The fake plot that kept Eisenhower under guard
For about a week in December 1944, Eisenhower was kept under heavy guard near Paris, because his security officers were sure German killers dressed as American soldiers were coming for him.
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Sources
Sources
- Hugh M. Cole, The Ardennes: Battle of the Bulge (US Army in World War II, Center of Military History, 1965), pp. 269-271 and 360-363: https://archive.org/details/CMHPub781TheArdennesBattleOfTheBulge
- Dwight D. Eisenhower, Crusade in Europe (1948), "Hitler's Last Bid"
- Omar N. Bradley, A Soldier's Story (1951)
- Charles Whiting, "Operation Greif: Assassinate Eisenhower", WWII History (2004): https://warfarehistorynetwork.com/article/operation-greif-assassinate-eisenhower-2/
- Jean-Paul Pallud, Ardennes 1944: Peiper and Skorzeny (Osprey, 1987)
- Law Reports of Trials of War Criminals, vol. IX: Trial of Otto Skorzeny and Others
- Kansas City Star photo archive, Lt. Col. Baldwin B. Smith (1945): https://kcstarphotos.org/photo/153615
- Wikipedia: Operation Greif; Gran Sasso raid; Otto Skorzeny
Film (public domain, picture only)
- US Army Signal Corps film from the US National Archives (General Eisenhower visits the front, autumn 1944; General Eisenhower inspects the front near Belfort, November 1944; General Montgomery and the 18th Airborne Corps, December 1944; white tanks and German prisoners in the Ardennes, January 1945; Road to Houffalize, January 1945; General Bradley visits the front, January 1945; Eisenhower, Bradley and Patton at Remagen and Petersberg, March 1945; the liberation of Paris, August 1944); March of Time outtakes of a German spy's court martial and the MP firing squads, December 1944 (US National Archives, via the US Holocaust Memorial Museum); "The Enemy Strikes" (War Department, 1944, with captured German film); Universal Newsreel, "German Drive Rolled Back by Allies" (11 January 1945); United News (December 1944); US Navy, D-Day: Normandy Invasion (1944).
Photographs and maps (public domain)
- US National Archives and US Army Signal Corps (including Skorzeny in custody, 1945, via the US Holocaust Memorial Museum, and Eisenhower's Christmas card and his Meuse bridges cable of December 1944, via DPLA); US Army Air Forces; US Army Center of Military History; US Army Map Service sheets Aywaille and Verviers (1944), via the University of Texas Libraries; Library of Congress (the Illinois State Capitol, Herbert Georg Studio, about 1939; a family's Thanksgiving dinner in Neffsville, Pennsylvania, Marjory Collins for the Office of War Information, 1942); Agence Meurisse, Bibliotheque nationale de France (the Trianon Palace and Saint-Germain-en-Laye, 1919); KU Leuven Libraries postcards (Aywaille, Dinant); Polish National Digital Archives (Skorzeny, 1943; Rommel and von Rundstedt, 1944); Nimitz Library; Los Angeles Daily News; Stars and Stripes; captured German photographs held by the US Army.
Credits (via Wikimedia Commons)
- Bundesarchiv photographs of Otto Skorzeny, Gran Sasso, German paratroopers in the Ardennes and von Rundstedt by Faupel, Bruno von Kayser, Toni Schneiders and others (CC BY-SA 3.0 DE); Eisenhower, 1944 colour portrait via PhotosNormandie (CC BY-SA 2.0); Betty Grable at Camp Lejeune, USMC Archives (CC BY 2.0); Allied commanders at Maastricht, 7 December 1944, Imperial War Museum via Europeana (CC BY-SA 3.0); the Cafe de la Paix by Willem van de Poll, Nationaal Archief (CC0); Antwerp by Piera-Cava44 (CC BY-SA 4.0); the Hautes Fagnes by Robin Stumm (CC BY 3.0); a Rupert dummy parachutist by Pajx.