How much did the Nazis know about D-Day?

by einarpall98

I was just wondering, an invasion of this massive scale would be hard keeping under the radar, Nazi Germany must have had some intel about the invasion i would thin

Spark_77

Not really.

By this time they couldn't send recon aircraft over Britain as they had lost air superiority.

Of course, they knew an invasion was coming - they'd been preparing the Atlantic wall for some time, although when Rommel inspected it he was shocked to find it was nowhere near as extensive as he had been led to believe - in some places it consisted of nothing more than barbed wire.

The Germans had long suspected an attack in the Pas de Calais area - it was the most obvious choice for an invasion. They also believed they had an effective spy network within the UK. The Allies ruled out an attack in the Pas de Calais region, simply because it was too obvious, they also had completely destroyed the German spy network, in fact they turned most spies in to double agents, which allowed them to feed false information to the Germans.

The most well known double agent was Joan Pujol Garcia, known as Garbo to the Allies and Arabel to the Germans. He was a Spanish chicken farmer who felt the inhumanity of war was unbearable and he had to do something. He offered himself to the Germans as a spy, posing as a government diplomat who often had travel to England. They were only too pleased to accept his "help". He soon started creating intelligence reports and passing them to the Germans. He then went to the British and offered to feed information to the Germans, unbelievably they turned him down - several times! They only relented when information from his reports and his code name were found in secret German messages that had been decrypted at Bletchley Park.

The information in the messages concerned the Allied intelligence services, because it wasn't always realistic - he talked of sailors enjoying fine wines for example, whereas in reality such a character would drink beer or ale. Luckily the Germans did not spot such errors - he was a trusted agent and they were very pleased with the information he gave them, including a (completely fictitious) network of informants.

Garcia moved to England and was put under the control of MI5. Soon he was part of Operation Bodyguard (more specifically Operation Fortitude, which was part of Bodyguard), which was a plan to mislead the Germans in to thinking that any invasion would be held in the Pas De Calais at some other date than June 1944. In fact, even on D-Day itself Garcia sent messages suggesting that the Normandy attack was simply a diversionary attack and the real thing was going to come in at Calais. This was a theme that he'd been feeding them for some time, all to reinforce the Germans' belief of an attack in that area.

Bodyguard was a much bigger plan that the agents though - they created a fictitious army called the 1st US Army group, Patton appointed as its commander. This was the force that allegedly were to invade at Calais. Through double agents and deliberate careless radio communications they gave the Germans the impression this was a real army and was forming in the South of England. Montgomery was put in charge of the real invasion force, but they still let it be known this was also headed for Calais. Near the time they found a double for Montgomery and sent him to Gibraltar and North Africa, hoping that he'd be seen and would make the Germans think any invasion was not imminent.

In the weeks and months that preceded the invasion the Allies deliberately ran photo reconnaissance flights and bombing campaigns along the coast from the Calais region, right through Normandy, again to disguise the intended real targets at Normandy. For every bomb dropped in the invasion area they dropped three elsewhere. It just created confusion for the Germans.

Lots of other distractions and diversions were carefully planned and executed by the Allies, all in such a way that it would reinforce the misconceptions that the Germans had. By creating the illusion of an attack at Calais the Allies forced the Germans to keep troops and equipment there, rather than being sent to reinforce the real invasion area.

So, with lots of carefully placed false information and the lack of effective photo reconnaissance of England - or even the English channel the Germans were blind and could only see what the Allies wanted them to. No-one was surprised to see the invasion appear out of the murky weather on the morning of 6th June 1944 but it did take some time before the Germans realised this was it and their intelligence was wrong. Depending on what you read High Command did not concede this until either late on D-Day or a few days afterwards.

TL;DR The Germans thought they had intelligence, but virtually all of it was false. Joshua Levine wrote a good book on this called "Operation Fortitude: The greatest hoax of world war 2", worth a read.