by David Irving
What Rommel did not know, in his black depression, was that this was also a day of gloom at Montgomery’s headquarters. After five days and nearly 10,000 killed and injured, the British frontal assault seemed no nearer the strategic breakthrough than before. In London, Churchill tackled General Alan Brooke, chief of the Imperial General Staff: “Why did Montgomery tell us he would be through in seven days, if all he intended to do was fight a halfhearted battle? Have we not got one single general who can win one single battle?” He announced ominously that he would call a meeting of the Chiefs of Staff at midday. At the meeting, Brooke claimed that Montgomery was really winding up for a new and even bigger attack; but this was pure façade, because Brooke realized that for all he knew Montgomery might in fact be licked. In his office afterward, Brooke paced up and down. “The loneliness of those moments of anxiety,” he wrote in his memoirs, “when there is no one one can turn to, have to be lived through to realize their intense bitterness. . . . It was fortunate that on that day I had not yet received a letter from Monty which arrived a few days later telling me what his feelings were at this juncture of the battle . . .”
IN EGYPT, ROMMEL is also pacing up and down, silently cursing the Italians and racking his brains for a way of surviving the coming crash. His battle headquarters has been moved some miles to the rear, but he has been on the battlefield all night, watching the heavy air raids, the parachute flares and the fireballs of artillery. At 3:30 A.M. he goes for a stroll in the darkened desert, to clear his mind: The British can repeat this display of brute force as often as they wish, a voice inside him argues. They can destroy my army battalion by battalion until there is nothing left. However many British tanks and troops I kill, the balance will still tilt each day more against us. Thirty minutes later, as the first grayness of dawn fingers the horizon, enemy fighter-bombers roar overhead.
One thing is clear to Rommel: If and when the British do break through, his army will be encircled and exterminated if it stays here—because he can never withdraw his heavy equipment and the largely unmotorized Italian infantry at short notice to a new line. At six A.M., bleary-eyed with lack of sleep, he drives out to a nearby hill. He can distantly make out the wrecks of the enemy tanks knocked out during the night, but the sight does not inspire him. In fact his army has just won a four-day breathing space, but Rommel considers the battle already lost; when Bayerlein reports back from his furlough at seven A.M., the field marshal admits it quite bluntly. Four hours later comes the last straw for Rommel—the tanker Luisiana, with 1,459 tons of gasoline, has also been sunk outside Tobruk.
It is significant that Rommel carefully conceals from his Italian superiors his developing plan to retreat to a new line. Indeed, he tells General Barbasetti at noon: “It will be quite impossible for us to disengage from the enemy. There’s no gasoline for such a maneuver. We have only one choice, and that is to fight on to the end at Alamein.”
But Rommel has already red-penciled a new line on his map: it is sixty miles west of the inferno of El Alamein. His diary this day, October 29, proves all this: “2:45 P.M.: C in C enlarges over lunch on his plan to prepare a line for the army at Fuka, to fall back on when the time comes, now that the northern part of the Alamein line is no longer in our hands. four P.M.: C in C discusses the plan with Colonel Westphal.” That same afternoon, Rommel orders all noncombat troops to start moving back to Mersa Matruh—far to the west even of Fuka. Rommel has thereby furtively begun to retreat.
“Rommel was not devious!” insisted Siegfried Westphal when I met him in October of1975, a handsome, ex-four-star general living in luxurious retirement in northern Germany. He angrily thumped the polished dining table, so that the crystal glassware and silver rattled. “Of course Rommel had a perfect right to retreat from Alamein, as and when he wished, without informing or consulting the OKW or Hitler!”
I disagreed, pointing out that however sound and inevitable Rommel’s decision later proved to have been, the consequences were bound to be more than local. It was a strategic decision of the first magnitude, and as such not one to be taken by Rommel alone and concealed from his superiors. It proved impossible to persuade Westphal that Hitler’s mistrust of Rommel stemmed from this episode. Westphal is an officer so loyal now to the memory of Rommel that where his present memory conflicts with the diaries of1942, he unhesitatingly pronounces his version right and the diaries wrong.
