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By Root 969 0

we are beaten in this battle, it’s the end of Winston.”664 This was histrionic: within a fortnight the Torch landings far behind Rommel’s front would have rendered the German position in Egypt untenable. That is why Correlli Barnett, Douglas Porch and others have described El Alamein as “the unnecessary battle.”665 But it was a desperately necessary one for the self-esteem of the British people. Bracken’s words reflected the prevailing mood among even the prime minister’s most loyal supporters. Churchill had presided over so many failures. There must be a success—a British success. Some postwar strategists have argued that, if Montgomery had merely waited for Torch, he could then have fallen upon Rommel’s retreating army in the open, and achieved a far more devastating and less costly victory. But this was never a credible political option for Eighth Army—nor for the prime minister.

On the night of October 23, he attended a dinner for Eleanor Roosevelt at Buckingham Palace. A courtier wrote:

Winston was like a cat on hot bricks666, waiting for the news of the start of Alexander’s offensive in Egypt. This … had begun at 8 pm our time, and I had to go out in the middle to get the news by telephone from No. 10. After a brief interval, nothing would content Winston but to go to the telephone himself. His conversation evidently pleased him, for he walked back along the passage singing “Roll Out the Barrel” with gusto, but with little evidence of musical talent. This astonished the posse of footmen through which he had to pass. I wondered what their Victorian predecessors would have thought had they heard Dizzy, or Mr. G[ladstone], singing “Knocked ’Em in the Old Kent Road” in similar circumstances.

Back in June, Auchinleck had chosen to halt his retreat and defend a line at El Alamein. South of a narrow stretch of desert, there less than forty miles wide, hills rendered the position impervious to flank attack. In contrast to most North African battlefields, there was little room for manoeuvre: it was necessary for an attacker to batter a path by frontal assault through minefields, wire and deep defences. In August, when Rommel attacked, these circumstances profited the British. Seven weeks later, they enabled 104,000 Germans and Italians to mount an unexpectedly staunch defence against 195,000 British troops and overwhelming firepower. Gen. Georg Stumme, acting as Axis commander during Rommel’s absence on sick leave, was killed in the first days. Rommel returned. For almost a week, the British pounded and hammered at his positions. Churchill and the British people held their breath. The first news was good—but so it had often been before, to be followed by crushing disappointments. The British no longer dared to anticipate victory. One minister, Amery, wrote on October 26: “I am terribly anxious lest even with our superior weight667 of tanks and artillery and aircraft it might yet prove another Passchendaele, and we spend ourselves in not quite getting through.”

Churchill became seriously alarmed when, on October 28, Montgomery paused and regrouped. He dispatched a threatening minute to Brooke: “It is most necessary that the attack should be resumed before Torch. A standstill now will be proclaimed a defeat. We consider the matter most grave.” British armies had been here so often before. Auchinleck had achieved comparable successes, only to see them crumble to dust. Then, on November 2, Montgomery launched his decisive blow, Operation Supercharge. “How minute and fragile668 one felt, trapped in this maelstrom of explosive fury!” wrote a bewildered young British platoon commander. “When we moved forward we scuttled like mice across the inhospitable sand … ready to sway and flatten ourselves to earth if a shell burst nearby … We were being fired upon. Though this was the very meaning of war, I felt a sense of outrage and betrayal. Someone had blundered. How could the chaos conceivably resolve itself into a successful attack? Yet all the major battles of history must have seemed like this, a hopeless shambles to the individual