the British Government discovered that carrots improve nightvision to the point that the British gunners could vastly improve their ability to see and shoot down Nazi planes so got the British public to grow and consume epic levels of carrots to improve their vision in the blackout and so they could better take down the enemy bombers. The British hit rates massively, massively improved thanks to the humble carrot and subsequently the Germans started their own carrot growing production to get a similar effect....
....except it weren't the carrots. The carrots were a lie to hide the fact that the British had invented the radar and could in fact plainly see the Nazis coming. It had the added benefit of encouraging the food-starved British population to easily grow a vegetable in their gardens that could feed them which they all delusionally believed increased their night-vision to superhero strength.
Have you read any of Ben Macintyre's books about spies? They're terrific. Operation Mincemeat, Agent Zigzag, Double Cross, and A Spy Among Friends are among my favorites.
well you had Jeff to help, but if you think how badly signed everything here is to the US [shit-tonnes of street signs there] that may be a byproduct of the British taking down all the signs before the invasion and just never having gotten around to putting them all back up. It would be bad enough invading Britain without them, but try occupying Britain without google maps or any road signs or any indication of what town you're in. Especially as the British had a plan to swap the village names around so that on the map Little Sodbury might be to the east of Chipping-Norton but in Little Sodbury you put up all the signs saying things like "Chipping-Norton Post Office" and "Chipping-Norton Butchers" and then tell the Germans it's Chipping-Norton. Then they start not-trusting their officially given maps. Plus even if they pay a Briton to tell them where Little Sodbury is, and he actually tells them the truth, if when they get there everyone in Little Sodbury maintains it's Chipping-Norton the Germans would then think the local that told
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I didn't even really notice a lack of street signs and you are right, it was because Jeff always seemed to know where we were headed. Smart of them and that explains a lot about south Stockton...
I did get pretty good at reading the Tube lines, though.
Besides which, you know how the Germans took over the Netherlands. It was a clever trick actually. They flew all their major attack squad high over the land as if on route to launch the [expected] all-out invasion of the much more attractive target of Britain so the Dutch watched the Nazis go over, warned the British and stood down, but then half way across the English Channel the invasion force doubled back and attacked the Dutch Capital from the side facing England whilst everyone was panicking about Britain being invaded, when it wasn't. And the Dutch expected them to have dropped all those bombs on England when they hadn't dropped any yet. It's also not the direction in which all the defences were pointing. Clever, that. Watch out for that sort of thing.
the Germans were always clever and militarily better in most cases, there's no denying it. And very, very good at the psychological intimidation of the enemy
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That's exactly the genius of it, though. The British told their own people about the carrots, and let their (tame! because they turned EVERY Nazi spy that made it to Britain) spies pass it along to Berlin.
The "someone elses" who are building the picture are the intelligence analysts, and they find out a whole hell of a lot through open source material, aka telling everyone, aka newspapers, or these days twitter, Wikipedia, facebook...
The classic example of opsec, or operations security, is the burglar who notices that newspapers are piled up on someone's front porch, and the mailbox is full. Conclusion? The house is empty and therefore safe to enter.
So sometimes spying is finding out secrets and (if you're Snowden) telling the world about them, and sometimes it's finding out secrets and telling your control. That's when people are most likely to die. (See, for example, Hanssen and Ames)
The fact that every single Nazi Spy in Britain is being run by British Intelligence is, I admit, very funny. However its probably systemtic of an inbuilt flaw of the Nazis being the bad guys so its very easy to get people to swap sides back to the forces of righteousness once they are not being intimidated by the SS. Its likewise why one only German POW ever escaped a British POW Camp and made it back to Germany. Generally the others didnt try that hard because who the hell is going to risk possible death to get back to Nazi Occupied Territory when the British will just let you sit around doing wood sculpting. Given a way out the Nazis swap sides pretty easily.
Of course, the fact that they were facing execution as spies might have had something to do with it too. (And many WERE executed. In fact the last execution in the Tower of London was of a Nazi spy.)Badgermirlacca
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....except it weren't the carrots. The carrots were a lie to hide the fact that the British had invented the radar and could in fact plainly see the Nazis coming. It had the added benefit of encouraging the food-starved British population to easily grow a vegetable in their gardens that could feed them which they all delusionally believed increased their night-vision to superhero strength.
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Have you read any of Ben Macintyre's books about spies? They're terrific. Operation Mincemeat, Agent Zigzag, Double Cross, and A Spy Among Friends are among my favorites.
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This so sounds like a MFU plot! :D
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I did get pretty good at reading the Tube lines, though.
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http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2015/12/22/london-tube-station-quiz-_n_8860868.html
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The "someone elses" who are building the picture are the intelligence analysts, and they find out a whole hell of a lot through open source material, aka telling everyone, aka newspapers, or these days twitter, Wikipedia, facebook...
The classic example of opsec, or operations security, is the burglar who notices that newspapers are piled up on someone's front porch, and the mailbox is full. Conclusion? The house is empty and therefore safe to enter.
So sometimes spying is finding out secrets and (if you're Snowden) telling the world about them, and sometimes it's finding out secrets and telling your control. That's when people are most likely to die. (See, for example, Hanssen and Ames)
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