More data on the Allied contingency and deception plans, mainly aimed at Norway, but sometimes with implications for Finland or Denmark:
SHADOWBOXING ON THE NORTHERN FLANK:
The Impact of Allied Contingency Plans and Deception Operations in Scandinavia on German Strategy in World War Two
In contrast to France, the Low Countries, Italy, East European and Balkan
countries, there were no major Allied ground campaigns to liberate Denmark and
Norway before the end of the Second World War. Except for the Danish island of
Bornholm in the Baltic Sea and a tiny portion of northeastern Norway, both of which
had been liberated by Soviet forces, those two countries were entirely under German control at the time of the German surrender of May 1945, as they had been since the
Allied evacuation from Narvik in May 1940. From hindsight, it seems only strategic
common sense that those Scandinavian countries were bypassed by the Allies while
the rest of the continent was not. In 1941 and 1942, when the Allied powers began to
seize the initiative from the Axis powers , the Allies’ forward positions were in
Russia, Egypt, Gibraltar, Malta and Britain. Their ultimate objectives required
invading and occupying the main source of German war potential, the German
homeland. The countries of West, East, Southeast and South Europe were invaded
because geography had placed them on the path between the Allies’ forward
positions and their ultimate objective. Unlike the rest of the continent, the
Scandinavian countries were not, of necessity, on this path.
However, in the years after Germany’s invasion and occupation of Denmark and Norway, it was not a foregone conclusion that Scandinavia would remain a strategic backwater for the duration . In the minds of many Axis and Allied decision makers an Allied invasion of Norway was a very real possibility . Above all, both Winston Churchill and Adolf Hitler were an obsessed with scenarios involving Allied offensives to turn the Third Reich’s northern flank. At various points during the war this potentiality had very real consequences. After Winston Churchill’s proposal for an invasion of northern Norway, Operation JUPITER, was rejected in 1942, Scandinavia was never again in contention to be a major theater of Allied operations. However, every year from 1941 to 1944, there were either major deception campaigns aimed at making the Germans believe an attack on Scandinavia was imminent, contingency plans to actually invade Scandinavia if priority operations, such as OVERLORD, could not be carried out , or both. The purpose of this paper is to explore the strategic debate within Allied circles over whether land operations should actually be mounted on the Scandinavian flank, Allied contingency and deception planning centered on Scandinavia, German preparations to meet a perceived Allied threat to their northern flank, and how the Allies’ actions influenced those perceptions of threat. Chronologically, it covers events from 1941 through the summer of 1944, after which threats to Scandinavia were obsolete as a contingency or deception.
The first British proposal for a rematch with the Germans in Norway was not Churchill’s oft-cited JUPITER operation. The British Joint Planning Staff formulated Plan DYNAMITE in 1941 (See Figure A), and it was aimed at southern Norway. The six division assault force was initially supposed to seize Stavanger and its airfields. After that the aim was “an advance on OSLO with a view to intensifying our economic pressure and forming a platform for further offensive action against GERMANY”. D-Day for this operation was supposed to be September 1st. Whether this referred to 1941 or 1942 is not made clear by the author’s source, which was not the original DYNAMITE plan, but a summary of the plan included in a declassified COSSAC document dated December 4th, 1943. (PREPARATION, Sept. 24) In any event, it was beyond British capabilities to implement this plan in 1941 and in 1942, as we know, Allied efforts were directed elsewhere.
In 1942 the Joint Planning Staff formulated Plan JUPITER (See Figure B), which was targeted against northern, not southern Norway. The COSSAC document cited above also summarizes it as follows:
the object ...was “to capture and hold the Northern NORWAY air bases in the PETSAMO - KIRKENES and BANAK areas”. The force involved was five infantry divisions all trained in snow and mountain warfare and seventeen commandos. The operation had to be carried out in winter in order to obtain sufficiently long hours of darkness. (PREPARATIONS, Sept. 24)
The latter plan was Churchill’s favorite. It is not clear why he preferred it over DYNAMITE at the time. He might have felt JUPITER would be of more immediate and direct assistance to the Soviets. Perhaps also, in 1942, he perceived a lodgement in southern Norway to be too vulnerable to a Nazi counter-stroke from Germany and Denmark. In any event, Churchill refers only to JUPITER in his memoirs. It is probably for this reason that it has appeared more often than any other operational code-name related to Norway, and why it is often used incorrectly to refer to later, different operations.
