Oh, what a tangled web we weave.............
We all readily believe what we want to believe, and con-merchants the world over take full advantage of the fact. We know that "if it sounds too good to be true", it isn't true - but we still subscribe after reading the glowing prospectus, or buy the useless "snake-oil". Fact is, we've not evolved into Homo Sapiens yet !
The problem must be compounded when the double-bluff of military counter-Intelligence is concerned. We seem to be particularly good at it - we had convinced, with spurious radio transmissions, General Galtieri and his merry men that there were two hunter-killer atomic submarines on the loose in the area. So when the Belgrano was torpedoed, the carrier Veinticinco de Mayo put about and fled back to port for fear of the mythical second one.
And I underdstand that German Intelligence was succesfully bamboozled, with lots of rubber inflatable tanks, guns and other armour, and fake radio traffic, into believing that the 1944 invasion was coming across the pas de Calais, and not to Normandy, in spite of all indications to the contrary.
The vaunted "West Wall" had not been fully completed to the West (in part due to a huge civil engineering effort having to be diverted to repair damage to the Dams in 1943), so the invasion force established itself ashore. The bulk of the Panzers were in the Calais area: it has been estimated it would need 70 trains a day over the French railway system to get them across to Normandy in time and in sufficient numbers to throw us back into the sea.
But Bomber Command had been diverted for several weeks (in spite of Harris's furious protestations) to "interdict" the railways of Northern France. They managed only six trains per day on the day. Again, we know the rest.
(All this was the popular belief at the time, I have not tried to verify it).
Danny.