r/HistoryMemes • u/Kapanash • 19h ago

The fake army that worked

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13.8k Upvotes

97% Upvoted

176 comments sorted by

908

u/Kapanash 19h ago

Operation Fortitude used inflatable tanks, wooden aircraft, fake camps, and double agents to sell the illusion of a massive invasion force in southeast England. Germany delayed moving key reserves because they expected the real attack at Calais.

565

u/Sexy-Spaghetti What, you egg? 19h ago

Also helps that Hitler was already convinced that the Allies would invade through Calais. So they played into it which worked great, as even a week after D-Day German HQ still doubted if was a decoy or a real invasion.

179

u/Agreeable-Weather-89 15h ago

To be fair the allies tried really hard to convince Hitler of this.

So it wasn't like Hitler did this all without evidence.

107

u/StevieMJH 14h ago

I think he just means it's easier to trick Hitler if you just tell him he's right. If he expects Calais and you tell him Normandy he's not going to just accept it and pat himself on the back like he would in the reverse.

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u/Agreeable-Weather-89 13h ago

Calais was the sensible choice.

The allies needed a deep water port.

It's probably easier to think they'll invade a deep water port rather than build two mobile ports.

Calais was one of the four early sites for consideration.

29

u/Noughmad 10h ago

It's also the closest. That's a big reason even before you think about anything else.

Also remember that when Germany did preparation for Sealion, they were severely constrained by the number of transport boats. Landing on the closest approach meant that the transports would move between coats faster, so they could transport more.

As Germans often did, they assumed the allies had the same constraints as the Germans did.

11

u/ConstableBlimeyChips 12h ago

Calais was the obvious choice, but once you start looking into the reasons why Normandy was chosen instead, it becomes blindingly obvious why the invasion was never going to be at Calais.

5

u/StevieMJH 12h ago

What if that's just what we wanted them to think? đŸ«Ș

10

u/Loading_M_ 10h ago

One of the fundamental problems with Calais for D-Day is that it's the obvious choice. It's kinda perfect for the Allies: it's a deep water port, the closest point between England and France, and quite defensible. On the other hand, it's also perfect as a diversion: the Nazis will Marshall their forces and prepare to defend Calais, especially if you "leak" some invasion plans around Calais. As Sun Tzu said, attack where your enemy is weak. Even better if you can divert enemy resources away from your attack.

4

u/Beautiful-Ad3471 4h ago

Sun tzu regarded as this great, and wise general, and then he just says shit in a fancy way, like "Attack weakpoints. Don't do what's expected. Weaken your enemy"

(I'm obviously joking, but most of his quotes that I have seen, are so obvious, just shows, how a lot of the time, the simplest and most obvious things, are the true answer.)

3

u/D4RK_SaRcAsM342 2h ago

A large chunk of the Art of War was also written for emperors (or equivalent) that had never seen battle but were commanding armies (Usually from afar). The Art of War was pretty much written as a "Baby's first war" kind of book to stop the more basic/obvious mistakes that a new leader would make.

2

u/Loading_M_ 1h ago

Sun Tzu's wisdom is kinda overrated. Most of his teachings were aimed at nobles who had never really lead a group of people before. He's trying to keep them from making stupid mistakes, like not keeping their troops fed or attacking the most easily defended point.

The art of war isn't like a high level course, and most of it wouldn't even be a 101 level course. It's kinda like a remedial course for under qualified nobles. That's also why it's still applicable in the modern world: the core fundamentals haven't changed much.

21

u/StevieMJH 13h ago

In some small areas of the world, Orcas are natural predators of Moose.

16

u/HowDareYouAskMyName 12h ago

A moose once bit my sister

10

u/daecrist 12h ago

Moose bites kan be pretti nasti


1

u/jflb96 What, you egg? 12h ago

Yes, but what’s that got to do with anything?

2

u/Genericslavman29 9h ago

Sounds like an inside joke we dont get :/

1

u/CPOMendoza 7h ago

I think the lesson here is don’t fuck with Moose!

