Now that was sheer brilliance.
Beyond a (relative) handful of personell, the entire army consisted of little more than radio traffic.
My understanding is that Patton was less than impressed at this particular assignment and like many at the time, couldn't understand the need for such levels of deception.
Of course one has to remember that barely a generation before, military intelligence had very few tools - reports from the front, spies and occasional balloon observers. Airborne recon, radio intercepts, even radar was still cutting edge and virtually unknown to the average person.
Today's militaries are spoilt by comparison with all the sattelittes, planes, radio, radar, internet, etc, etc, etc. Take just wiki for an example. Even though much of the information there is not classified, or could be inaccurate, how much intel can be gained from just half an hour there? How long would it have taken to gather the same info 100 years ago?
Quote:
Originally Posted by Mohoender
The intension was to confuse the foreign intelligence services which had the worse difficulties to identify and locate German units.
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While this may or may not be true, the creation of new units while allowing existing ones to fade away is madness. Existing units have exisiting support netowrks, command structures, etc. A new unit needs all those things created.
In my opinion, it's probably about ten times harder to create a new division than to simply assign the same personnel to exisiting units as replacements.
If the Germans had the manpower to do both, then the idea has some serious merit. Alternatively, simply renaming exisiting units would have a similar confusing effect without many of the associated problems.