On the night of 30 August 1942 Field Marshal Erwin Rommel launched his last offensive in Egypt, trying to swing his panzers around the southern end of the British line at El Alamein and break through to Alexandria and the Nile. The newly arrived commander of the British Eighth Army, Bernard Montgomery, waited for him on the Alam el Halfa ridge with tanks dug in alongside anti-tank guns, while the Desert Air Force bombed the Axis columns day and night. Slowed by minefields, short of fuel and unable to break the ridge, Rommel began to pull back on 2 September. It was Montgomery's first victory, and the last time Rommel tried to reach the Nile.
Stalemate at El Alamein
After taking Tobruk in June 1942, Rommel's German and Italian army had pushed into Egypt and reached the British line at El Alamein, between the sea and the impassable Qattara Depression. His attacks in July failed, and the first battle of El Alamein ended in stalemate. Churchill then reshaped the command: General Harold Alexander took over the Middle East, and after General William Gott, the first choice for the Eighth Army, was killed when his aircraft was shot down, Montgomery was appointed and took command on 13 August.1
The historian John Rickard describes how Montgomery changed the army's mood and methods: no more retreats, divisions fighting as divisions, and no more tank charges across the open desert into German anti-tank guns. His armor would wait in prepared positions, tanks hull-down beside dug-in guns, for the Germans to come to them. The key was the Alam el Halfa ridge, which ran east to west behind the southern half of the main line.2
Rommel's last gamble
Rommel knew that the Allies would be reinforced faster than he would. Rickard writes that once Field Marshal Albert Kesselring and the Italian Marshal Ugo Cavallero promised enough fuel, Rommel chose the night of 30 to 31 August, at the full moon. His infantry would pin the British front, while the Afrika Korps, the German 90th Light Division and the Italian armored divisions swept around the open southern flank, passed Alam el Halfa and turned north to the coast, cutting off the Eighth Army. Rickard puts the tank strength at around 440 on the Axis side, about half of them German, against some 480 on the British side.3 › Erwin Rommel
Rommel also fought partly blind. His radio intercept company, which had served him so well, had been captured earlier in the summer, and the German spy ring in Egypt had been arrested and turned by the British, who now fed him false information through it.4
Minefields, bombs and the ridge
The attack began at 11 p.m. on 30 August. The minefields were deeper than expected, and by dawn the Afrika Korps had advanced only about eight miles, under constant air attack; General Georg von Bismarck of the 21st Panzer Division was killed and the corps commander, General Walther Nehring, was wounded. With the British 7th Armoured Division threatening its flank, the German armor turned north earlier than planned, straight toward the western end of the ridge.5
There, on the afternoon of 31 August, it ran into the dug-in tanks of the 22nd Armoured Brigade. Rickard notes that the new long-barreled Panzer IV knocked out many British tanks, but British anti-tank guns and artillery did the same to the Germans, and the attack faded at dusk. Bombing went on through the night; one bomb fell within ten yards of Rommel's slit trench. A German attack on the center of the ridge on 1 September was easily beaten off, and on the morning of 2 September Rommel decided to withdraw. The Australian War Memorial sums it up: strong British defenses forced him onto the defensive.6
The Six-Day Race
Montgomery did not let his tanks chase Rommel into the open; a New Zealand attack on the night of 3 to 4 September led to two days of hard fighting, and the battle ended on 7 September with the front a little east of the old Axis minefields. Rickard cites Rommel's own count of 570 dead, 1,800 wounded and 570 captured and 50 tanks lost, and Alexander's report of 1,640 British killed, wounded and missing and 68 tanks lost. Rommel recorded that his men called the battle the Six-Day Race.7
It was the first time a major Rommel offensive had failed. Montgomery then took his time to build up his strength and attacked on 23 October in the Second Battle of El Alamein, told in our article on the Battle of El Alamein; the rivalry of the two commanders is the subject of Montgomery vs Rommel.8
Also on this day
- 1757: Battle of Gross-Jägersdorf. At Gross-Jägersdorf in East Prussia, Field Marshal Apraksin's Russian army fought a smaller Prussian force under Hans von Lehwaldt in Russia's first battle of the Seven Years' War.
