BBC
A document has been published for the first time which proves that the Nazis were fooled by the Allies’ D-Day landing plans. (Via BBC)
The double-cross was so significant that it arguably shortened the length of World War II.
It was a certain Juan Pujol Garcia, an apparent Spanish businessman, who is at the heart of this new discovery — for the part he played in convincing the Nazis that the Allies were planning to stage the majority of the landings in Pas de Calais, rather than the Normandy coast.
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An intercepted memo picked up by British agents and decoded at Bletchley Park, revealed to the Allies that Garcia’s lie had not just worked, but had altered Germany’s war strategy. The Allies knew in advance that Adolf Hitler and his troops had fallen hook, line and sinker for the plot.
The Spaniard Pujol, known as Alaric Arabel to the Nazis, ran a network of spies in Britain, feeding information back to Berlin via his handler in Madrid. But in reality, he was working for the Brits (they knew him as Garbo) and his web of lies would mislead the enemy.
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The BBC has reproduced the document (see above) and the main takeaways are these: not only were many German troops kept in the wrong area, thus preventing them from swamping Normandy but the Allies knew in advance that their plan had worked. Indeed, lives were surely saved and the war was brought to a quicker conclusion.