Diversion and Deception - Dudley Clarke's "A" Force and Allied Operations in World War II

Among the operations known as Plan Bodyguard, the deception devised to cover the Allies'' Normandy landing, was the little known but critical Plan Zeppelin, the largest and most complex of the Bodyguard plans. Zeppelin, in conjunction with the Mediterranean Strategy, succeeded in pinning down sixty German divisions from southern France to the Balkans in time for D-Day. This was the work of "A" Force, Britain''s only military organization tasked with carrying out both strategic and tactical deception in World War II. Whitney T. Bendeck''s Diversion and Deception finds "A" Force at its finest hour, as the war shifted from North Africa to Europe.

Focusing on the years 1943 to 1945, Bendeck describes how "A" Force, under the leadership of Dudley Clarke, orchestrated both strategic and tactical deception plans to create notional threats across the southern perimeter of Europe, with the chief objective of keeping the Germans pinned down across the Mediterranean.