thomas malloy wrote: >In The Longest Day, Romel is shown wanting to deploy the panzers, but >only Hitler could give the order and the staff was afraid to wake him >up. I concede that movies are not the best history teachers.
That really happened. The movie was accurate. That was one reason the invasion was not stopped, but another reason was that the British convinced the Germans that invasion would be at Pas de calais, so large numbers of German troops were massed there. The British and Americans deployed thousands of fake inflatable tanks and trucks and fake radio traffic to make the Germans think they had an extra army. (German high altitude reconnaissance aircraft took low res pictures of the fake tanks.) After the invasion started, for several days the deception continued. They fooled the Germans into thinking Normandy was only a feint, and another attack was coming, so troops were held back to meet the fake army. - Jed
