World leaders from Vladimir Putin, Joseph Stalin ‘used physique doubles’

Since Vladimir Putin‘s invasion of Ukraine and as rumours flow into about his declining well being, the physique double theories proceed to stack up. 

The head of Ukrainian army intelligence, Lieutenant General Kyrylo Budanov, whose spouse was poisoned in November in line with Ukrainian intelligence officers, has put ahead theories that the Russian president is utilizing physique doubles, alleging that the ‘actual’ Putin has not been seen since June final yr.

In August 2022, Budanov appeared on TV to say to viewers that Putin’s peak and ears have modified in latest appearances.

In March, Putin was mocked by Ukraine for allegedly sending a lookalike to war-ravaged Mariupol in a excessive safety go to. Kyiv official Anton Gerashchenko posted three pictures of Putin’s chin and questioned whether or not they belonged to the identical man.

Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov in April admitted that studies had been rife about Putin’s doppelgängers however claimed the warmonger was nonetheless ‘mega-active’.

But the idea of world leaders utilizing doubles just isn’t a brand new one.

For figures in energy and the intelligence officers surrounding them, doubles and decoys can function a helpful technique of avoiding assassination or throwing the enemy off track. 

Putin just isn’t even the primary Russian chief reported to have used a physique double. In 2008, with the obvious approval of the Putin regime, Felix Dadaev lastly got here ahead to inform a fairly exceptional story of his time standing in for Joseph Stalin.

For 1 / 4 of a century, Stalin dictatorially dominated the Soviet Union and remodeled it into a serious world energy.

The Soviet dictator in all probability exercised larger political energy than another determine in historical past.

He industrialised the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, forcibly collectivised its agriculture, consolidated his place by intensive police terror, helped to defeat Germany in 1941 to 45, and prolonged Soviet controls to incorporate a belt of japanese European states.

Chief architect of Soviet totalitarianism and a talented however phenomenally ruthless organiser, he destroyed the remnants of particular person freedom and failed to advertise particular person prosperity, but he created a mighty military-industrial complicated and led the Soviet Union into the nuclear age.

The slender, dishevelled eyes and droopy moustache had been unmistakable – options that terrified half the world, condemned tens of millions to a merciless loss of life and which even as we speak are an on the spot image of monstrous despotism.

But regardless of the cautious curve of the brows and the stainless hair, footage emerged of a lookalike who had by no means been supreme chief of the Soviet Republic.

This, because the Russian public discovered, was Dadaev, a dancer and juggler who, amid the determined defence in opposition to Hitler’s invading armies, was ordered to the Kremlin to work as Stalin’s physique double.

For greater than half a century, Dadaev remained silent, fearing a loss of life sentence ought to he dare to open his mouth.

But on the age of 88, he lastly got here ahead to inform a fairly exceptional story.

It takes him from the ruined streets of Grozny all the way in which to Yalta on the Black Sea coast for the historic three-powers showdown, the place Stalin, Churchill and Roosevelt fought to find out the form of post-war Europe.

Dadaev’s autobiography explains that he was one among 4 males employed to impersonate the supreme chief, taking his place in motorcades, at rallies, on newsreel footage and wherever – as at Yalta – Stalin feared he was particularly hazard.

The Russian media was enthralled. For years, hypothesis about Stalin’s physique doubles remained simply that, with the reality locked away within the KGB archives and guarded by the tradition of paranoia.

It is unlikely that his e-book, Variety Land, launched in 2008, would have been printed with out official approval.

Brief statements from the KGB archives, the state movie trade Mosfilm and the state-run Academy of Security, Defence, Law and Order supported Dadaev’s model of occasions.

‘Even after I was younger, my buddies joked that I seemed like Stalin,’ he recalled.

‘By the time my make-up and coaching had been full, I used to be like him in each method, besides maybe my ears. They had been too small.’

Trained on the private request of Stalin, Dadaev attended rallies and conferences throughout Russia sporting the chief’s trademark Red Army cap and heavy overcoat encrusted with medals.

He hardly ever had a talking half however, in an age earlier than tv, his fastidiously copied look and mannerisms went down effectively.

