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An eye witness account of the second battle of El Alamein by World War II veteran rifleman Victor Gregg. The Second Battle of El Alamein, Egypt (23 October–11 November 1942) was a decisive battle in the Second World War. With the Allies victorious, it marked the watershed of the Western Desert Campaign, prompting Winston Churchill to proclaim 'Before Alamein we never had a victory. After Alamein we never had a defeat.' The British victory turned the tide in the North African Campaign and ended the Axis threat to Egypt, the Suez Canal and the Middle Eastern and Persian oil fields via North Africa. Victor Gregg, after an absence of eight months of service, is offered a promotion which he promptly turns down, saying, 'I just wish to fight out this war in the company of the lads who I call my mates, and they are all in the carriers.' In this first-hand account, Gregg bravely unpicks not only the action of war, but the reaction of the normal men in extraordinary circumstances, trying to cling to sanity amongst the debris of corpses - many of which were friends and comrades.
The story of one of the most important battles of the Second World War between two of its greatest generals is expertly related and explained by a leading historian, with detailed illustrations and supplementary facts.
“A well-researched and highly readable account of one of World War II’s most important ‘turning point’ battles.” —Jerry D. Morelock, Senior Editor at HistoryNet.com In the early years of World War II, Germany shocked the world with a devastating blitzkrieg, rapidly conquered most of Europe, and pushed into North Africa. As the Allies scrambled to counter the Axis armies, the British Eighth Army confronted the experienced Afrika Corps, led by German field marshal Erwin Rommel, in three battles at El Alamein. In the first battle, the Eighth Army narrowly halted the advance of the Germans during the summer of 1942. However, the stalemate left Nazi troops within striking distance of the Suez Canal, which would provide a critical tactical advantage to the controlling force. War historian Glyn Harper dives into the story, vividly narrating the events, strategies, and personalities surrounding the battles and paying particular attention to the Second Battle of El Alamein, a crucial turning point in the war that would be described by Winston Churchill as “the end of the beginning.” Moving beyond a simple narrative of the conflict, The Battle for North Africa tackles critical themes, such as the problems of coalition warfare, the use of military intelligence, the role of celebrity generals, and the importance of an all-arms approach to modern warfare.
El Alamein, Britain's victory in the deserts of North Africa in 1942, was the first major reversal of fortunes for Hitler's Third Reich. Before the Battle of El Alamein in 1942, the British had never won a major battle on land against the Germans; nor indeed had anyone else. Drawing on a remarkable array of first-hand accounts, this book reveals the personal experiences of those on the frontline and provides fascinating details of how the war was actually fought. It also includes analysis of the strategic decisions made by the generals. El Alamein is the story of exactly how a seemingly beaten and demoralized army turned near-defeat into victory in a little over four months of protracted and bloody fighting in the harsh North African desert.
The Greatest Battles in History by Charles River Charles River Editors Pdf
*Includes pictures. *Discusses both the First and Second Battle of El Alamein. *Includes accounts of the fighting by soldiers and important generals. *Includes a bibliography for further reading. "The desert was quivering with heat. The gun detachments and the platoons squatted in their pits and trenches, the sweat running in rivers down their dust-caked faces. There was a terrible stench. The flies swarmed in black clouds upon the dead bodies and excreta and tormented the wounded. The place was strewn with burning tanks and carriers, wrecked guns and vehicles, and over all drifted the smoke and the dust from bursting high explosives and from the blasts of guns." - Cecil Ernest Lucas-Phillips "It may almost be said, 'Before Alamein we never had a victory. After Alamein we never had a defeat.'" - Winston Churchill The United States began 1942 determined to avenge Pearl Harbor, but the Allies, now including the Soviet Union by necessity, did not agree on war strategy. In 1941, both the Germans and British had moved armies into North Africa, where Italy had already tried and failed to reach the Suez Canal, and the British sought American help in North Africa, where British General Bernard Montgomery was fighting the legendary "Desert Fox," General Erwin Rommel. At the same time, Stalin was desperate for Allied action on the European continent that could free up the pressure on the besieged Soviets. Roosevelt eventually sided with Churchill and decided to land American forces on North Africa to assist the British against Rommel, much to Stalin's chagrin. With the Axis forces trying to push through Egypt towards the Suez Canal and the British Mandate of Palestine, American forces landed to their west in North Africa, which ultimately compelled Rommel to try to break through before the Allies could build up and overwhelm them with superior numbers. Given that the combined Allied forces under Montgomery already had an advantage in manpower, Montgomery also wanted to be aggressive, and the fighting would start in late October 1942 with an Allied attack. At Alamein, 195,000 troops in 11 divisions faced off against 50,000 