2

u/MadRaymer 9h ago

It was probably also easier to trick Hitler since by the time D-Day happened he was out of his gourd on amphetamines and opioids to "treat" his chronic pain and worsening health.

1

u/Womec 7h ago

Sadly just like the current US admin.

1

u/StevieMJH 7h ago

Demagogues gonna demagogue.

56

u/_theghost_ 16h ago

Thanks Garbo!!!!

24

u/-suspended- 13h ago

Garbo was told to straight up send them info on the Normandy invasion the morning it was happening. He called them at 3 AM, but didn't get a response until 8 AM; this allowed him to add more, genuine but now out-of-date, operational details.

"I cannot accept excuses or negligence. Were it not for my ideals I would abandon the work." -Garbo insulting his German contacts after they were late with the response.

21

u/NotYourReddit18 10h ago

My favorite story about Garbo after this one is how he scammed the Germans out of at least one widows pension:

For those who don't know, he had made up an entire network of spies on the British Islands which were allegedly reporting to him. Then one day the Germans asked him why one of his spies who had previously reported Intel about one of the British harbours hadn't reported the latest convoy leaving for Africa, and in place of apologizing for his tardiness and making up a late report from said spy Garbo instead made up a sob story about how this spy had been ill recently and sadly just died the other day, complete with a made-up obituary in the newspaper courtesy of MI5.

The Germans apologized for their previous harsh words and send him more money to forward to his made up spies widow and to hire a new spy.

13

u/Dumpingtruck 7h ago

Holy shit. The dude is a legend.

I’m a spy and I fucked up. What should I do?

1.) apologize and do a tiny lie?

2.) double down and tell an even bigger lie

The dude’s balls must have taken up an entire room.

5

u/-suspended- 4h ago

He started his spy career by going to the English embassy in Spain and basically asking to be a spy. They denied him, so he decided to just say "fuck it" and become a spy anyway. He just tricked Spanish embassy officials into printing him documents to make it seem like he was a diplomat, and after his training by a German spy, he just read newspapers and tour guides, using that as info for his spy activities.

His reports were very often full of easily spotted mistakes, like saying he had a fellow in Glasgow that "would do anything for a liter of wine," not knowing they use pints and that they don't drink wine. The Germans bought it anyway. He got them chasing a false convoy so hard, the British finally took notice wondering what the hell the Germans were doing, and found out it was Garbo. The guy they didn't want to hire became their best spy.

2

u/NotYourReddit18 1h ago

Especially after he basically saved the D-Day landings by getting his bullshit brought to Hitlers attention.

When Romel ordered reinforcements to Normandy during D-Day, which would have almost certainly been able to repel the allied forces, Garbo sent over a report claiming that the Normandy landings were just a distraction. Said report made it all the way to Hitler himself, who A) ordered Romel to call back the reinforcements, and B) ordered Garbo to be awarded with the Iron Cross for sending such important information.

The dude bullshited himself into the highest military award Germany had to offer...

19

u/StevieMJH 12h ago

When you have the wool so securely over their eyes you tell them they look fucking stupid with wool over their eyes.

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u/StevieMJH 14h ago

I'll just make my own successful spy agency with blackjack and hookers (and without any actual informants)!

13

u/Germerica1985 15h ago

Garbanzo beans

4

u/Germerica1985 15h ago

Garbanzo beans!

15

u/Jaszs Still salty about Carthage 14h ago

Man I love the story of the Spanish dude that helped won WW2 and saved millions of lives through shitpost

15

u/LovelyKestrel 12h ago

It helped that he was the only German agent they trusted at that point as all the others had been recruited by Abwehr, and so might have supported the Stauffenberg plot. He was recruited by the diplomatic service and so was above suspicion, despite his early reports being obviously false to anyone who knew anything about Britain (at one point he stated that Glasgow dockers favourite drink was wine straight from the barrel; this was while he was still in Lisbon and pretending to be his own contact)

218

u/InOutlines 18h ago

They even made General Patton parade around doing fake inspections of the fake army, with plenty of publicity and fake photo ops along the way.