It helped that he had educated as each an actor and illusionist.

Dadaev was born within the highlands of Dagestan and, when his household moved to Grozny, in Chechnya, he started taking ballet classes – fairly regular for a Russian boy in Soviet occasions.

At the age of 16, he had been supplied a spot within the State Singing and Dance Band of Ukraine.

But conflict broke out and, as an alternative of becoming a member of a tour of Britain with the band, Dadaev was posted to a live performance brigade, the place he carried out as a dancer, juggler and illusionist.

He was required to struggle, too, and was so badly injured throughout the Russian liberation of Grozny in 1942 that his household was advised he had been killed.

‘I used to be one among seven “corpses” delivered to a hospital, however one other man and I had been nonetheless alive,’ he stated.

That ‘loss of life’ was the beginning of a wierd double life. One night in 1943, he was flown to a cottage close to Moscow the place officers from the NKVD (predecessor of the KGB) demanded that he forge a brand new and distinctive id.

‘I used to be flattered, in fact – proud to seem like the chief, proud to assume what my buddies who teased me about wanting like him after I was younger would say now,’ he stated.

Just into his 20s, Dadaev was a fantastic deal youthful than Stalin, however make-up and the pressure of conflict meant that he may cross as a 60-year-old.

‘We had all skilled a lot struggling that I seemed a lot older than I used to be,’ he stated.

He spent months in coaching, a few of it underneath the eagle eye of Lavrenty Beria, Stalin’s feared chief of secret police.

He watched films of Stalin to excellent the mimicry of his motion and intonation.

Dadaev’s e-book recollects his first terrifying try to play Stalin in entrance of the chief’s comrades on the Kremlin.

‘Remember, this plan was devised by the chiefs of all these frightful committees,’ he stated.

‘There was a lot using on the plan. Perhaps I didn’t absolutely perceive all of the accountability.

‘Everybody shivered. Even amongst these males on the highest stage, everybody was scared. The essential factor, they stated, was to maintain silent on the first assembly if Stalin was not within the temper for dialog.

‘But if he was, to be laconic and say one thing to him in his personal voice.

‘After a sleepless evening, at 9am they introduced me to the Kremlin. First General Vlasik, head of Stalin’s private safety, got here by.

‘He was surprised, then, after a pause, nodded his head approvingly. Then he studied my jacket and robe, paid consideration to my barely bent left arm and glanced at my boots.

‘I used to be ready with concern in case he observed my pretend gray temples.

‘I had a make-up artist however he could not be with me on a regular basis. So I discovered to do it myself.

‘But my capability to repeat Stalin’s manners, voice and stroll was much more essential.’

In 2008, General Vlasik’s daughter Nadezhda Nikolayevna confirmed Dadaev’s position.

‘Yes, they used doubles,’ she stated.

‘All the methods to distract consideration from the chief had been invented by my father.

‘He was so concerned within the work, and liked Stalin a lot, that he prompt unbelievable concepts.’

Dadaev was gifted – and fortunate. Had he did not persuade Vlasik or Beria, he would nearly definitely have been shot to guard the key plan.

As it was, he was banned from seeing his family and sure by a non-disclosure settlement that remained in drive lengthy after Stalin died.

Dadaev met his doppelgänger on just one event, within the Fifties, and even then the encounter was temporary.

‘He smiled and gave me an approving nod and that was it,’ he recalled.

‘Stalin had 4 doubles in all. He was very afraid of makes an attempt on his life.

‘Spies surrounded him and each journey was totally deliberate. For instance, doubles had been typically substituted for him on the way in which to the airport.

‘Several vehicles had been used to distract anybody watching. I typically took these journeys.’

Initially, Dadaev’s conferences had been restricted to leaving the Kremlin and driving off in Stalin’s automotive.

He progressed to assembly social gathering officers, and as soon as, Dadaev stood on the mausoleum in Red Square as an alternative of Stalin.

‘It was a sportsmen’s parade,’ he stated.

‘Everyone was certain it was Stalin himself. I walked to the mausoleum with members of the federal government, then stood on the central dais, smiling and greeting the passing columns.

