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‘In wartime, truth is so precious that she should always be attended by a bodyguard of lies.’ (Winston Churchill) 
One of the main reasons for the overwhelming success of the D-Day was the deception played on the Germans. Operation Bodyguard was launched in 1943. Its objective was to mislead the Germans about the timing and location of the Allied invasion of Europe.
There were 3 possible landing sites in easy reach of British ports: Norway, Pas-de-Calais and Normandy. Initial goal was to ensure the Germans defended all three, to spread them thin, rather than concentrating on Normandy.
Deception operation Fortitude North targeted Scandinavia. Fake radio traffic and false intelligence provided by double agents built the fiction of a British Fourth Army based at Edinburgh Castle, Scotland. The (non-existent) force was supposed to invade Norway.
Operation FORTITUDE South was designed to fool the Germans into thinking that the Allies would land in Pas-de-Calais. For that, a variety of deception methods were used. One was the use of dummies. Pictured: dummy landing craft, south-east England, before D-Day
Fictitious army was created through use of decoys and fake radio traffic. First US Army Group (FUSAG) was ‘based’ in south-east Britain and was preparing to land in Pas de Calais. The commander of the imaginary FUSAG was General Patton. (Picture: inflatable tank)
The deception was so successful because the Germans were convinced that the allies were going to land in Pas De Calais, rather than in Normandy, the most obvious and shortest route; size of the allied forces was greatly over exaggerated... (pictured: paradummy)
