In late 1942, with on-going Allied success in the North African Campaign, the thoughts of the military planners turned to the next target. British planners considered that an invasion of France from Britain could not take place until 1944, and the Prime Minister, Winston Churchill, wanted to use the Allied forces from North Africa to attack Europe's "soft underbelly". There were two possible targets for the Allies to attack. The first option was Sicily; control of the island would open the Mediterranean Sea to Allied shipping and allow the invasion of continental Europe through Italy. The second option was into Greece and the Balkans, to trap the German forces present between the British and American invaders and the Soviets. At the Casablanca Conference in January 1943 Allied planners agreed on the selection of Sicily – codenamed Operation Husky – and decided to undertake the invasion no later than July that year. There was concern among the Allied planners that Sicily was an obvious choice – Churchill is reputed to have said "Everyone but a bloody fool would know that it's Sicily" – and that the build-up of resources for the invasion would be detected. Adolf Hitler was concerned about a Balkan invasion, as the area had been the source of raw materials for the German war industry, including copper, bauxite, chrome and oil. The Allies knew of Hitler's fears, and they launched Operation Barclay, a deception operation to play upon his concerns and to mislead the Germans into thinking the Balkans were the objective, thereby keeping Sicily less defended than it could have been. In doing so, the deception operation reinforced German strategic thinking about the likely British target. To suggest the eastern Mediterranean was the target, the Allies set up a headquarters in Cairo, Egypt, for a fictional formation, the Twelfth Army, consisting of twelve divisions. Military manoeuvres were conducted in Syria, with numbers inflated by dummy tanks and armoured vehicles to deceive observers. Greek interpreters were recruited and the Allies stockpiled Greek maps and currency. Falsified communications about troop movements were generated from the Twelfth Army headquarters, while the Allied command post in Tunis – which was to be the headquarters of the Sicily invasion – reduced radio traffic by using land-lines wherever possible. On 29 May, Myers was informed by Cairo that Sicily was to be invaded in the second week of July and ordered that Greek resistance organizations were to commence Operation Animals a sabotage campaign throughout Greece. The operation was to begin on 21 June and last until 14 July and Myers immediately contacted local SOE agents and the leadership of ELAS, which agreed to participate in the operation.