D-Day, the most important battle of World War II, was fought at the Normandy Beaches, the preparation, though, is usually left out. With Operation Fortitude concealing the plans from the Germans and the immense training, production at home soared.

Operation Fortitude could be one of the greatest deception plan ever created.  There were so many different elements contributing to the one goal of keeping the operation not only a secret from the Germans, but also a secret from the world. Even the troops that were in the operation didn’t know what they were getting into. If the Americans, British, and Canadians weren’t able to deceive the Germans, then there would be a mass slaughter on the beaches of Normandy.

            Phantom armies were the main focus of the Allies. The phantom armies were a group of fake tanks, trucks, jeeps, and much more machinery being moved about around the shores of Britain to try and fool the Germans on where the attack would fall (). The amazing thing about this army was that these vehicles and other things were not made out of metal. They were made out of airbags which were pretty much blow-up balloons (). With these things being so light they could be easily moved in a quick period of time which was just what the allies needed to fool the Germans. There were a few main steps that would help the allies succeed. First, was physical deception in which they would mislead the enemy with a “fake” army (). Secondly they used controlled leaks of information through people high in their government that the Germans would believe (). Lastly they would capture German spies and use them against the Germans ().

There were different sections of Operation Fortitude. First there was Fortitude North (). This was the area where the Allies planned to fake an assault on Scandinavia (). It consisted of two parts; first a plan to re-occupy any parts of occupied Scandinavia that might be weakened and second was to attack Norway (). Then there was Fortitude South (). Fortitude South had the job of convincing the Germans that the invasion would come to the Pas De Calis, a well known strategic point for an invasion since it was the closest part of France to England (). The key element of Fortitude South was Operation Quicksilver which tried to make the Germans believe that the general mass of all the troops were on grouped into two armies when there was actually eight ().