Dead Ringer: The Body That Fooled the Abwehr

The Germans at Normandy were partly misled by 'Operation Bodyguard' — the strategic deception that the main invasion would come at the narrowest point of the Channel (Calais/Dieppe), not the beaches. This deception included fake radio traffic from a fictional 1st Army Group supposedly stationed 400 miles from where the real invasion was assembling. German intelligence officer Alexis von Roenne (who was secretly anti-Nazi) deliberately misread the Allied order of battle to suggest 90 divisions in England — when there were only 52. This inflated number confirmed Hitler's belief that Normandy was a feint and the real invasion was coming at Calais.