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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.
بالفعل مشترك ? تسجيل الدخول
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.
بالفعل مشترك? تسجيل الدخول
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THE ANGELS OF BASTOGNE
In the middle of Germany’s final major offensive, a young nurse risked her life to help treat wounded American soldiers
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REICH TO REPUBLIC
INTERVIEW WITH FRANK TRENTMANN From defeat and division to democracy, the historian examines Germany's struggle with post-war guilt, memory and reconciliation
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THE SPARTACIST UPRISING
The fledgling democratic republic of Germany was forced to immediately fight for its existence against communist insurgents bent on its destruction
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WHAT IF...MEXICO DEFEATED THE UNITED STATES?
Could Mexico have claimed vast swathes of territory, including the potentially gold-rich California, in a huge blow to US expansion?
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THE MARCH ACTION
The final rising of the radical left during the Weimar period was followed by the sharp decline of communist influence in Germany
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BALTIMORE
In the War of 1812, the Royal Navy launched an assault on the economic hub of Maryland, prompting an inspired American defence against the old enemy
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THE RUHR UPRISING
After the Kapp-Lüttwitz Putsch, radical left-wing workers united in a violent bid to establish a Soviet-style government
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THOMAS J HUDNER
This US Navy aviator fought a desperate battle against time, flames and the brutal North Korean winter in an attempt to rescue his trapped wingman
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GHOSTS OF DYNAMO
Armed with the British Admiralty's battle summary, firsthand accounts and a 2023 seabed survey, it's now possible explore a number of Operation Dynamo wrecks to understand what was lost at Dunkirk
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1944-45 BATTLE FOR EUROPE SNIPERS
These elite sharpshooters led the Allied advance in Normandy and eventually beyond the frontier of the Third Reich