Retreat

As Field Marshal Rommel retreated after the El Alamein battle, the British troops were very slow to follow. The Desert Fox managed to get virtually unscathed back to Tunisia marching through the whole of Lybia with his troops. The commanders of the Eigth Army never quite managed to get bold enough to rout the remains of the German Army. To a layman this might sound initially funny, however, the British decision was based on the expectancy of the feigned retreat. The feigned retreat is basically retreating as soon as the enemy starts the offensive.

This will have a number of advantages:
-your supply lines will become shorter
-your front will become shorter
- your density (number of operatives covering a particular area) will become higher.To illustrate this: fighting 2000 men scattered over a front the size of New York is easy, fighting the same 2000 men on a front the size of Times Square is impossible

Especially an enemy which has already proven to be more apt to audacity then intelligence will fall for this one. The trick of course being that you run back into a fortified position (with lots of snipers), or, after creating enough distance, you split up to the flanks, let the enemy rush through, join up and attack them in the rear.

The disadvantages of this movement are that:
- An enemy might not fall for this one, but just set up their defences leaving you with a loss of territory (think about American Football: you don�t want the enemy to close to the scoring area)
- The enemy might only pursue you very cautiously and consolidate all territory, thereby becoming aware of any possible �surprise attacks�

Battles where this was used:
- The Africa Campaign of �41-�42
- Russia�s �normal� strategy: Napoleon in 1812 basically got into trouble with Mother Nature because the Russian troops refused to give battle and kept on retreating. The German Army during Operation Barabarossa also fell for this one although the Soviets were doing battle all the way.
- The Invasion of Finland by the Soviet Union during WWII: instead of going into battle outnumbered, the courageous Fins left the Soviets to find a deserted border, forcing them to march onward in temperatures of -40 Celsius. In the meantime the Finnish troops were applying Guerilla warfare on the extended columns..