Operation Fortitude

The 1944 deception that fixed German attention on Calais before D-Day

Overview

Operation Fortitude built a phantom army to convince Germany the 1944 landing would come at the Pas de Calais. Fake radio traffic, dummy tanks and aircraft, and the fictional First US Army Group nominally commanded by General Patton painted a huge force massed in Kent. Double agents, above all Garbo, fed confirmation straight to Berlin. Hitler held powerful reserves in the north for weeks after the Normandy landings, a delay that secured the beachhead and crowned the Double-Cross System. Leaked documents and double agents reinforced the fiction until well after the landings.