Guderian initially went to Africa with great ambition, first visiting Mussolini in Rome. After the meeting, the Italian prime minister had a good impression of this famous armored hero, and praised Hoffman's decision to increase the investment in the African army, and together with his son-in-law, the foreign minister Count Ziano, poured a lot of ecstasy soup on Guderian, and even hinted that Rommel's title of marshal was not worthy of the name, and it was not as good as Guderian's contribution in the blitzkrieg, which made the latter very intoxicated.

But this good mood lasted less than three days before it was shattered: when he left Rome, Mussolini had patted his chest and promised that the supplies would be loaded into the ship and then shipped, and for this promise he gave the Italian leader a full glass of red wine, but he did not expect that he had been in the African army for three days, and the relevant supplies were still backlogged in the warehouse in the port, and there was no action to load the ship. Guderian, who really had no choice, could only bite the bullet and ask his subordinates to go to Marshal Kesselring to help communicate, the new commander-in-chief of the Southern Front knew the temper of the Italians, and let him be relieved, he would find a way.

Finally, the day after Marshal Kesselring was out of the army, the Italians unhurriedly loaded the ship and prepared to set off, and it was only then that he understood why the Führer had arranged for Kesselring to be commander-in-chief of the Southern Front, while Guderian could only be the commander of the Afrika Army - he really did not have the ability to dance well with Caisselring's long sleeves and to be good at dancing left and right.

A few days later, he was even more discouraged by the inspection of the troops, who had seen the incompetence and laziness of the Italians on the Eastern Front, and had also learned the evaluation of Italy by the other party in his conversation with Rommel, and had sufficient immunity to the performance of the Italians in the African army, but the situation on the field was far worse than he had imagined - the Italians here were no longer incompetent and lazy, they were simply a joke. He had heard a lot of jokes ridiculing the Italians in the headquarters, and he thought it was an exaggeration by the staff officers, but he didn't expect it to be all true, and even the Italians themselves admitted it without minus.

This made him admire Rommel's work, and he could not imagine that the African Army, which relied only on four dissatisfied German divisions and carried Italian waste, could achieve such outstanding results. Hearing that Rommel had a bad attitude towards the Italians and was angry at every turn, he thought that Rommel had a bad temper, but now the actual situation is here, and no one can get better in terms of the Italians' virtue. Now he could understand why the Italian leader and Rommel were not at ease with each other, and the matter could not be reconciled at all, and he felt that he would soon be on the same path as Rommel.

The first reinforcements to be transferred to Guderian were the 4th Panzer Division under Major General Eberbach, which was a new force drawn from Army Group Center and an old subordinate of Guderian in the original 2nd Panzer Group, but it had not yet reached the designated position. Although they are all typical German officers and can support the appointment of the new commander, Rommel has led the African Army to fight a bloody road in the long yellow sand, and they are not familiar with Guderian's exploits in comparison. There are also some people who are Rommel's most trusted henchmen, who have quite an opinion of Guderian's arrival, believing that he has squeezed Rommel out of Rommel by any means in order to regain the Führer's position and is preparing to come to pick peaches. Fortunately, Hoffmann and Kesselring knew the difficulty of Guderian's management, and after Rommel left, the veteran commander of the Afrika Army, General Nilin, was also transferred back to China, and Rommel's old partner, Major General Alfred Gauss, chief of staff of the Afrika Korps, also returned to China to recuperate because he was unwell. Colonel Baierlein took over as Chief of Staff of the Afrika Army, and the Afrika Army Headquarters was absorbed and merged by Guderian, and now the German African Panzer Army is equal to the Afrika Army, and Guderian directly manages the four divisions under his command. From this point of view, it is understandable that there is some emotion towards Guderian from the top and bottom of the Afrika Army.

This suspicion reached its peak when Guderian convened his first military conference after taking office, when he decisively halted the Afrika Army's offensive plans that had been planned, prepared, and largely prepared before Rommel left. The entire staff team of the command clamored and decided that Guderian's purpose in halting the offensive plan was not simple, but only to show the prestige of his new commander and to flaunt his different combat style from Rommel. The commanders of the two main armoured divisions, Major General George von Bismarck, commander of the 21st Panzer Division, and Lieutenant General Gustav von Walster, commander of the 15th Panzer Division, were equally skeptical, but they were cautious and did not want to directly confront the commander who had only been in office for a few days.

Guderian did not choose to quarrel, he patiently waited for them to finish all their complaints, and only at the end did he use the killer move, he said: "Actually, the reason why I stopped the attack on El Alamein is very simple, your offensive plan and deployment policy have been known to the British on the other side, because the British have our telegraph code. ”

"It can't be." Lieutenant Colonel Friedrich von Melinzin, Chief of Intelligence, was the first to jump.

"Impossible?" Guderian shrugged, "Gentlemen, we can make a good bet. ”

Rommel's henchman, Chief of Operations, Colonel Siegfeld Westphal, asked with a gloomy face, "How do you want to fight?" ”

Guderian could not have been more familiar with tactical deception, and he sent a telegram to Berlin using the original telegram code, which meant: "After aircraft reconnaissance, it was found that the British were currently deployed in the north with relatively weak forces, and the south was more dense, in order to strengthen the breakthrough force, it was recommended to postpone the offensive for a few days, so that the African army would have enough time to change its disposition." Then, notwithstanding the Berlin callback, the same telegraph code was used to order the Italian infantry units in the south (mainly the Brescia Division) to switch with the German 164th Light Division on the northernmost flank to strengthen the offensive forces. The Italians had resisted Guderian's order to adjust their deployment, but when they heard the news that the British army in the north was empty, and the main force of the Eighth Army in the south needed to carry out the main offensive mission, they immediately made arrangements according to this request.

The results of the next evening's reconnaissance supported Guderian's view, and the British Eighth Army on the opposite side was making targeted adjustments, with an armored brigade drawn from the center to strengthen the southern flank. Even so, Montgomery was still unwilling to take the risk, and successively transferred the strength of the two Australian infantry brigades in the rear to the center for mobile support - anyway, the Eighth Army had enough troops, what if the Germans jumped over the wall in a hurry?

When the results of the reconnaissance came, the command was silent, no one regarded this as accidental, everyone understood that Guderian's guess was correct, and everyone involuntarily broke out in a cold sweat - if they attacked as originally planned, they would crash headlong into the fire net prepared by the British, and Guderian's authority would be established at once.

The atmosphere of the next evening military meeting was much better, and Guderian explained the insider: "Gentlemen, this is not unfounded speculation, before I left, the Führer had just cracked the traitorous group in Berlin and arrested a large group of conspirators, many of them marshals and generals in high positions. A lot of our information has long been in the hands of the other side, and these telegram codes were provided to the British by the traitors. ”

When Guderian told the list of people involved one by one, everyone was dumbfounded, and the effect was no less than that of a 500-kilogram aerial bomb dropped on the scene. Everyone thought sadly that they were fighting bloodily to defend the empire in North Africa, far from home, and that a few shameless bigwigs in Berlin had betrayed them all in the blink of an eye for their pitiful little selfish gain -- a stab in the back against the African army! In fact, Guderian's mood was also very bad when he said these names, because there were many of his old colleagues and superiors, and he didn't understand how they could get to this point.

The chief of staff, Colonel Baier Lein, turned pale: "What now?" If this is the case, it means that the British have dug a trap ahead of us, and there is no small risk of a temporary change of battle plan, and as soon as we make any other moves, the British will know that we have noticed their tricks and will pounce quickly, and they know all the weaknesses of our existing disposition. ”

There was a brief silence in the combat meeting.