Germans (four divisions) and 54,000 Italians (eight divisions), where they were able to use their superior numbers and weapons to defeat the Axis troops. Over the next few weeks, the Allies made steady progress and forced Rommel to conduct a fighting retreat to safety until his army linked up with another Axis army in Tunisia, but the fighting at the end of 1942 inevitably compelled all Axis forces to quit the theater, the first time since the beginning of the war that Africa was safe for the Allies. The Second Battle of El Alamein was a turning point in the two-year conflict between Allied forces and a combined German-Italian force in North Africa. While the scale of the battle paled in comparison to the battles of the Eastern Front, where the majority of German troops were concentrated, it still marked an important victory in World War II, especially from the British perspective. The British, who had suffered through three years of war in which they seemed to teeter on the brink of defeat, were able to hang their hats on the victory, reviving the nation's morale and reaffirming its military might. The Greatest Battles in History: The Battle of El Alamein comprehensively covers the entire military situation that led up to the two battles of El Alamein, analyzes the decisions made by the battles' most important leaders, and explains the aftermath of the Allied victory. Along with a bibliography and pictures of important people and places, you will learn about El Alamein like never before, in no time at all.
The Second Battle of El Alamein was one of the most decisive Allied victories of the Second World War. The Second Battle of El Alamein marked a major turning point in the Western Desert Campaign of the Second World War. El Alamein saw two of the greatest generals of the war pitted against each other: Rommel and Montgomery. Through key profiles and a chapter devoted to “The Armies,” El Alamein 1942 explores what made these men inspired leaders and what led to their respective defeat and victory. Montgomery’s success ensured that the Axis army was unable to occupy Egypt and therefore gain control of the Suez Canal or the Middle Eastern oil fields, thereby preventing a major source of income and power coming to them. The background and impact of the battle are explored in separate chapters, offering the reader clear insight into why what happened in this remote part Egypt was so central to the Allied cause. Through quotes and maps, the text explores the unfolding action of the battle and puts the reader on the front line. If you truly want to understand what happened and why — read the Battle Story.
El Alamein was one of the pivotal battles of the Second World War, fought by armies and air forces on the cutting edge of military technology. Yet Alamein has always had a patchy reputation - with many commentators willing to knock its importance. This book explains just why El Alamein is such a controversial battle. Based on an intensive reading of the contemporary sources, in particular the extensive and recently declassified British bugging of Axis prisoners of war, military historian Simon Ball turns Alamein on its head, explaining it as a cultural defeat for Britain. Alamein is a military history of the battle - showing how different it looks stripped of later cultural excrescences. But it also shows how 'Alamein culture' saturated the post-war world, when archival sources mingled with film, novels, magazines, popular histories, and the rest of Alamein's footprint. Whether you are interested in the battle itself or its cultural afterlife, if you have an opinion about Alamein, you'll question it after reading this book.
Before the Battle of El Alamein in 1942, the British had never won a major battle on land against the Germans; nor indeed had anyone else. Drawing on a remarkable array of first-hand accounts, this book reveals the personal experiences of those on the frontline and provides fascinating details of how the war was actually fought. It also includes analysis of the strategic decisions made by the generals. El Alamein 1942 is the story of exactly how a seemingly beaten and demoralized army turned near-defeat into victory in a little over four months of protracted and bloody fighting in the harsh North African desert.
"In late June 1942, the dispirited and defeated British Eighth Army was pouring back toward the tiny railway halt of El Alamein in the western desert of Egypt. Tobruk had fallen and Eighth Army had suffered a humiliating defeat at the hands of Rommel's Panzerarmee Afrika. Yet just five months later, the famous opening bombardment signaled the start of Eighth Army's own offensive, which destroyed the Axis threat to Egypt." "Explanations for the remarkable change in the fortunes of Britain's desert army have generally been sought in the abrasive personality of the new army commander Lieutenant-General Bernard Law Montgomery. But the long running controversies surrounding the commanders of Eighth Army - Generals Auchinleck and Montgomery - and that of their legendary opponent, Field Marshal Erwin Rommel, have often been allowed to obscure the true nature of the Alamein campaign." "This is also the story of how an army learned from its mistakes. For too long the change in personalities at the top has blurred the real continuity of experience that saw the Eighth Army transform itself from a tactically inept collection of units into a battle-winning army. Pendulum of War explores the Eighth Army's learning curve, and shows how lessons from bitter experience were used to develop improved tactical methods that eventually mastered the veterans of Rommel's Afrika Korps." --Book Jacket.
