the German defence. Although Rommel and Rundstedt recognised that they needed a flexible, in depth defence, they didn't have the means to create this vision. Allied deception and sabotage played a key role in creating disorder within the German forces during D-Day. Operation Titanic involved dropping five hundred dummy parachutists near Normandy to draw the Germans away from the real landing areas for the Airborne. In order to sell the deception, gunfire was simulated by attaching fireworks to the dummies. 34 Rundstedt ordered the 12th SS Panzer division to Lisieux to engage with a fake landing, and the 352nd infantry division was diverted from the Omaha and Gold beaches to the southern woods to search for these fake paratroopers. It was made more effective when Spiedel cancelled the mobilising alarm after finding out they were fake. 35 This was a reasonable reaction to the news, and although it was his fault, he can not be charged too harshly. His decision resulted in the real landing of paratroopers adding to the mass confusion. Their dispersion only strengthened this confusion and fear as to the direction and scale of the allied attack, especially with the Germans lacking the manpower to respond in strength to every instance of a reported drop. 36 This deception was assisted by the bombing efforts of the USAAF on German communication, so there was a lack of clear intelligence and communication for their response. The role of the SOE and French resistance should not be ignored. While there was extensive sabotage and clandestine acts committed across German territory for widespread detriment in the months before D-Day, transport and communication sabotage on D-Day and throughout Overlord was on an unprecedented scale. 37 Dozens of railways and hundreds of communication lines were sabotaged in harmony with Allied bombing. While this disorganised German forces at Normandy, it also delayed the deployment of crucial troop reserves from Germany by weeks. 38 This is significant as the Germans would have otherwise had a rapid ability to direct reinforcements to the front in comparison to the initially slower transportation of the Allies over the channel. While not as blatantly decisive as Allied air supremacy, it reduced the already small chances of the Germans for an effective German counter-attack. Hitler maintained a severe dissonance between personal political objectives and military logic. Borne from sound Clausewitzian theory regarding the culminating point, Manstein’s proposal to engage in a strategic withdrawal
34 Mary Barbier, D-day Deception: Operation Fortitude and the Normandy Invasion (Mechanicsburg: Stackpole Books, 2009), p. 36.
35 Barbier, p. 37. 36 Barbier, p. 38. 37 Roundell Palmer, War Cabinet Memo on the SOE , 13 October 1944, p. 10. 38 Palmer, pp. 12-3.
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