Operation Barclay
Operation Barclay was an Allied deception in support of the invasion of Sicily in 1943 during World War II .
This operation was intended to deceive the military leadership of the Axis Powers about the actual Allied distribution of forces in the Mediterranean and to draw attention from the actual target Sicily to the Balkans .
For this purpose, a false army (the "Twelfth Army" with 12 divisions) was created, which was supposed to simulate a concentration of troops in the eastern Mediterranean with apparent troop movements and heavy radio traffic.
The successful Operation Mincemeat , in which the Germans had deliberately misguided plans, had already suggested a two-part Allied operation plan with invasions in Sardinia and southern France as well as in the Balkans. The impression of a planned invasion of the Balkans has now been reinforced by the recruitment of Greek translators and the procurement of appropriate maps as part of Operation Barclay .
The Allied measures to cover up their plans for invasion were overall a complete success; the Wehrmacht High Command accepted a far higher number of Allied troops in the eastern Mediterranean than was actually the case. Although Mussolini continued to assume Sicily was the most likely invasion target, Hitler was firmly convinced that the landings would take place in Sardinia, Corsica, and Greece. As a result, reinforcements were ordered there and the Italian fleet also concentrated on the Adriatic , away from Sicily. The following Operation Husky achieved the desired surprise effect during the invasion of Sicily. At the time of the invasion, only two German and four Italian divisions were ready for defense in Sicily.
literature
- Jon Latimer: Deception in War . John Murray, London 2001, ISBN 1-58567-204-1 .
Web links
- Maneuvers of deception in World War II (English, PDF, 194 KiB)
Individual evidence
- ↑ Dahms, Hellmut Günther: The Second World War in Text and Image , Herbig 1989, 5th edition, p. 276