The battles of El Alamein: The turning point of WWII
With the Axis in the ascendancy in North Africa and optimistic of taking the Suez canal, the battles of El Alamein were crucial in deciding the outcome of WWII.
Image: General Bernard Montgomery (R) watches British tanks advance | Public Domain
After the collapse of France in 1942, the battleground of World War II temporarily switched to North Africa. Initially, the Allies had enjoyed great success in routing Italian forces, despite being heavily outnumbered at times.
However, the arrival on the scene of Field Marshall Erwin Rommel and his Afrika Korps changed everything. With superior tanks, astute leadership and some tactical missteps on the part of the British, Rommel was able to drive his rivals east through Libya and into Egypt.
At El Alamein, the Allies regrouped and made a defiant stand. Defeat would mean the Axis could claim the Suez Canal, but victory in the end was instrumental in turning the tide in the Allies’ favour.
You can learn more about these pivotal battles below and by watching Sky HISTORY's The Sound And The Fury, available from Thursday, 8th May.
Background to the battles
The preamble to the battles of El Alamein was a dark time for the Allies. Not only had France fallen to Nazi rule in 1940, but the appointment of the charismatic Rommel – nicknamed the ‘Desert Fox’ and widely regarded as one of the greatest military generals in history – had given all the momentum to the Axis in North Africa.
Hitler’s plan was to squeeze the Allies out of Africa altogether, thus claiming the Mediterranean Sea and the all-important Suez Canal. Had he been successful in doing so, he would have been able to cut off British supply lines from its colonies in the east, severely weakening his enemy.
By the summer of 1942, Rommel was within reach of his objective. The British Eighth Army made a stand at the tiny railway outpost of El Alamein due to its strategic location. With the sea to the north and the impassable quagmire of the Qattara Depression to the south, the bottleneck prevented the Axis from flanking the Allies as they had done so successfully on previous occasions.
The Allies muster a response
The first battle of El Alamein began on 1st July 1942, when Rommel’s forces attacked the defensive line. However, the British commander General Claude Auchinleck ordered a shrewd counterattack which turned into a back-and-forth war of attrition. Two weeks later, Rommel had made little progress; in fact, Auchinleck had successfully put him on the back foot and as a result, the first battle of El Alamein came to an end.
The Allies now prepared for their own counterstrike. The first order of business was drafting in General Bernard L Montgomery, who had developed a reputation as an irritable taskmaster – but also as one of Britain’s greatest military leaders. He resisted petitions from Winston Churchill to act quickly, instead taking his time to build up superior forces.
Meanwhile, the Allies laid a trap for the Axis in the shape of Operation Bertram, which was one of the biggest deceptions of WWII. Through the use of dummy tanks, dummy lorries and even a dummy water supply line, they pretended that the main attack would take place far to the south, when really it would strike at the heart of the Axis line.
A war of attrition
The second battle of El Alamein got underway on the evening of 23rd October 1942. Montgomery had divided his strategy into two parts. First came Operation Lightfoot, which combined a barrage of heavy artillery with RAF bomber squads and advanced infantry units. The entrenched position of the Axis troops meant this descended into a hard-fought attritional skirmish more reminiscent of Amiens in WWI than WWII.
However, the momentum shifted significantly with the launch of the second phase of attack: Operation Supercharge. The 1st Armoured Division and the 2nd New Zealand Division were able to cut swathes through the enemy lines after intense tank warfare, thus forcing Rommel into full retreat.
The second battle of EL Alamein lasted 12 days and resulted in losses of more than 30,000 troops for the Axis, either through death or capture. Meanwhile, the Allies suffered casualties of around 13,500 men.
Aftermath and legacy
When Winston Churchill would refer to El Alamein in later speeches, he would call it 'the end of the beginning', as well as pointing out that 'before Alamein we never had a victory, after Alamein we never had a defeat'.
As such, its importance in turning the war in the Allies’ favour should not be underestimated. While the fierceness of the fighting on the Eastern and Western Fronts mean that WWII is often regarded as a largely European and American affair, the role that North Africa played is undeniable. As well as halting Rommel in his tracks, El Alamein forced Hitler to redivert troops southwards and lose hundreds of thousands of men in the process.
What’s more, El Alamein provided a timely morale boost to the Allies in general and the British in particular. And if Rommel and Hitler had succeeded in taking the Suez Canal, things could have been very different. As a result, El Alamein remains a pivotal moment in the history of the Second World War.
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