Hitler did not want to fight for North Africa in 1941, his eyes were staring eastwards towards steppe not desert. Egypt was the prize his ally Benito Mussolini coveted. Yet Il Duce's ill-judged invasion of Greece was compounded by failure in Libya when Generals Wavell and O'Connor's strike in December 1940, Operation Compass, heralded disaster for Italy. Erwin Rommel was sent in with meagre forces, and grudgingly, to stem the rot. But this tortoise turned into a hare. The Desert Fox - generally at odds with his hosts and nominal superiors, not to mention High Command, was a maverick genius who began to rapidly turn the tide. It kept turning. The pendulum of war in the Western Desert began to swing, and it swung back and forth through abortive British offensives, Brevity and Battleaxe, then more tellingly with Claude Auchinleck's Crusader offensive.
But Rommel wasn't daunted. He struck back, harrying the Allies eastwards, past Gazala and Mersa Matruh, into Egypt and the El Alamein Line. Auchinleck saw him off in the First Battle of El Alamein (1-27 July 1942) but failed to mount a successful counterstroke. By now Churchill, desperate for a convincing victory, had had enough of 'The Auk' and his mercurial Chief of Staff Eric Dorman-Smith. He appointed General Harold Alexander to overall command and gave 8th Army, firstly to William Gott, whose death in a plane crash then cleared the path for Bernard Montgomery.
Alexander's instructions were plain, as set out in a directive on 10 August: 1 Your prime and main duty will be to take or destroy at the earliest opportunity the German-Italian Army commanded by Field-Marshal Rommel together with all its supplies and establishments in Egypt and Libya.
هذه القصة مأخوذة من طبعة Issue 113 من History of War.
ابدأ النسخة التجريبية المجانية من Magzter GOLD لمدة 7 أيام للوصول إلى آلاف القصص المتميزة المنسقة وأكثر من 9,000 مجلة وصحيفة.
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هذه القصة مأخوذة من طبعة Issue 113 من History of War.
ابدأ النسخة التجريبية المجانية من Magzter GOLD لمدة 7 أيام للوصول إلى آلاف القصص المتميزة المنسقة وأكثر من 9,000 مجلة وصحيفة.
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COUPS & CHAOS
How the French armed forces lost the war in Algeria and almost destroyed French democracy in the process
BATTLE OF ALGIERS
When the Front de libération nationale FLN) took its war to the streets of the capital, France’s military responded with merciless wrath
THE RISE OF ALGERIAN RESISTANCE
How the anti-colonialist struggle around the globe helped inspire Algeria’s liberation movement to organise and fight back
ROOTS OF REVOLUTION
A century of French occupation led to a genocide in Algeria that provoked one of the bloodiest showdowns of the modern age
DWIGHT W BIRDWELL
In the opening hours of the North Vietnamese Tet Offensive, this Specialist Five led his armoured cavalry detachment in repulsing a fierce communist assault against Tan Son Nhut Air Base near Saigon
THE FIVE STRATEGY AND LEADERSHIP
Phillips O’Brien discusses how this quintet of national leaders impacted the course of the Second World War
Great Battles FLODDEN
On the morning of 9 September 1513, King James lV of Scotland stood atop Flodden Hill with what seemed an insurmountable advantage over the English. Yet by the day's end he would lay slain and his army shattered
FERDINAND 'THE BLOODY'
Known for his brutal martial punishment and execution of his own men, Ferdinand Schérner’s ruthlessness was matched only by his devotion to Nazi ideology
AIRBORNE UNDER SIEGE ARNHEM
For nine days the heroic 1st Airborne fought desperately, waiting vainly for relief that never came
SCANDINAVIA UNDER ATTACK
Hitler’s forces smash through Denmark and Norway ina grim foretaste of the terrible fate awaiting the rest of Western Europe