Churchill and his Chief of Staff, Field Marshal Alanbrooke, did not agree on the desirability or feasibility of this operation. Churchill argued that the proposed landing could hit German forces in a vulnerable position and make the Lend-Lease convoys to the Soviet ports of Murmansk and Archangel less vulnerable to German air and naval attack. Alanbrooke argued the landing would be too risky and too costly, that “it was a strategic dead-end” and that the Germans, with their air bases in southern Norway, had superiority over the Allies, whose land-based air cover could not reach the region in question. (Weinberg, p357-58)
Historian Gerhard Weinberg believes that the idea had more merit than than Alanbrooke and others have commonly supposed. He asserts Churchill believed it would achieve four strategic goals: 1. Safer convoy routes to the Soviet Union. 2. A diversion of the German from the Arctic portion of the Eastern Front. 3. interruption Swedish iron-ore supplies to Germany in the winter months. 4. A significant impact on the “attitude of Sweden and the position of Finland in the war.” (Weinberg, p357-58)
If successful, he believes it also would have provided some relief for Allied shipping. By drastically reducing German capability to harass convoys to Murmansk, the Allies would have been able to deliver a greater proportion of aid by this shorter northern route, as opposed to the route around the Cape through the Persian Gulf to southern Russia, which tied up ships for much longer periods of time. (Weinberg, p357-58)
Another potential consequence of a British seizure of Norway, in the minds of British who advocated it and the Germans who feared it, was the opening of the Baltic to Allied activity and a consequent increase in the threat to the entire northern coast of Germany. This does not seem geographically plausible. Norway is not on the Baltic Sea. As long as Denmark was under Axis control and Sweden remained neutral, the Baltic Sea would have remained a German lake. If Sweden were drawn into the war however, that situation would be change. In that event, the Germans would have had to assume the onerous burden of occupying at least southern Sweden as a buffer zone against Allied penetration of the Baltic, or would have to face the consequences of having Allied bases very close to the Baltic shores of Denmark, Germany and Poland. In short, the long-term strategic potential of a Scandinavian front turned entirely on the position of Sweden. With Swedish territory involved, Scandinavia could be a major theater. With Swedish territory neutral, Scandinavia would in fact be a strategic dead-end. The importance of this speculation lies in the fact that the same ideas ran through the minds of German strategists. As will become apparent, German mistrust of Swedish intentions was an important factor in German defense planning and Allied deception planning.
In Weinberg’s opinion, an invasion of Norway in 1942 would not have have disrupted preparations for a cross-channel attack as much as operation TORCH did. (Weinberg, p357-58) Presumably this is because he assumes, like Alanbrooke, that JUPITER would reach a natural stopping point once all of Norway was liberated. The North Africa invasion, on the other hand, had too much strategic potential, thereby offering tempting targ3ts of opportunity which distract effort from preparation for an invasion of France. While this pleased Alanbrooke, with hindsight Weinberg sees that the opening up of the Mediterranean coast of Europe to Allied operations made it that much easier for the Allies to delay the Cross-Channel attack from 1943 to 1944.
The difficulty with Weinberg’s speculation is that no one in 1942 framed the issue the way he does in his book. The American planners, who were anxious to avoid being committed to Mediterranean options, did not see the Norway proposal as a useful means of keeping Allied resources committed in the Atlantic. They were committed entirely to SLEDGEHAMMER, a proposed beachhead in France, and eschewed all landing operations on the German periphery, whether in the north or south. If they envisioned a second-best alternative, it was to shift emphasis to the Pacific. Therefore, once SLEDGEHAMMER was definitely canceled, disappointed US planners had nothing to propose. Franklin Roosevelt did not push the Norway invasion either, which would have satisfied his requirement to involve US forces in ground fighting in the European theater before the end of 1942. He did not have strong views on where, in particular, this ground campaign should take place. He was inclined to see Axis domination of Northwest Africa as a potential threat to South America. Therefore, North African operations, first ‘GYMNAST’ and ultimately TORCH stoked his interest more than other peripheral operations. The primary contestants in the JUPITER debate were therefore in British circles. The British Staff unanimously opposed the plan and preferred a North African invasion, which could link up with their hard-pressed forces in Egypt.
