The Battle for North Africa, El Alamein and the Turning Point for World War II - Glyn Harper
The location of Operation Supercharge caught Rommel by surprise. While his front had not broken, he knew the situation was desperate and that his tank losses had been “severe.” He knew, too, what had prevented the British Eighth Army from breaking through: “It was only by the desperate fire of all available artillery and anti-aircraft guns, regardless of the ammunition shortage, that a further British penetration was prevented.” Rommel took the immediate decision to commit his armor on the morning of November 2 “to pinch out the enemy wedge.” The 21st Panzer Division would counterattack north of the wedge and 15th Panzer from its south. The “gravity of the situation in the north” forced Rommel to commit another armored division, the Italian Ariete Division, early in the afternoon. As he recorded of this counterattack: “Violent tank fighting followed.” This was exactly what Montgomery had planned for. At last he had his clash of armor on ground of his choosing.
Signals intercepts confirmed that the Axis armor was on its way. Freyberg’s diary recorded at 0935 hours:
“Message in from 30th Corps that 21st Panzer Division is expected to counter-attack West South West from 868302. It was also said that 15th Panzer Div would counter-attack about the inter-bde boundary. Situation of various batteries was also reported. Passed this to NZ Division.”
Not only had the artillery readied itself to meet the counterattack but, along the new front, 2nd and 8th Armoured Brigades also prepared to meet the Afrika Korps attack. At noon, the remaining twenty-four tanks of 9th Armoured Brigade were grouped to form a composite regiment and placed on the right flank of 2nd Armoured Brigade just where the weight of 21st Panzer’s attack would fall. For the rest of the morning and into the afternoon of November 2, “there was the fiercest and most prolonged tank engagement of the whole battle.” An early report described the action: “All day the battle raged. One hundred and seventy-six enemy tanks were reported counterattacking furiously from the north and southwest.” Losses were heavy on both sides, but the Afrika Korps suffered most of them. In the first encounter of the day, 2nd Armoured Brigade knocked out twenty-five German tanks, of which eighteen continued to burn for most of the day. Two JU-87 Stuka air raids that the Luftwaffe attempted were driven off by Desert Air Force Hurricane fighters before they even reached the battlefield and the DAF bombers pounded andf strafed the Afrika Korps columns and positions during the day. The War Diary of German 90th Light Division recorded a critical moment in the battle:
“During the morning the fighting reached its climax. Smoke and dust covered the battlefield, and visibility became so bad that the general picture was of one immense cloud of smoke and dust. Tanks engaged in single combat; in these few hours the battle of Alamein was decided.”
Sometimes called the battle of Tel el Aqqaqir, this great tank encounter was the climax of the battle. General von Thoma later described the battle as “Tank against tank.” For him it was “the biggest tank battle I have ever experienced.” During the battle, the Afrika Korps and one Italian armored division were exposed to the fire of hull-down Grants and Shermans, the superiority of the British artillery, and the bombs of the DAF and “took a mortal pounding.” In total, “77 German and 40 Italian tanks had been put out of action” that day. It had been “an unequal battle from every point of view.” Not only did the British have air supremacy and more tanks, but Afrika Korps was forced to attack in daylight across open ground. The result was that Afrika Korps “suffer[ed] the kind of losses which they had so often in the past inflicted upon their opponents.”
General Freyberg, whose reading of the battle was as good as any other, felt that by the end of November 2, “it was clear that the enemy was cracking.” He warned his brigadiers to be ready for the exploitation phase, believing that the enemy would soon withdraw. “I felt certain that the war on our front was over,” he wrote. Rommel, whose experience matched Freyberg’s, had reached a similar conclusion. But while the Afrika Korps was “virtually destroyed during the day of intense fighting,” 1st Armoured Division had still not been able to penetrate beyond the Rahman track. Some British commanders despaired that they could ever get beyond the Axis gun line. As the Australian official historian recorded, even on November 2: “The Eighth Army was not hitting Rommel for six, nor even penetrating his outfield to the boundary.” Operation Supercharge was similar to Lightfoot in that it had made a sizable advance, but had still not achieved the desired breakthrough.
In the end, this did not matter. That evening, with “only 35 serviceable panzers left” and with an “absolutely desperate” supply situation, Rommel gave the order to break off the attack and withdraw. The Afrika Korps’ War Diary recorded of the decision: “The situation compels Panzer Army to withdraw slowly by bounds to a new line. Afrika Korps will withdraw on a wide front.” That “new line” would be at Fuka, some sixty miles away. After ten days of fighting, Eighth Army had won the battle.
