Third Reich Victorious by Peter G. Tsouras

Author:Peter G. Tsouras
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781632208163
Publisher: Skyhorse Publishing
Published: 2015-02-15T00:00:00+00:00

The reality

All the military events that I have recounted up to and including 1 July occurred exactly as described, with the single exception of the high command arrangements on the British side. Auchinleck’s offer of resignation on 23 June was not in fact accepted, so Alexander was left free to continue his onward journey to Britain. Auchinleck then took personal command of Eighth Army and fought a highly flexible but ultimately successful defensive battle at Alamein, only to be sacked on 8 August after he had failed to convert that significant victory into a successful counter-offensive. Auchinleck’s reputation was tainted by the suspicion that his ‘flexibility’ had meant he was ready to continue the retreat not only back to Cairo and even—and this was the particularly shocking thing to the lounge lizards at the Gezira tennis club—that he was ready to abandon Cairo itself. He had tolerated the mass burning of secret documents on ‘Ash Wednesday’, 1 July, in a way that suggested a readiness to evacuate, and it helped generate panic. Therefore when Alexander was made CinC ME in August, he had to make it clear that there would be ‘no more retreats’, and many regretted that this had not been spelled out much earlier. As for Strafer Gott, he was designated to take over Eighth Army at the same time, but his Bombay aircraft was shot down and he was killed before he could take up the post, which then fell to one of Brooke’s self-important cronies from England.

From 2 July onwards the real First Battle of Alamein was fought very differently from my fictitious description. I have let Rommel win it by turning south against two exposed British brigade boxes, whereas in reality both of those brigades had already been withdrawn further to the east, as a result of Auchinleck’s realism and readiness to manoeuvre. Rommel was actually defeated when he reinforced failure by turning to help 90th Light Division in the north. However, if Alexander had been in charge, instead of the Auk, we may speculate that British tenure of the front line would have been rigid and unbending, out of a misplaced and potentially disastrous belief in the later revisionist Eighth Army propaganda line that Auchinleck’s willingness to contemplate a further retreat was corrosive of morale throughout Egypt and all the military forces.

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