The battle of El Alamein, a turning point in the Second World War?

Published on: 23/10/2022 – 10:02 On October 23, 1942, the second battle of El Alamein began, an episode of the desert war considered as one of the turning points of the Second World War. This battle marks an important victory for the Allies led by General Montgomery against Marshal Rommel’s Afrikakorps. “The silence was broken by the first barrage of the main El Alamein offensive, which began at 9:40 p.m. with Montgomery’s thousands of guns pounding the enemy positions. Operation Lightfoot blazed in the night. It looked like broad daylight. The desert sky was ablaze with the lights of explosions and tracer fires. (…) It was a monumental, perfectly orchestrated requiem of war.” . In her Memoirs “As long as the day lasts” (Plon editions), Susan Travers, a member of the Free French Forces, recounts the beginning of the second battle of El Alamein in which she took part on October 23, 1942. It is not the first times that the Allied forces opposed German troops in this corner of the Egyptian desert, only a hundred kilometers west of Alexandria. A few months earlier, in July, the two camps had already opposed each other in the same place, but without a winner or loser. At the head of the Axis forces, Marshal Rommel, nicknamed “the desert fox”, does not lack ambition after several successes against the British even if the situation of the Afrikakorps is more and more delicate. As Benoît Rondeau, author of “The Desert War” (Caraktere editions), points out, he sees himself “conquering Egypt, in the footsteps of Alexander or Bonaparte”. “Rommel’s plan is to destroy the 8th Army at El Alamein, rush and seize Cairo, then Suez and Port Said, before forcing the defenders of Alexandria to surrender,” adds this historian specializing in the Second World War. Operation “Lightfoot”But facing him stands British General Montgomery who, under pressure from British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, launched a counter-offensive in the fall of 1942 called “Lightfoot”. “The main effort will be launched to the north by General Leese’s XXX Corps and General Lumsden’s X Corps) while diversions will be launched to the south by General Horrocks’ XIII Corps. seize the ridge of Miteiriya. The armored vehicles of the X Corps (twice as many tanks as the Afrikakorps) will then take the demined corridors to deploy and repel the expected counter-attack of the Afrikakorps”, describes Benoît Rondeau. Within months, the British Eighth Army had grown considerably stronger. Careful preparation was also elaborated including an intoxication operation aimed at deceiving the enemy. “The ‘Martello’ maneuver thus makes it possible to hide assembly areas. A false pipeline and false depots are built in the south. Dummy machines (8,400 for the entire operation) are concentrated north of the front” , explains the author of “The epic of the desert, the 8th British army” (Ysec editions). This second battle, in which a few troops of the Free French Forces took part on the southern flank, began on October 23. The moment is propitious because Marshal Rommel is absent, traveling to Berlin. But as summarized by Benoît Rondeau, “the British breakthrough was difficult to acquire”. British casualties are high during the first two days and the German front has not yet been broken through. But opposite, the situation is not much better. Germans and Italians face supply problems and lack of fresh troops, while the Allies’ reserves are important. Rommel’s retreat On October 25, Marshal Rommel finally resumed command of his army and launched a counter-attack that ended in failure. “While Rommel’s tactical choices can be explained but are debatable, victory is only possible in the absence of an absolute will to win on the face of it. But this will, Montgomery undoubtedly possesses, and he is ready to all the sacrifices for that”, underlines the historian. In a few days, the situation of the Axis forces becomes untenable. Rommel is pessimistic and resigns himself to withdrawal. This proposal was unacceptable to Hitler, who sent him a message on November 3: “The famous order enjoins the Afrikakorps to fight on the spot until ‘victory or death’. To the great displeasure of its officers, Rommel, disciplined, obeyed. He was furious at not taking advantage of the inaction of the British to extricate his troops from the trap that threatened them. He finally decided to disregard the Führer’s instructions. Rommel then gave the order for an immediate retreat the next day “to try to salvage what could still be salvaged”, he would later write. The legend of El Alamein In London, the victory is resounding. Winston Churchill pronounces this famous sentence: “It is not the end, nor even the beginning of the end; but it is the end of the beginning”. For many, the second battle of El Alamein thus marks a turning point during the Second World War. “It benefits from the fact that it is embedded in a context of shifting of the war in favor of the Allies on the other fronts: Stalingrad in the East, Guadalcanal in the Pacific, successes confirmed in the first half of 1943 with the defeats of the Axis at Stalingrad and Tunisia and the victory, after bitter fighting, over the U-Boats [sous-marins de guerre, NDLR] in the Atlantic in May”, considers for his part Benoît Rondeau who underlines on the contrary that it is the first battle of El Alamein, led then by the British general Auchinleck, which proved to be more decisive: “A conquest of Egypt by the Axis would have had dire consequences. The decisive aspect of the second battle lies in the fact that the Axis hopes of conquest are definitely shattered: there will be no swing of the pendulum and the initiative now belongs to the Allies, who are devoting substantial resources to the campaign.” El Alamein becomes a legend. General Montgomery becomes one of the most important figures of the Second World War, still revered across the Channel. “The United Kingdom, which had suffered many setbacks since 1940, then needed of a hero and a redeeming battle”, summarizes the historian. “History has been able to do justice to Claude Auchinleck and to the importance of the first battle of El Alamein, fought in July 1942. These victories in Egypt illustrate in no uncertain terms how much the British Empire contributed to the eventual victory over the Axis forces. Nevertheless, myths die hard and, in the minds of the general public, the battle of El Alamein only took place in October-November 1942 and will remain for a long time associated with Montgomery and the turn of the Second World War.”