Churchill was the only major champion of a Norway effort. However, even he always saw JUPITER as complementary to a North African landing, not a substitute for it. In his colorful prose, compared to a small bridgehead in France in 1942, “It would have been better to lay our right claw on French North Africa, tear with our left at the North Cape[northern Norway], and wait a year without risking our teeth upon the German fortified front across the Channel.” He goes on to say, ”Though I hoped for both ‘Torch’ and ‘Jupiter,’ I never had any intention of letting ‘Jupiter’ queer the pitch of Torch.” (Churchill, p323-324) Faced with the vehement opposition of his military advisors, the indifference of American strategic planners and FDR’s mild preference for an invasion North Africa, Churchill was in a weak position. This was clinched by the serious shortage of assault-shipping, which precluded simultaneous landings in Norway and Africa. The preferred Operation TORCH was launched, and even it had to be reduced from a landing in three countries (Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia), to a landing in two (Morocco and Algeria), because of this shortage. In his memoirs, Churchill says he hoped Africa would be cleared quickly, in part so that assault-shipping and carriers could be made available to undertake JUPITER in the winter of 1942-43. This was not to be possible.
The actual engagement of Allied forces in the Mediterranean theater shifted the focus of the intra-Allied strategic debate to the issue of determining the appropriate scope of future operations in that theater for the remainder of 1942 and most of 1943. Norway was out of the picture for most of this time.
At the Trident conference of May, 1943, the Americans secured British commitment to a cross-channel invasion, code-named OVERLORD in May of 1944. More concretely, the British agreed to transfer seven British and American divisions from the Mediterranean to Britain in November of 1943 (Weinberg, p611). This reinforced the American and Soviet veto on British proposals for extensive operations in the eastern Mediterranean. In this situation, Churchill’s interest in a Norwegian project resurfaced. At the Quebec Conference, in August 1943, the conferees conceded to Churchill that planning for a Norwegian invasion should be updated. (Weinberg, 616) In the unlikely event that OVERLORD had to be cancelled, the forces massing in Britain could be used for an offensive on Germany’s northern flank.
General Morgan of the COSSAC staff was tasked with updating the operation. In a memo dated 24th September,1943, Morgan made his annoyance with this task evident by proposing that the British be predominantly responsible for its planning. Already busy with other planning tasks, Morgan demanded an increase in his staff. (PREPARATION, Sept. 24) Whether or not his staff was increased, planning did move forward in December, 1943 on a hypothetical invasion of Scandinavia, code-named ATLANTIS. (See Figure C)
The directive for planning this operation in December, 1943 ordered the plan complete by February 1st of 1944. This directive assumed it would be known by March 15, 1944 if OVERLORD was going to be canceled for that year. In the event that it was, ATLANTIS was scheduled for June 1st, 1944. This document also quoted the British Chiefs of Staff’s reaction to General Morgan’s attempt to pass the buck to them., “since operations against NORWAY were to be regarded as an alternative to OVERLORD it would be quite impracticable to for it to be regarded as a solely BRITISH enterprise”. (ATLANTIS, Directive, Dec. 4)
Since the Allies were so much more built-up in 1944 than 1942, ATLANTIS could quite naturally have far greater resources available for it’s execution than either DYNAMITE or JUPITER. It therefore had more grandiose aims than any of the previous plans. Landings would be made by June 1st at multiple points along the Norwegian coast from Stavanger and Bergen in the south, to at least as far north as Trondheim, for the purpose of destroying German forces and establishing bases in southern Norway. These bases would be used around September 1st to support an invasion of Denmark from which future, unspecified attacks against the Germans could be mounted. (ATLANTIS, Directive, Dec. 4) The planners were told to assume, worst-case style, that Finland would still be in the war on the Axis side at this time and that Sweden would be strictly neutral, but would fight the Germans if attacked by them. (ATLANTIS, Directive, Dec. 4)
Ultimately, the Allies always gave strategic priority to parts of the European theater outside of Scandinavia. ATLANTIS, the last of the contingency plans for a forced landing in Norway and Denmark, was made obsolete by the successful Allied invasion at Normandy in June 1944. The Norwegian and Danish resistance movements, rather than the Allied Expeditionary Force accepted the German surrender in their countries in May 1945.
