soc.history.war.world-war-ii

Louis C wrote:

>The wild card is will the deception plan hold on.

The Germans _never_ saw through it, even long after
the invasion.

GARBO, who fed them vast amounts of "detail"
about FUSAG, who on D-Day+3 sent them a urgent
warning that the Normandy landings were in
his judgement a feint, was later issued the
Iron Cross, and became the chief German source
of V-weapon impact data.

OTOH - the entire double-cross system was in
grave danger from spring 1944. Abwehr agent
Johnny Jebsen posted in Spain, had approached the
British about defecting, and disclosed a lot
of stuff about German agents in Britain, all of
whom were doubles. The British didn't want this
information - in particular, they didn't want
the Germans to know they had it, as that would
destroy the double agents. Thus they could not
accept Jebsen's defection. Then Jebsen was
arrested by the Gestapo. Fortunately, the
Gestapo busted him for financial misdealings,
and apparently never realized he was in the
midst of defecting, nor made him talk about
what he had told the British. Had they got into
that, it would have become obvious that GARBO
and many other prize German agents were doubles,
and that all their information was bogus -
including most of FORTITUDE SOUTH (the Calais
deception), passed on _after_ Jebsen had told
the British about the agents.

But the arrest was only a month before D-Day
and afterward the Gestapo was busy with other
things, and Jebsen was largely ignored.
--
| People say "There's a Stradivarius for sale for a |
| million," and you say "Oh, really? What's wrong |
| with it?" - Yitzhak Perlman |