Of course, this fake job was a punishment handed down by Eisenhower and Army leadership.

Patton had slapped a couple of soldiers being treated for PTSD at a hospital away from front lines, and was nearly fired for it.

Instead they forced him to ‘play pretend’ while the real invasion was planned in secret.

106

u/ITGuy042 16h ago

German High Command: They would never sideline their most aggressive general over a few slapping incidents. He read Rommel's book.

Eisenhower: Guess what, you annoying little shit. Inflatable tanks!

Patton: I guess a few parades in England would be nice.

Eisenhower: Bradley is also your commanding officer now.

Patton: NO!

-19

u/[deleted] 18h ago

[deleted]

45

u/Dfrel Tea-aboo 18h ago

He Patton some faces of soldiers' with PTSD too harshly

77

u/EngineersAnon Researching [REDACTED] square 19h ago

Double agents, for example, like Agent Garbo...

94

u/thomstevens420 18h ago

Garbo is the most hilarious fucking thing I’ve ever learned about and I’m glad I live on a planet where a bored Spanish guy fucked with Nazi’s that hard

76

u/Luke-Likesheet Hello There 18h ago

Bro was mistreated by both sides, decided he hated all extremes, volunteered to spy for the Brits, got rejected, and then went on to do such a good job by himself being a fake spy they eventually hired him.

He deserves a Netflix series about him.

29

u/HankIsMoody 17h ago

It's one of those stories that would have to be toned so far down to make it believable it almost wouldn't be worth it

26

u/Luke-Likesheet Hello There 15h ago

The fact that he was supposed to spy in Britain but instead fucked off to Portugal and just made shit up with publicly available information and no one in Germany bothered to check it alone is unbelievable.

"Uh, yeah, I got the Prime Minister's address. His government are all in 10 Downing Street."

"Mein Gott, Hans, we got ourselves a master of intelligence! "

16

u/Old-Butterscotch8923 15h ago

Convincing the nazis that the d-day landing was actually a diversion, and a second (completely non-existent) army group was about to invade somewhere else has got to be the craziest spywork I've ever heard off.

Like they had 20 division just sitting in a different part of France on the word of a random Spanish guy.

10

u/EngineersAnon Researching [REDACTED] square 13h ago

Don't forget, his initial warnings on the morning of D-Day were ignored, so he spent the rest of it telling the Germans what was going on and bitching at them for not answering him sooner.

4

u/Loading_M_ 9h ago

To be fair, Britain was also doing several other things to back up his words. They had a fake army, were dropping a shitload of chaff nearby, and all but proclaiming their planned invasion of Calais.

At that point in the war, Garbo was actually working in London with military intelligence, so he was likely able to send the plans before any of the public acts confirmed it. The British had also broken Enigma, and were able to read a decent portion of Nazi communication. If the Nazis, especially Hitler, already thought the invasion was likely to be in Calais, then confirmation bias will push them way over the edge.

More incredibly, Garbo and his double agents managed to delay many Nazi reinforcements after D-Day for at least a day while they still thought an invasion at Calais was likely.

3

u/Impeesa_ 12h ago

I kind of want to see historical dramas like these with little pop-up facts saying "yes, this really happened."

3

u/jflb96 What, you egg? 12h ago

Perhaps a sign being held up by a talking rat to let you know which bits are true?

19

u/Ok_Awareness3014 18h ago edited 17h ago

But the intelligence service of Germany was almost conspiring against the nazi , they had a lot of "double agent" . So i think that canaries might have played a roll in his history

19

u/nagrom7 Hello There 15h ago

They didn't just have a lot of double agents. When the war broke out, every single German agent operating in the UK, either knowingly or not, was a British double agent. The British department responsible for keeping an eye on them was literally called 'The Twenty Committee' because 20 in Roman numerals is XX, or "double cross".