‘The key factor was to get the step proper. When Stalin was amongst his entourage, his stroll was immediate and agency.

‘But at receptions or conferences, he walked slowly and pensively.

‘My confidence was bolstered as quickly as I got here out and was greeted by authorities members saluting me.

‘We went on to the mausoleum. I may see there have been no suspicions. Yet once more the KGB had pulled it off.’

Dadaev’s largest mission got here as Stalin flew to Yalta for the well-known convention in February 1945.

Stalin’s flight was stored high secret whereas a later one with Dadaev on board was publicised.

‘Two flights had been organized, with one among them aimed to distract everybody’s consideration,’ he stated.

‘Nobody ever wrote about it, nobody is aware of about it. I used to be a decoy to attract the eye of international intelligence. Stalin was already in Yalta.

‘But it did not work. Two makes an attempt had been made in Yalta to kill the actual Stalin. Our intelligence failed. I used to be again in Moscow by then.

‘Seven high-ranking intelligence officers misplaced their posts. They had been fortunate to lose simply that.’

Another ruthless dictator stated to have made use of physique doubles is former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein.

There was a degree the place everybody appeared to be an knowledgeable on Hussein physique doubles, having learn previous studies that he had as much as 10 at his disposal.

There had been questions over whether or not one among them had appeared Iraqi tv, proving that the chief had survived a missile assault.

In some situations, recalling studies circulating about Putin because the begin of the invasion of Ukraine, theories focused on his chin, ears and jowels, with members of the general public worldwide transfixed by the idea of a Hussein clone.

It performed into popular culture’s obsession with doubles and decoys. Hussein’s use of lookalikes typically portrayed him in a buffoonish method, with the dictator parodied within the 1993 movie Hot Shots! Part Deux and within the wildly in style South Park franchise.

It was extensively reported that the Iraqi president had a number of look-alikes who stood in for him from often at public occasions.

Intelligence officers had lengthy suspected that Hussein made use of physique doubles.

In September 2002, pathologist Dr. Dieter Buhmann from Homberg University in Saarland, southwest Germany, decided that there have been not less than three lookalikes being utilized in rotation, that includes in public appearances and seen taking pictures rifles, smoking cigars, waving and strutting.

It was prompt that the doubles hardly ever spoke due to Hussein’s idiosyncratic lisp.

Buhmann had been requested by a German tv information program to scour a whole lot of archived video stills and pictures of Hussein.

Iraqi dissidents had spoken of Hussein’s stand-ins beforehand, with tales of recruitment schemes and cosmetic surgery, and of coaching in actions and mannerisms.

Dr. Buhmann prompt that the face of a reported doppelgänger was just a bit too broad. For others, the world underneath the mouth was fractionally too small and low.

Buhmann stated that he had made use of latest expertise to look at some 450 pictures of individuals purporting to be Hussein from public appearances and movies and was in a position to decide ‘indubitably’ that he used doubles.

‘The anatomical specificity of the faces is completely different,’ Buhmann stated. ‘One, for instance, has a really giant center face. The distance from one ear to the opposite may be very a lot completely different to Saddam Hussein. And in one other case the area underneath the mouth is just too small and never excessive sufficient.’

Arab press had extensively reported the dictator’s elaborate safety precautions and stated that he frequently used doubles and likewise would by no means keep in the identical constructing for 2 nights in a row. Hussein was recognized to dwell in fixed concern of being assassinated by his personal officers.

CIA officers had stated that Hussein instantly executed anybody whom he suspected of betraying him, with such measures making it very arduous to supply dependable intelligence on his location.

One official stated: ‘We may know that he was in one among a number of buildings in Baghdad – however then to make sure of killing him, we must blow all of them up, which might additionally kill lots of harmless folks. We’re reluctant to do this.’

Buhmann stated he introduced his facial options comparability method utilizing overlays at an FBI discussion board in 2000, however was unsure if the strategy had been tailored by US authorities.

