Battle of El Alamein
Sidi Barrani, Bardia, Sollum, Sidi Rezegh, Mersa Matruh, Bir Hacheim, El Agheila, Beda Fomm, Sidi Omar, Benghazi … The names of many remote villages in North Africa were written into history in 1941-1942 as British and Axis armies battled back and forth across the scrubby desert wastelands of northern Egypt and Libya. Read more
Battle of El Alamein
The German town of Goch lay east of the Reichswald forest, a scene of heavy fighting for the British Army as it ground its way steadily into the heart of Germany. Read more
Battle of El Alamein
Tobruk, the vital Libyan seaport on the coast of Cyrenaica, fell to General Erwin Rommel and his victorious Afrika Korps in less than 24 hours after an unexpected and devastating air, armor, and infantry attack on June 21, 1942. Read more
Battle of El Alamein
The night of December 14, 1941, was bitterly cold in the North African desert. Midway between El Agheila and Tripoli, Libya, was the German and Italian air base outside the town of Tamet. Read more
Battle of El Alamein
Born on November 15, 1891, in Heidenheim, Germany, Erwin Rommel was a hero of World War I, receiving the Pour le Mérite, or Blue Max, for his actions on the Italian Front. Read more
Battle of El Alamein
He came highly recommended, praised by General George C. Marshall as “one of the best.” But ultimately from these high hopes and expectations would come disastrous failure. Read more
Battle of El Alamein
Even before the end of World War II, German General Erwin Rommel’s fame was such that he was already being elevated into the Valhalla of such legendary warriors as Hannibal against the Roman Empire, Napoleon during his defensive campaigns of 1813-1814, and Robert E. Read more
Battle of El Alamein
On November 28, 1947, a converted North American B-25 Mitchell medium bomber crashed in the Algerian desert, killing all aboard. Read more
Battle of El Alamein
Bradley could have been referring to German General Erwin Rommel. While Rommel was winning the war of desert armor tactics during 1941-1942 in the North African Campaign, he was losing the war of logistics. Read more
Battle of El Alamein
After the war in Europe was won, General Dwight D. Eisenhower had many opportunities to review various campaigns with the leaders of the Soviet Army–– including even Joseph Stalin himself. Read more
Battle of El Alamein
The reason for it was unthinkable. The Gothic Line, the last line of defense in Italy, was necessary, but senior German commanders had not been concerned that it would ever be contested by Allied forces. Read more
Battle of El Alamein
The origins of the Matilda Tank or “I” Tank date back to 1934, when Maj. Gen. Percy C.S. Read more
Battle of El Alamein
In September 1942, two patrols of armed jeeps and trucks of the Long Range Desert Group (LRDG) raided the German airfield at Barce. Read more
Battle of El Alamein
An old cliché admonishes, “Bad things always come in threes.” Whether it was thought of as a law of nature or merely coincidence, a rapid succession of events in North Africa during the summer of 1942 seemed to confirm this widely held notion among the officers and men of the British Eighth Army. Read more
Battle of El Alamein
The war in North Africa flung vast armies across the arid deserts of Libya and Egypt for two long years, beginning with the Italian invasion of Egypt in September 1940. Read more
Battle of El Alamein
When one gazes upon the bookshelves in the Military History section of a well-endowed library, one cannot help but notice the number of volumes dedicated to the battles for North Africa during World War II and particularly to the Battle of El Alamein in October 1942. Read more
Battle of El Alamein
German defenders hunkered in their concrete and steel bunkers along the Normandy coast were in for two major shocks on Tuesday, June 6, 1944. Read more
Battle of El Alamein
For the Allied tankers and infantrymen of the American, British, Canadian, and Free French armies battling German Panther and Tiger tanks in Normandy in the summer of 1944, the Sherman tank’s failures were glaringly evident as their own shells bounced off the hulls of the Nazi armor and they were themselves destroyed at a far greater range by the powerful German tanks. Read more
Battle of El Alamein
After the humiliating fall of France in June 1940, two impassioned patriots—a general and an infantry captain—refused to accept defeat and determined, against all odds, to exact retribution from the German invaders. Read more
Battle of El Alamein
A big challenge faced Maj. Gen. Brian G. Horrocks, an infantryman, when he was cross-posted to take command of the British Army’s 9th Armored Division in March 1942. Read more
