In one stage of the war,German Soilders were posing as American Soilders
How did the Germans get the American Unifroms?
How did the Americans find out that they were Germans?
- The Battle of the Bulge (December 1944/January 1945)
- From POWs and KIAs
- After temporarily arresting almost all of their own men they simply had to get the right ones by accident. :mrgreen:
According to Skorzeny’s book (the men shown were part of his 150th Panzer Brigade) security was very poor and it was common knowledge where they were based that an English speaking unit was being formed. If I remember rightly a note went out to all Army/SS units asking for volunteers for a special mission and you had to be able to speak English. So it may have been known before the mission started.
ebay ???
Faux-uniforms are easily reproduced. But since the German Army had been engaged with the US Army since 1942, they had a sizable store of captured American uniforms, equipment, and weapons. In fact, the Germans put captured US/UK Sherman tanks in service as they did captured Soviet stuff…
So it wasn’t much to repair damaged vehicles and put them into service as “American.” They also made mock-ups of US made tanks by altering the appearance of their own armored vehicles, such as adding on plates to a Panther to make it look like an M-10 Wolverine tank destroyer…
How did the Americans find out that they were Germans?
They managed to seed a good deal of paranoia in the American lines. Men were interrogated over culturally specific facts and asked trick questions on their favorite baseball team or Disney movie. In any case, unless the Germans soldiers posing as Americans were in fact American, good actors, or Germans that had spent a lot of time in the US - they would be easily spotted as they would have acted odd, spoke English with an accent, or have said something strange and were easily spotted…
Of course some ammies were interrogated as well. General Omar Bradly for examole was asked the capitol of Illinois and when he anwsered correctly, “springfield”, The soldier asking him thought it was chicago…
I think these Germans were called commandos or something. I remember reading about it in a primary source about the author being afraid that the 2 men he was with were german because they spoke perfect german and wore german outfits. They were just americans with a radio to listen to the enemy. I remember about the german spys putting white or yellow tape over roads signifying “mines ahead!” to disrupt yanks from having a quick retaliation.
And the fake american soilders tryed too redirect the american soilders.