01 Jun Overlord, June 6, 1944
73 years ago. Spring 1944. The Allies were finally ready to face Hitler on the beaches of France. In numbers, their ground forces were severely outmanned by the Germans, nearly ten to one. The Allies’ advantage was their almost total air superiority.
The Germans knew an invasion was coming and were focused on uncovering exactly where and when. The Allies were just as focused on misleading them. The code name for the invasion was Overlord, and the code name for the deception plan was Fortitude.
The foundation for this complex ruse was already in place. German spies who had infiltrated Great Britain had been captured and turned into double agents by the British Secret Service. Working under creative code names such as Zigzag, Garbo, Chopin, and Tricycle, some of the double agents had been feeding misinformation back to the Germans for years, always under direct supervision of the British. As a follow-up and unknown to the enemy, the British code breakers at Bletchley Park were able to intercept and read German communications.
The photograph Into the Jaws of Death shows American troops, part of the U.S. 1st Infantry Division, leaving a Higgins Boat on Omaha.
The international press correspondents at the Grand Hôtel in Stockholm were at the bar, scrambling for news bits. Hedvig Johnson, at London’s OSS office on Ryder Street, waited impatiently along with everyone else as the official reports began to come in.
The landings on the beaches of Normandy, the largest invasion fleet ever assembled, heralded the beginning of the end for Germany’s Third Reich.
(Above is excerpted from the book: Liberty Lady: A True Story of Love and Espionage in WWII Sweden)
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