The battle spluttered on for two more days. On the evening of November 2 at 1950 hours, Rommel sent a message to OKW hinting at the need to withdraw, but not actually stating that he had already given the order to do so. It was “his famous admission of defeat.” Rommel’s message read :
"Despite today’s defensive success, the army’s strength is exhausted after ten days of tough combat against immensely superior British ground and air forces. The army will therefore no longer be capable of impeding the strong enemy tank formations expected to repeat their breakthrough attempt tonight or tomorrow. For want of motor transport it will not be possible for the six Italian and two German nonmotorized divisions to withdraw in good order. A large part of these units will probably be overrun by the enemy’s mechanized formations. But even our mechanized troops are engaged in such heavy fighting that only part will be able to disengage from the enemy…. In this situation the gradual destruction of the army must therefore be assumed to be inevitable despite the heroic resistance and exemplary spirit of the troops.
Sgd. Rommel, Field Marshal."
The message has been accurately described as “a clever piece of expectation management.” by Rommel to his superiors instead of flatly admitting defeat and strategic blunder of entering Egypt and over extending all the way to Alamein line without necessary support and logistics structure and air cover.
In the early hours of November 3, Rommel’s follow-up report to OKW retrospectively announced that he had given the order to withdraw commencing at 2200 hours on the night of November 2. Both messages were intercepted and decoded by Bletchley Park in England and in Brooke and Montgomery’s hands by noon the next day. On the night of November 2, those German and Italian troops not locked in combat at the front began hastily retreating westward.
The Panzer Army, however, did not withdraw from the Alamein position on November 3. The entry in the Afrika Korps War Diary for November 3 confirmed a change in intent. It recorded that, “Now that the situation had altered, and a mobile defensive policy was about to be instituted on the Alamein front, this withdrawal was stopped.” There had been no change in policy, nor had the situation altered in Rommel’s favor. Instead, Hitler had responded poorly to Rommel’s “expectation management.” In fact, David Irving has written that Rommel’s signal about the withdrawal of Panzerarmee from Alamein “poleaxed Hitler.” After venting his anger and frustration at General Walter Warlimont for not immediately passing on Rommel’s signal, Hitler dictated an immediate message to be radioed to Rommel. It would become “one of the most famous signals of the war.”
Around midday on November 3, Rommel returned to his headquarters after inspecting the situation along the coast road. He had narrowly missed being killed by “a carpet of bombs laid by 18 British aircraft,” only avoiding the bombs by “some frantic driving.” At 1330 hours, an order arrived from Adolf Hitler. While it praised the leadership of Rommel and the courage of his soldiers, it was emphatic that there would be no withdrawal from the Alamein position. The Führer told Rommel :
“In the situation in which you find yourself there can be other thought than to stand fast, yield not a yard of ground and throw every gun and every man into the battle…. Your enemy, despite his superiority, must also be at the end of his strength. It would not be the first time in history that a strong will has triumphed over the bigger battalions. As to your troops, you can show them no other road than that to victory or death.”
Rommel was infuriated and puzzled by this order. He admitted that he was “completely stunned” by it. More than this, it filled him with indecision: “For the first time during the African campaign I did not know what to do.” He later described November 3, 1942, as “a memorable day in history.” One of Rommel’s biographers has written that Hitler’s signal on November 3 “marked a turning in Rommel’s life and views.” It certainly had a profound effect on him. This was because “not only did it become finally clear on that day that the fortunes of war had deserted us, but from that day on the Panzer Army’s freedom of decision was continually curtailed by the interference of higher authority in its conduct of operations.” This interference “came as a considerable shock” to Rommel, but he did his best to comply with the order. He ordered movement to the west to be halted and made some attempts to strengthen his defenses. He also reported back to Hitler that while he would comply with the order, it meant soon losing the entire army and with it their position in North Africa. To emphasize how serious the situation was, Rommel sent his personal assistant Leutnant Alfred-Ingemar Berndt to report directly to Hitler that if his “stand fast” order was upheld, “the final destruction of the German-Italian Army would be a matter of days only.”
