Battle of El Alamein
The Eighth Army broke Rommel's line at El Alamein in twelve days of fighting in October and November 1942, and the Axis never advanced in North Africa again. The position mattered because it could not be turned. The Qattara Depression, impassable to vehicles, lies some forty miles south of the coast at that point, so the front was a wall rather than a flank, which suited a commander with more men and guns and less flair. Montgomery had both: roughly 195,000 men to 115,000, over 1,000 tanks including 250 new American Shermans against some 550, and complete air superiority. Rommel had laid half a million mines in belts his troops called the Devil's Gardens, and he was in Germany on sick leave when the attack began; his replacement died of a heart attack the next day. The plan was attritional by design — a thousand-gun barrage on the night of 23 October, engineers clearing lanes through the minefields for the armour, and then a grinding fight in which the infantry killed tanks and the tanks fought infantry, called the crumbling. It stalled, and Montgomery shifted the point of attack north to Operation Supercharge on 2 November. Rommel signalled that he was withdrawing, Hitler ordered victory or death, and he retreated two days later regardless, having lost some 30,000 prisoners and most of his armour. Churchill said afterwards that before Alamein Britain never had a victory and after it never had a defeat, which is a good sentence rather than an accurate one. The Anglo-American landings in Morocco and Algeria began four days after Rommel started his retreat, which is what actually made the position hopeless. Alamein nonetheless mattered enormously in Britain, where the church bells were rung for the first time since 1940.
- Year: 1942 CE
- Category: Military
