During August 1942 Rommel was reinforced with a brigade of German paratroops and a division of Italian paratroops. He had about 200 medium tanks in his two panzer divisions and 240 in two Italian armored divisions. While the Italian tanks were older models, Rommel’s force included 74 Panzer IIIs mounted with 50-mm guns and 26 Panzer IVs mounted with new 75-mm guns—an important qualitative advantage. However, British tank strength at the front had been increased to more than 700 (including some 160 Grants). Rommel had hoped to achieve a quick breakthrough that would disrupt the Eighth Army’s communications, but when his attack was launched on the night of August 30–31, 1942, it became bogged down in a minefield. The delay doomed the offensive. The RAF asserted complete control of the skies, making resupply hazardous for the German-Italian force, and Rommel’s assault on the British 22nd Armoured Brigade’s position southwest of the ʿAlam al-Halfaʾ ridge was rebuffed. Subsequent probing attacks and local flanking maneuvers were checked by robust British defenses. Faced with critically low fuel reserves and subjected to almost continuous air attacks, on September 2 Rommel broke off the offensive and made a gradual withdrawal. For the Eighth Army, the sight of the enemy retreating, albeit only for a short distance, far outweighed the disappointment of failing to cut them off.

Seven weeks passed before the British launched their offensive. Churchill chafed at the delay, wishing to achieve a decisive victory over Rommel in advance of Operation Torch, the planned Allied landings in Tunisia in November 1942. Montgomery was determined to wait until he could be reasonably sure of success, however, and he had Alexander’s support. The offensive was to begin with a night attack, and adequate moonlight was needed for the process of clearing gaps in the German minefields. The assault was scheduled for October 23, 1942, the night before the full moon.

By that time the British superiority in strength—both in numbers and in quality—was greater than ever before. On paper the two sides had the appearance of being evenly matched: each had 12 divisions, of which four were armored. On the ground, the balance was very different. The Eighth Army’s fighting strength was 230,000, whereas Rommel had fewer than 80,000 infantry, of whom only 27,000 were German. More striking still was a comparison of actual tank strength: when the battle opened, the Eighth Army had a total of 1,440 medium tanks, of which 1,230 were ready for action. Rommel had only 260 German tanks (of which 20 were under repair, and 30 were light Panzer IIs), and 280 Italian tanks (all of obsolete types). Thus, because only the 210 German medium tanks could be counted on in the armored battle, the British held a six-to-one superiority in numbers. In addition, the British had 1,000 more tanks in reserve. In terms of quality, the British advantage was even greater, as Sherman tanks had been arriving from the United States in large numbers. At the start of the battle, the Eighth Army had more than 500 Shermans and Grants, whereas Rommel had only 30 of the new Panzer IVs.

In the air, the British also enjoyed a greater superiority than ever before, with more than 1,500 first-line aircraft against some 350 German and Italian planes. Much more important for the issue of the battle, however, was the indirect and strategic action of the RAF, together with the Royal Navy’s submarines, in strangling the enemy’s sea arteries of supply. In October 1942 the interruption of Axis supplies became still greater, and less than half of what was sent arrived in Africa. Artillery ammunition ran very short, and because of the sinking of oil tankers (none reached Africa during the weeks immediately preceding the British offensive), Rommel was left with one-tenth of the fuel necessary for sustained operations. The loss of food supplies was an important factor in the spread of sickness among the troops; Rommel himself fell ill, and in September he was sent back to Europe to recover. His convalescence in Austria was cut short by a telephone call from German leader Adolf Hitler, prompting Rommel to fly back to Africa. He arrived near El-Alamein on the evening of October 25 to take charge of the defense.

