Results
The Allies were able to judge how well Fortitude was working thanks to Ultra, signals intelligence obtained by breaking German codes and ciphers. On June 1, a decrypted transmission by Hiroshi Ōshima (the Japanese ambassador) to his government recounting a recent conversation with Hitler confirmed the effectiveness of Fortitude. When asked for his thoughts on the Allied battle plan, Hitler had said, "I think that diversionary actions will take place in a number of places - against Norway, Denmark, the southern part of western France, and the French Mediterranean coast". Adding that he expected the Allies to subsequently attack in force across the Straits of Dover.
They maintained the pretense of FUSAG and other forces threatening Pas de Calais for some considerable time after D-Day, possibly even as late as September 1944. This was vital to the success of the Allied plan, since it forced the Germans to keep most of their reserves bottled up waiting for an attack on Calais that never came, thereby allowing the Allies to maintain and build upon their marginal foothold in Normandy.
Read more about this topic: Operation Fortitude
Famous quotes containing the word results:
“I have no doubt that it was a principle they fought for, as much as our ancestors, and not to avoid a three-penny tax on their tea; and the results of this battle will be as important and memorable to those whom it concerns as those of the battle of Bunker Hill, at least.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Consider what you have in the smallest chosen library. A company of the wisest and wittiest men that could be picked out of all civil countries in a thousand years have set in best order the results of their learning and wisdom. The men themselves were hid and inaccessible, solitary, impatient of interruption, fenced by etiquette; but the thought which they did not uncover in their bosom friend is here written out in transparent words to us, the strangers of another age.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“A distinction of property results from that very protection which a free Government gives to unequal faculties of acquiring it.”
—James Madison (1751–1836)