Beschreibung:

World War II—Oberkommando Des Heeres
Das Britische Kriegsheer. [np., April 1942]
8vo (226 x 165mm), thumb-index, seven maps and charts loosely inserted, original red printed boards, indistinct ink-stamp, pencil inscription on front free endpapers, ("Found among the Germ. 'PIONIER' documents at Hochfilzen/Tyrol 28/7/1945"), corners bumped
AN EXCEPTIONALLY RARE GERMAN INTELLIGENCE DOCUMENT. The capture of a copy of this German assessment of the British Order of Battle during the Dieppe Raid of 19 August 1942 was a key moment in the Intelligence war against Nazi Germany: it provided compelling evidence of the potential for strategic deception, which would be used to stunning effect in the lead-up to D-Day.
Das Britische Kriegsheer provided a detailed picture of British forces, which the Abwehr had built up from their firm knowledge of the pre-war British Order of Battle, air photographic reconnaissance, wireless intercepts, and espionage. MI5 analysts judged it to be substantially accurate but noted that it included a significant number of spurious divisions that had been invented by imaginative handlers at MI6 and fed to the Germans by Renato Levi, a double agent (code-named CHEESE), in order to inflate Allied strength in the Middle East. This unambiguous evidence that the Abwehr had been successfully duped helped to give the British confidence to engage in strategic deception on an astonishing scale, mostly notably Operation Fortitude, which convinced the Germans that the main Allied invasion of 1944 would be launched against the Pas-de-Calais – a conviction that German High Command retained even after D-Day. This successful subterfuge saved thousands of allied lives and was credited by General Eisenhower as a key factor behind the success of the Normandy Landings. If it had not been for the evidence provided by Das Britische Kreigsheer it is unlikely that operations on the scale of Fortitude would have been contemplated.
Das Britische Kreigsheer is exceptionally rare as almost all copies will have been destroyed by the Reichswehr before the end of World War II. The copy captured at Dieppe is not known to survive, there are no copies recorded on JISC or WorldCat, there is no copy in the Imperial War Museum, and there are no auction records for this 1942 edition (only for a later edition of 1944, which does not have the same historical significance).