Nevertheless, the Germans had tied down hundreds of thousands of troops in Scandinavia after Germany had initially conquered those countries. German troop strength in Norway stood at 464,000 on June 6, 1944 (Sexton, p109), having been incrementally reinforced since 1941. The Germans felt they needed to hold on to these territories for the same reasons they had seized them in the first place. Germany was dependent on Sweden for approximately 73 percent of its iron-ore. Over the winter, most of it was shipped out of the ice-free Norwegian ports of Narvik and Kirkenes. Naval bases in the Norwegian inlets (fjords) were also considered vital for the prosecution of naval war against Britain. (Sexton, p109) Additionally, seizing Norway prevented Britain from tightening its blockade of Germany by closing off the North Sea, as they had in World War I. This was the logic behind the initial invasion of Norway and Denmark (WESERUEBUNG) in April, 1940. Once the Germans seized these territories, the same logic still applied, dictating continued occupation.
Still, the the exact strength of German forces in Scandinavia depended greatly on German estimates of the Allied threat. Hitler had a high estimate of the threat. He, and at times many of his subordinates, feared an attack on Norway by the Allies at several points during the war. Their estimate of the threat influenced their decisions about military and naval deployments from 1941 to 1944. The perceived threat to Germany’s northern flank did not emerge in a vacuum. The success of WESERUEBUNG was uncertain in its early stages. The Allies successfully retook Narvik and heavily damaged the German Navy (Kriegsmarine). (Pitt & Pitt, p20) This demonstrated Allied superiority in sea power, and the vulnerability of German forces which had no land connection to Germany. Victory had been assured only by the withdrawal of the Allies, which only came in response to the German offensive in the Low Countries. Beginning in 1941, Hitler felt that Britain would not resist the temptation to attack these vulnerable German forces with forces from the British Isles.
German fears of an Allied attack however, depended on more than logical deduction and Hitler’s strategic hunches. The Allies did their very best to lend plausibility to these fears. The Special Operations Executive (SOE) supported resistance groups everywhere in Europe, including Norway, to make sure that the Germans could not feel one hundred percent secure in any part of their empire. Commando raids served the same purpose. The German command could also never be quite sure that Allied Convoys to Russia were not in actuality carrying forces for an invasion of north Norway. (Sexton, p110) The remainder of this paper will discuss Allied efforts to make the Germans believe an attack on Norway was imminent and corresponding German preparations to meet this perceived threat.
To make best use of all the assets they could use to influence German perceptions, the British developed and carried out five formal deception plans aimed at Norway between 1941 and 1944. These were OMNIBUS, HARDBOILED, SOLO I, TINDALL and FORTITUDE NORTH (Sexton, pp110-112). These plans surpassed in complexity the three genuine contingency plans, ‘DYNAMITE’, ‘JUPITER’ and ‘ATLANTIS’, although there were a great many parallels between the two different types of plans. British deception operations were a joint operation of the London Controlling Section (LCS) and the double-cross (XX) or Twenty Committee. LCS designed and coordinated the strategic deception plans. The XX Committee controlled German intelligence agents who had been caught by the British authorities and were working as double-agents. The double-agents were used by the XX Committee to pass disinformation back to German intelligence. (Sexton, p110) These double-agents were collectively the single most valuable tool the British had to implement their deception plans, particularly in the early years. They were not the only tool however. Double-agents were used in tandem with dummy preparations, press leaks and diplomatic tip-offs.
The first deception plan with Norway as its target was code-named OMNIBUS. As historian Donal Sexton puts, “through a succession of seemingly unrelated reports from double-agents BALLOON, DRAGONFLY, GELATINE and the team of MUTT and JEFF, the Abwehr [German intelligence] learned that the British were recruiting Norwegian fishermen to act as pilots, that King Haakon VII was inspecting Norwegian troops, and that British officers were preparing for an unspecified operation.” German intelligence offered two of the agents bonuses for more information about invasion preparations they believed were going on in Scotland (Sexton, p110). This type feedback from unsuspecting German intelligence was naturally quite helpful to the British in deciding what types of disinformation to emphasize and in designing future deception operations.