Earlier in September of that yr, a former mistress of Hussein, Parisoula Lampsos, who claimed she had been romantically concerned with him for 3 many years, stated he had a double whose face had been rendered equivalent by way of use of cosmetic surgery.

She stated the dictator joked about UN weapons inspectors, claiming they might by no means uncover something as a result of he had moved and hidden chemical and different secret weapons previous to their visits.

Hussein denied utilizing physique doubles when he was interrogated by FBI particular brokers who carried out 20 formal interviews and not less than 5 ‘informal conversations’ with former Iraqi dictator after his seize by US troops in December 2003, in line with secret FBI studies launched as the results of Freedom of Information Act requests by the National Security Archive and posted in July 2009 on the National Security Archive web site.

During the interviews Hussein refuted some examples of what he considered as myths, together with his purported use of physique doubles.

Instead he stated that to evade his enemies he by no means used the phone and travelled continuously from one dwelling to a different. He described the farm the place he was captured in a ‘spider gap’ as the identical place the place he took refuge after a failed 1959 coup try.

Hussein was infamous for being a determine who would cease at nothing to consolidate energy, however in physique double phrases he was outdone by a member of his circle of relatives.

Latif Yahia was the physique double of Saddam Hussein’s son Uday for 4 and a half years within the late ’80s and into the ’90s, overcoming a number of assassination makes an attempt earlier than he escaped on the finish of the Persian Gulf War.

Yahia, aged 38 on the time and residing in Dublin, launched a e-book about his experiences, entitled I Was Saddam’s Son.

Yahia and Uday attended secondary faculty collectively in Baghdad, the place schoolmates typically mistakenly thought they had been associated due to their comparable look.

Yahia claimed he was jailed and threatened with the rape of his sister earlier than he agreed to tackle a job as Uday’s double.

He stated that with a purpose to carry this out he needed to have tooth implants and cosmetic surgery on his chin.

Yahia stated he was pressured to observe videotapes of Uday, to check how his actions and conversations, and to observe videotapes of rape and torture ‘to be robust like Uday, to not care anymore, to be an animal like him’.

He was kitted out with Uday’s signature black uniform and used the identical barber. His household thought of him useless and a funeral was held for him.

In time, this got here to be true, in a method. Whereas Yahia stated that as a baby, ‘I used to be so quiet, I used to be so mushy,’ the years as a double made him powerful however flamable. He later underwent counselling to beat the emotional ache ensuing from these experiences.

In the 2011 movie The Devil’s Double, British actor Dominic Cooper performed each Yahia and Uday. 

In 1983 Yahia, a lieutenant within the Iraqi military, was pressured to develop into the double of Uday.

Yahia, who ultimately managed to flee Iraq aided by the CIA, claims he stood in for Uday when addressing armed forces throughout the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait.

‘It’s a charming concept,’ Cooper stated. ‘The thought {that a} principally good man has to dwell day-after-day with somebody so hideous, and that he has no selection within the matter.’

Much of The Devil’s Double is predicated on Yahia’s autobiography, which gained little consideration previous to the invasion of Iraq in 2003, however has since bought greater than 6.7 million worldwide.

Twenty years after he escaped Iraq, Yahia stated he was nonetheless affected by his experiences.

‘I nonetheless have nightmares, nonetheless discover it arduous to get to sleep till the early hours of the morning,’ Yahia stated.

‘Every time I’m going into the bathe, I see the bodily scars on my physique and assume: “Why did this happen to me?”’

Uday Hussein’s was seen as an international playboy, but he was also infamous for his abduction, rape and murdering of young women, and for his torturing and killing of opponents.

He even had a falling out with Saddam Hussein after he killed the Iraqi leader’s personal valet at a party, as depicted in The Devil’s Double. But several of the real-life events detailed in the book were left out of the film.

Yahia said that had they been included, ‘it would be a horror movie’.

‘If we put in all the details, I don’t think anyone would watch it,’ he added.

‘There are some extraordinary scenes of violence which actually took place and some of them are harrowing,’ Cooper said.

Yet the Mamma Mia! star insisted they are justified in the context of the film’s ‘glimpse of a gangster regime’.

