24. The Need to Confuse the Germans About the Allies’ Plan for the Invasion of Southern Europe
In late 1942, Erwin Rommel, the “Desert Fox” who had given the British no end of trouble and embarrassed them on multiple occasions in North Africa, had been defeated at the Battle of El Alamein. As the year came to a close, the British were in hot pursuit of the Desert Fox westwards out of Egypt, across Libya, and towards Tunisia. Simultaneously, the successful Operation Torch landings had brought American and British forces to French North Africa, and they were steadily marching eastwards, to close in on Axis forces in North Africa from that direction as well.
With Allied victory in North Africa seemingly just a matter of time, the question of “what next?” arose. Once Africa was cleared of the Axis, the entirety of southern Europe would become vulnerable to an Allied invasion. There were many tempting targets, of which Sicily, which lay close to Tunisia, was the most obvious. However, because it was so obvious, the Allies wanted to trick the Axis and get them to commit defenders elsewhere in the Mediterranean, instead of concentrating them in Sicily. So a deception plan was called for.