Reversing the withdrawal once it had commenced proved to be extremely difficult. Rommel read Hitler’s “stand fast” order to von Thoma, commander of the Afrika Korps, and informed him that the withdrawal was canceled. “We have no other choice,” he told von Thoma. “We must make a stand, and if there’s no other way out, we must be prepared to die.” Von Thoma agreed and assured Rommel that he would not withdraw without orders to do so. But there was a huge problem. Von Thoma informed Rommel that:the position is that we do not have a continuous front, the Italians have all pushed off … Still more bad news has arrived. Tanks have broken through at various points. The situation is now critical, Sir. Rommel agreed with von Thoma that he could withdraw to the first bound as planned, some fifteen kilometers (nine miles) east of El Daba, but from here “this line is to be held to the last man.” According to Rommel, Hitler’s order “had a powerful effect on the troops.” They would obey it and “sacrifice themselves to the last man.” But “an overwhelming bitterness welled up in us.” This was because they all knew “that even the greatest effort could no longer change the course of the battle.” A superb army was being destroyed because of rash decisions made thousands of miles away.
The New Zealand official history described November 3, 1942, as “a curious day in the Battle of Alamein.” This was because “confusion, indecision and caution were more prominent than action.” Alexander reported to Churchill that on November 3, “progress was slow owing to mines and anti-tank gun screens.” On the evening of November 2, three battalions of the 7th Motor Brigade tried to secure objectives across the Rahman track prior to the armor of 1st Armoured Division moving across the track the next morning. Only one battalion, the 2nd King’s Royal Rifle Corps (2 KRRC), secured any new ground but it did not get to the Rahman track. At first light on the morning of November 3, 2nd KRRC, in its exposed forward position, was attacked by the tanks of the Italian Littorio Division. With its six-pounder guns in support, it was able to hold off the attack and during the morning it destroyed seven M13 tanks in the firefight.
The anti-tank gun screen across the Rahman track was still effective, so no advance of the armor of 1st Armoured Division took place that morning. Instead, 8th Armoured Brigade moved south of Tel el Aqqaqir toward a newly captured feature known as “Skinflint.” Both armored brigades of the division engaged in long-range shooting that day and claimed to have knocked out another twenty-two tanks and twenty-three guns during it. It was a frustrating day for the British commanders. They could sense that Rommel’s front was broken, but they still could not penetrate the Panzer Army’s anti-tank gun lines.
This was also the day that the air effort of DAF (Desert Air Force) reached its peak in the North African campaign. Around the small hill of the Tel el Aqqaqir feature, the DAF bombed anything that moved. Tel el Aqqaqir was a slight elevation where 15th Panzer Division had taken up strong defensive positions. Its height offered superb observation over this part of the battlefield and protection for gun emplacements. It was “ideal for placing artillery” and it was here that that “the vast majority of Rommel’s remaining 88 mms were situated.” But the hill was a prominent feature, which made it an ideal target for aerial bombing. Tel el Aqqaqir “rapidly became the crucial ground under contest.” During “the busiest and … probably the most successful day of the battle,” the DAF flew 1,094 sorties and dropped 199 tons of bombs. Its losses, though, were “heavy, with 16 planes being lost and a further 11 damaged.”
A series of hastily mounted infantry attacks on the afternoon of November 3 produced negligible results. One carried out by 5/7th Gordons of 51st Highland Division, supported by Valentine tanks of 8th RTR, in the evening of November 3 was disastrous primarily because artillery support had been canceled for fear of hitting the armor of 1st Armoured Division. The tanks were in fact nowhere near where the attack was made. The Gordons managed to capture a position near the Rahman track south of Tel el Aqqaqir, but suffered ninety-four casualties. Nine Valentine tanks had been destroyed and a further eleven damaged from the thirty-two that had taken part. Niall Barr is critical of these improvised attacks, writing that they “proved yet again that Eighth Army found it difficult to conduct effective small-scale operations.” These attacks of November 2–3, according to Barr, “had borne a striking similarity to many of the hastily organised and poorly prepared operations mounted in July.” There is no denying, though, that these actions had an acute impact on Panzer Army and Rommel felt the loss of every single tank and gun.
More promising, though, was the foray by two armored car squadrons of the Royals and by some South African armored cars that managed to slip behind the Axis positions and reach the El Daba area. Here they shot up Axis supply trucks , cars and soft-skin vehicles and caused considerable alarm. It was these vehicles that von Thoma reported to Rommel as the tanks that had broken through their positions. General Freyberg wrote that the operations on November 3 amounted to obtaining some “further elbow room.” Traveling across the front in the afternoon, Freyberg noticed “a great change. Everything seemed to point to a general enemy withdrawal.” Freyberg was correct but there was one final infantry effort to come.