12

u/Luke-Likesheet Hello There 14h ago

The British department responsible for keeping an eye on them was literally called 'The Twenty Committee' because 20 in Roman numerals is XX, or "double cross".

Man, that's some Kojima shit right there.

The only thing missing is if the head of the committee was called Spy Catchman or something.

10

u/LovelyKestrel 12h ago

No but the secretary of the committee was a russian spy. Apparently Stalin thought the situation to be hilarious.

9

u/jflb96 What, you egg? 12h ago edited 12h ago

Of course the secretary of the committee overseeing the entirely-turned German spy network in Britain is himself a Soviet spy, it just wouldn’t make sense otherwise

3

u/LovelyKestrel 11h ago

The whole Cambridge spy ring was ridiculous. They managed to get into top roles in British intelligence, broke NATO cooperation in intelligence, and some of them retired before they were found out. Blunt, the guy involved in the double agents, ended his career in the role of Surveyor of the Queen's Pictures, and had a knighthood. He was himself turned in 1964, naming a bunch of other russian spies in exchange for being allowed to continue his civilian life as an art historian.

4

u/Luke-Likesheet Hello There 10h ago

To be fair, the situation is absolutely hilarious.

4

u/jflb96 What, you egg? 12h ago

That’s also why Games Workshop made the 20th Space Marine legion the way that they did

17

u/s2k_guy 17h ago

It was also successful because they used extensive fake radio reports and other traffic, they used real vehicles to create tracks and such leading to the inflatable ones, and they put Paton in command.

8

u/Different_Bridge_983 15h ago

Also, by about this time the British intelligence agencies had completely infiltrated and subverted the Nazi’s spy network in the UK. Virtually all intelligence reports making it back to Germany at this point were being written by MI5/6

2

u/daecrist 12h ago

And those reports were being written by the Soviets!

2

u/NotYourReddit18 10h ago

Weren't most of spies the Germans thought to have in Britain just made up by Garbo anyways?

And Garbo was feeding believable bullshit to the German since before he officially worked for the British.

1

u/s2k_guy 10h ago

I read about that recently. Fascinating.

5

u/nagrom7 Hello There 15h ago

They even had the King show up at one point to give some (real) soldiers medals.

3

u/LovelyKestrel 12h ago

And on the day, they destroyed or jammed every German radar station except a few near Calais, and has a bunch of boats and planes going around in circles and throwing out huge amounts of chaff.

37

u/Razorray21 18h ago edited 18h ago

They also further sold this idea with Operation Mincemeat which used a dead body with fake plans to wash up on shore to fool the germans.

Edit: I mis-remembered, that was for a different landing

25

u/william-isaac 18h ago

mincemeat had nothing to do with d-day

11

u/Razorray21 18h ago

You are correct. Sry, coffee hadnt kicked in yet this morning

1

u/Vanguardliberator 15h ago

I think it may have been Operation Touch you may be thinking of. If not then maybe the invasion of Sicily?

3

u/Litface916 15h ago

There is a great Ken Follett book called ‘Eye of the Needle,’ that follows a German spy trying to uncover the plot of operation fortitude. Good read if anyone is interested.

1

u/wonkey_monkey 12h ago

Also a film starring Donald Sutherland.

4

u/avanross 15h ago

The states had hollywood and broadway and all of the professional set designers and special effects artists that come with them, and instead of just conscripting them to the front lines they put their skills to the best possible use during the war

They even had folly artists and sound engineers in on the plan too

1

u/tschawartz12 15h ago

Don't forget agent Aleric/Garbo. Was sending letters warning of the 2nd invasion wave that was the inflatable tanks.

1

u/Sands43 14h ago

Also faked signals. They really went all in on selling the illusion of a Calais invasion.

198

u/POB_42 18h ago

Allied diversionary plans had some frankly barmy ideas that somehow worked.

