Hoodwinked Deception and Resistence

by Shapiro, Stephen; Forrester, Tina; Craig, David

• ISBN13: 9781550378337
• ISBN10: 1550378333
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2004-02-01
• Publisher: Annick Press

Summary

Reveals top secret tricks and tactics.Hoodwinked plunges readers into the secret strategies and underground battles that helped turn the tides of World War II. There's the American army of inflatable tanks and dummy planes: amassed across the Channel from occupied France, this phantom army helped to distract Germans from the true invasion at Normandy. Equally sneaky was the special forces unit known as the Beach Jumpers. Led by movie-star turned military captain Douglas Fairbanks Jr., the team specialized in mimicking an invasion fleet...with only 10 small boats.Presented with historical accuracy and engaging storytelling, and bursting with sidebars, archival photographs, color maps and illustrations, Hoodwinked tells 18 true, gripping stories of elaborate ruses, military fakery and cunning deception on both sides of World War II.2004 marks the 60th anniversary of D-Day. Hoodwinked includes three tales of Allied deception and resistance that helped secure the success of the Normandy invasion.

Author Biography

Stephen Shapiro is a lifelong aficionado of military history, and a recipient of the Canadian War Museum History Award.

Tina Forrester is a researcher and writer on a broad spectrum of subjects. Her previous works include Ultra Hush-Hush, and The Birthday Book.

Illustrator David Craig is highly skilled at depicting historical events and people. His previous works include the dramatic illustrations in the children's books Attack on Pearl Harbor and First to Fly: How Wilbur and Orville Wright Invented the Airplane. The latter title won the 2003 James Madison Book Award.

Table of Contents

Map	4	(2)
Introduction	6	(3)
Deception	9	(48)
Dead ringer	10	(5)
Ground cover	15	(3)
Working magic	18	(5)
False front	23	(6)
Out of the blue	29	(4)
Home invasions	33	(5)
Operation Overlord: The D-Day Landings	38	(3)
Phantoms of the operation	41	(4)
Top performance	45	(4)
Three dots and a dash	49	(4)
Ghost of a chance	53	(4)
Resistance	57	(36)
Prep school	59	(3)
High alert	62	(4)
Under new management	66	(5)
Wanted: Tito	71	(4)
Inside the wall	75	(6)
Danger ahead	81	(4)
Mixed reception	85	(4)
The Oslo Gang	89	(4)
Photo credits	93	(1)
Glossary	93	(1)
Index	94	(2)
Acknowledgments	96	(1)
Biographies	96

Excerpts

IntroductionThe Second World War happened half a century before you were born -- a very long time ago. Yet even today, the name Adolf Hitler and images of concentration camps, Japanese prisoner of war camps, and atom bombs fill many hearts with dread.Hitler was a cruel and dangerous man who drove his followers to commit incredible atrocities. The Nazis murdered millions of civilians: 6 million Jews as well as other groups Hitler deemed inferior to Germans, such as Russians and Poles. But Second World War horrors also took place in Asia. Torture, insufficient food, and poor sanitary conditions at many Japanese prisoner of war (POW) camps killed large numbers of Allies. And the Second World War presented humanity with a new and terrifying horror: the atomic bomb. Some argue that dropping the A-bomb on Japan shortened the war. Certainly it introduced a scale of destruction never before seen. These bombs were the forerunners of the weapons of mass destruction that we so fear today.On September 1, 1939, the Germans stunned the world by invading Poland. The German army crushed the Poles in just a few days. Most countries did not want to fight a war. Memories of the First World War, in which 9 million military lives were lost and so much of Europe was destroyed, were strong. But there was another reason most of the world was unprepared: the Great Depression. During the 1930s, many governments were preoccupied with trying to find food and work for their citizens who were jobless and hungry.In Germany, meanwhile, Hitler spent most of the 1930s building the armed forces and ordering factories to produce war materials. He also took the first steps in the creation of his empire. He reoccupied the Rhineland in 1936 (which Germany had been forbidden to occupy after the First World War), annexed Austria in 1938, and then began to seize Czechoslovakia later the same year. Hitler claimed that all he wanted to do was bring the German-speaking people under one government -- his. But when the Nazis invaded Poland in September 1939, it was finally clear that he had to be stopped or all of Europe would fall. Two days later, Great Britain, France, Australia, New Zealand, and India declared war on Germany. Canada followed suit a week later.The next spring (1940), Germany invaded one country after another. Denmark, Norway, Belgium, the Netherlands, and France all fell before the German advance. Italy, which had signed a non-aggression pact with Germany in 1939, now declared war on the Allies. The Nazis occupied or had control over most of western Europe, and the British feared their country would be next. The Germans did indeed bomb Britain's airfields and cities very heavily in August and September 1940 (the Battle of Britain). They also attempted to cut off Great Britain's supplies arriving by sea. But the British, led by Prime Minister Winston Churchill, refused to surrender.In the spring of 1941, Hitler turned his focus to the eastern front: the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (also known as Russia). First, Germany, Italy, Hungary, and Bulgaria occupied Yugoslavia and Greece to ensure the Allies would not attack Hitler's armies as they pushed eastward. Then, in June, German armies attacked the Russians. After a few months, Hitler realized that the Russians were much tougher than he had thought. He had believed the conflict would be over by Christmas 1941, but the Russians continued to fight. With the onset of frigid winter conditions, many German troops died from hunger and cold.To make matters worse for Hitler, Japan attacked Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, on December 7, 1941. The Japanese emperor, Hirohito, wanted to destroy the U.S. fleet to keep the Americans from hindering the expansion of his empire. The United States responded by declaring war on Japan. Germany was then forced to declare war on the U.S. because Germany had signed a pact with Japan in 1940 that promised that if one country was