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As May of 1941 rolled into June, the situation for the British in the Mediterranean was bleak. North Africa was under siege from Rommel’s vaunted Afrika Korps, Greece had been occupied by the Germans, and Crete has just fallen to a daring (and costly) German paratroop assault. British General Archibald Wavell faced a daunting task: keep the Suez Canal and the Middle East’s vast oil supplies from falling under the “crooked cross” of the Axis flag.
But manpower was scarce. In fact, there was really none to be had. So Wavell turned to Colonel Dudley Clarke, and tasked him with figuring out a solution to the problem. In his recently-published book Deathly Deception (which focuses on Operation Mincemeat), Denis Smyth writes, “In such straitened military circumstances deception could act as a force multiplier, dissuading the enemy from assaulting a particularly weak point in British defences.”
In the closing days of May 1941, that weak point was Cypus. Located just 300 miles straight east from newly-acquired Crete, the British believed it presented a juicy target to the Germans, offering a chance to dominate the Mediterranean, ease supply to Rommel in North Africa, and look straight down the chute of the Suez Canal. And Cyprus was defended by a less-than-adequate 4,000 British soldiers of, shall we say, not front-line caliber.
So Clarke and his men decided to convince the Germans that Cyprus had more men than it really did. He created the 7th Division and “placed” it on Cyprus. And on June 13, 1941, the deception began. There were dummy headquarters and dummy tanks (like the one shown above) placed around the island. There were phony divisional signs and directions placed on the roads and intersections. Since a divisional HQ generates quite a bit of radio traffic, that was contrived as well. In fact, the British went so far as to leak some information about the island’s defenses to a known Axis collaborator.
As it turns out, the Germans didn’t really have plans for Cyprus at all. But the deception was valuable anyway. The German High Command completely fell for the ruse. The 7th Division didn’t go away. In fact, over time, more fictional forces were created, and they wreaked havoc on the German planning. Field Marshal Montgomery’s victory at El Alamein brought with it the capture of German documents, which overestimated British tank counts by 40% and infantry strength by a staggering 45%, thanks in part to phony forces.
When preparing for the invasions of Sicily and Italy in 1943, and ultimately, the Normandy coast in 1944, these ficticious units served to dilute the German defenses, forcing them to keep busy in lots of places for no good reason. And the 7th Division, created out of thin air in June 1941? In German minds, it never went away. That division (along with others) figured into German planning all the way to the end of the war, almost 4 years later.
Recommended Reading: Deathly Deception – A mostly fascinating look at one of the most famous deception campaigns of the Second World War.
Today's History Lesson 