HISTORY
"The sound of the cannons shook people's ears and bled, the tanks that were hit burned with raging fire, illuminating the night as if it were day, the corpses on the sand were strewn around, and the soldiers' bodies were crushed to pieces by the tanks, and even if there was a hell, it would not be more terrible than El Alamein."
On October 23, 1942, the Battle of El Alamein began in the North African theater of World War II.
The battle was fought by montgomery's Eighth Army, led by the British, against the German-Italian Afrika Korps led by Rommel in Alamein, North Africa.
The battle was one of the most famous tank battles in history, and the Battle of Stalingrad and the Battle of Guadalcanal in the same period marked the beginning of the Allied strategic counteroffensive.
Churchill once said: "Before El Alamein we were defeated many times, and after El Alamein we were invincible."
El Alamein turned the tide of the war in North Africa, and the war in North Africa turned the tide of the entire anti-fascist war.
The battle was the first major victory for the British army since World War II. Britain regained control of North Africa, held the Suez Canal, the gateway from the Mediterranean sea to the Indian Ocean, controlled the oil of the Middle Eastern countries, restrained the Allies in terms of transportation and energy supply, and solved the worries of the Allies in the Pacific Theater and the Soviet-German Theater.
El Alamein is a coastal town on the Liere border, just over 100 kilometers from Alexandria, the British naval base in North Africa, and only 350 kilometers from Cairo, the capital of Egypt, making it the last line of defense for the British to protect Egypt.
How did this classic tank battle, known as the Fairy Fight, unfold? How did Montgomery and Rommel each show their powers?
Let's start with Montgomery's magic weapon: the magician and the blindfold.
Montgomery inspected the terrain in a tank
On the night of 23 October 1942, the British army gathered 500 tanks and nearly a thousand artillery pieces to launch a rapid attack on the Gini Heights, where the Afrika Korps North Infantry garrison was stationed, while Rommel was returning to Europe for recuperation due to illness.
The Afrika Korps were caught off guard, and Stenm, who was in charge of Rommel's position, suffered a heart attack and died in the shelling. Stenm may not have figured out until his death, what happened to this armored legion that fell from the sky?
It turned out that Montgomery had divided his personnel and weapons, which were twice as much as German and Italian, into three ways. He first deployed a small group of men and horses to pretend to attack the south road to contain Rommel's main tank division, and at the same time gathered a large force to march north. The question is, how do you dodge German reconnaissance planes and hide real marching routes in the unobstructed desert terrain?
Montgomery brought in Muskelin of the Royal Engineer Corps. The latter was a british star magician before the war, and after the start of World War II, he led a magic team in the Corps of Engineers, specializing in large camouflage scenes. Maskelyn covered the northward tank army with sackcloth, painted windows and wheels, disguised as supply trucks, and easily achieved stealth under the cover of sand and heat.
In the face of such a situation, the "Desert Fox" Rommel tactical transformation: abandoning blitzkrieg and using all conditions to defend.
Known as the "Desert Fox" by his British rivals, Rommel was the most legendary German field marshal of World War II. He traveled north Africa in blitzkrieg and was best at mechanized mobile combat, and his troops were once named "Phantom Troops" because of their mysterious and rapid attacks.
On 25 October, Rommel returned to North Africa. He had long discovered that this was a fierce and hard battle, and he had made tactical arrangements before returning to Europe. With troops and supplies inferior to those of his opponents, he ordered the construction of fortifications on the spot, and then laid two minefields 61 kilometers long and 1 kilometer wide in front of the fortifications. The mined area contains both anti-tank mines and small, lethal mines specifically designed for demining engineers, totaling more than 10 million, which Rommel called "the devil's garden".
To the south of the minefield was a sandy basin that the Panzer Division could not set foot in, and to the north was the Mediterranean Sea, so Montgomery had to send engineers to clear mines on a small scale and open a passage for tanks to pass. Once in this passage, in order to avoid triggering the mines on both sides, the tank speed will slow down, the phenomenon of "traffic jam", then they become live targets, the German and Italian air forces can bomb in the air, and on the ground, Rommel has another weapon - the 88 mm anti-aircraft gun.
This gun was originally designed to deal with fighters, the range can reach 2000 meters, the firepower is extremely strong, can easily penetrate the tank armor, Rommel ordered people to modify it slightly, adjust the ballistic angle, you can shell the British tank, which is also the result of Rommel's imagination in a desperate situation.
The two sides were in a state of stalemate until 3 November, when the British tore through the German-Italian lines and the war came to an end.
From a tactical point of view, both sides can be called full of personnel. Why did the previously invincible Desert Fox fail?
Rommel commanded the arming on the front lines of the battlefield
From the German and Italian side, before the Battle of El Alamein, Rommel's Afrika Korps swept through North Africa in 2 months, driving the British army eastward for more than 2,000 kilometers, with outstanding achievements but great consequences. The first is continuous combat, the soldiers suffered serious casualties, physical weakness, has become the end of the crossbow;
Second, there was a shortage of supplies: the Supply of German and Italian troops was entirely imported by the Italian Navy from the Libyan capital, the port of Tripoli, and by the time Rommel marched to the Lierean border, the supply line had been stretched too long. On the way through Libya, the supply trucks were constantly shelled by the British Air Force, and the material loss rate was as high as 80%.
What's worse is that Hitler was now deeply trapped in the Soviet-German battlefield and unable to support North Africa. Rommel had only 80,000 men, 540 tanks, 350 aircraft, and a severe shortage of fuel.
From the Allied point of view, in order to ensure the safety of supplies, the British Navy detoured the Cape of Good Hope, and then went north from the Suez Canal into the Mediterranean Sea, importing supplies from Alexandria, so the supplies were very abundant. Montgomery can use more than 200,000 troops, 1440 tanks, 1500 aircraft, more than twice as many as the other side. Moreover, the British army has more than 300 Sherman M4 tanks donated by the United States, which are extremely powerful, with sufficient armor thickness and first-class protection, which is the strongest killing weapon on the African battlefield.
When the trench warfare is stuck, hardware strength becomes the decisive factor.
On 4 November, Rommel violated Hitler's "victory or death" order and led his troops to throw away their armor and leave.
Rommel's defeat was the result of the fascist top military bloc's eagerness to expand while ignoring objective conditions. The laws of history tell us that it is also a wisdom to stop at the right time.