By October 23 he was ready to attack. It began with the largest British artillery bombardment since World War I. Fed up with the carnage of war, in which he himself was seriously injured, he was determined to avoid unnecessary loss of life. According to historian Richard Holmes, the bombardment reflected Montgomery’s “desire to have metal, rather than flesh, do the work whenever possible.”
Engineers cleared a channel through deep German minefields, allowing passage for Allied tanks. Although the weight of the tanks could detonate mines laid by the Germans, the soldiers were able to cross the territory. Montgomery gave this part of the plan the apt name Operation Lightfoot. Losses on both sides mounted rapidly, but the Germans and Italians were outnumbered two to one. Rommel’s tanks, far from their supply bases, were low on fuel.
On the night of November 1-2, the second phase of the attack, Operation Supercharge, began. A British armored division penetrated the last layer of Axis defenses. Progress was still not easy. On November 3, the 9th Armored Brigade lost 102 of its 128 tanks. After the battle, Montgomery led the victorious Eighth Army across 2,000 miles of North Africa. Rommel initially had 500 tanks, which was reduced to just 100 by the end of the first phase, and after a major tank battle on the final day, he had only 30 operational tanks. Montgomery dutifully refused to gamble during the chase, and some of Rommel’s task force managed to escape. Still, most of the infantry was taken prisoner. By May 1943, the remaining Axis forces in North Africa had surrendered.
More like this:
• The true story of the World War II Dambuster attack.
• How the fascist Lord Haw Haw was tried for treason
• A small island occupied by Britain to stop the Soviet Union
Rommel did not live to see the end of the war, but he did not die in battle. when he was involved in the 1944 incident plot To kill Hitler, the Nazis offered Hitler the opportunity to commit suicide to avoid the spectacle of putting a famous general on trial in public. Historians remain divided over Rommel. While some see him as an ambitious but essentially apolitical commander who fought a clean war, others argue that his career and fame were tied to the brutal and murderous regime of the Nazis.
Source: BBC Culture – www.bbc.com