Even as the battered tanks of 8 RTR returned “covered with the dead bodies of my Highlanders,” Major General Wimberley , commander of 51st Highland Division was ordered to make another two infantry attacks that night. But his 51st Highland Division, like other formations in Eighth Army, had run out of infantry. To make what would be the last infantry assault at Alamein, Wimberley was given the 5th Indian Brigade for the task. This brigade was still “relatively fresh” and it was to try to capture part of the Rahman track immediately south of the 5/7th Gordons that night. It was to advance on a narrow front southwest of Tel el Aqqaqir for a distance of two miles. This would be followed by a two-battalion assault by 51 (Highland) Division on the Tel el Aqqaqir feature.
In support of 5th Indian Brigade’s attack were the surviving Valentine tanks of 50 and 46 RTR and a massive amount of artillery. This artillery support included the field guns of 1st Armoured, 51st Highland, and the New Zealand Divisions, as well as two medium regiments. This was a total of 360 guns similar to what had been used to commence Operation Supercharge two nights before. In total, these guns fired 37,000 rounds that night. The New Zealand artillery commander, Brigadier “Steve” Weir, coordinated the artillery fire plan. His task was made much harder by the combination of the short time period to prepare the plan and the fact that 5th Indian Brigade had never before advanced behind a creeping barrage.
There was considerable confusion at the start of the attack. It was so muddled that zero hour was delayed by an hour. However, some artillery batteries did not get word of the postponement and opened fire at the arranged time. At 0230 hours, the attack went ahead and commenced with a full artillery barrage. However, only one complete battalion, 1/4 Essex and two companies from 4/6 Rajputana Rifles, which was meant to be the reserve battalion, advanced behind it. In spite of the confused start and the weak attacking force, “the operation went with complete success.” There was little opposition encountered as the artillery had been so effective that the Indian brigade encountered mostly dead or demoralized defenders and little resistance. The Essex battalion was on their objective at first light with more than 100 prisoners. The Rajputs had similar success and that morning the tanks of 50/46 RTR joined the infantry on their objectives without losing any tanks. While the Indian infantry earned “high praise at the time” for this attack, there is little doubt that its success was primarily due to the overwhelming artillery support it had been allocated.
The final infantry operation of the battle was made by the 7/10 Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders. This battalion was allocated the task of capturing the Tel el Aqqaqir feature. Advancing at 0515 hours on a narrow 600-yard front, under a barrage provided by seven regiments of field artillery, the advance was unopposed. However, eight men were killed and twenty-three wounded from artillery rounds dropping short. Clearly the gunners were fatigued and some of their gun barrels worn out. At 0710 hours when the barrage ceased, the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders “found themselves in complete and unopposed occupation of the Tel el Aqqaqir feature.” Only two German prisoners were captured and it was clear that the enemy had abandoned the position in considerable haste. These two infantry attacks had finally opened up gaps in the Axis frontline, which Eighth Army’s armor could exploit.
In the north, on the morning of November 4, the Australian infantry probed the enemy lines. The patrols found the troublesome Thompson’s Post and other Axis positions abandoned. Instead, the enemy were now holding a line around a mile west of the Australian positions. The “dogfight” phase of the battle was over.
At 0830 hours on the morning of November 4, the 7th Armoured Division was through the gap. It had moved north on October 31, “ready to exploit the breakthrough he [Montgomery] shortly expected to achieve in the northern sector.” It had taken longer than expected but the breakthrough had been made. “We got out into the open, a tremendous feeling,” recalled John Harding. The 11th Hussars in the lead, with 22 Armoured Brigade of 7 Armoured Division following, drove beyond Tel el Aqqaqir for five miles before it encountered any opposition. This happened in the early afternoon, when 22nd Armoured Brigade encountered the tanks of the Italian Ariete Armored Division. Although their tanks were seriously outmatched, the Italians fought desperately for several hours. In this last fight, the Ariete were joined by the remnants of the Littorio and Trieste Divisions. The action lasted all afternoon and ended at dusk when “all three Italian divisions were mostly destroyed.” Rommel received a report from the senior field officer present that his Axis partners had “fought with exemplary courage.” He described their annihilation as “a very gallant action” and admitted that “we had probably always demanded more than they, with their poor armament, had been capable of performing.” The Italian 20th Corps had certainly proved capable and courageous that afternoon. These often-maligned Italian formations had sacrificed themselves in this last armored encounter at Alamein. In doing so they gave the Afrika Korps the chance to escape a similar fate.
