Exciting if journalistic description by Breuer (Geronimo!, Hitler's
Undercover War, Sea Wolf - all 1989, etc.) of the vast
superstructure of deception erected by the Allies to mislead Hitler
about the focus of the D-Day invasion. Churchill called the
deception, which succeeded in keeping huge German forces
immobilized in Scandinavia and the Balkans, "the greatest hoax in
history": As late as eight weeks after the Normandy invasion, the
German Fifteenth Army was still waiting for a nonexistent attack in
the Pas de Calais area from a nonexistent army of 1.5 million men
under Patton's command. Meanwhile, an enormous force of more than
5,000 ships, 700 warships, and 150,000 men had been able to
approach the Normandy beaches unobserved. No German leader expected
the attack on the date it occurred, and Allied D-Day casualties,
which had been expected to number more than 60,000, were in fact
fewer than 12,000. Much of Breuer's material is familiar, including
his discussion of the huge advantage given to the Allies by the
breaking of the German codes, and of the control by British
Intelligence of every German spy in Britain. But though the author
relies almost entirely on previously published information, some of
it is less familiar - for example, the covert buying of long-dormat
Norwegian stocks and bonds in European financial centers, in order
to suggest that Norway would be one focus of the Allied attack; and
the extraordinarily thorough means by which, in the final days
before D-Day, Britain closed itself down to prevent any last-minute
leakage of information, a process that included opening diplomatic
pouches and forbidding foreign diplomats to leave England. While
Breuer can hardly pass a cliche without picking it up (diplomats
are "striped-pants bureaucrats" and "glamorous femme fatales" like
to "snuggle up" to British agents), he brings together the elements
of deception in a compelling way, revealing more fully than
individual narratives have done just how brilliant the Allied
deception actually was. (Kirkus Reviews)
Despite the mighty invasion force the Americans and British
mustered in England in early 1944, a top Allied general warned: If
the Germans have even a 48-hour advance notice of the time and
place of the Normandy landings, we could suffer a monstrous
catastrophe For his part, Adolf Hitler planned to inflict such a
massive bloodbath on the invaders that the Allies would agree to a
negotiated peace with Nazi Germany.
"Hoodwinking Hitler" is an action-packed, you-are-there account
about a colossal and incredibly intricate deception scheme created
and implemented by ingenious and diabolical minds, machinations
intended to bamboozle the Germans on true Allied invasion plans.
Facets of the global chicanery included electronic spoofing, double
agents, diplomatic deceit, whispering campaigns, femmes fatales,
camouflage, strategic feints, the French underground, murder plots,
phony military installations, misleading bombing raids, sabotage,
propaganda, traps, fake codes, and kidnap schemes. On D-Day, June
6, 1944, the Allies gained total surprise, mostly because of what
Winston Churchill called the greatest hoax in history. But not
until two months later, when the Allies broke out of Normandy, did
the deception scheme pass into history. By that time, ultimate
Allied victory in Europe was assured.
General
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