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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