The Second Battle of El-Alamein

The British infantry assault at El-Alamein was launched at 10:00 pm on the night of October 23, 1942, after a furious 15-minute bombardment by more than 1,000 guns. German minefields proved a greater obstacle than had been initially reckoned, and when daylight came on October 24, British tanks were still transiting the paths that had been cleared by engineers. It was only on the second morning of the battle, after additional night attacks by the infantry, that four brigades of armor had succeeded in deploying 6 miles (10 km) beyond the original front. They had suffered much loss in the process of pushing through the constricted passages. The subsidiary British attack by the XIII Corps in the south had meanwhile met similar trouble and was abandoned. Nevertheless, the wedge that had been driven into the German defenses in the north looked so menacing that local defending commanders threw in their tanks piecemeal in efforts to stanch the British advance. That action fulfilled Montgomery’s calculation and enabled his armor, now established in good position, to inflict heavy losses on those spasmodic counterattacks. By the time Rommel had arrived in the evening of October 25, half of the defense’s effective tank force had been lost. The British resumed the attack the following day, but their attempt to push forward was checked, and their armor paid a heavy price for the abortive effort. The chance of developing the breach into a breakthrough had faded, and the massive British armored wedge was embedded in a strong ring of German antitank guns. Montgomery deduced that his initial thrust had failed, that the breach was blocked, and that he must devise a fresh plan, while giving his main striking forces a rest.

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Montgomery’s new offensive, dubbed Operation Supercharge, opened on the night of October 28 with a northward thrust from the wedge toward the coast. His intention was to pinch off the enemy’s coastal pocket and then launch an exploiting drive westward along the coast road, toward Daba and Fūka. That offensive too became hung up in the minefield, and its prospects waned when Rommel opposed it with the veteran 90th Light Division. Rommel could not continue to parry such attacks indefinitely, however. Montgomery was losing four tanks for every one that he knocked out, but even at that rate of attrition, the British still held the advantage. The Afrika Korps had only 90 tanks left, while the Eighth Army had more than 800. As soon as he saw that his coastward thrust had miscarried, Montgomery decided to revert to his original line of advance, hoping to profit from the northward shift of the enemy’s scanty reserves. The new attack, begun in the early hours of November 2, again bogged down in the minefields, and resistance proved tougher than expected. The situation looked gloomy, but things were far worse for Rommel.

By the end of the day on November 2, Rommel had depleted his resources almost completely. The core of his defense—the two Panzer divisions of the Afrika Korps—amounted to only 9,000 men at full strength, and combat had withered that number to little more than 2,000. Worse still, the Afrika Korps had barely 30 tanks fit for action, whereas the British could field more than 600. That night Rommel decided to fall back to Fūka in a two-step withdrawal. That redeployment was well in progress when, soon after midday on November 3, an overriding order came from Hitler, insisting that El-Alamein must be held at all costs. The turnabout doomed any chance that Rommel may have had of making an effective stand, as a resumption of the defense of El-Alamein was an exercise in futility. The 51st Highland and 4th Indian divisions were the core of an infantry attack on the night of November 3 that succeeded in piercing the joint between the Afrika Korps and the Italians. Soon after dawn on November 4, three armored divisions passed through the opening thus created, with orders to swing northward and bar the enemy’s line of retreat along the coast road. Their exploiting drive was reinforced by the motorized New Zealand Division and a fourth armored brigade.

The initial pursuit of Rommel was not sufficiently direct or extensive to catch the bulk of the forces retreating along the coast road. The British then attempted an encirclement near Mersa Matruh but were hampered by a fuel shortage and heavy rain. Once Rommel had slipped through the jaws of his armored pursuers, he did not pause until he had reached Agheila at the far end of Cyrenaica, some 700 miles (over 1,100 km) from El-Alamein. A pause of three weeks occurred before the Eighth Army could mount an offensive against the Germans’ new position. Rommel slipped away again, and although a British flanking maneuver cut off his rearguard, that rearguard was able to break through the encirclement and escape. Rommel halted at Buerát (al-Buʾayrāt), an additional 200 miles (320 km) distant, where he stayed for three weeks. When the Eighth Army launched its next offensive, in mid January 1943, Rommel fell back again, making an almost continuous 350-mile (560-km) withdrawal, past Tripoli, to the Mareth Line inside the Tunisian frontier. His decision was the consequence not merely of his weakness in forces and in supplies but also of the new situation produced by the Anglo-U.S. invasion of Morocco and of Algeria in November 1942.