El Alamein. This Egyptian desert railway halt, situated about 95 km. (60 mi.) west of Alexandria, gave its name to two different encounters between Allied and Axis forces during the
Western Desert campaigns.
The first, and some say erroneously named, was a defensive battle fought by the British and Commonwealth Eighth Army from 1 to 4 July 1942. Commanded by
General Auchinleck, the Eighth Army prevented
Rommel's Panzer Army Africa (renamed German–Italian Panzer Army, 25 October 1942) from breaking through its defensive lines near Ruweisat Ridge when Rommel made a penultimate bid to conquer Egypt and seize the Suez Canal. It is still a matter of debate whether Auchinleck, aided by
ULTRA intelligence and
Dorman-Smith, was at last able to gain the initiative; or whether Rommel had simply run out of steam.
Rommel tried to break through again, and failed, at
Alam Halfa in September. Then in the second El Alamein battle, the Eighth Army, now commanded by
Lt-General Montgomery, fought successfully between 23 October and 4 November 1942 to pierce Rommel's defences, forcing him to retreat into Tunisia.
Unlike most previous Western Desert battles, this second battle was a set-piece affair against static defences with no turnable flank, and lack of fuel and transport (see
logistics) prevented Rommel from practising the mobile warfare of which he was a master. Instead, before going on sick leave on 23 September (he returned on 25 October), he ordered his defences strengthened by laying half a million anti-tank mines. Within these main minefields smaller ones, comprising anti-personnel devices, were laid. The Germans called them ‘the Devil's gardens’, and they caused Montgomery's attack serious delays. Rommel also ‘corseted’ the weaker Italian units with German formations and formed his armour into six groups positioned to counter-attack any breach of his defences.
Besides being critically short of fuel, Rommel was outgunned and outmanned by the British:
| Eighth Army | Panzer Army Africa |
|---|
Men | 195,000 | 104,000 (inlcuding |
| | 50,000 Germans) |
Infantry battalions | 85 | 71 including 31 |
| | German |
Medium tanks | 1,029 | 496 |
Anti-tank guns | 1,451 | 800 |
Field and Medium artillery | 908 | 500 |
Aircraft | 530 | 350(+150 from |
| | elsewhere) |
Montgomery's plan (LIGHTFOOT) was to breach Rommel's northern defences by employing four infantry divisions of
Leese's 30th Corps on a 16 km. (10 mi.) front (see Map 28). Paths would be cleared through the minefields to enable the two armoured divisions of Lumsden's 10th Corps to pass beyond the infantry's bridgehead, a line codenamed OXALIC, to a line (PIERSON) running south-east from Kidney Ridge. There they would take up defensive positions against any German armoured attack, and would not go on to the offensive until the infantry battle—the ‘crumbling’ process as Montgomery called it—had been won.
By attacking in the more heavily defended northern sector, and by laying on elaborate
deception plans and diversionary attacks in the south with 13th Corps, Montgomery achieved initial surprise. His plan envisaged three stages of the battle: the break-in, the ‘dogfight’ which would last about a week, and the break-out.
But the break-in, begun during the night of 23/24 October before a rolling barrage (see
artillery, 2) from 882 guns, was slowed by the depth of Rommel's defences, and Lumsden's armour only reached OXALIC on the first day. However, 9th Australian Division took a key feature (Point 29) in their northern sector and began developing a salient while 1st Armoured Division attacked two centres of resistance (SNIPE and WOODCOCK) either side of Kidney Ridge. Rommel launched fierce counter-attacks there, but these were contained, and constant Allied air attacks and concentrated artillery bombardments (both features of the battle) aided the infantry's ‘crumbling’ of his forces. Meanwhile the Australians continued to push out their salient, and this siphoned Rommel's best troops away from where Montgomery was about to unleash a second attack (SUPERCHARGE) while it also ‘uncorseted’ the Italians.
But the process was slow, and Churchill became agitated when divisions were withdrawn from the front for SUPERCHARGE. This was launched on the night of 1/2 November by the New Zealand Division, and other infantry units, north of Kidney Ridge and south of where Rommel's élite units had now been drawn. This cleared the way forward for the armour and Rommel, after his forces had suffered further attrition, decided the battle was lost and that he must save his mobile troops by withdrawing to Fuka. He warned Hitler on 2 November that his army was without fuel and faced annihilation—a signal which, thanks to ULTRA, was in Montgomery's hands the next morning—but when, in a second signal, he said a withdrawal had begun Hitler ordered him to stand fast. Rommel tried to do so but, once started, the process could not be reversed. A night attack by the 51st Highland Division overran its objectives and at dawn on 4 November it found Tell El Aqqaqir abandoned. At midday Rommel's defences caved in and that evening Hitler gave him permission to withdraw. But by then Rommel's defeated army had started its headlong retreat across Libya during which Montgomery netted 30,000
prisoners-of-war. Allied casualties during the battle had amounted to 13,560.
El Alamein was the climax of the Western Desert campaigns and one of the turning-points of the war; the victory, as intended, influenced the French to co-operate in the
North African campaign after initially opposing the landings there.
Bibliography
Hamilton, N. , Monty: The Making of a General, 1887–1942 (London, 1981), ad fin.
Strawson, J. , El Alamein: Desert Victory (London, 1981).
