Operation Sparrow

As D-Day looms, three crack commandos parachute into enemy territory on a high-stakes mission of lies and deception. To succeed—and to save D-Day—they’ll need to get arrested by the Nazis.

By March 1944, World War II had raged for four and a half years. Tens of millions were already dead. Adolf Hitler knew an Allied invasion was coming and planned to crush it—if only he knew where it would land. If the führer’s forces were in the right place, the Nazis could stop D-Day and continue their murderous control of Europe. But the Allies had a plan.

Operation Sparrow called for an elite three-man commando team to drop behind enemy lines, walk into German hands and craft a web of lies strong enough to sway Hitler. The mission seemed impossible: survive Nazi interrogation while making D-Day lies sound true. The three men would risk everything to convince the führer the invasion would strike the Balkans, two thousand kilometres away from Normandy. It was either genius or suicidal. Probably both.

Operation Sparrow is the never-before-told story of one of the most daring and successful missions of World War II—a razor’s-edge campaign that diverted millions of Axis troops from Normandy’s beaches through cunning, espionage and audacity.