In the meantime, other events were taking place which reinforced German fears. On December 7, 1941 the United Kingdom declared war on Finland, after having waited for five months since that country attacked the Soviet Union. (Sexton p110) On December 17 the Soviet Army launched a major offensive along the whole Finnish border. Later on that month, British commandos raided Vaagso in the south of Norway and the Lofoten Islands in North.(Pitt, p62)
The German Army High Command, Oberkommando der Wehrmacht
(OKW) suspected that these events were a prelude to something bigger on the northern flank. On December 23, 1941, General Nikolaus Von Falkenhorst, who commanded all German forces in Norway and northern Finland was ordered to review his defenses and measure their capability to fight off an invasion. Four days later, Hitler gave his assessment. He stated, “If the British go about things properly, they will attack northern Norway at several points. By means of an all-out attack by their fleet and ground troops they will try to displace usthere, take Narvik if possible, and thus exert pressure on Sweden and Finland.” (quoted in Sexton, p110)
The Germans took action to remedy the perceived danger in early 1942. Organizationally, Falkenhorst was tasked with forming a mobile reserve around the 25th Panzer Division, stationed in the theater. To control coastal defense he also set up several static divisional headquarters. Quantitatively, between January and June of 1942, the Germans increased their troop strength in Norway from 150,000 to 250,000 men (Sexton, p110).
The German responses at sea were even more dramatic. From February 11-13, 1942, the German battlecruisers, Scharnhorstand Gneisau, the heavy cruiser Prinz Eugen and their escorting destroyers made their infamous dash from Brest in France through the English Channel to German ports. (Pitt & Pitt, p66). Hitler was partly motivated by fear that these ships were particularly vulnerable to attack in Brest. However, he also felt it was just as important that the German ships ultimately reach Norway. By this point he was proclaiming, “Every ship that is not in Norway is in the wrong place.” (quoted in Dworschack, p74). The ships suffered mine and torpedo damage and none reached Norway until after extensive and lengthy repairs. By March 1942, however, the Tirpitz, Scheerand five destroyers were in Norwegian waters.(Dworschack, p75) Despite their mortification at seeing the German ships slip through the Channel under their noses, the British ultimately benefited from the German redeployment. One author crystallized the current historical consensus on the ultimate result of the Channel Dash, “the withdrawal from Brest of the Kriegsmarine simplified the Royal Navy’s blockade by allowing its strength to be concentrated in the north.” (Dworschack, p75)
Taking note of German interest in the possibility of an Allied invasion of Norway, and the actual movement of reinforcements into that country, the British launched the deception operation HARDBOILED in early 1942. HARDBOILED bore an uncanny resemblance to the never used but genuine Plan DYNAMITE. Invasion preparations appeared to be aimed against Stavanger in southern Norway. (See Figure A) The American military attache in Stockholm hinted to his Finnish counterpart that an invasion that an Anglo-American invasion of Norway would soon take place. The Finnish Attache tipped off the Germans. Two of the double-agents reported that amphibious forces were gathering in Scotland, the natural staging point for an invasion of Norway. (Sexton, p110)
In the second half of the year, SOLO I was launched as a cover plan for the genuine Operation TORCH. The target area was the narrow central coastal region of Norway running from Trondheim to Narvik. The Allies hinted that forces which were being gathered in Scotland for the North Africa invasion were aimed at this part of Norway. The British 52nd Mountain Division intensified its training and attempted to recruit Norwegian speakers. The press noted that General Eisenhower’s naval aide had a pair of Arctic weather boots in his office. Double-agents reported that Allied naval crews in the British Isles were being equipped with clothing for Arctic weather conditions. (Sexton, 110-111). German aerial reconnaissance could detect the preparations in Scotland on its own. In October of 1942, the Germans ordered two infantry divisions and one tank battalion go to Norway, thousands of miles from where the Allies would actually land in November.
Despite the lack of a genuine invasion in the north, the OKW felt that the actual Allied attack on the southern periphery of the Reich in North Africa indicated that an attack on Norway at some point was likely. In a striking parallel with Churchill’s strategic intuition, they seemed to feel that landings on the southern and northern periphery should logically complement each other. (Sexton 111).
As 1943 began, Hitler and OKW wondered where in Scandinavia the blow would fall. The Finns reported their assessment that the Allies would invade the Trondheim-Narvik sector in a combined operation with the Swedes. (Sexton, p111) Hitler’s and Von Falkenhorst’s suspicions got the better of them. They both believed that the Allies had promised the Swedes possession of Narvik in return for their participation in the war. This flight of fancy did have a tiny grain of realism in it. At the time of the initial invasion of Norway, the Swedes had suggested that they themselves occupy Narvik (Weinberg, 174). Still, it was poor judgment to assume so readily that Sweden would risk certain German retaliation for this purpose.
