Artillery of Lies

by Derek Robinson

  My account of Eldorado’s prolific skill is true to the facts of Garbo’s phenomenal output. By 1944 Garbo headed a network of fourteen active agents and eleven valuable contacts. He had sent four hundred secret letters and transmitted about two thousand radio reports, for which the Abwehr paid some £20,000. Since I completed Artillery of Lies, the final volume of the official history of British Intelligence in the Second World War has been published.* Its author, Michael Howard, describes Garbo as the agent “who was almost single-handed to provide a justification for the existence of the Twenty Committee.” Probably his greatest contribution to the Allied cause was to help persuade the Germans that the main D-Day landings would take place in the Pas de Calais area, and that the Normandy attack was only a diversion. Michael Howard quotes a message from Berlin to Garbo’s Abwehr case officer on June 11, five days after the landings: “The reports received in the last week from Garbo have been confirmed almost without exception and are to be described as especially valuable.” To the end, it seems, the Germans were convinced that the only reason the Pas de Calais attack never took place was because the Normandy landings were unexpectedly successful. Not surprisingly, Arabel/Garbo was awarded both the Iron Cross and the MBE.

  Historical facts such as these I was happy to incorporate in Artillery of Lies. Similarly, details of the anti-Nazi conspiracies, of rivalry between the Abwehr and the SD, of Albert Speer’s colossal architectural plans, of the Hamburg firestorm, and of Jeschonnek’s suicide are all authentic. The Double-Cross System operated broadly as described. Some of Eldorado’s military “secrets” had their roots in reality. For instance, the US Air Force experimented with remote-controlled Flying Fortresses, each packed with TNT and directed to crash on its target—the basis of OWCH—and the idea of GABLE (a ski-jump takeoff for bombers) was confidently reported by a wartime magazine. The rest I made up; which is not to say that it could not have happened.

  DR

  * Michael Howard, British Intelligence in the Second World War, HMSO, 1990