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OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 10/5/2016, SPi
ALAMEIN
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GREAT BATTLES
ALAMEIN
SIMON BALL
1
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3
Great Clarendon Street, Oxford, OX DP,
United Kingdom
Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford.
It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship,
and education by publishing worldwide. Oxford is a registered trade mark of
Oxford University Press in the UK and in certain other countries
© Simon Ball
The moral rights of the author have been asserted
First Edition published in
Impression:
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in
a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the
prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted
by law, by licence, or under terms agreed with the appropriate reprographics
rights organization. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the
above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the
address above
You must not circulate this work in any other form
and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer
Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press
Madison Avenue, New York, NY , United States of America
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
Data available
Library of Congress Control Number:
ISBN ––––
Printed in Great Britain by
Clays Ltd, St Ives plc
Links to third party websites are provided by Oxford in good faith and
for information only. Oxford disclaims any responsibility for the materials
contained in any third party website referenced in this work.
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To Helen
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FOREWORD
vii
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viii
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ix
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FOREWORD
for the Sudanese the Battle of Kerreri; the Germans called Waterloo ‘la
Belle Alliance’ and Jutland Skagerrak. Indeed the naming of battles
could itself be a sign not only of geographical precision or imprecision
(Kerreri is more accurate but as a hill rather than a town is harder to
find on a small-scale map), but also of cultural choice. In the
German general staff opted to name their defeat of the Russians in East
Prussia not Allenstein (as geography suggested) but Tannenberg, in
order to claim revenge for the defeat of the Teutonic Knights in .
Military history, more than many other forms of history, is bound
up with national stories. All too frequently it fails to be comparative,
to recognize that war is a ‘clash of wills’ (to quote Clausewitz once
more), and so omits to address both parties to the fight. Cultural
difference and even more linguistic ignorance can prevent the histor-
ian considering a battle in the round; so too can the availability of
sources. Levels of literacy matter here, but so does cultural survival.
Often these pressures can be congruent but they can also be divergent.
Britain enjoys much higher levels of literacy than Afghanistan, but in
the memory of the two countries’ three wars flourished in the
latter, thanks to an oral tradition, much more robustly than in the
former, for whom literacy had created distance. And the historian who
addresses cultural legacy is likely to face a much more challenging task
the further in the past the battle occurred. The opportunity for inven-
tion and reinvention is simply greater the longer the lapse of time
since the key event.
All historians of war must, nonetheless, never forget that, however
rich and splendid the cultural legacy of a great battle, it was won and
lost by fighting, by killing and being killed. The Battle of Waterloo has
left as abundant a footprint as any, but the general who harvested
most of its glory reflected on it in terms which have general applic-
ability, and carry across time in their capacity to capture a universal
truth. Wellington wrote to Lady Shelley in its immediate aftermath:
‘I hope to God I have fought my last battle. It is a bad thing to be
always fighting. While in the thick of it I am much too occupied to feel
anything; but it is wretched just after. It is quite impossible to think of
x
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FOREWORD
glory. Both mind and feelings are exhausted. I am wretched even at the
moment of victory, and I always say that, next to a battle lost, the
greatest misery is a battle gained.’ Readers of this series should never
forget the immediate suffering caused by battle, as well as the courage
required to engage in it: the physical courage of the soldier, sailor, or
warrior, and the moral courage of the commander, ready to hazard all
on its uncertain outcomes.