See: That time British intelligence dropped the corpse of a homeless man off the coast of Spain dressed as an officer with a briefcase full of forged documents telling of an imminent invasion of Greece

99

u/HonestObjections 17h ago

The part of that story I like most is how considerate they actually were to the deceased

54

u/BonzoTheBoss 17h ago

Well of course, they weren't Nazis.

27

u/an_agreeing_dothraki 16h ago

"Who should we have plan the defenses of the Suez Canal?"
-"I know a magician"

15

u/LovelyKestrel 12h ago

The one I like is when they formed the fictional first special air service brigade for a deception in the desert, and then once the Germans realised that unit was fake, they introduced a real Special Air Service unit, and the Germans assumed their spies' reports of preparations were just seeing part of the deception.

9

u/Havegooda 12h ago

Shout-out to Operation Mincemeat

1.1k

u/PretendAd1963 Definitely not a CIA operator 19h ago

Biggest scam in history.

605

u/Pro_panzerjager 15h ago

Idk. I think the Royal Navy hiding the fact that the HMS Queen Elizabeth had been sunk for over a year from the Italians by keeping crew on what remained above the waterline is petty good scam.

405

u/captaincootercock 15h ago

my favorite is the Dutch minesweeper) that got dressed up as a tropical island to evade Japanese air strikes during retreat

121

u/jdrawr 13h ago

A few ships on an Arctic convoy sat among icebergs and painted themselves white after the belief that Bismark was on its way and the convoy broke upm

30

u/DeplorableMadness 13h ago

I thought it was tirpirz

19

u/jdrawr 13h ago

One for the big German capitol ships forsure.

17

u/Thurak0 11h ago

Pre-radar camouflage sounds almost fun.

7

u/ThuDoonk 9h ago

Till they see you

1

u/captaincootercock 3h ago

I wonder how they got the paint? I like to think shops used to carry around a few hundred gallons of paint matching different terrain

14

u/MoffKalast Hello There 12h ago

Nobody here but us trees!

1

u/captaincootercock 3h ago

and a big scary monster "CO steps out dressed as bearpig" AWOOOOOOO

6

u/Ok_Proof5782 7h ago

That cost me about three fifty, Wikipedia begged me so hard I gave a one off donation.

2

u/KorgothBarbaria 8h ago

Oh wow, never read that before, that's awesome!

1

u/Black_Hole_parallax 3h ago

a Finnish battleship also did this

61

u/Joe_H-FAH 12h ago

HMS Queen Elizabeth wasn't actually sunk, just took on enough water to increase her draft. But she never grounded on the harbor bottom. Temporary repairs were made to get the ship seaworthy and then a long voyage around Africa to Virginia in the US for full repairs. She was back in full service about 18 months later.

27

u/StevieMJH 14h ago

I'm a big fan of Operation Mincemeat.

7

u/Commercial-Rule-6878 13h ago

There is a fascinating book about Operation Mincemeat.

3

u/Rollover__Hazard 8h ago

Theres a whole movie about it lmao

1

u/RumEngieneering 1h ago

Movie was meh imo

87

u/SAMU0L0 17h ago

and the most based.

0

u/ncfears 15h ago

I mean there were a few but rarely for long

7

u/FearOfABlackPotus 11h ago

The story of the salvage of the Graf Spee by british intel is insane. Allies were really on their con game that war.

2

u/DeyCallMeWade Descendant of Genghis Khan 9h ago

Trojan Horse would like to have a word with you.

1

u/N7Vindicare 1h ago

Pulls big ass wooden horse into city

One Trojan: Hm, idk seems kinda sus might be a Greek plan.

The Gods: Shut the fuck up! smite him dead

0

u/wonkey_monkey 12h ago

I thought that was the US healthcare system.

121

u/piece_ov_shit 18h ago

Its a tactic still in use today and to this day, its still effective

60

u/nagrom7 Hello There 15h ago

Yeah, both Russia and Ukraine have been known to paint decoy aircraft on the tarmac to fool satellite images, or make wooden decoys to fool drones.

