The “Desert Fox” Has Ears
Bibliography with Notes plus Bonus Content
Gorenberg, Gershom. War Of Shadows, Codebreakers, Spies, and the Secret Struggle to Drive the Nazis from the Middle East. New York: Public Affairs, Hachette Book Group, 2021.
Chapter 1 EL ALAMEIN
“No advance intelligence had revealed that the forward sections of Strategical Intercept Company 621 would be in that spot or that Seebohm would be visiting that day. The capture of the unit was a gift of fortune.”
Johnson, Hans. Armchair General. “Radio Kills: Rommel’s 621st Radio Intercept Company,” 2012. http://armchairgeneral.com/radio-kills-rommels-621st-radio-intercept-company.htm
“This is not an attempt to downplay the unit’s successes; rather, it is simply putting them in context. Too often there is a tendency to attribute success in intelligence to a single source. That can be true, but it is not for the 621st…
“March 1941 found Gerisch’s platoon deployed at Sirte, Libya…
“Seebohm docked on April 24th with another radio intercept platoon, a radio direction finding platoon, and Lt. Wischmann’s group of cipher specialists…
“As the intercept operators found the various British radio nets, they had to determine what radio network they were listening to and its purpose. The British made their job much easier in mid-1941 through lax communications security. They did not always use codewords. So a British radio operator might try and contact “8th Army” instead of MXQ. Now the Germans knew what MXQ was. The British compounded the problem by not changing the various code words very often.
“There was also too much chatter on the British radio nets—gossiping really—and no real radio discipline. Another bad British habit was too much ‘cc’ing’ of messages instead of simply leaving these addresses off of messages that did not directly concern them…
“Equally important, the British were completely aware of their vulnerabilities and made further radio security changes. They started with a week’s radio silence…”
Wahlert, Glenn. The Western Desert Campaign 1940-1941
(Australian Army Campaigns Series Book 2). Sydney: Big Sky Publishing, 2011. Kindle.
Chapter: THE STRATEGIC SETTING
“Italian troops frequently became lost using their own maps, even when travelling on roads and known tracks. It was evident that the Italians had conducted little reconnaissance to update or confirm their maps. The arriving German army found captured British maps excellent and reproduced them for their troops.“
Bonus Illustrations
WWII in North Africa 