In 1992 Yahia was flown to Vienna after he was taken out of Iraq. He survived four assassination attempts connected to his book and moved to Ireland in 1997.

Yahia eventually chose to settle in Daingean, County Offaly, where he married an Irish woman. 

Still visibly carrying the physical scars of his ordeal that ended in 1991, he told Reuters in 2011 that he had lost his identity completely, even to the point that a death certificate was issued in his birth name.

It had taken a long time for him to get some form of that identity back.

‘It take five years between psychology doctors and counselling, and yeah, the scar, you carry it with you your whole life. It’s not something to forget it overnight,’ said Yahia.

It was a challenge to hold onto a slither of his original identity during his time has Uday’s fiday, an experience that was a terrifying one.

Yahia also had a chilling message for the Hussein family’s late son.

He said: ‘Just the worst thing happened to me when I get to Kuwait and I have the assassination attempt, and nearly, this is, I lost my life. I’ve been injured in my arm, my chest, my head – I nearly [was] killed there. But Uday, this guy I say, and I say it before again; if I see him in Hell, I’ll kill him again. I can’t forgive anyone, except this guy.’

Cuban Revolutionary Fidel Castro was additionally stated to have used a physique double.

Lieutenant Colonel Juan Reinaldo Sanchez wrote an explosive, revelatory account of state secrets and what he personally witnessed in The Double Life of Fidel Castro, My 17 Years As Personal Bodyguard to El Lider Maximo, published in 2015.

Castro always travelled with fourteen guards spread over four vehicles and multiple weapons distributed in different cars, Sanchez said.

A doctor, a photographer and his double, Silvino Alvarez, who sat at the back of a car wearing a false beard, were in the entourage, he said.

Alvarez was used when Castro fell ill in 1983 and 1992. He was driven around Havana to lead the people to believe their leader was well.

Castro himself always had a 7.62mm Soviet Kalashnikov assault rifle along with five clips loaded with thirty bullets each between his feet.

Behind him, level with his right shoulder was a 9mm Browning pistol – and more weaponry was kept with the escort and the guards, as well as in the trunk.

The author and one-time personal bodyguard had to write down details of Castro’s day in notebooks, including the most trivial details, such as the vintage of the wine when a bottle was uncorked. It was an hour-by-hour detailed account of Castro’s life.

When the pages were filled, the little book was tied with string, sealed with wax and sent to the presidential palace and stored for posterity.

And there, along with the notebooks, are recordings of all his important conversations. He secretly recorded everything – including bugging the rooms of foreign diplomats who visited and stayed in Havana hotels. He recorded them on video and bugged the telephone.

Sanchez was one of Castro’s security guards from 1977 to 1994, accompanying him on overseas trips to meet everybody from popes to US presidents, and witnessing first hand his boss’s ability to exploit Cuba as a personal fiefdom.

Recalling a typical day spent spear fishing off Cayo Piedra, he said: ‘I can’t describe it any other way than comparing it with the royal hunts of Louis XV in the forests around Versailles.’

When, in 2005 and 2006, Forbes named Castro as one of the world’s richest heads of state – on a par with the Queen of England and Prince Albert of Monaco – he accused the magazine of ‘infamy’ in a public tirade that raged against the alleged greed of countries such as Britain and the US.

As Cuba’s Chief of State, Head of Government, Prime Minister, First Secretary of the Cuban Communist Party and Commander-in-Chief of the armed forces, he wanted to be known as the ‘Maximum Leader’, not a lazy, avaricious despot.

Sanchez spent 17 years working for Castro before getting bored with the job and asking to be allowed to resign.

Castro responded by accusing him of disloyalty and jailing him for two years between 1994 and 1996.

Sanchez recalled in 2014 how he once viewed the indisputably charismatic Castro as ‘a god’, admitting: ‘I would have died for him.’

But he later said the man he’d been brought up to admire became Cuba’s ‘master in the manner of a 19th-century landowner’.

‘For him, wealth was above all an instrument of power, of political survival, of personal protection,’ he said.