H E W ST RA C H A N
xi
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PREFACE
xiii
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PREFACE
xiv
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CONTENTS
. Names
. Alamein Unplugged
. Prisoners
. Correspondents
. Generals
. Soldiers
. Tacticians
. Strategists
. Conclusion
Notes
Bibliography
Picture Acknowledgements
Index
xv
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LIST OF FIGURES
xvii
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LIST OF FIGURES
xviii
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LIST OF MAPS
xix
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ABBREVIATIONS
xxi
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ABBREVIATIONS
PzAOK Panzerarmeeoberkommando
RAF Royal Air Force
RAMC Royal Army Medical Corps
RTR Royal Tank Regiment
RUSI Journal Royal United Services Institute Journal (– ), (formerly
known as Journal of the Royal United Service Institution
(–))
SAAF South African Air Force
SAS Special Air Service
SIG Special Intelligence Group
SIS Secret Intelligence Service
TNA The National Archives, London
USAAF United States Army Air Force (pre-)
USAF United States Air Force (– )
xxii
0 5 10 15
El Daba
Miles
iles
ack
2 8m
dr ia
tr
n
l e xa
man
Tel el Aqqaqir Tel el Eisa A
Kidney Ridge To
Rah
Mi
te iriy El AIamein
aR El Ruweisat N
Deir el Shein
Ruweisat Ridge
xxiii
Alam Halfa
Pt. 102
Qaret el Abd Bare Ridge
Mun Muhafid
assib
Gebal Kalakh
Ragil
Samaket Gaballa
Naqb abu
bu Dwels
Dweis Qaret el Himeimat
Qattara Depression
ARTHUR BANKS
M E D I T E R R A N E A N S E A
Cyrene
Derna
Barce
Tocra ar Gulf of
khd Bomba
el A
xxiv
SUEZ CANAI
EL
of Sirte I GH El Hamam El Daba
TR Fuka
Ajedabia
Agedabia Burg
Burgel
el Arab
El Alamein
Mersa
Merst Brega
brega
LIBYAN PLATEAU
PLATERU
El Agheila
CYRENAICA
ion Cairo Suez
e ss
pr
De
Gu
ra
lf
tta
of S
River N
Qa
Gr Siwa
ue z
ea
t
ile
Sa
L I B Y A nd E G Y P T
S
ea
Names
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 10/5/2016, SPi
NAMES
sea, and air battles sprawling across the second half of . Much of
the drama of those months was played out in public. Armies swept
over , miles along the Libyan coast, in both directions. The island
of Malta was besieged and relieved. The Libyan fortress-city of Tobruk
was captured and retaken. Benito Mussolini and Winston Churchill
went to North Africa in person. The British imperial military high
command in Egypt was sacked. Erwin Rommel, the German military
commander, appeared in triumph in Berlin. There were public
debates, radio and newsreel reports, and dramatic press conferences.
The main strands of a cultural afterlife emerged during the campaign.
On the other hand, as a battle fought between October and
November , El Alamein was a high-intensity land battle fought
on the sparsely inhabited western borderlands of Egypt. Little credible
news was generated during the battle. The news mill in the nearby
cities of Alexandria and Cairo was unexciting and uninformative.
Participants at El Alamein were themselves confused about the battle’s
course until its twelfth day. The dramatic reconstruction of the
first minutes of the battle in the reels of the British cinema
documentary, Desert Victory, established an enduring visual signature
for Alamein; but, outside a relatively closed circle, very little else took
on a memorable form. Desert Victory itself spent twenty-six minutes
getting to its memorable ‘Fire!’ scene, whilst devoting only twenty-one
minutes to the battle itself.4
Controversy swirled around the campaign rather than the battle.
When attention centred upon the fight at Alamein itself, as opposed to
wartime strategy, or the personalities of the campaign, the focus was
on the days after the battle, from November onwards. Such
disagreements focused on what might—should—have been done
rather than what actually happened.
Even establishing the name and extent of the battle took many
months longer than the battle had taken to fight. At the end of June
, the then British military commander, Claude Auchinleck,
claimed that he was about to fight the ‘battle of Egypt’. At the end of
the battle in November , the British prime minister, Winston
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NAMES
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NAMES
Churchill, said that the ‘battle of Egypt’ had just been fought. In one of
his most famous aphorisms he predicted that the Battle of Egypt
would be the ‘end of the beginning’ of the Second World War.
