A good source is Ben McIntyre’s ‘D-Day Spies’ (its one of the more readable), which covers the ‘double-cross’ part of ‘Fortitude’/’Bodyguard’ (The name for the total deception plan covering the Normandy landings). Since there were only two realistc landing points in northern France, the Germans had to be convinced that any landing would be at Calais (a shorter route and available ports), rather than Normandy.

The First US Army Group (FUSAG) was the formation (based in SE England) which was supposed to menace Calais. It was of course fake. Patton was not the original commander, but was available because he had nothing else to do, having been sacked from his previous post due to slapping a wounded soldier (actually he slapped two soldiers) . Ike and other commanders respected his talents, and did not want to lose him, but neither could he carry on in the way he had. The deception planners were delighted – they had a real life high profile commander the germans could hardly fail to miss.

He did certainly throw himself into his new role (perfect for a theatrical character like Patton), but he continued to be a handful. In one speech he declared that Britain and America were destined to rule the world, something which did not go down well with the Russians, but did at least bring publicity to his ‘command’!

The fake camps. etc of FUSAG actually were wasted since there was almost no German recon. flights, and it could be argued that even the radio traffic was not entirely needed, because the Germanswere not bothering to monitor it. Instead, they relied massively on their agents in Britain, who were of course all double agents. It really was the agents which sold the cover plan, although Patton was extremely useful.

Fortitude was very successful. The order of battle which OKW had was pretty much identical to the one the agents had given them,the Japanese ambassador reported that Hitler entirely agreed with where the (notional) attacks would come and the German forces around Calais did not move for months, if at all (15th Army stayed there for seven weeks). Calais ended up as a German redoubt, isolated by the Allied advance, and having to be taken by the British at some cost in order to be able to use the port.

It could be argued that Patton’s ‘command’ of the fake FUSAG was almost as important as his real command of an army group.

If we are being picky about the exact date of ‘D-Day’, you could argue it started on the 5th, with Jeburgh/SAS teams(?)/French resistance being ‘in country’ on the 5th, and the airbourne forces being in the air. The British jumped first, at 16 minutes past midnight.

Strange fact about ‘The Longest Day’. The actor Richard Todd was almost the first allied officer to jump into France (he would have been the first, but apparently a more senior officer wanted that honour), although the gliders at Pegasus Bridge landed first.

When they made the film, the producers wanted him to recreate his role as part of the unit that reinforced the gliders troops on the bridge (he actually being a genuine hero). Since he was a gent, he said no (actually he might have said it was too minor a role, which can be taken two ways) but he did play his own commander at the bridge (Major Howard), with someone else playing him! Thats method acting!

Other strange fact – the US Army lent lots of troops for filming, which was unfortunate since they were not available when the Berlin Wall went up, and there was a minor scandal.

That’s a bit simplistic. Europe wasn’t going to remain Nazi regardless of us invading. It was just a quesiton of how long it would remain Nazi. We didn’t “save Europe” from being Nazi forever.

On the other hand, I, like just about any other reasonable person, think that a Europe 100% under Stalin’s boot would not have been an improvement over a Europe under Hitler’s boot. So we certainly “saved Europe” from that fate.

Patton did an excellent job on the Calais ruse, the effect was far more than just that of his name. Postwar analysis made it clear that the fake radio traffic and other measures totally convinced the Germans. The fact that Patton threw himself effectively into that task while being shut out from the planning and training for D-Day itself was one of the strong points in his favor. He’d already been selected to lead 3rd Army in Europe, but if he’d screwed up that assignment, whined endlessly, etc it’s not hard to imagine Eisenhower changing his mind. He and Bradley had serious doubts about Patton’s stability (though not his skills).

Supposedly, having Patton around before D-Day and linking him to the Calais invasion gave that ruse credibility to the Germans. So they say.

The USSR would’ve won eventually without the western invasion. The threat of and subsequent reality of that invasion probably shortened the war by a year, though, and that shortening very likely saved more USSR lives than it cost in US, British and Canadian lives. Not to mention that the “FInal Solution” would’ve gone on for another year or so, and Hitler’s scorched earth policies regarding defeated Germany also, etc etc.

And, of course, if we hadn’t invaded Normandy, western europe most likely would’ve been absorbed into a much larger USSR blok than the one that grew out of the final positions of the troops in 1945.

My father always regretted that he did not land on D-Day, but some time later in Belgium. He was in the 104th Infantry, the Timberwolf Division, to which some Belgians even today express gratitude. He

Stalin required D-Day, asked for it, was mad when it was delayed, and the Allied forces pushed the Western Front to Berlin pretty quickly and there were no Soviet troops involved in that. Of course, the USSR’s role has been blindingly underrepresented in Western histories and folklore of WWII, but that does not mean that Normandy was not invaded or that the non-Soviet allies did not liberate France, Belgium, Holland, Denmark, Italy, etc. etc.

“But Ike did successfully beat the crap out of Hitler” – even we Brits now acknowledge that, however distasteful, it was Stalin who won the war in Europe. You guys won in the Pacific.