‘Fidel Castro also let it be known that the revolution gave him no rest, no time for pleasure and that he ignored, indeed despised, the bourgeois concept of holidays. He lies.’

Following a decade of keeping his head down, Sanchez fled to the US as an exile in 2008.

Castro, meanwhile, handed over power to his brother, Raul, the same year, guaranteeing that in the absence of any legal opposition party in Cuba, the Castro dynasty will continue to flourish.

Sanchez portrays a man obsessed with power and money, who styled himself as a hero of the working classes while living the opulent existence of a medieval potentate.

Unlike a gilded royal, however, the Cuban leader managed to keep his life of luxury a closely guarded secret.

For that, like any good dictator, he can thank the agents of a security state every bit as oppressive as that forged by dictatorial chums in Zimbabwe, China and the old Soviet Union.

Castro indulged in a double life of grandeur while portraying himself as a humble revolutionary and vocalising his despise for the bourgeois concept of life and vacation.

He had numerous affairs and kept his mistresses a secret, along with his lavish lifestyle.

His many luxurious homes, his offices, the ghost town where guerrillas were trained, everything was a secret including all the money he siphoned off from the national economy.

Castro amassed an immense personal fortune that enabled him to live like a prince, nightly drinking his whisky on the rocks or scotch over ice while being waited on.

He lived like a prince but his language was littered with profanities.

Caya Piedra, an island of unparalleled beauty in the Caribbean Sea off the southern coast of Cuba, was the secret getaway destination of Castro travelling in the only luxury yacht in the republic of Cuba.

Ten members of his elite personal corps escorted their leader in 55-foot-long speedboats ‘all equipped with heavy machine guns and stocks of grenades, Kalashnikov AK-47 rifles, and ammunition to prepare us for any eventuality’, wrote the author.

Castro travelled in his private, elegant boat, Aquarama II, entirely ‘decorated in exotic wood imported from Angola,’ a replica of a vessel confiscated when he overthrew Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista in 1959.

Few Cubans knew about the yacht, or the private creek where it was moored ninety miles southeast of Havana.

Ironically he discovered the island following the failed Bay of Pigs Landing in April 1961 mounted by President Kennedy.

A landing stage was built for Castro’s three vessels and a helicopter, a floating pontoon was annexed to the jetty and a straw hut with a bar and barbeque grill constructed to prepare all freshly caught meals.

Most Cubans believed Castro only owned ‘a modest fisherman’s hut somewhere on the coast’ rather than this luxury vacation home he visited every weekend when it wasn’t raining.

Several Cuban ministers have stepped on shore, claims the creator, together with CNN founder Ted Turner, Barbara Walters, French businessman Gerard Bourgoin the Chicken King and Erich Honecker, one time leader of the communist German Democratic Republic, but few others.

The author swam at his side or above him carrying a pneumatic rifle that shot round-tipped arrows that bounced off of a target to warn off any sharks or barracudas that might come too close.

Castro owned a block of houses to guarantee the security of a building called Once in that block. The building contained a fitness room, a private basketball court (he never lost a game), a bowling alley, and an apartment that housed his mistress Celia Sanchez who had been at the heart of the Cuban Revolution with Fidel, his confidante and indispensable aid after meeting in 1957.

He visited her daily until her death in 1980 and did not marry Dalia until Celia had passed.

Hidden behind high walls on a different site of five acres was Unit 160, the logistical headquarters that housed everything from fuel, telecommunications, food supplies, and car mechanics. 

There were laying hens and a flock of geese, several bulls and Holstein cows that were the subjects of Castro’s genetic experiments to improve milk yields and farming.

Behind 160 was a detached house, the House of Carbonell, where Castro had many secret affairs – including with Juana Vera, aka Juanita, his English speaking interpreter, Gladys, a Cuban airline flight attendant, and Pilar, a French speaking interpreter – among many others.

‘Thinness, much more than blondeness, was an essential criterion in Fidel’s romantic choices,’ Sanchez said. 

He was more interested in his mistresses than his siblings and his numerous offspring – numbering no less than nine.

In Punto Cero, Dalia was boss over the meals, the domestics’ schedules, the relationship Castro had with her five children.

