Operation Bodyguard

Operation Bodyguard
Part of Operation Overlord, World War II
Joseph Stalin, Franklin D. Roosevelt and Winston Churchill at the 1943 Tehran conference, where Operation Bodyguard was proposed
Operational scope	Strategic
Planned	1943–44
Planned by	London Controlling Section, Ops (B), R Force and others
Objective	Strategic surprise for Operation Overlord
Executed by	George S. Patton
Outcome	Success in keeping the German 15 Army at Calais.

Operation Bodyguard was the code name for a World War II deception plan employed by the Allied states before the 1944 invasion of north-west Europe. The plan was intended to mislead the German high command as to the time and place of the invasion. The plan contained several operations, which culminated in the tactical surprise of the Germans during the Normandy landings on June 6, 1944 (also known as D-Day) and delayed German reinforcements to the region for some time afterwards.

German coastal defences were stretched thin in 1944, as the Nazis prepared to defend all of the coast of north-west Europe. The Allies had already employed deception operations against the Germans, aided by the capture of all of the German agents in the United Kingdom and the systematic decryption of German Enigma communications. Once Normandy had been chosen as the site of the invasion, it was decided to attempt to deceive the Germans into thinking it was a diversion and that the true invasion was to be elsewhere.

Planning for Bodyguard started in 1943 under the auspices of the London Controlling Section (LCS). A draft strategy, referred to as Plan Jael, was presented to Allied High Command at the Tehran Conference in late November and approved on December 6. The objective of this plan was to lead the Germans to believe that the invasion of north-west Europe would come later than was planned and to expect attacks elsewhere, including the Pas de Calais, the Balkans, southern France, Norway and Soviet attacks in Bulgaria and northern Norway.

Operation Bodyguard succeeded and the Normandy landings took the Germans by surprise. The subsequent deception suggesting that the Normandy landings were a diversion led Hitler to delay sending reinforcements from the Pas de Calais region for nearly seven weeks (the original plan had specified 14 days).

During World War II, and prior to Bodyguard, the Allies made extensive use of deception – developing many new techniques and theories. The main protagonists at this time were 'A' Force, set up in 1940 under Dudley Clarke, and the London Controlling Section, chartered in 1942 under the control of John Bevan.