Night finally fell, but the curtain of the Afrika Army's offensive had just begun, and after eating the resistance of the British 1st Panzer Division in front of them, they immediately rushed to the positions of the 7th Panzer Division. Due to the actions of Horlocks and others, the Ranke commandos could not get in, but fortunately, in the afternoon, the air force seized the last ten minutes of sunshine and took advantage of the fact that the British planes were busy pursuing the Italians to launch a fierce attack on the positions of the 7th Panzer Division, which greatly weakened the opponent's resistance ability.

In the darkness of the night, flares were constantly fired into the air, illuminating the land as if it were day, and the infantry positions of the 7th Panzer Division, known as the "Desert Rats", were filled with fierce gunfire and fire. Although their overall response was better than that of the 1st Panzer Division, and they were not damaged by the Ranke commandos. But now that Guderian's large forces have arrived, and the positions of the 1st Division have been broken through, with the flanks completely exposed, a 7th Division, lacking armored strength, cannot withstand the onslaught of nearly 300 tanks up and down the Afrika Army.

After repeated charges, the 15th and 21st Panzer Divisions scuttled through the front at the cost of more than 30 tanks, and the Panzergrenadiers swarmed up and continued to expand and tear the gaps. As the air force reconnaissance has shown, the positions of these two divisions are basically infantry and artillery, and there is not much armored force, which objectively facilitates the African Army to break through the enemy's encirclement, pursuit, and interception, and fight a bloody way in the encirclement of nearly 200,000 troops of the Eighth Army.

Guderian appeared calm after breaking through the encirclement, and after walking forward for more than two hours, on the one hand, he gathered the troops that were somewhat disjointed by the offensive operation, and on the other hand, he deployed positions and fortifications, and prepared to fight the tanks that the British had withdrawn after daybreak. This time, though, the British apparently learned wisely. Although they were anxious to return to the division to gather their infantry and artillery units, they did not choose the mode of directly marching head-on, but carried out a frontal attack with a part of their forces, while on the other hand, the main forces broke away from the coastal road system and made a flank detour to cover people's eyes. They also crammed a large number of captured Italians into a frontal attack, impersonating the Germans in numbers and making the Germans shrink from the battle - in Horrocks's words, since the Germans could send a convoy of spies under the guise of us, we should not be blamed for an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.

This kind of scoundrel practice was unanimously scolded by the Afrika Army, and even the British prisoners such as Brigadier General Brown and Captain Richardson in the prisoner camp could not stand it, saying that these two armored divisions had lost their gentlemanly demeanor and were barbarian practices. Guderian turned a blind eye to this, and on the one hand, he adjusted his deployment accordingly in response to the enemy's attempts. On the other hand, they asked their subordinates not to hold back when facing the Italians, but to fight as they should - if they did not do this, the British would certainly use more than 200,000 Italian prisoners in the future to make a fuss, but they were afraid that they would not be able to fight any war. However, the frontal disposition was completely changed, and the two sides fought again in a scuffle, each losing some of its strength and then ending hastily, the Afrika Army was anxious to return to Tobruk, the British 1st and 7th Panzer Divisions were anxious to collect their own scattered infantry, and the artillery Afrika Army relieved many of the captured Italians - these poor creatures were first beaten by the British. Then it was thrown out by the British as a meat cushion to get rid of the German attack, which is really unlucky.

September 21, 1942. Hoffmann and the High Command, far away in Berlin, finally received Guderian's complete battle report: ...... After suffering heavy losses with the enemy, our African Army broke away from the front line of El Alamein and returned to Tobruk to continue fighting.

Everyone thought that the Führer would be furious, but they didn't expect Hoffman to have a smile on his face, and he didn't care at all, but expressed his satisfaction with his attitude: "Very well, General Guderian has laid a solid foundation for our next stage of operations." And what he thought to himself was: "I have finally avoided defeat at the Battle of El Alamein." Start reversing the inertia of history! ”

Zeitzler and Keitel were so surprised by the Führer's magnanimity that they could not react at once, and at last they said: "But the British will soon attack Tobruk, although they have suffered heavy losses." However, we still have an absolute superiority in troops, the strategic situation in North Africa has not improved, and even because of the heavy casualties of the Italian army, Prime Minister Mussolini has lost his temper. ”

"The Italians don't care about it for now, I believe that Guderian can hold Tobruk and send the troops scheduled for him over as soon as possible, and it will be easier for us to play to our advantage without the Italians hindering us." Hoffman smiled, "If you don't give the British a little sweetness, how can they rest assured and boldly press their forces forward......