Nevertheless, Von Falkenhorst made a contingency plan, OperationI/II , for the occupation of Sweden(Schuster, pp36-37). As a result of the above-mentioned Finnish report, which may or may not have been an Allied plant, the Germans contemplated violating the neutrality of their Swedish buffer, an action that would have magnified the damage of an Allied assault on Norway by creating a wider Scandinavian front extending into the Baltic. This did not happen, but the Germans still paid a price in terms of faulty strategic deployments. To carry out the Swedish occupation, if need be, while defending Norway from the Allies, the 295th division was redeployed to Norway and the 25th Panzer Division was strengthened. (Sexton, p110)
At the same time, intelligence feedback from Germany indicated to the Allies that their efforts of the previous two years had taken great advantage of German sensitivity to dangers from the north. They proceeded to develop more elaborate deceptions in 1943 and 1944.
The code name for the London Controlling Section’s operation against Norway in 1943 was TINDALL. It was only one part of a larger deception plan which threatened numerous points along the northwestern coast of Europe, known as the COCKADE series. (Sexton, pp111) TINDALL was complemented by operation STARKEY, a threat to Pas De Calais. TINDALL was mounted in three phases and Stavanger was again the initial imaginary target. (TINDALL, Aug. 19, 1943) The Lister peninsula, Kristiansand and Oslo would then be attacked in turn. The targets were in southern Norway because a lack of sufficient escort carriers and long-range-fighters made any operation further north implausible at this time. (Sexton, p111) However, two carriers were still sent to the north to launch air raids against Narvik and Bodo, quite possibly hoping to render the basic deception plan more credible by adding an obvious diversion to it!
TINDALL was also supported by training exercises of the 49th and 52nd Divisions in Scotland which simulated an offensive in the Scottish Highlands, territory which resembles southern Norway. Double-agents reported this activity and the Luftwaffe increased aerial reconnaissance of the area. That, unfortunately, was all they did. Multiple landings in northwestern Europe did not seem plausible to the Germans at this time. They knew the Allies did not have sufficient forces in Britain to undertake these operations. (Sexton, p111) This demonstrates the limitations of deception planning, even in such a favorable intelligence situation as that of the Allies. It is very difficult to prevent an enemy from getting at least a very rough picture of one’s overall strength. Ideally, deception plans should not exceed actual capabilities by so much that they become implausible.
The flip side of this is that Hitler could detect the rapid growth of Allied forces in Britain as the winter of 1943-1944 approached. The withdrawal of seven divisions from the Mediterranean theater in November was probably taken as an indicator that something was up for northwestern Europe in 1944. That month, Hitler issued Directive 51, which called for a strengthening of the Atlantic Wall to deal with an invasion that was most definitely expected for the spring. He decided that forces could no longer be transferred from the West to strengthen the eastern or southern fronts. In practice, Hitler defined the West as the whole Atlantic coast of occupied Europe, which extended up through Norway. At a conference on December 20, Hitler discussed his renewed fear of an Allied assault in the north:
There is no doubt that the attack in the West will come in the spring. I have the feeling that they want to operate on very broad fronts... We must count on additional landings in Norway... There’s a distinct possibility of a landing in Norway... Of course it would be only a diversion, but it could become unpleasant for us if the bastards hang on there and lure out our Air Force.----- We must use a lot of submarines because we mustn’t let them gain a foothold there. If the enemy does gain a foothold, it would be fatal for our whole Northern army. We wouldn’t be able to get any more transports through to them. In the South we have found out what it means if the bastards sit on an island...” (Quoted in Gilbert, pp127-128)
Despite his stated belief that the Norway operation would be a diversion from a more important assault, Hitler still could not abandon that country. Given the vulnerabilities of the isolated northern armies, they needed to either successfully resist or be destroyed entirely. This meant he needed an effective defense there from the very outset, which meant forces had to be deployed there which could otherwise have been on the European mainland.
With the forces that would be available in the UK in 1944, a multiple landing deception plan modeled on the COCKADE series could be made to work. In fact, to prevent the Germans from concentrating at the decisive point of invasion, deception had to be used. The trick was to threaten as many alternate objectives as possible while ultimately concentrating on a single line of advance.
