With so many hands at work on such a broad canvas, it is very hard to say exactly when the strategic plan, whose aim it was to keep the enemy’s reserves away from France, gave way to the tactical plan, which sought to reduce the rate of enemy reinforcement in the Normandy bridgehead. The change had certainly occurred before the Joint Commanders’ Plan was approved on 18th May. There were at this time fifty-six German divisions in France and the Low Countries. Between the Seine and Den Helder, in the area of the Fifteenth Army, there were nineteen infantry divisions; in the Seventh Army area, between the Seine and the Loire, there were fourteen; in the South-West of France four, and on the Mediterranean coast nine. The Seventh and Fifteenth Armies were grouped together as Army Group ‘B’, of which Rommel was the Commander. The ten armoured divisions in France and Belgium were thought to be held as a centrally controlled mobile reserve, whose function would be to drive any invading force back into the sea before it had time to establish a lodgment. They were disposed as follows:
Area |
Formation |
Location |
| Fifteenth Army | 1st SS Panzer Division | Turnhout (Belgium) |
| 2nd Panzer Division | Amiens | |
| 116th Panzer Division1 | Pontoise | |
| Seventh Army | 21st Panzer Division | south of Caen |
| 12th SS Panzer Division | Dreux | |
| Panzer Lehr Division | south of Chartres | |
| First Army | 17th SS Panzer Grenadier | north-west of Poitiers |
| 11th Panzer Division2 | east of Bordeaux | |
| Nineteenth Army | 2nd SS Panzer Division3 | Toulouse |
| 9th Panzer Division | Avignon |
Since the beginning of May the G-2 Division at SHAEF had been circulating periodical estimates of the enemy build-up against Operation OVERLORD. That of 3rd June, which differs little from its predecessors and which was the last to be issued before the invasion, forecast that within a week of the first landing all three Panzer divisions north of the Seine, namely the 2nd Panzer Division at Amiens, the 116th Panzer Division at Pontoise and the 1st SS Division at Turnhout, would have arrived in the bridgehead. The 116th Panzer Division was to be expected on D plus 1 and the other two between D plus 3 and D plus 7. Of the infantry divisions under command of the Fifteenth Army, it was estimated that the 84th, 85th and 331st Infantry Divisions, all field formations, would also arrive between D plus 3 and D plus 7. From the South and South-West it was supposed that the 2nd SS Panzer Division and the 11th Panzer Division would reach the bridgehead by the end of the first week.
To contain the forces north of the Seine, and in particular the three armoured divisions, was the task of FORTITUDE SOUTH. To this we shall return. In order to hold down the formations guarding the Mediterranean and Biscay coasts, two other plans were now put into operation, VENDETTA4 for the South and IRONSIDE5 for the West.
ZEPPELIN, the Mediterranean counterpart of FORTITUDE, had, under the direction of the Commander ‘A’ Force, been in operation since the beginning of the year and included among its objects the prevention of reinforcements from reaching the German armies in France. Such an object, of course, precluded the exercise of any threat to the south coast of France. At the beginning of May, however, it was judged that the time had arrived when measures should be taken to contain the formations in that area. A subsidiary plan called VENDETTA was therefore introduced. This threatened an attack by a total force of about ten divisions on the French Mediterranean coast between Sete and Narbonne. The landing was to take place on 19th June, with the mission of seizing the Carcassonne Gap and exploiting to Toulouse and Bordeaux.
There still remained the problem of containing the formations in the South-West of France. It was impossible to associate an operation in that region with FORTITUDE SOUTH. The only reasonable story that suggested itself was that a long sea voyage operation should be launched from the west-coast ports in the United Kingdom against Bordeaux, with the object of capturing that place for the introduction of American forces sailing direct from the United States to France. The landing would be exploited along the Garonne Valley and would eventually link up with VENDETTA. This imaginary assault was given the name IRONSIDE. After several unsuccessful attempts had been made to mobilise physical resources such as air reconnaissance and minor naval operations in support of the plan, it was finally left to Special Means to perform the task.
Among the English-controlled agents the leading parts were played by BRONX and TATE. The story was such an improbable one that we were unwilling to embroil our best agents, although GARBO, through his very unreliable sub-agent 7 (6), did make a contribution.
In order to help BRONX to send urgent messages about the invasion with the necessary speed, the Germans had provided her with a code which she herself had subsequently elaborated to suit our requirements more exactly. The sectors of the European coastline were given monetary equivalents: thus, £50 indicated the Bay of Biscay. The credibility of the information was denoted thus: ‘for my dentist’ meant that information on the place of the landings was certain, ‘for my doctor’ that it was almost certain and so on. ‘Toute de suite’ meant invasion in one week, ‘urgent’ meant in two weeks, ‘vite’ in about a month and ‘si possible’ that the date was vague. On 29th May, BRONX sent the following telegram: ‘Send £50 immediately. I need it for my dentist.’ This meant: ‘I have definite news that a landing is to be made in the Bay of Biscay in one week.’ One would have thought that the Germans might have felt a little uneasy about the reaction of the British censors when confronted with the news of this dental crisis, even though it was their own code. However, we later had reason to believe that no such anxiety disturbed their minds for, in March 1945, this agent was given a similar code relating to Norway, Denmark and North-West Germany.6 In a letter ostensibly written at the same time that the telegram was despatched BRONX explained that she had picked up this valuable information at a night-club from a British officer who was under the influence of drink. ‘After a cocktail party I stayed on at the Four Hundred Club with Captain X. After having a good deal to drink, he told me that I should hear some startling news on the wireless next day, as there was to be an airborne attack on the U-boat base at Bordeaux, preliminary to the invasion. Yesterday he came to see me, very much upset, and asked me to swear not to repeat anything as he had been drunk and now the attack had been postponed for a month, and if I repeated the conversation I would endanger thousands of lives. I am convinced that he spoke the truth and and have, therefore, decided to send you a telegram to warn you of this raid.7
TATE counted among his friends a number of naval officers, and of these no one had in the past supplied him with more useful ‘high grade’ naval gossip than a certain lady called Mary, who worked at the Admiralty. On 23rd May, TATE transmitted the following message to the Germans: ‘Saw Mary for the first time for a long while. She was sent on a special mission to Washington. She says she worked on preparations for an independent expeditionary force which will leave United States for Europe. That is all I have found out so far.’ And four days later: ‘Saw Mary. Found out that the before mentioned expeditionary force consists of six divisions. Its commander is General Friedenhall.8 The objective for this army, in Mary’s opinion, is South France, but I believe that Mary herself does not know much on this point.’
On 5th June GARBO forwarded a second-hand report from 7 (6) which referred to the presence of an American assault division at Liverpool ‘destined for an attack on the South Atlantic French coast in co-operaton with a large army which will come direct from America to the French coast’. GARBO viewed the report with scepticism and thus made it easy to dissociate himself from it should IRONSIDE turn out badly.
Thus, on the eve of the invasion, pressure was being exerted against both the southern and western seaboards. This brings us back to the Channel coast and to a further consideration of FORTITUDE SOUTH.