How the Royals helped fool Nazis over D-Day

The Royal Family's active part in wartime efforts to deceive the Nazis about the D-Day landings was a closely guarded secret.

George VI, the Queen Mother and even a young Princess Elizabeth were involved in efforts to distract Axis attention away from the intended location of the Allied invasion of Europe in Normandy by planting a trail of false leads. In 1944 the king was actively working on behalf of British intelligence. He had been fully admitted into the ultra-secret planning for Operation Overlord, the codename for that June's D-Day landings.

On March 3 his private secretary Sir Alan Lascelles noted in his diary: 'Two 'MI' men called on me yesterday, and explained how the king's visits in the next few months could assist the elaborate cover scheme whereby we are endeavouring to bamboozle the German intelligence over the time and place for Overlord.'

Intelligence expert Dr Rory Cormac described the situation as a 'really significant clue, as it just gives a little hint that the king not only knew about one of the biggest secrets of the war, but had an active and personal role in it himself'.

George's visits to troops in southern England - previously thought to be random photo opportunities - were part of an elaborate disinformation campaign.

In particular, visits to the South-East were publicised to convince the Nazis that Calais was the point of attack, rather than Normandy, and that the invasion was imminent rather than still in preparation.

Princess Elizabeth was also enlisted in the deception strategy. A newspaper report on March 24 said she had made her first 'full-length tour' to inspect troops with her parents. Such publicity around a visit from the whole Royal Family was used to 'amplify' the efforts to deceive the Nazis.

Footnotes:
1.The D simply stands for “day.” The designation was traditionally used for the date of any important military operation or invasion. Thus, the day before June 6, 1944, was known as D-1 and the days after were D+1, D+2, D+ and so on.

2. Code Breaker. During World War II British Military Intelligence staged puzzle competitions in national newspapers to identify and recruit potentional code breakers to Blectchley Park. among them was Stanely Sedgewick, a clerk, who later recalled being told that they were particular looking chaps with twisted brains like mine.

MI5 also kept an eye out for compilers who might be using crosswors to send secret messages to the Germans. So there was great concern when, in the months leading up to D-day in June 1944, various ly telegraph crosswords featured words such as MULBERRY, OMAHA, NEPTUNE and OVERLORD, all codenames related to the landings.

The coincidence was so strong to overlook - but it turned out that the compiler, Leonard Dawe, was headmaster of a London grammar school evacuated to Surry, next door to a camp for American and Canadian troops.

Dawe often invited his pupils to fill in blank crossword grid with words for which he would later set the clues. Unfortunately, those same pupils were in the habit of creeping close to the fence separating them from the loose-lipped soldiers next door and eavesdropping them on their conversations. Eventually the bewildered Dawe worked out the codenames had appeared thanks to his cosetters. He avoided arrest and, although he was made to burn the notebooks in which he jotted down ideas for clues, continued compiling until shortly before his death in 1963.