The cover plan for OVERLORD, Operation FORTITUDE, was the way the Allies sought to achieve the necessary dispersal of German defenses. FORTITUDE was divided into two parts: FORTITUDE SOUTH, aimed at Pas De Calais, and FORTITUDE NORTH, aimed at Norway at Norway and Denmark. (Plan Fortitude, Feb. 23, 1944) The stated objective of the plan was to induce “the enemy to make faulty strategic dispositions in relation to operations by the United Nations against GERMANY in 1944.” (Fortitude, 2/23/44) Both parts of the plan furthered this objective with great success.
FORTITUDE NORTH resembled Operation ATLANTIS in its emphasis on several widely dispersed landing zones in Norway and follow-on plans for an attack on Denmark. (See Figure C) The fictional plan, however, was even more grandiose than the genuine plan. It called for an imaginary assault by the Western Allies on Narvik and a march inland to the northern Swedish town of Gallivare, in the heart of their iron mining district. A Soviet force was supposed to march across Finland to meet them. Indeed, in contrast to the ATLANTIS plan, Sweden was very central to FORTITUDE NORTH. The Allied offensive landing at Narvik was supposed to be followed by the acquisition by the Allies of air bases in southern Sweden. This element was probably played up because feedback from earlier operations had made it clear that the Germans were suspicious of Swedish intentions. Also, it made the whole scenario more threatening than an invasion of Norway alone would have been, as our discussion of the strategic geography of Scandinavia on pages 4 and 5 would suggest. The Swedish airbases would help support Allied landings in southern Norway and then Denmark (See the arrows in Sweden in figure C). The Swedish based air attacks from the east and amphibious assaults from the west would form a double envelopment around the German forces in Norway and Denmark. This would rip a gaping hole into Germany’s northern flank.
Suspecting that even the Germans might find this audacious plan hard to swallow, the Allies devised another plan to reinforce its plausibility. Plan GRAFFHAM was aimed at making the Swedes think an attack on Norway was imminent. This deception was mounted entirely by diplomatic means. The Americans British and Soviets put heavy diplomatic pressure on the Swedish Foreign Ministry to grant air bases and transit rights, all of which would have seriously compromised Swedish neutrality. The British sent War Office and Air Ministry officials to Sweden ostensibly to negotiate for these rights. (Sexton, p113)
Many Swedish officials and much of the Swedish media were convinced by these actions that the Allies were going to make Scandinavia a major front in 1944. The Germans, as intended, heard all the rumors and these served as “independent” confirmation of some of their worst suspicions. Deceiving neutral parties can in this way reinforce the impressions one is trying to make on the mind of his enemy.
Dummy preparations were mounted to support FORTITUDE NORTH. Fictional units such as British II and VII Corps, and the American 55th Division were said to be massing in Scotland. So were half-real, half fictional aircraft squadrons. The Royal Navy conducted aggressive reconnaissance off the imaginary invasion targets in northern Norway. The frequency of actual commando raids by SOE was increased. SOE operatives also spirited Norwegian administrators backed to England to give the impression that an occupation government was being set up. King Haakon of Norway made more public appearances. The genuineness of all these manuevers was naturally confirmed by double-agents working for the XX Committee. (Sexton, p112)
The movement of the 89th and 363rd Divisions to Norway in May 1944 was a tribute to the success of FORTITUDE NORTH. This brought total German troop strength in that country up to 464,000. These two divisions, at least, were unavailable to respond to NEPTUNE, the code-name for the initial amphibious landings in Normandy. This helped achieve at least two of the deception plan’s stated objectives: “b. Inducing him to expend his available effort on fortifications in areas other than the target area [Normandy]” and most of all,
“d. Retaining forces in areas as far removed as possible from the target area before and after the ‘NEPTUNE’ assault.” (Fortitude, 2/23/44)
In the end, liberating Europe from the Axis was such a challenging task in large part because the Allies could not achieve strategic surprise against Hitler the way he had achieved strategic surprise against his victims earlier in the war. As Hitler’s Directive 51 indicates, the fact that the Allies were going to invade the Atlantic coast of Europe was a secret so big it could not be kept. In this situation it was very useful for the Allies to at least make plans to exploit even the most unlikely avenues of attack, and to make the Germans aware that they were being considered. Strategic distraction of the Germans was the only way that the Allies could at least partially substitute for strategic surprise. Allied threats to occupied Scandinavia served to demonstrate this principle in action.