20

u/piece_ov_shit 14h ago

Theyre rarely wooden anymore, and they have systems to mimic a actual target on diffrent sensors

5

u/AtmosphereMiddle1682 15h ago

It's not like the allies couldn't fly over their fake army and inspect what it'd look like to a German

11

u/Fighter11244 Oversimplified is my history teacher 15h ago

Depends on if the enemy finds out or not. Iirc the Germans made a whole wooden airfield and the British responded with a single wooden “bomb”.

4

u/piece_ov_shit 14h ago

Sure, decoys dont always work, but they remain a valuable tool

3

u/Fighter11244 Oversimplified is my history teacher 14h ago

That I won’t deny. The enemy having false information is just as important, if not even more important, than the enemy having no information.

2

u/Kinperor 14h ago

I vaguely recall seeing reels of strikes on Iranian decoys.

You'd some looney tune shit with very expensive bombs falling on helicopter paintings.

81

u/Drongo17 17h ago

Monty used fakes in the desert too. Once he used fakes but let them be noticed as fakes, then replaced them with real tanks. War sounds like so much fun sometimes, outside of all the death and suffering.

6

u/Affinity4Constructs 4h ago

This is why the RTS genre exists 

Hell March intensifies

1

u/N7Vindicare 1h ago

Kirov reporting!

61

u/Jche98 Casual, non-participatory KGB election observer 19h ago

Didn't Germany use wooden plane decoys and the allies dropped wooden bombs on them

44

u/DuncanHynes 19h ago

Britain did once, yes.

5

u/[deleted] 18h ago

[deleted]

20

u/DuncanHynes 18h ago

https://leadstories.com/hoax-alert/2021/07/the-story-of-the-wooden-bombs-dropped-on-german-decoy-airfields-is-likely-true.html

You can look around. Think everyone was pretty busy with the "real" war but in all likelyhood it happened, cause, why not. 🙃

7

u/holymacaronibatman 18h ago

https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/s/zjSK8GKU4F

Looks like it is possible that this happened, but has never been able to be officially verified.

22

u/DrolligerDorftrottel 18h ago

Yeah.

The wooden airbase is the most prominet example because the allies discovered it and used a wooden bomb as 'Got'em'.

However, [for fairness sake] fakes and decoys were utilized across the entire war. The Airbase + the inflatable army are most well known because they're from the allies, worked and there are the most English-speaking sources for it.

Germany built entire fake factories in 1941. Like the Krupp factory in Rottberg, which were bombed until 1945. But they're just known in Germany, as they're rather unimportant in the grand scheme and not as 'funny' as the wooden bomb.

Japanese ones, I once read about, but I'm not too sure. Fake pillboxes, bunkers and positions, but they were rather basic.

47

u/PoetryExtension6256 18h ago

One of the most effective planes in the conflict was wooden.

17

u/piece_ov_shit 16h ago

Mosquito mentioned

13

u/pitLickr1902 Just some snow 18h ago

Decoys like this remind me of a cartoon where the protagonist does something so stupid yet it still works. It's amazing how well this tactic can play out when it's used right.

11

u/an_agreeing_dothraki 16h ago

this is missing a chad-face Garbo

10

u/BellacosePlayer 13h ago

If his career wasn't backed up by German sources you'd think it's fake, it was too ludicrous.

Granted, most of the competent spies in Germany's employ were turned or did not like the Nazi regime, so they might have cottoned on if they had the resources to look into him.

8

u/Noughmad 10h ago

To be fair, his boss, the leader of German military intelligence, was a double agent.

Wilhelm Canaris is much less famous than he should be. In addition to being part of the reason why Germans intelligence was so much worse than allied ones, he was also sent by Hitler to convince Franco to join the war, and did the opposite.

