Outfoxing the Desert Fox at 2nd El Alamein - Deception at the tactical and operational level

This is the episode in a two-part military deception operations series looking at the Battle of 2nd El Alamein.
This episode looks at:

• How did Allied intelligence turn Rommel’s own spy network and Rebecca-based Condor ring in Cairo into a weapon before the Second Battle of El Alamein?
• What was the “Black Code” used by Colonel Fellers, and how did its compromise change the intelligence and deception battle in the Western Desert in 1942?
• How did a single falsified “going map” south of Alam Halfa lure Afrika Korps tanks into soft sand, burn their fuel, and help blunt Rommel’s attack?
• How did Wavell, T.E. Lawrence, Allenby and the Megiddo campaign shape British World War II deception doctrine used at El Alamein?
• Who was Dudley Clarke, what was “A Force”, and how did they build a full-time deception organisation for Eighth Army before Operation Lightfoot?
• What were Operation Treatment and Operation Bertram, and how did they work together to hide Montgomery’s real plan for the Second Battle of El Alamein?
• How did dummy tanks, sunshields and fake truck parks in Operations Martello and Cannibal actually fool German aerial reconnaissance and ground observers?
• How did fake pipelines and supply dumps in Operations Diamond and Bryan mislead Rommel about where and when the main British attack would fall?
• How successful was Operation Bertram in deceiving Rommel and the Afrika Korps, and what do German reports and captured officers reveal about the deception?
• What are Barton Whaley’s 10 steps for designing a military deception plan, and how can El Alamein’s deception lessons apply to modern information and LSCO campaigns?

The next episode looks at how Montgomery took over the 8th Army and turned around the morale of the whole army.

00:00 Recap – Unit 621 and deception focus
01:06 Black Code compromised & Fellers’ reports
02:08 Condor spies, Rebecca & the Cairo spy ring
03:48 Turning Condor into a deception channel
04:38 De Guingand’s false going map concept
06:13 Map “capture”, Rommel’s attack & fuel crisis
08:39 Wavell’s WWI deception roots & key principle
09:32 Operation Compass and early Western Desert deception
10:29 Dudley Clarke, A Force & dummy formations
12:17 “What do you want the enemy to do?” – Clarke’s lesson
13:14 The El Alamein problem & tasking the deception plan
14:01 Strategic deception: Operation Treatment & the Crete feint
16:02 Operation Torch, U-boats & shared deception goals
17:50 Operation Lightfoot plan – 30th, 10th & 13th Corps
19:25 Operation Bertram: objectives & overall concept
20:12 Operation Martello – hiding 10th Corps’ build-up
21:52 Sunshields, truck parks & fuel concealment
22:47 Operation Cannibal & hidden artillery
23:45 Munasib dummy guns & double-cross in the south
24:41 Fake pipeline (Diamond) & southern supply bluff (Bryan)
25:35 Final shell game: tanks into sunshields & dummy tanks
26:28 Battle opens & Panzerarmee Afrika’s misreading
27:21 German estimates of timing & location of the attack
28:03 Reconnaissance failure & Luftwaffe “nothing to report”
28:54 Von Thoma on being deceived & delayed Afrika Korps move
29:36 What if 21st Panzer had been north earlier?
30:33 Resources, experience & integrating deception with ops
31:37 Barton Whaley’s 10-step deception process
36:32 Wrap-up, references & future deception case studies
37:33 Credits & how to support the podcast

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