In this continuous battle for nearly a month, Guderian led the African Army to skillfully maneuver with Montgomery's Eighth Army with inferior forces, constantly using tactics to weaken and strike at the enemy, killing and wounding nearly 50,000 British troops before and after, and destroying more than 700 British tanks, more than 500 armored vehicles, and nearly 1,000 artillery pieces of various types, while its own losses were only nearly 3,000 people, more than 50 tanks, more than 30 armored vehicles, and less than 100 artillery pieces. In the air battlefield, because the African Army mainly fought with fighters, and because the pilots were generally better than the enemy, they also won the victory with a score of about 112:400.

The most unfortunate were the Italians, who surrendered in formation with a total of 4 infantry divisions, 2 armored divisions and 1 mechanized infantry division were seriously wounded in the flight, and more than 5 were killed, wounded, and captured. Of the 50,000 men and 250 tanks, less than 30 remained, except for the Italian paratrooper brigade that had been the first to withdraw to Tobruk with the 164th Infantry Division of the African Army, the rest of the Italian troops had lost their strength, and thousands of them were saved by the Germans only thanks to the British throwing off their burdens.

When the results of the battle were announced to the world, Britain and Germany vied to declare themselves the victors of the Battle of El Alamein. The British, at their press conference, showed the main military demarcation line captured by Italy and currently in favor of the British; The Germans showed photographs of British prisoners led by Brigadier General Brown and a large number of captured British equipment at their press conference, claiming that they had obtained it with only a quarter of the strength of the British army.

Privately, Churchill, the Prime Minister of the British Empire, was extremely dissatisfied with the results of the Eighth Army, believing that they were led by Guderian by the nose and fought like a **** on the whole, but the commander of the Eighth Army, Lieutenant General Montgomery, resolutely did not accept this accusation, and he retorted angrily: "We drove the enemy from El Alamein to Tobruk, and their losses in personnel were more than ours (counting the Italians), and the losses of the main weapons were comparable to ours (obviously exaggerating the results). In proportion, we lost only a third to a quarter of our weapons and equipment, while the enemy lost more than 60%. If this is not a victory, I don't know what a victory is - is it a victory to withdraw troops from Dunkirk unharmed? ”

General Alexander also strongly supported Montgomery, and at the internal shutdown analysis conference in Cairo, he made a special statement: "The Eighth Army has fulfilled its main strategic task, what is our task? "It was the defense of Egypt and the prevention of the enemy's coveting of the Middle East, and now we have repelled the enemy, gained a stable front, halted the enemy's offensive and driven them back to Tobruk, and we have successfully achieved our goal." As for the fact that most of the prisoners and the results of the battle were Italians or Italian equipment, I do not deny it at all, but among the troops we lost were many Indians, Frenchmen, South Africans, and Greeks. This is not a reasonable idea. Moreover, Guderian was constantly replenished in battle, and although he still had fewer technical weapons than we did, our original advantage over him was weakened, and more importantly, his weapons had a technical advantage - such as those T-34 tanks, and we did not have a good way to deal with them......"

At the meeting, Montgomery did not argue too much, but said: "If anyone feels that he is more competent as commander of the Eighth Army, I can give up his position, but I will never accept the accusation that we lost the battle - this is unfair to me, unfair to the tens of thousands of soldiers who were wounded and killed in this battle, and even more unfair to the 200,000 brothers of the Eighth Army." War is not something that can be done by looking at a map, listening to a report, or using your brain in a London office, but it means fighting with all your heart and the last bit of strength, and I am not alone in learning the power of Rommel or Guderian. ”

In this battle, Montgomery won the love of his subordinates, and an excited staff officer said: "We have finally returned to Tobruk with great effort, and if any **** officer in London dares to come and pick peaches, I will beat him into a nest with a Stern submachine gun!" ”

Churchill wanted to remove Montgomery, but General Alexander, who was on the front line, did not approve of it, nor did his cabinet colleagues in London, and in the end he gave a painless conclusion: the merits and demerits should be offset, no reward or punishment, and the Eighth Army should be given follow-up supplies and let them capture the fortress of Tobruk as soon as possible.

Two days later, Montgomery made a request: to capture Tobruk, add 5 more armored divisions and 1,000 tanks to the Eighth Army (the required performance is comparable to the T-34), 5 infantry divisions and 1,000 aircraft, preferably home-roots troops.

"Hell......" Churchill roared as he jumped to his feet in his office, "with so many troops and equipment, a pig can lead the Eighth Army to defeat Guderian." ”

"Really?" Montgomery, who was far away in North Africa, sneered and mercilessly revealed the prime minister's old story: You were so confident before the Battle of the Dardanelles, when you had a far superior force and equipment advantage over the Turks, and who won? I think the only thing to brag about is that you won!

End of Volume II. (To be continued.) )