Passive Deception: Operation Bodyguard And The Normandy Landing
2105 Words9 Pages
Midterm
Michael Smith
AMU
INTL413
Prof. Dr. Jose Mora
Midterm
Passive Deception operations are described as hiding the real and showing the fake, when using this type of operation your want to hide your true intentions or capabilities from the enemy’s prying eyes. The case study found in John Caddels article Deception 101- A Primer on deception shows the use of this type of deception in Operation Bodyguard and the Normandy landing. This operation was a cover operation (umbrella) for two separate operations operation fortitude south and north both leading the high command of the Nazis to believe that in fact the actual invasion site would be across the strait of dover. Now Passive operations means that the user wants to hide what really exists…show more content… Of these mistakes was reinforcing the North and South and believing the actual invasion was a diversion and the real invasion was soon to take place in the south. The manipulation of the information in these operations led to the success of the operations, and ability to use the Germans preconceived notions against them also made the operation more believable. The inertia of rest comes into the light, that the Germans decision makers were at rest until the inertia of the invasions made them react, but it was already too late with the invasion force already being on ground. The effectiveness of the deception operations are truly based off the ability to use and exploit the targets own preconceived notions and bias against them to further make the deception operations more believable especially in the instance of Operation Bodyguard and Operation Fortitude South. Arrogance and ignorance are some of the instances that had been exploited in these operations and were even more so prevalent in the highest authority in the German High Command and that was Hitler’s arrogance, that his Atlantic wall was impenetrable. In Caddels article it further went on to say that flaws in logical analysis lead one more to being deceived and in the Germans case it was well apparent their analysis was off…show more content… Deception is harder to employ if more information is known and it is easier to detect manipulation of information if more than one source is available to be given about a subject. Countries where the media and information flow is closely monitored and controlled by the government, such as North Korea and Iran, can be almost assuredly as having some instances of information manipulation or disinformation in their reports. We can only be deceived if we allow deception to happen, even so seen in the Cold War, while there was a great deal of information regarding the Soviet Maskirovka and Dezinformatsia operations these could change at any given time. Or could be utilized in other places as well such as seen with the Deception used in the Cuban Missile Crisis, where the soviet ambassador constantly reassured the west there were no offensive weapons on Cuba on