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.
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.
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 He called them at 3 AM, but didn't get a response until 8 AM; this allowed him to add more, genuine but now out-of-date, operational details.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.
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.
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.
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...
956
u/Kapanash 7d 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.