The Battle of Alamein by John Bierman,Colin Smith Pdf
"The picture is large in scope, juxtaposing the designs and delusions of grand strategy against the courage, chaos, and confusion of individuals in combat. At Alamein, Nazi Germany's hitherto unbroken succession of land victories was finally reversed, and the mightiest war machine the world had ever seen suffered its first major defeat. This riveting account is military history at its absolute best."--BOOK JACKET.
In the struggle against Hitler, each of Britain's armed forces fought a battle it had to win. For the Royal Air Force it was the Battle of Britain. For the Royal Navy it was the Battle of the Atlantic. And for the army it was El Alamein. In 1940 the Battle of Britain had kept Britain in the war, only for two years of almost unrelieved disaster to follow: humiliating defeats in Greece and the Far East, and the seemingly inexorable German advance into the Soviet Union. By the summer of 1942 documents were even being burned in Cairo, as Germany's brilliant celebrity general Erwin Rommel threatened to sweep aside the Eighth Army and drive his forces through to the Suez Canal. But then in October 1942, with Churchill's government in desperate need of a military victory, British and Common-wealth troops under Montgomery embarked on a First World War-style battle of attrition in Egypt's Western Desert. After twelve days and thirteen nights they broke through the German and Italian lines at El Alamein. It was a defeat from which Rommel would never recover, and a turning-point in the war famously celebrated by Churchill as 'the end of the beginning' -- the line in the sand Hitler's forces were unable ever to cross. Like his magisterial history of the Battle of Britain, The Most Dangerous Enemy -- already acknowledged as the definitive account -- Stephen Bungay's Alamein is a trenchant re-examination of an event now cloaked in myth. Though the propaganda of the time focussed on personalities, this was a desert war, he reveals, determined largely by logistics. In a conflict that for two years had ebbed and flowed along the North African littoral, victory was always going to go to the side that mastered its supply lines -- in Britain's case not least by withstanding the epic siege of Malta. He also gets beyond the polemics and eulogies of many past writers in re-assessing Alamein's chief protagonists, Montgomery and Rommel, to show how it was precisely the most unattractive side of Montgomery's character that was needed to transform the Eighth Army into a force capable of fighting a battle it could win. But above all Alamein is a magnificently readable narrative illuminating every aspect of the desert war, from the grand strategy of the wider struggle for control of the Mediterranean to the movingly human, in a graphic evocation of the phantasmagoric blur of thunderous cannonade, baking heat and tormenting flies that was the soldier's war. In the year of the sixtieth anniversary of Alamein, this superb book is a gripping re-telling of one of the crucial battles of the war. Book jacket.
The Second Battle of El Alamein (23 October - 11 November 1942) was a decisive battle of the Second World War that took place near the Egyptian railway halt of El Alamein and marked the watershed of the Western Desert Campaign. In August 1942, Lt.-Gen. Sir Bernard Law Montgomery took command of the 8th Army, and the British victory turned the tide in the North African Campaign, ending the Axis threat to Egypt, the Suez Canal and the Middle Eastern and Persian oil fields via North Africa. The Second Battle of El Alamein revived the morale of the Allies, being the first major success against the Axis since Operation Crusader in late 1941. The battle coincided with the Allied invasion of French North Africa in Operation Torch, which started on 8 November, as well as the Battle of Stalingrad and the Guadalcanal Campaign. This book, first published in 1962, provides a detailed account of the Second Battle of El Alamein, based on original German and British sources and drawing on the author’s own observations as one of the combatants.
"The Battle of El Alamein marked the turning point in Britain's fortunes in World War II. Three separate battles took place between July and November 1942, all fought to halt the advance of Rommel's army towards the Suez Canal. The final battle at El Alamein, fought in October and November, saw the continuous bombardment of the German line that Rommel was instructed to hold at all costs by Hitler himself. The Allies shattered the German defenses, and Rommel led a westward retreat in order to salvage what was left of the Afrika Korps. This book provides an in-depth analysis of the battle that turned the tide in favor of the Allies in Africa"--Page 4 of cover.
