD, JUNO,
and SWORD. United States forces landing on OMAHA beach encountered the
stiffest resistance and the outcome there remained in doubt for several
hours. Casualties for the day for all Allied forces probably totaled
between 9,000 and 10,000 with perhaps 3,000 killed. Many of the losses
were at OMAHA beach. These totals are rough estimates and an accurate
record of D-Day casualties may not exist.
The invasion force
established itself in Normandy and eventually broke out of the Normandy
hedgerow country and launched offensives, which pushed the Germans out
of France. The Allied drive continued but met intense German resistance
in the Huertgen Forest where United States forces suffered heavy casualties
while fighting under extremely difficult conditions. Then, in December,
the Germans launched a major offensive which also inflicted heavy losses
on American forces in what has become known as the Battle of the Bulge.
After stopping the German offensive in the Ardennes, Allied forces resumed
offensive operations and after experiencing much more hard fighting
and suffering many more casualties, Allied forces crossed into Germany
and fought their way to a meeting with the Russian forces on the Elbe
River in April 1945.