If one of their five offspring wanted to speak with Castro, they had to go through Dalia.

But perhaps the most important example of the use of a decoy among historical figures comes from Britain’s very own Bernard Montgomery.

On May 25, 1944, Field Marshal Montgomery was in the south of England planning to invade German-occupied northern France with a 1.3 million-strong army.

On the identical day, the Montgomery decoy made an look within the British colony of Gibraltar, main Nazi spies to tell Berlin that the invasion would happen within the south of France.

The outlandish scheme saw two Bernard Montgomerys living separate lives over the course of few weeks.

One was Britain’s most celebrated soldier soldier, a constant threat to the German army Italy and North Africa.

The other was a nine-fingered actor from Perth, who looked the spitting image of the national hero.

As the Germans frantically attempted to work out where the Allied forces invasion would strike, a doppelgänger named M.E. Clifton James was doing his utmost to confuse them. 

By the summer of 1944, the German military was thin on the ground due to a brutal war against the pressing Russians in Eastern Europe.

They were aware that a combined British and US force was preparing to establish a ‘Western Front’, but they did not know the location.

The Allies assessed that their daring planned invasion of Normandy in the north of France had the highest probability of being successful if the Germans had allocated their defences elsewhere.

Making use of double-agents, the Allies had tricked the Germans into believing that Norway, the south of France, the Balkans and Romania were under threat of imminent invasion.

Their fictional army in the south of England included inflatable tanks to dupe German planes.

But Montgomery’s decoy proved to be their most rewarding trick.

M.E. Clifton James had been a working actor for 25 years.

James, who had grown up in Western Australia before moving to London, had joined the British Army with the aim of becoming an entertainer, but was instead drafted to the Pay Corps.

His uncanny resemblance to Field Marshal Montgomery became known through word of mouth, leading to an invitation from the film unit.

James was trained to impersonate Montgomery after being auditioned by successful Hollywood actor Lieutenant Colonel David Niven.

The crash course included mimicking Montgomery’s speech patterns and his quick and unpredictable mannerisms.

James used a prosthetic finger after losing his during WW1 so that it would not give him away.

Some of the pair’s lifestyle choices were also worlds apart.

Montgomery famously shunned alcohol and cigarettes, whereas James was recognized to get pleasure from each.

Two weeks before D-Day, James was flown on Winston Churchill’s plane to Gibraltar in southern Spain.

There were no German spies active in Britain at the time, but Gibraltar was known to harbour several German agents.

It would serve as an ideal location for the decoy Montgomery and Operation Copperhead.

There he opened up at a reception at the governor-general’s home for ‘Plan 303’, an invasion of southern France, across the country from the real landing site.

Berlin found out and the German commanders were left confused.

James then travelled to Algiers in Algeria, making several public appearances with the Allied commander in the Mediterranean.

The Germans could not understand why Britain’s best general was in Africa at the perfect time for a European invasion. The foundations were now truly cemented.

The trick operation had a bigger impact than the Allies had anticipated.

Adolf Hitler fully believed that a series of diversionary attacks were set to take place across Europe.

Hitler told the Japanese ambassador Hiroshi Oshima on June 1: ‘I think that diversionary actions will take place in a number of places – against Norway, Denmark, the southern part of western France, and the French Mediterranean coast.’

When models from Great Britain, US, Canada and Free France landed in Normandy on June 6, the Nazi chief was satisfied it shaped a part of the bluff.

He refused to move German troop out of the Pas-de-Calais region for seven weeks, as he believed that the Normandy invasion was just a diversionary attack.

By the time he changed his mind, the Allies had made a significant advance and the Germans would be forced out of the French capital a month later. 

James found himself without work at the end of the Second World War and started to take unemployment benefits.

But he achieved fame through his 1954 memoir I Was Monty’s Double, in which he detailed his role in Operation Copperhead.

Four years later, James played both himself and Montgomery in the film version, which altered aspects of the story.

Towards the end of the film, German commandos arrive by submarine to kidnap the phony Montgomery, with a lively fight scene breaking out. The real-life version was not so dramatic.