Operation Greif: Chaos Behind the Lines

The Battle of the Bulge was Hitler's last-ditch attempt at counter-attacking the Allied troops. His generals actually advised against the attack because they did not think it would succeed on such an ambitious timeline. They thought it had no more than a ten percent chance of success. The only reason the Germans lasted so long was that the Allies didn't notice several early warning signs of an offensive.

But Hitler had a secret plan up his sleeve. With Operation Greif, he wanted to disguise Germans as Americans and sneak them behind the US lines to sabotage equipment and battle plans. German soldiers who spoke English went through rigorous training, which included close-quarter combat training and watching movies to improve their accent. They also learned how to "eat with a fork after laying down the knife" and how to "tap their cigarette against the pack in an American way". The operation was so secret that one soldier was executed for writing about it too much in a letter sent home.

The Germans also used stolen weapons and jeeps in order to pose as GI's. Once behind the lines, they committed small acts of sabotage, such as cutting communication lines and switching road signs. But they succeeded the most at causing confusion and terror among the US troops, whether it was intentional or not. One day, American military police stopped a jeep full of soldiers with American uniforms and accents, but who failed to produce proper paperwork. They discovered the Germans' secret operation, and paranoia swept throughout the troops.

Once word got out that there were Germans in the mix, the US troops set up checkpoints where soldiers would be asked questions about American pop culture like baseball and actors. They captured a few Germans, but the test also produced false results. Paranoid US soldiers mistakenly thought Marshal Bernard Montgomery's jeep was a German fake and shot out its tires. Another incident was when one soldier detained General Omar Bradley after he answered that the capital of Illinois was Springfield. The answer was correct, but the soldier happened to believe that the capital of Illinois was Chicago.

The checkpoints also left the British soldiers at a severe disadvantage because they were as clueless about American pop culture as the Germans. The questions eventually got too hard, and even some of the high-ranking generals didn't know the answers.

In the end, Operation Greif only survived long enough to confuse the Americans for a time, and the Allies eventually succeeded in crushing the last major German offensive of the war.

Sources:
https://www.history.com/news/8-things-you-may-not-know-about-the-battle-of-the-bulge
https://allthatsinteresting.com/operation-greif