Soldiers had been speaking of Alamein since : on November
, for instance, the commander of th Armoured Brigade,
Eighth Army congratulated his officers for their victory in the ‘Battle
of Alamein’.5 Desert Victory was very precise in starting its account of
‘the battle of El Alamein’ on the evening of October , but used
the phrase ‘battle of Egypt’ at the end of the film.6 In the former
BBC correspondent at Alamein—who had since emigrated to the
USA—finished his account of the battle with the words, ‘so that was
the Battle of Egypt—or of Alamein, as they seem to be calling it
at home’.7
In the spring of , on behalf of the imperial victors, a committee
in the British War Office thrashed out the details of Alamein.8 The
Battles Nomenclature Committee had little difficulty in classifying
the Battle of El Alamein but a great deal of trouble in classifying the
Alamein campaign. In the committee adopted the formal
style ‘Battle of El Alamein’, and confirmed the dates of the battle as
October to November . The only matter for discussion was
whether to include ‘El’ in the style. All the battles, engagements, and
actions in North Africa were littered with inconsistent use of bastard-
ized Arabic. The use of ‘El Alamein’ rather than ‘Alamein’ seemed to
the committee more ‘correct’.
The committee agreed that there had been a separate battle fought
for the Alamein position between August and September . By
analogy they assigned it the name ‘Alam el Halfa’, after a landscape
feature. The committee was also clear that there had been a previous
battle at Alamein. This battle did not delay their deliberations either. It
was assigned a full battle classification and styled ‘Defence of Alamein
Line’ and dated to July .9
The British official committee established the formal ‘three battles
of Alamein’ structure. It did not foresee the backlash against its
classification of ‘Defence of Alamein Line’. In the main difficulty
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En juin 1880 dans une conférence tenue rue Oberkampf à Paris, elle
répondait à la grande objection: vous n’êtes pas militaire, faite aux
femmes qui demandent leurs droits:
Elle dépeint la situation fausse et pénible que les droits civiques, que
possède l’homme, et qui sont refusés à la femme font à celle-ci. Elle
réclame pour son sexe les droits politiques afin de le soustraire à
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politiques de la femme et de les inscrire dans leurs programmes
électoraux:
Elle veut autant d’écoles, autant de science pour les filles que pour les
garçons et autant de droits politiques.
«Mademoiselle,
«Je serai heureux de vous donner des explications que vous
donnerait le Ministre lui-même, sur la demande que votre
patriotisme vous a amené à formuler.
«Le Ministre qui, vous n’en doutez pas, rend une entière justice
aux sentiments généreux qui vous guident, m’a bien recommandé
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«Je vous prie...
«Le Lieutenant-Colonel, Sous-chef de Cabinet.
A. Mourlant.»
«Novembre 1886.
Hubertine Auclert.
Directrice de la Citoyenne.»
«Monsieur le Ministre,
«Hubertine Auclert.
Directrice de la Citoyenne.»
Son mariage en 1888 avec Antonin Lévrier l’éloigne de Paris pour aller
habiter l’Algérie, où son mari était nommé magistrat.
Pendant son séjour dans la colonie, elle étudia la condition de la
femme Arabe. Elle a bien vu les maux qui la font souffrir et en propose les
remèdes dans le livre qu’elle lui a consacré: Les femmes Arabes[7].
En 1901, elle s’adressa au gouverneur de l’Algérie pour qu’il rétablisse
les écoles de filles:
«Monsieur le gouverneur,
«Hubertine Auclert.»
«Madame,
Lorsqu’elle revint à Paris en 1892, après la mort de son mari qui lui
laissa un vide cruel, comme on lui demandait pourquoi elle s’était logée
dans un quartier si triste, près d’un cimetière, elle répondit: Cette tristesse
répond à mon état d’âme: mon mari est enterré au Père Lachaise, je ne
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Elle trouva un peu de consolation dans sa solitude à s’occuper de ceux
qui souffrent. Elle groupa autour d’elle quelques âmes charitables qui
prirent le nom de Tuteurs des Pauvres. Avec leurs cotisations on secourait
les pauvres honteux qui sont légions dans notre beau Paris.
On lisait dans le préambule des statuts: