{"id":54354,"date":"2023-12-26T23:05:35","date_gmt":"2023-12-26T22:05:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.outono.net\/elentir\/?p=54354"},"modified":"2024-12-26T00:21:16","modified_gmt":"2024-12-25T23:21:16","slug":"wissant-the-fortifications-that-were-the-target-of-a-large-deception-operation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.outono.net\/elentir\/2023\/12\/26\/wissant-the-fortifications-that-were-the-target-of-a-large-deception-operation\/","title":{"rendered":"Wissant, the fortifications that were the target of a large deception operation"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>During World War II, the coasts of countries occupied by nazi Germany were fortified from France to Norway.<!--more--><\/p>\n<p><rel><a href=\"hhttps:\/\/www.outono.net\/elentir\/2022\/06\/06\/maisy-the-german-normandy-battery-that-was-mysteriously-buried-by-the-us\/\">Maisy: the German Normandy battery that was mysteriously buried by the US<\/a><\/rel><br \/>\n<rel><a href=\"https:\/\/www.outono.net\/elentir\/2023\/04\/12\/the-accidental-discovery-of-a-wwii-bunker-in-which-the-electrical-installation-still-works\/\">The accidental discovery of a WWII bunker in which the electrical installation still works<\/a><\/rel><\/p>\n<p><strong>Hitler knew that the Allies would end up landing somewhere in France.<\/strong> The German intelligence services set themselves the challenge of finding out where this invasion would take place. <strong>The Allies launched the so-called Operation Fortitude, a major deception operation<\/strong> to convince the Germans that they would cross through the Pas de Calais, the narrowest point between the coasts of France and England.<\/p>\n<p>One of the stratagems was to put the famous General George Patton in charge of a fictitious army group, for which inflatable tanks were created in order to deceive German reconnaissance planes. <strong>A Spaniard working as a double agent, Juan Pujol, completed the operation<\/strong>, providing false information to Germany.<\/p>\n<p><strong>One of the places where this landing would have occurred was Wissant<\/strong>, a French coastal town located in the Pas de Calais. While waiting for a landing that finally took place on June 6, 1944 in Normandy, 250 km away, <strong>the Germans fortified the beaches of Wissant with some bunkers that still exist today<\/strong>. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/@KMMilitaryHistory\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\">KM Military History<\/a> has shown them in two interesting videos:<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"German Strongpoint 119 Preussen - Wissant\" width=\"665\" height=\"374\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/zG25k46yK5Y?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Strongpoint Sauerland - Wissant\" width=\"665\" height=\"374\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/-QiBgONjebA?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>You can see some screenshots of these videos here. Here we see <strong>a personnel bunker that looks like it is stranded in the sand<\/strong>. It belongs to the 119 Preussen group of fortifications and its current state is due to the displacement of the sand, which ends up overturning some of these old bunkers.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/live.staticflickr.com\/65535\/53422911566_8b6fc02685_b.jpg\" style=\"width:100%; height:auto; border:0px;\" \/><\/p>\n<p><strong>An observation bunker<\/strong>, also from the 119 Preussen group. It is very inclined forward, due to the movement of the terrain.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/live.staticflickr.com\/65535\/53423341310_805d58c73f_b.jpg\" style=\"width:100%; height:auto; border:0px;\" \/><\/p>\n<p><strong>These bunkers were large<\/strong> and were abandoned in the area, surely, because their demolition would have been extremely expensive. Today they are a magnet for tourists.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/live.staticflickr.com\/65535\/53423228949_fd201995c5_b.jpg\" style=\"width:100%; height:auto; border:0px;\" \/><\/p>\n<p><strong>A machine gun bunker<\/strong>, smaller in size than the others.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/live.staticflickr.com\/65535\/53422911546_8ca448d1fc_b.jpg\" style=\"width:100%; height:auto; border:0px;\" \/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>During World War II, the coasts of countries occupied by nazi Germany were fortified from France to Norway.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[19536,16879,11549],"tags":[16529,10575,20817,20819,20821,20822,4697,20820,10389],"class_list":["post-54354","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-we-said-yesterday","category-fortifications","category-military-history","tag-atlantic-wall","tag-france","tag-general-george-patton","tag-juan-pujol","tag-operation-fortitude","tag-pas-de-calais","tag-wehrmacht","tag-wissant","tag-world-war-ii"],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-08-11 22:38:19","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.outono.net\/elentir\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54354","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.outono.net\/elentir\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.outono.net\/elentir\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.outono.net\/elentir\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.outono.net\/elentir\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=54354"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.outono.net\/elentir\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54354\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.outono.net\/elentir\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=54354"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.outono.net\/elentir\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=54354"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.outono.net\/elentir\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=54354"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}