Operation Fortitude: The Allied D-Day Deception Campaign and Media Use

Abstract

Throughout the Second World War, the Allies focused much of their war effort on Operation Fortitude, a campaign strictly for the purpose of misinforming the Axis Powers. One extensive use of misinformation came before and after the assault on Normandy in June of 1944, more popularly known as D-Day. The Allies' goal was to make the Germans believe the attack would be coming at Pas de Calais, much further east and closer to England. The Allies used a number of different strategies to accomplish this, including extensively bombing the Calais area, using General George Patton as a commander "decoy," and even creating a fake invasion force. This paper examines how the media was used to carry misinformation. The Allies used both newspapers and radio broadcasts to influence the Germans into believing an attack would be coming at Calais, not Normandy. By withholding the secret details of the invasion, the American public was also led to believe an attack was coming at Calais. I argue, although double-agents were also an important way to transmit false information, without the use of media an effective campaign would have been much more difficult.