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40 Fascinating But Lesser Known Facts About WWII

Khalid Elhassan January 5, 2019 25 min

World War II - European theatre of World War II — Raising the Red Banner over the Reichstag. Anarkismo

Dummy vehicles and fake water filling station behind British lines in 1942. Wikiwand

30. British Deception and Misdirection Efforts

The Germans were fed misinformation via turned spies, and borrowing from stage magic, the British built wood and canvass contraptions to deceive German aerial reconnaissance. Tanks over here were made to look like trucks, while trucks over there were made to look like menacing concentrations of tanks. To further fool the Germans about the British buildup of supplies and munitions, the CDTC set up fake ammunition dumps. With water being the most precious resource in the desert, whose concentration offered strong indicia of intent, a 200 mile dummy water pipeline was laid to the southern sector of the line.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.