Rommel had a terrible dilemma. His defenses at Alamein had been “crumbled.” His front was broken and the powerful armor of Eighth Army was about to be unleashed. Yet his Führer had forbidden him to withdraw, instead urging Rommel and Panzerarmee to “yield not a yard of ground” and travel the single road to “victory or death.” In November 1942, victory was out of the question and Rommel did not relish needlessly sacrificing himself or his army. On the morning of November 3, Rommel’s commanding officer, Field Marshal Albert Kesselring, arrived at Panzerarmee’s headquarters. There Rommel vented his frustrations about Hitler’s “crazy order” and admitted that “some angry words passed between us.” According to Rommel’s son Manfred, Kesselring sympathized with Rommel and restored his freedom of action. Manfred Rommel noted that:
Kesselring did, in fact, discuss with my father the possibility of circumventing Hitler’s order. Kesselring gave it as his view that Rommel, as the man on the spot, should do what he thought was right.
On the afternoon of November 4, 1942, there was only one prudent course of action left to Rommel. As he recorded of his decision :
“So now it had come, the thing we had done everything in our power to avoid—our front broken and the fully motorised enemy streaming into our rear. Superior orders could no longer count. We had to save what there was to be saved. After a preliminary talk with Colonel Bayerlein, who had now assumed command of the Afrika Korps again, I issued orders for the retreat to be started immediately.”
General Von Thoma (who was captured on late morning of 4th November by 1st Armored Division on the frontlines while organising a final desperate rearguard action of Afrikakorps at Tel el Mapsra. His composite battlegroup from 21st Panzer and German 90th Light Divisions was complately destroyed by 2nd Armored Brigade and 7th Motor Brigade and heavy British artillery fire. Von Thoma was himself taken prisoner on top of his knocked out panzer , brought to Eighth Army HQ , dined with Montgomery in the evening , even invited Monty to his estate in Germany after the war ) was correct when he informed Crüwell that it was “a very important decision” and that the delay making it made the withdrawal that night “extremely difficult.” Rommel did send an immediate signal to Hitler explaining that to prevent the loss of North Africa, he needed to resort to “mobile warfare” and that he would contest with the enemy “every foot of ground” from a new defensive position running from Fuka to the south. Rommel sought retrospective approval for his decision. Afrika Korps received Rommel’s order at 1450 hours that day. It recorded that at dusk it was to “withdraw to the area south of Fuka.” Having taken the decision to abandon the Alamein position, Rommel must have been relieved to receive two signals the next morning, one from Adolf Hitler, the other from Kesselring. While they were “far too late,” they did authorize his withdrawal to the Fuka position.
On November 4, with Rommel’s signals to Hitler being intercepted and translated by Bletchley Park almost as fast as he was sending them, General Alan Brooke allowed himself a measure of satisfaction. He recorded in his diary that “The Middle East news has the makings of the vast victory I have been praying and hoping for.” If Montgomery had failed to defeat Rommel in this third battle of Alamein, “I should have had little else to suggest beyond my relief by someone with fresh and new ideas!” But the news was promising and Brooke ended his entry on November 4 saying, “It is very encouraging at last to begin to see results from a year’s hard labour.” While the botched pursuit of the defeated Afrika Korps did not result in the “vast victory” many hoped for, it was a decisive victory nonetheless.
Six days later, at the Lord Mayor’s luncheon banquet in London on November 10, a jubilant Winston Churchill was in fine form. He said in his speech that he never promised anything to the British people but blood, sweat, tears, and toil. Then he described a novel development in the war. Churchill explained to the audience:
“Now, however, we have a new experience. We have victory. A remarkable and definite victory…. Rommel’s army has been defeated. It has been routed. It has been largely destroyed as a fighting force.”
It had been no easy victory. After twelve days and thirteen nights of hard fighting with the heavy casualties this entailed, Rommel’s Panzerarmee was broken and had been forced to withdraw from the battle. It was not yet destroyed as a fighting force, though. Despite this, the democracies had won their first offensive battle against a German-led army in the Second World War. This October–November Alamein battle was a considerable achievement and indisputably one of the war’s great turning points. Why this was so is explained in the next concluding section .
An officer in the 7th Battalion of the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders recalled a moving event at the end of the battle. Lieutenant John Campbell remembered:
“When it was all over, and the Germans had withdrawn, the pipe major went up on the skyline and played “Flowers of the Forest.” Everybody wept.”