greatest British disaster of the war. Hitler was so impressed he promoted Rommel to field marshal. But Rommel wrote his wife: “I would rather he had given me one more division.”
The unexpected loss of Tobruk shocked General Ritchie to such a degree that he gave up potentially strong positions at Sollum and Halfaya Gap on the frontier. This shows how the actions of a commander can affect the will of the general opposing him. Ritchie had three times as many tanks as Rommel in reserve, and three almost intact infantry divisions there, with a fourth on the way up.
But Ritchie decided to make his stand at Mersa Matruh, 130 miles farther to the east. Auchinleck, who saw Ritchie no longer had the confidence to lead the 8th Army, took over direct command on June 25 and decided to withdraw all the way to El Alamein, 110 miles farther east, and only 60 miles from Alexandria, the Royal Navy’s vital Mediterranean base.
El Alamein was literally the last-ditch defense line for Egypt and the Middle East. If Rommel threatened Alexandria, the British fleet would have to abandon the Mediterranean, severing the main supply line to Malta, assuring its abandonment, and turning the sea into an Axis lake. Rommel then could get ample supplies with which to seize the Egyptian Delta, Palestine, and Syria.
Auchinleck’s decision raised a fearful storm in London, but his choice was shrewd and strategically brilliant. Auchinleck knew Rommel was at the end of his strength. He had only a few dozen tanks, and his infantry force was only a shadow of its original size. El Alamein could counter Rommel’s only remaining advantage, his ability to maneuver. This was because the immense Qattara Depression was only thirty-five miles to the south and its salt marshes and soft sand formed an impassable barrier for tanks. With British armor, infantry, and artillery deployed along the short El Alamein front in emplaced fortifications, Auchinleck could stop Rommel’s few remaining tanks and force him to fight the static, set-piece battle of attrition in which the British excelled.
If Rommel could once be stopped, the Axis position would rapidly become hopeless. The British were close to their supply sources, and had many more tanks, airplanes, guns, and troops to draw on in any case. Rommel was at the tag end of an immensely long supply line, and the guns, tanks, and troops he needed would not arrive. The Italians would not dare send in convoys to Mersa Matruh for fear of challenging the Royal Navy. The only ports the Italians would use were Benghazi and Tripoli, requiring road transport of 750 or 1,400 miles to El Alamein.
In other words, Rommel had to seize El Alamein at once, or he had lost the campaign.
Rommel recognized the merciless equation as well as Auchinleck and pushed his men and vehicles forward in hopes of getting past El Alamein before the British could organize a defense. But now he had only forty tanks and 2,500 motorized German infantry, while his 6,000 remaining Italian infantry were much less mobile and slower coming forward.
Despite Auchinleck’s decision, British forces tried to defend Mersa Matruh. Rommel knew that everything now depended on audacity, speed, and the moral effect of his aura of victory. He parlayed this psychological advantage into a bold attack with his three extremely weak German divisions on June 26.
While 90th Light reached the coast road east of Matruh on the evening of June 27, blocking the direct line of retreat, 21st Panzer made a deep penetration south of Matruh, threatening the line of retreat of 13th Corps’s mobile forces posted in the Matruh area. The corps commander, General Gott, ordered withdrawal, but failed to inform the two divisions holding Mersa Matruh perimeter until the next morning. Nearly two-thirds of the garrison escaped the following night in small groups, but 6,000 fell prisoner, a number larger than Rommel’s entire striking force.
Rommel now sent the panzers all out for Alamein. They reached it on June 30. Auchinleck had established four boxes along the thirty-five miles from the sea to the Qattara Depression. But the intervals between them were covered only by small mobile columns. Rommel, however, believed Auchinleck had concentrated his tanks north of the depression, not realizing they were still in the desert to the southwest, trying desperately to get to Alamein.
Fearing the tanks, Rommel paused briefly to work out an attack. It was a fatal delay. It gave the British armor just enough time to get behind Alamein and form a defensive force. Rommel had had just one chance to break through at Alamein. If he had struck at once, he could have rushed on to Alexandria and the Delta. He did not. This was the moment Rommel lost the war in Africa.
Rommel attacked the next day, Wednesday, July 1, 1942. His reputation was so awesome that the news terrified the British. The fleet withdrew through Suez into the Red Sea. In Cairo, headquarters hastily burned files. Commanders frantically planned to evacuate Cairo and the Delta.
Africa Corps’s assault went in about twelve miles south of the sea at Deir el Shein and hit a box Rommel didn’t know was there. Defended by the 18th Indian Brigade, the box held till evening, when the Germans smashed it and captured most of the defenders. British armor arrived too late to save the brigade, but in time to check Rommel’s efforts during the night to penetrate to the rear.
From this point on, Axis presence in Africa was doomed. Rommel renewed the attack the next day, but he had fewer than forty tanks now and was forced to halt when he saw British tanks blocking their way, as well as others moving around their flank. Rommel tried again on July 3. By now he had only twenty-six tanks, yet he advanced nine miles before British fire halted them. During the day a New Zealand battalion captured nearly all of Ariete Division’s artillery in a flank attack, while the remaining Italians took to their heels. It was clear evidence of exhaustion and overstrain.
Rommel, at last recognizing reality, broke off the attack. Auchinleck had at last gained the initiative. He counterattacked on July 4. The Axis troops held, and both sides soon stopped out of exhaustion. Now the two opponents slowly built their strength. In the following weeks they exchanged savage attempts to crack the other’s line. The tactical situation altered little. But the strategic situation had been transformed. The Axis had no hope of matching the huge buildup that had begun apace on the British side.
Churchill flew out to Cairo on August 4 and changed commanders when he found Auchinleck strongly resisting his insistence on renewing the offensive. Auchinleck wanted to wait until September so newly arrived troops could learn desert warfare. Churchill handed over the Middle East command to General Sir Harold Alexander and brought out General Sir Bernard Montgomery from England to run the 8th Army. Montgomery turned out to be more insistent than any officer in the army in meticulously tidying up his forces before doing anything. He took even longer than Auchinleck, but Churchill couldn’t admit he’d been wrong, and gave way.
Rommel launched one more desperate offensive on August 30. It had to go in on a less-fortified stretch to the south, but 8th Army had mined the region, and German mobility was limited by shortage of fuel. Rommel at last had to pull back, defeated. From this point on, the Axis forces simply hung on, waiting for the British blow to fall.
14 STALINGRAD
THE STALINGRAD CAMPAIGN IN RUSSIA IN 1942 IS ONE OF THE MOST POIGNANT examples ever recorded of a ruler engineering his own destruction.
When the army chief of staff, Franz Halder, protested the self-defeating operations, Hitler removed him. Only in the late stages when the German 6th Army had been isolated and a quarter of a million men were about to be lost was Erich von Manstein able to induce Hitler to grant just enough leeway to keep the entire southern wing of the German army from being destroyed as well.
After Stalingrad, Germany surrendered the initiative in Russia. Hitler never could summon enough strength thereafter to alter the balance of power against him. Despite heroic efforts by his soldiers, he had doomed himself to the slow, inevitable destruction of his army and his regime.
Two elements of the 1942 campaign stand out. First, Hitler committed the oldest and most obvious mistake in warfare: he neglected the principle of concentration and split his efforts between capturing Stalingrad on the Volga River and seizing the oil fields of the Caucasus. Either task would have been enough for his gravely weakened army. It was madness to attempt both, since the two thrusts diverged in different directions over hundreds of miles, leaving insufficient strength in either arena. The Red Army seized the opportunity, stopped both offensives, and concentrated against the closest danger, Stalingrad.
