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Operation ''Bodyguard'' was the code name for a World War II deception plan employed by the Allied states before the 1944 invasion of north-west Europe. The plan was intended to mislead the German high command as to the time and place of the invasion. The plan contained several operations, which culminated in the tactical surprise of the Germans during the Normandy landings on June 6, 1944 (also known as D-Day) and delayed German reinforcements to the region for some time afterwards. German coastal defences were stretched thin in 1944, as the Nazis prepared to defend all of the coast of north-west Europe. The Allies had already employed deception operations against the Germans, aided by the capture of all of the German agents in the United Kingdom and the systematic decryption of German Enigma communications. Once Normandy had been chosen as the site of the invasion, it was decided to attempt to deceive the Germans into thinking it was a diversion and that the true invasion was to be elsewhere. Planning for ''Bodyguard'' started in 1943 under the auspices of the London Controlling Section (LCS). A draft strategy, referred to as Plan Jael, was presented to Allied High Command at the Tehran Conference in late November and approved on December 6. The objective of this plan was to lead the Germans to believe that the invasion of north-west Europe would come later than was planned and to expect attacks elsewhere, including the Pas de Calais, the Balkans, southern France, Norway and Soviet attacks in Bulgaria and northern Norway. Operation ''Bodyguard'' succeeded and the Normandy landings took the Germans by surprise. The subsequent deception suggesting that the Normandy landings were a diversion led Hitler to delay sending reinforcements from the Pas de Calais region for nearly seven weeks (the original plan had specified 14 days). ==Background== During World War II, and prior to ''Bodyguard'', the Allies made extensive use of deception – developing many new techniques and theories. The main protagonists at this time were 'A' Force, set up in 1940 under Dudley Clarke, and the London Controlling Section, chartered in 1942 under the control of John Bevan.〔Latimer (2004), pg. 148–149〕〔Cruickshank (2004)〕 At this stage of the war, Allied and German intelligence operations were heavily mismatched. Through the signals work at Bletchley Park, much of the German lines of communication were compromised – intercepts, code named Ultra, gave the Allies insights into how effectively their deceptions were operating. In Europe, the Allies had good intelligence from resistance movements and aerial reconnaissance. By comparison, most of the German spies sent into Britain had been caught (or handed themselves in) and turned into double agents (under the XX System). Some of the compromised agents were so trusted that, by 1944, German intelligence had stopped sending new infiltrators. Within the German command structure internal politics, suspicion and mismanagement meant intelligence gathering had only limited effectiveness.〔Latimer (2001), pg. 207–208〕〔Holt (2004)〕 By 1943 Hitler was defending the entire European western coast, with no clear knowledge of where an Allied invasion might land. His tactic was to defend the entire length and rely on reinforcements to quickly respond to any landings. In France the Germans deployed two Army Groups. One of these, Army Group B, was deployed to protect the coastline; the Fifteenth Army covering the Pas de Calais region and the Seventh Army in Normandy.〔Latimer 2001, pg 206〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア(Wikipedia)』 ■ウィキペディアで「Operation Bodyguard」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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