If the landing is canceled, then it will be necessary to wait until two weeks later to have the right tides and moonlight, which will reduce morale, disorganize the troops, and more importantly, the secret will not be kept. Pen ~ fun ~ pavilion www.biquge.info

That's unimaginable! After some consideration, Eisenhower ordered the longest-range U-formation to set off first, and the final order was to be given in the early morning of 25 August, when the U-formation would return or continue to advance according to this order.

In the early hours of 24 August, Stagg reaffirmed that there would be a brief period of good weather on 25 August, and Eisenhower consulted with the rest of the command, and they agreed to land on 25 August.

Eisenhower pondered for a moment, two minutes in some recalls, four minutes in others, and finally firmly ordered the landing on 25 August, with accurate weather guarantees that made Eisenhower make a difficult choice.

Sufficient material supplies, realistic combat exercises, extensive pre-war reconnaissance, and accurate meteorological support made all the senior commanders of the Allied forces full of hope for the victory of the Normandy landing, and once the incomparably powerful Allied forces landed in France, it would be the result of pushing all the way, and Rommel's demise was imminent.

The Normandy landings were a strategic amphibious landing on the mainland, and landing on the beachhead was not a sign of victory. Due to the relatively large depth of the mainland, even if the beachhead is landed, the defending side can transfer reserve troops from other places to organize a counterattack and drive the landing side into the sea.

The Germans could rely on their quick reactions, swift maneuvers, and resolute counterattacks to suppress the landing Allied forces on the narrow landing beachhead, and without the strong naval and air support of the Allied forces, they would not even be able to hold the beachhead in the projectile land.

The German army in France was very good in terms of reaction and combat effectiveness, and the railways and highways in France were very developed, so the Allies certainly knew very well what kind of resistance they would encounter. Therefore, the key to the success or failure of the Normandy landing lies in withstanding the German counterattack in the first two weeks of the landing and establishing a unified and consolidated landing field.

However, before the Allies occupied the large port, they could only transport 12 to 15 divisions, including 1 to 2 armored divisions, and ensure the supply of food, oil, and ammunition for these troops.

On the other hand, although the German army only deployed 8 divisions in Normandy, it was able to transfer 25 to 30 divisions from various places in three days, of which 7 to 8 armored divisions were used for counterattacks.

In other words, victory was only possible if German reinforcements were prevented from reaching Normandy. In order to achieve the goal of preventing German reinforcements, the Allies adopted a two-pronged approach, on the one hand, using a powerful air force to bomb railway and road targets in northwestern France, blocking communications to Normandy, so that German reinforcements could not reach.

On the other hand, it was to carry out strategic deception and camouflage to convince the German high command that after the Normandy landing, there would be another bigger landing, so it did not transfer reinforcements to Normandy. -- This strategic deception was the most secretive part of the Normandy landings, and only some of it was made public in the declassified archives 50 years later, and some of it was only speculated and imagined by future generations.

In February 1941, Lieutenant General Morgan, deputy chief of staff of the Allied High Command, proposed that deception and secrecy measures be developed to ensure the success of the landing. The project was codenamed Jay.

Participating agencies include the British Military Intelligence, the Special Operations Agency, the Counterintelligence Service, the Double Cross Committee, the Political Warfare Enforcement Service, the U.S. Strategic Intelligence Agency (the predecessor of the CIA), the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and the Allied Army, Navy, and Air Force Intelligence.

The core department is the London Office of Overseers, which is located at 2 Great George Street, the seat of Churchill's wartime cabinet, and is responsible for formulating and implementing strategic deception and reconnaissance operations, and coordinating the British and Allied intelligence services to organize major operations.

Now it has become the organization of strategic deception in the Normandy landings. The motto is witty, cunning and sophisticated, and the coat of arms is a statue of the half-human, half-sheep god of agriculture and animal husbandry, Saturn, an elf in ancient Roman mythology who specializes in making waves.

The current Chief of Division is Lieutenant Colonel John of the British Army? Bivan, whose nickname is the Head of Scams. Although his position and rank were not high, he had a lot of authority, and even Churchill and Roosevelt sometimes had to arrange activities or make statements in accordance with his request.

The scope of this strategic deception, the ingenuity of its conception, and the difficulty of this deception are unimaginable.

In March 1941, Project Jay was renamed Project Guardian. Its purpose was twofold: first, to induce the German army to disperse throughout Europe through various means, so as to reduce the German defenders in France, especially in the Normandy area, to a minimum.

The second was to convince the German high command that the Normandy landings were only a feint aimed at inducing the Germans to commit to reserve forces prematurely, so as to create conditions for the next larger-scale main attack.

The latter purpose is the core content of the "Defender" plan, and this content cannot directly fall into the hands of the German army, but must be reversed in an indirect way, so that the German army has spent a lot of effort to obtain such a star and a half, and then according to such clues, it will analyze, reason, and generalize, and draw erroneous conclusions that are in line with the hopes of the Allies.

After listening to Beavan's plan, Allied Supreme Commander Eisenhower wrote an instruction saying "I like all this" and sent Colonel Wilder, director of the "Special Means Committee", a deception expert of the Supreme Command, to fully assist Beavan in his entirety.

In order to achieve the first purpose of the "Guardian" plan, that is, to disperse the German army, Bivan implemented the "Zeppelin" plan in southern Europe: at the beginning of August 1941, Britain and the United States desperately put pressure on Stalin, and Britain and the United States used aid as a threat to force Stalin to organize more than 2 million troops to carry out the so-called counteroffensive plan.

The German army on the Soviet front line really fought back and forth with more than 2 million Soviet troops, and the Soviet army in the great counteroffensive actually changed its previous decline and was able to compete with the German army.

In fact, they knew that it was Rommel who ordered the German army and its allies on the Soviet front to deliberately release water on the Soviet army, and Britain, the United States and the Soviet Union were also very satisfied with the effect of the counterattack.

Rommel's deliberate show of weakness was digging a hole for Britain and the United States, but some small countries did not think so, they thought that Germany was about to finish, so they quietly sent personnel to surrender to Britain and the United States.

However, the British radio and newspapers revealed the secrets of these traitors, consciously or unconsciously, and Germany could not tolerate the presence of traitors in southern Europe, so it decided to send troops to occupy Hungary.

Rommel then drew three armored divisions and one infantry division and occupied all of Hungary on August 19, 1941, imprisoning Hungarian Prime Minister Kali in a concentration camp. Romania was frightened and suspended secret contacts with Britain and the United States. In this way, although Germany controlled the situation in southern Europe, it lost 4 divisions of elite troops in France. (To be continued.) )