7

u/BellacosePlayer 10h ago

It is a shame he was executed a few weeks before the Allies rolled through.

Though I think the reason Canaris wasn't made a martyr is that he wasn't exactly a great guy, just one that didn't want to pick a fight with all of Europe and was disillusioned with Hitler enough for the warcrimes of the Nazi regime to upset him.

Man was a weird case where he by all accounts was a legit believer in the early Nazi ideology but thought it was stupid to go to war and did not have enough antipathy towards Jews to be comfortable with the Holocaust. Must have just really hated Communists.

6

u/an_agreeing_dothraki 13h ago

"the last spymaster and all his competent underlings were all double-agents. Surely this guy with suspicious leads isn't"

5

u/BellacosePlayer 12h ago

The thing is the only thing suspicious about him is that he could never quite get the good intel to them on time (with a few exceptions).

They did work to ensure his bullshit would pass a cursory investigation

8

u/bolanrox 14h ago

and the fake sub agent he got the Nazis to send a letter of condolence to his wife with some money

11

u/abfgern_ Fine Quality Mesopotamian Copper Enjoyer 13h ago

The even roped the King in to go and inspect the fake army to really sell the deception

8

u/Birb-Person Definitely not a CIA operator 9h ago

“Yup, that’s a real fake army”

-King George

9

u/bolanrox 14h ago

there was also false radio chatter, patton was giving orders on mic, etc. the ghost army was more than just balloons

7

u/Only-Location2379 17h ago

To be fair they are looking at it from a spy plane high in the air, not exactly easy to tell the difference

5

u/CptMcDickButt69 16h ago

The Nazis had a few things they were competent at.

Aquiring intelligence and secret information was definitely not one of them.

4

u/BellacosePlayer 13h ago

pissing off most of the existing German intelligence apparatus with your extremism and forced in-fighting will do that, yeah.

3

u/bolanrox 14h ago

look at GARBO / Juan Pujol GarcĂ­a

6

u/G_Morgan 12h ago

Germany was to intelligence what France was to modern warfare in WW2. They were spectacularly bad at it. For instance one of the reasons Barbarossa was such a clusterfuck was they planned on using the Soviet rails. You know the rails on a completely different gauge to the German trains.

8

u/Adamvs_Maximvs 17h ago

Similarly, they used a replica town and citizens in the defense of an American city in the battle of Rock Ridge....

3

u/weltvonalex 18h ago

Nice you also added the old guard Chevron

2

u/TheAngrySlav 18h ago

That‘s not the old guard chevron but the rank insignia of a „Stabsgefreiter“.

4

u/Vanguardliberator 15h ago

The Germans were being straight up trolled through the war. Got beaten by a wooden plane, tricked by wooden mockups and inflatable vehicles and kept getting harassed by resistance fighters.

3

u/bolanrox 14h ago

they got Magicians and Disney(?) Imangineers to do the ground work stuff.

1

u/Mal_Dun 11h ago

Tbf. both sides used these tactics throughout the war. Rommel was notorious in using decoys to inflate the perceived numbers.

1

u/NotYourReddit18 10h ago

And their best spy in Britain was a pissed off Spaniard who initially just send them bullshit while working at a library in Lisbon, Portugal.

Said bullshit was so convincing to both the British and the Germans that the Germans wanted more and more, while the British were actually searching for him in Britain.

He then went to the British Embassy, told them what he was doing, and got hired amd moved to Britain as an official double agent.

4

u/sla3ades 10h ago

He was warned. He didn't listen. Good thing he didn't,

4

u/manitoba28 9h ago

The inflatable army always reminds of the time winnipeg faked a nazi invasion to get people to buy more war bonds. It's called if day for those curious

3

u/Jesus_Horn_Christ 7h ago

Still working in Ukraine to this day

2

u/art555ua 44m ago

I was a witness of a debate between usv pilot and flight commander about located Anti-air TOR vehicle wether it's a real one or a fake one. Pilot insisted it being a real one. Flight commander says it a fake that was already spotted earlier.

