WW2: Battle of El Alamein

Warfare

History Hit

History

4.5 • 943 Ratings

🗓️ 7 November 2022

⏱️ 39 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

The Second Battle of El Alamein marked a key turning point in the Second World War - a moment when the Allies were no longer on the defensive, but on the offensive. Fought in the unrelenting deserts of North Africa, the eventual Allied victory prevented Nazi expansion into North Africa and the Middle East. Had the Axis-Power and German Field Marshall Erwin Rommel managed to breakthrough at El Alamein, it would have brought the Holocaust to the entire Middle East, where there were around 75,000 Jewish people in Egypt, over half a million in Palestine, and populations in Syria, Lebanon and Iraq. It was the Allies victories in North Africa that prevented genocide happening on the same scale as Europe.

In this episode, James Rogers is joined by Washington Post Journalist and author Gershom Gorenberg to detail the decisive tactics of Rommel and the Allies, the importance of retreat as a military strategy, and the arrival of Field Marshal Bernard Law Montgomery, one of the most prominent and successful British commanders of the Second World War.

You can find Gershom's book here.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	At 940 PM on Friday the 23rd of October 1942, the 2nd Battle of Al-Alameen began.
0:11.0	It started with a 4-hour ground and air bombardment launched by Britain and its allies against
0:16.6	Rommel's German forces and was followed by a wave of British infantry that rushed enemy's
0:22.0	strong points.
0:23.4	The battle would ebb and flow backwards and forwards with offensive and counter-offensive for
0:28.7	almost two weeks until November 4th.
0:32.2	It was then that through the clouds of dust and sand that the
0:35.3	breakout began and Rommel's forces were pushed to breaking point. I'm your
0:40.1	host James Rogers. This is the warfare podcast and to mark the 80th anniversary of the Battle of Al-Alameen this month,
0:46.2	we're joined by an old friend of the podcast, Gersham Gourenburg. Now Gersham is a columnist for the Washington Post and the author of the groundbreaking history War of Shadows,
0:56.7	Code Breakers spies and the secret struggle to drive the Nazis from the Middle East.
1:01.9	What Gersham does so well is explain just why
1:05.2	El Al-Alameen was a major, if not the major turning point of the Second World War.
1:10.4	Enjoy. Hi Gersh and welcome back to the warfare podcast. How you doing? I'm doing fine. It's a pleasure to be back with you. Well it is
1:25.2	great to have you back on the podcast especially as we're marking the 80th anniversary of the
1:30.5	second Battle of El Alamee.
1:32.6	There are many, many 80th anniversaries of the Second World War this year,
1:36.4	and that's going to carry on all the way through until 2025.
1:40.1	So listeners are going to hear me saying 80th anniversary a lot over the next few years.
1:45.0	But to be completely honest, I think that this is going to be one of the most important ones.
1:50.0	Because the second Battle of El-Armain was fought near the Western frontier of Egypt between the 23rd of October and the 4th of November 42,
1:59.0	and it was truly that climactic turning point of the North Africa campaign. that
	...

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