An interesting near disaster before the Battle of Kursk

[Errigal]

Here's an interesting incident from the Eastern Front in WW2 which I just found in the memoirs of German General Reinhard Gehlen.

We had managed to convince General Zeitzler that our ideas were right, and he approved a major propaganda operation designed to step up the Russian desertion rate at the same time as we launched our next big offensive, Operation Citadel. We code-named the opera*tion Silver Lining, and trained 1,500 officers and propaganda workers specially for it at the Dabendorf training camp. A key element of the operation was that the deserters had to be "welcomed" where possible by Russian reception teams. A special leaflet was designed with a facsimile of my signature instructing all our troops to treat deserters particularly well and find out if they wished to join the "Russian Liberation Army." Citadel was planned to commence at dawn on May 6; so on the evening of May 3, we issued the code word Silver Lining: the 18 million leaflets were to be released over Russian lines as the offensive began. There was a last-moment panic when we learned that Silver Lining was a long-existing Luftwaffe code word for commencing poison gas warfare, but this caused no real problems. As it turned out, Citadel was postponed for two months, and our Silver Lining operation, which began without the accompanying military offensive on the night of May 6, went off at half cock. It resulted in hundreds of deserters, but not the many thousands we had confidently expected.

from The Service, General Reinhard Gehlen pg.89