What the Nazis Heard on British Radio the Night Before D-Day

On the night of June 5, 1944, a German radio intercept team near Lille picked up a coded BBC broadcast and correctly identified it as a signal that the Allied invasion was coming within 48 hours. The Fifteenth Army went on full alert. The warning was passed up the chain. And the one army defending the Normandy coast never received it. Meanwhile, Allied electronic warfare was blinding German radar with metallic chaff, spoofing phantom fleets off Pas-de-Calais, and dropping dummy parachutists rigged with loudspeakers playing pre-recorded gunfire across the French countryside. By 2:00 a.m. on June 6, German units were chasing airborne divisions that didn't exist. By 6:33 a.m., Berlin radio announced the invasion to the world before the Allies had confirmed it. This is the story of how a military received the right warning, through the right equipment, at the right time, and still couldn't act on it.