The battle began with the artillery barrage at 21:40 on 23 October 1942 and is usually dated to 4 November 1942, when the Axis line broke and Rommel’s army began its retreat. Some accounts extend it to 11 November, when the last Axis troops were cleared from Egypt, because prisoner totals and the pursuit continued after the breakthrough. The First Battle of El Alamein was fought in July 1942, and the Battle of Alam Halfa, sometimes counted as a separate engagement, from 30 August to 5 September.

El Alamein is on Egypt’s Mediterranean coast about 105 kilometers west of Alexandria in a straight line; the Commonwealth War Graves Commission gives about 130 km by road. In 1942 it was little more than a railway halt. Its importance came from geography: south of it the Qattara Depression, a huge low basin of salt marsh and soft sand, closed the desert about 65 km inland, giving the defenders a front that could not be outflanked. The area is now the site of a large new city, New Alamein. See the armies and the ground chapter.

The British Eighth Army, including Australian, New Zealand, South African, Indian, Greek and Free French formations and supported by the Desert Air Force and American air units, defeated the German-Italian Panzerarmee Afrika. The Axis army lost most of its tanks and about 30,000 men as prisoners and was forced into a retreat of more than 2,000 kilometers to Tunisia, where the Axis forces in Africa surrendered in May 1943.

Figures vary. The National Army Museum gives the Eighth Army more than 190,000 men and the Axis 116,000. Encyclopaedia Britannica gives about 230,000 against about 80,000, a larger gap. The difference reflects whether rear-area troops, Italian formations and units that arrived during the battle are counted. On any measure the Eighth Army had a clear superiority in men, tanks, guns and aircraft, and a much more secure supply line.

The British official history records 1,029 Eighth Army tanks fit for action on 23 October, with about 200 more available as replacements and around 1,000 in workshops. The Axis had 249 German and 278 Italian gun-armed tanks, many of the Italian ones lightly armored M13/40s and M14/41s. By 28 October a Panzerarmee report gave 81 serviceable German and 197 Italian tanks, against about 800 British. By 4 November only about 36 German tanks remained in action.

Rommel was ill and had left Africa on 23 September 1942 for treatment and rest in Europe. General Georg Stumme took command. When the British attacked, Stumme drove forward on 24 October, came under fire and died of a heart attack; General Wilhelm Ritter von Thoma took temporary command. Hitler ordered Rommel back, and he reached the front on the evening of 25 October, by which time his armored divisions had already suffered heavily.

The Devil’s Gardens was the German name for the deep Axis minefields at El Alamein, laid in two main belts several kilometers apart and connected by cross-belts that divided the ground into boxes. The British official history puts the number of mines at around half a million, mostly anti-tank Teller mines, some captured from British stocks at Tobruk, mixed with anti-personnel mines and booby traps. Clearing lanes through them at night was the first task of Operation Lightfoot. See Operation Lightfoot.

Bertram was the Eighth Army’s deception plan. Camouflage staff under Geoffrey Barkas built dummy supply dumps, a dummy water pipeline that appeared to advance a few miles a day, and dummy tanks and guns in the south, while real tanks massed in the north under “sunshield” covers that made them look like trucks. The aim was to make the Axis expect the attack later and farther south. German records and prisoners’ accounts indicate it largely worked. See Supplies, Air Power and Deception.

Lightfoot was the opening attack on 23–24 October, in which four infantry divisions of XXX Corps cleared corridors through the northern minefields for the armor of X Corps, while XIII Corps attacked in the south. Supercharge was the renewed breakthrough attack beginning at 01:05 on 2 November, directed by the 2nd New Zealand Division, which opened the gap through which British armor broke out on 4 November.

The British official history gives Eighth Army losses of about 13,560: some 2,350 killed, 8,950 wounded and 2,260 missing. Axis losses are less certain. British counts of prisoners reached 7,802 Germans and 22,071 Italians by 11 November. Estimates of total Axis killed, wounded and captured range from about 30,000 to 60,000 depending on the source and period covered. See Casualties, Prisoners and the Record.

No American ground units fought there, but American equipment and aircrews played a part. After Tobruk fell on 21 June 1942 the United States shipped 300 Sherman tanks and 100 self-propelled guns to Egypt, and Shermans and the M7 “Priest” served in the battle. The U.S. Army Air Forces’ 57th Fighter Group (P-40s) and 12th Bombardment Group (B-25s) flew under the Desert Air Force; the official history counts 1,181 American sorties. See the Army Air Forces collection.

Several causes combined: the Axis motorized units broke contact during the night of 4–5 November, British armor was tired and disorganized after twelve days of fighting, minefields and false minefields slowed the outflanking columns, and heavy rain on 6–7 November bogged vehicles near Fuka. Montgomery’s caution also played a part. The Italian infantry and German parachute troops without transport were captured in large numbers, but the mobile core of the Afrika Korps escaped west.

It was one of several turning points in late 1942. In terms of numbers it was far smaller than Stalingrad, where the Soviet counteroffensive opened on 19 November. Its significance was strategic and political: it ended the Axis threat to Egypt and the Suez Canal, coincided with Operation Torch, restored British confidence and prestige, and began the clearing of North Africa that made possible the invasion of Sicily in July 1943.

The Alamein Memorial forms the entrance to El Alamein War Cemetery. It commemorates more than 8,500 soldiers of the Commonwealth land forces who died in the Western Desert campaigns and have no known grave, and more than 3,000 airmen with no known grave who died over a wider area. It was designed by Sir Hubert Worthington and unveiled by Field Marshal Viscount Montgomery on 24 October 1954, the twelfth anniversary of the battle.

The Commonwealth War Graves Commission’s current record lists 7,240 Commonwealth burials of the Second World War, 815 of them unidentified, and 102 war graves of other nationalities. An older CWGC information sheet gave 7,367 burials and 821 unidentified, an example of how cemetery figures are revised. German dead are commemorated at the German war memorial (4,313 dead) and Italian dead at the Italian memorial (more than 5,200), both on the coast road west of El Alamein.

Yes. Mines and other explosive remnants from 1940–42 still contaminate parts of Egypt’s northwest coast, especially between the Qattara Depression and El Alamein and near Mersa Matruh and Sollum. Estimates have been unreliable; in 2017 the EU ambassador cited about 2,680 square kilometers still thought to be contaminated. A UNDP-supported project reported 1,674 km² cleared between 2014 and 2019. See Egypt, Memory and Unexploded Ordnance.

In October 1942 the Eighth Army included British divisions (among them the 1st, 7th and 10th Armoured and the 44th, 50th and 51st Highland infantry divisions), the 9th Australian Division, the 2nd New Zealand Division, the 1st South African Division, the 4th Indian Division, the 1st Greek Infantry Brigade and Free French forces. Indian, African and other units also served in support roles. The Imperial War Museums describe the Eighth Army as seven British and four Commonwealth divisions.

The Eighth Army re-entered Mersa Matruh on 8 November, Tobruk on 13 November, Benghazi on 20 November and Tripoli on 23 January 1943. Rommel retreated to the Mareth Line in southern Tunisia, while British and American forces from Operation Torch advanced from the west. After the battles of Kasserine Pass, Mareth and Wadi Akarit, the Axis forces in Africa surrendered in May 1943. See the Kasserine Pass collection.