The relative lull in the ground fighting lasted through the last two days of October 1942. Rommel got some sleep, his spirits lifted and he even began to hope he might pull through after all. An Italian ship had arrived safely with 600 tons of gasoline—one day’s ration. Field Marshal Kesselring also came on the thirtieth, bringing fresh promises of airlift support—Luftwaffe transport squadrons were beginning to arrive from the Russian front. Rommel expressed his distress to Lucie the next day: “It’s a tragedy that this sort of support only starts when things are virtually hopeless.”
Late on October 30, the Australian infantry wedged into Rommel’s northernmost sector caused a minor flap by thrusting toward the coast again. Thirty enemy tanks duly reached the coast road, but Rommel stopped any further exploitation. His forces took 200 Australians prisoner and destroyed over a score of their tanks. Cavallero radioed to him Mussolini’s “deep appreciation” of the local victory, and his confidence that Rommel was going to win the battle too. Rommel was less sure. “The fight is getting on my nerves,” he tersely admitted to Lucie.
All this time he was stealthily preparing for the Panzer Army’s sudden retreat—he was casting the fatal “backward glances” that no commander should ever allow himself in battle. On October 31 he tipped off those combat units like Ramcke’s paratroop brigade that had no motor transport, about the Fuka plan. The next morning his artillery commander General Fritz Krause returned from a secret inspection of the proposed Fuka line: it was ideal—steep declivities at its Qattara end would make it impossible for Montgomery to outflank it. A retreat timetable was worked out, and provisional positions in the line were allocated on the map.
Ironically, now that Rommel had decided on retreat, the Panzer Army had 1,200 tons of gasoline and more was arriving each day. Even ammunition was evidently plentifully on hand in the rear. In March 1943 Kesselring sarcastically told another general, “I still recall how there was a permanent outcry during the Battle of Alamein that they had no ammunition—and when they retreated, twelve thousand tons of it had to be blown up!” What Rommel’s army lacked now was truck transport, and more than that, it lacked morale.
There could be no doubt that night, November 1–2, that Montgomery’s grand slam was beginning. At about ten P.M., 200 guns began a barrage on one narrow sector of Rommel’s defenses, while wave after wave of heavy bombers pounded the same sector and targets in the rear. All that long, cold night the field marshal could see parachute flares hanging over the desert. Thoma’s Afrika Korps headquarters was hit—all his telephone lines were cut and he himself was slightly injured; the radio waves were jammed and useless. At five A.M. the next day Rommel drove forward to find out what was happening. The news was that at one A.M. massed tanks and infantry had broken into the defense system west of Hill 28 on a 1,000-yard-wide front and were pushing remorselessly through the minefields in an attempt to break out. A bloody battle was still raging in the semidarkness there, but the German and Italian infantry holding that sector were outnumbered and outgunned.
As daylight came, Rommel could see scores of enemy tank hulks in the minefields, but behind them hundreds more were lining up to roll forward into the breach. Scores of enemy armored cars had actually broken right through, like the first spray of water from the fissures that mark the bursting of a dam; they had vanished in the predawn light behind Rommel’s lines, where even now they were rampaging around, shooting up soft-skinned supply units. Then the dam burst. At eleven A.M. the phone rang, and the long-expected message came to Rommel: “Tank masses have broken through, one or two miles southwest of Hill 28, and are
advancing westward.”
The Rommel diary adds, “Afrika Korps estimates 400 enemy tanks here. Our own panzer strength only meager after counterattacks. According to reports of artillery observers, there are about 4–500 more tanks standing by beyond the mine boxes J and K.”
Rommel grabbed a hasty meal—chicken fricassee with rice—then left to fight what was to prove the last great desert tank battle of his career. Lieutenant Armbruster watched him go, and wrote: “Today will probably decide the outcome. Poor Rommel, he has to shoulder too much responsibility and there’s so little he can do. Accursed gang in Rome! Pray God we pull it off.”
Many times Rommel surveyed the battle from a hill. He snatched a few minutes to write to Lucie: “Things are not going well for us. The enemy is gradually battering us out of our position by sheer brute force. This means the end. You can imagine what kind of mood I’m in. Air raids and still more air raids.” Between noon and one P.M. he counted seven attacks by bomber formations on the remaining defenses west of Hill 28. Despite its Red Cross insignia, the big Field Hospital 288 was bombed, killing three officers. The Rommel diary records that he ordered British officers to be housed there as hostages: “This is to be drawn to the enemy’s attention.”
At 1:30 P.M. his radio intelligence unit intercepted a signal revealing that Montgomery’s directive to his tanks was to turn northeast toward the coast at Ghazal (halfway to El Daba) so as to cut off Rommel’s forces north of that thrust. Rommel immediately decided to strip his southern front of his last reserves: he ordered the Italian armored division Ariete and the rest of his artillery to move northward to Tell el Aqqaqir, which was evidently Montgomery’s interim objective.
All afternoon the battle continued. The enemy’s main tank forces were using American-built tanks, and greatly to the Germans’ dismay, there were several hundred of a type not seen before—the Sherman. It was much superior even to the Panzer IV. It was able to open fire at ranges well over 1,000 yards, while its armor seemed impervious even to the flak eighty-eight gun.
By 3:30 P.M. Rommel had seen enough. He had decided to start pulling back his front line that night; he announced his decision to his staff an hour later. “We will hold a combat line on the Rahman Track,” his diary quoted. “C in C regards a withdrawal to the Fuka line as inevitable, since the entire northern sector of the Alamein line has been lost, including all our minefields and defense works there.”
He reserved his final decision until General von Thoma telephoned him that evening about the battle. “We have done what we can to string together some kind of defense,” said Thoma. “The line is intact again, but thin. And tomorrow we’ll have only thirty or at most thirty-five tanks fit for action.” He added, “There are no more reserves.”
Only thirty-five tanks! That clinched it for Rommel. He told Thoma, “My plan is for the whole army to fall back to the west, fighting. The foot units will start their move tonight. Your job in the Afrika Korps will be to stand firm until tomorrow morning, and then fall back fighting, but as slowly as possible to give our infantry a chance to escape.” At seven P.M. Rommel asked for the latest ammunition and gasoline positions; both were “bleak.” Krause, his artillery commander, warned him, “I don’t even have enough gasoline to transport ammunition from El Daba to the battlefront.”
Twenty minutes later, Rommel’s staff began telephoning advance orders for the retreat. By 9:05 P.M. the last unit of his Panzer Army had the order.
The teletypes that confirmed these telephone messages all began with the same words—“Under superior enemy pressure, the army is preparing to withdraw, step by step, while still fighting.” The distance between these clear, brisk signals and the convoluted and verbose signal Rommel sent to Rome for both High Commands at midnight leaves only one conclusion possible: that he intended to conceal his retreat as long as possible from Hitler and Mussolini. An interim report that he had sent off that afternoon made no mention of his intention at all. As a first stage, during darkness the Tenth Corps infantry would fall back from the Himeimat ridge to the old line occupied before the battle of Alam el Halfa; while the Twenty-first Corps infantry would begin a similar withdrawal in the center. The main retreat the next day would be screened by Rommel’s armor—with the Twentieth Corps on the right, the Afrika Korps in the center and the Ninetieth Light Division on the left.
At what time the Italian High Command found out, in Rome, is not certain. Rommel had made thorough arrangements with Barbasetti, in Libya, to lend him truck transport that evening to help evacuate the Italian infantry. (Barbasetti let him down.) But Cavallero’s first information came from Colonel Mancinelli, his liaison officer on Rommel’s staff. Cavallero at once radioed him: “Please inform Marshal Rommel that Duce considers it imperative to hold present front at all costs. . . . Supplies are coming by both sea and air, speeded up by every means at our disposal.” This signal did not leave Rome until eleven A.M. the next day. From his diary it is evident that Cavallero believed Rommel still had over 250 tanks left and all the gasoline and ammunition he needed. “It’s his battle!” he had rasped to Kesselring and Rintelen late on November 2.
The unhelpful interim report that Rommel had sent that afternoon reached the High Command in East Prussia some hours later. General Jodl read it out to Hitler. It stated:
Despite today’s defensive success, the army’s strength is exhausted after ten days of tough combat against immensely superior British ground and air forces. The army will therefore no longer be capable of impeding the strong enemy tank formations expected to repeat their breakthrough attempt tonight or tomorrow. For want of motor transport it will not be possible for the six Italian and two German nonmotorized divisions to withdraw in good order. A large part of these units will probably be overrun by the enemy’s mechanized formations. But even our mechanized troops are engaged in such heavy fighting that only part will be able to disengage from the enemy. . . . In this situation the gradual destruction of the army must therefore be assumed to be inevitable despite the heroic resistance and exemplary spirit of the troops. Sgd. Rommel, Field Marshal.
At about the same time, in that quiet country house in England, Rommel’s signal was fed into the decoding machine. A teleprinter typed out his cri de coeur. Experts analyzed it—of course, it made no mention of his planned withdrawal— and a few hours later the man called “C,” the chief of the Secret Service, read it out over the scrambler telephone to Churchill and the select few officials allowed to know anything Ultra Secret. A high official at the Foreign Office wrote in his diary: “C. had news, which he phoned to me this morning, which certainly seems to show Rommel is in a fix. I am inclined to think that R. is crying wolf to get more help sent him. But this certainly looks good . . .”
TOWARD MIDNIGHT, Hitler himself telephoned one of Jodl’s staff officers at the High Command compound: “Is there any further news from Rommel?” The colonel said there was not. “Then telephone Rintelen in Rome,” Hitler demanded, “and find out.”
An hour later the colonel telephoned Hitler back: “Rommel’s final daily report has arrived in Rome. It’s being decoded now and put on the wire to us. It repeats what he said in the interim report, virtually.” Greatly relieved, Hitler went to bed.
At 8:30 A.M. next day, November 3, Field Marshal Keitel galloped into Hitler’s bunker and insisted on seeing the Führer. In great agitation he handed over the teleprinter copy of Rommel’s midnight report. Near the end of it Rommel had surreptitiously buried his admission that his army had actually begun to retreat: “The infantry divisions are accordingly already being withdrawn during the night of November 2–3,” it said. The sentence poleaxed Hitler. Keitel explained that his night duty officers had not noticed this key sentence and had filed the teletype with routine papers. A few minutes later Rommel’s routine morning report was also in Hitler’s hands. It announced that the infantry withdrawal was going “according to plan.”
Hitler clutched his head. His frustration and anger at this unexpected turn o
f events in Egypt were vented at Jodl’s administrative deputy, General Walter Warlimont. “At this critical moment, Rommel turned to me and the fatherland,” he proclaimed melodramatically. “We should have been a source of inspiration to him. If I had been awakened, I would have taken the full responsibility and ordered him to stand fast. But our Mr. Warlimont is snug asleep, while Rommel is appealing to me.” He dictated an immediate message to be radioed to Rommel—one of the most famous signals of the war:
With me the entire German nation is watching your heroic defensive battle in Egypt, with well-placed confidence in your leadership qualities and in the courage of your German and Italian troops. In your situation there can be no thought but to persevere, to yield not one yard, and to hurl every gun and every fighting man available into the battle. Considerable air reinforcements are being transferred over the coming days to C in C South [Kesselring]. The Duce and his High Command will also do their utmost to furnish you with the means to keep up the fight. Superior they may be, but the enemy are surely also at the end of their strength. It would not be the first time in history that willpower has triumphed over the stronger battalions of an enemy. To your troops therefore you can offer only one path—the path that leads to Victory or Death. Sgd. ADOLF HITLER.
At 11:05 A.M. Jodl telephoned Hitler’s signal personally to Rintelen’s adjutant in Rome. At 11:30 A.M. it was on its way from there via Enigma code to Egypt. Shortly, it was being rushed to Churchill in London too—“Hitler has ordered his troops to choose between Victory or Death!”