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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

32. Operation Bertram, the Plan to Outfox the Desert Fox

The El Alamein battlefield was bounded to the north by the Mediterranean Sea, and to the south by the Qattara Depression, impassable to armor and wheeled vehicles. Operation Bertram sought to fool Erwin Rommel about where the British planned to strike. That was important because Rommel faced fuel shortages that made redeploying his troops, particularly the Italians, difficult or even impossible once fighting began. Wherever Rommel deployed his forces, that is where most of them would stay during the battle. So the British sought to convince him to deploy them in the wrong place.

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.