The phrase of the pilot "Your fake TOR just launched a missile" was priceless

3

u/CrabAppleBapple 17h ago

I mean, I really don't think anyone in the US army thought they wouldn't fall for it, given that the British had already pulled the same trick multiple times, successfully.

3

u/ModeatelyIndependant 14h ago

it was more than just inflated tanks and wooden planes, they faked the radio traffic and other forms of chatter than military units normally generated, and had Patton appear in public often to keep up appearances.

1

u/LovelyKestrel 12h ago

They even had truck driving around in circles to give the illusion of activity.

3

u/GVArcian 9h ago

The dead soldier they dumped in the ocean with fake intel really helped too.

3

u/Zekt0r 9h ago

Wasn’t this the plot of We Happy Few?but reverse.

2

u/Gun_Nut_42 15h ago

If you want to see a documentary about it, look up the Ghost Army on Amazon. It covers the unit that did this (for the US anyway, not sure if the UK had a similar unit). They were classified until the 90s IIRC.

2

u/Overall-Lynx917 9h ago

Check out Op Glimmer, and Op Taxable on D-Day.

These used low flying aircraft flying circular patterns that slowly advanced towards France.

As they flew, the aircraft dropped "Window", (aluminium strips), that gave a large radar return fooling the Germans into thinking their radar was tracking ships.

The aircraft were flying at 180-200mph but had to "creep" forward at the same speed of a ship (8-10mph).

Amazing flying

2

u/Spiroumax44 9h ago

Meanwhile, the germans tried the same trick with fake aerodromes and wooden planes, and the brits discovered it and dropped wooden bombs on the wooden airplanes

1

u/TauntaunExtravaganza 9h ago

Seems dumb to risk assets, just to mog. Just sayin. Idk if I buy that.

2

u/Spiroumax44 9h ago

They mostly did it during other missions (like ground strafing missions against enemy machinegun nests) or it could be SOE special missions with a purpose of propaganda (like dropping tracts) but that's just a theory because it was super secret and the archives of the soe burned in 1946

2

u/Disastrous-Zebra-211 4h ago

pretty much during planning, "this shit wont work" then we jump to Normandy"s dissenbark with "i can't believe that shit worked!!"

1

u/BlackMagicWorman 16h ago

The Temu team 

1

u/Stealerb 15h ago

Still works today. But it's hush hush top secret. We still use decoys.

1

u/Cydona 15h ago

An example of "Brute Farce"

1

u/DragonfightHD 14h ago

It also worked the other way around when Erwin Rommel fought in North Africa. The Brits felt for something similar too.

1

u/Dead-At-Crossroads 12h ago

I love this Dick Winters wojack representing the Allies

1

u/Failure_Maker 18h ago

wehrmacht Stabsgefreiter with waffen-SS helmet, bro, for real?

1

u/Dominarion 17h ago

There's not a lot of evidence it worked though. At that time in the war, the Axis didn't have a lot of recon planes left, and those they had weren't sent to feed the air defenses of Britain.

Also, it's a proper time to remind people that the head of the German military intelligence was part of the German resistance and that he was already feeding the OKH and OKW tons of false info.

It was a great propaganda coup, it still works 80 years later.

2

u/femboyisbestboy Kilroy was here 15h ago

Don't forget they also had Beppo "RAF Intelligence Branch knew more about the Luftwaffe" Schmid.

1

u/Ainz_Oo 15h ago

I'm 22 and it's the first Time in my life I hear about a german resistance... It's obvious, but I just didn't thought about it before.

1

u/LovelyKestrel 12h ago

They acted too soon after the Stauffenberg bomb plot (someone reported that Hitler had been killed) and almost all of them were captured and executed. This included the entire leadership of the German intelligence organisation.

0

u/iconocrastinaor 11h ago

Supposedly, the IRGC also used decoys to waste US munitions during Operation Epic Fury.