History of England 1-6

Such sentiments were generally felt, if rarely uttered, and instead found their way into the nation’s disgruntlement as a joke. Caustic jeers about soldiers ‘practising for when they meet Rommel’ (in other words, running away) abounded in a nation whose sense of deference to the military had worn thin. Others jibed at ‘the chairborne troops’, the vast sub-army of auxiliary staff, who seemed to many to be little more than clerks. And in a time of austerity, some could not fail to notice that soldiers had certain material advantages over their compatriots. Much of this resentment was groundless, of course, and nor did it preclude gratitude. Yet the perceived discrepancies in life between soldier and civilian engendered an attitude quite different from that of twenty years before.

When the soldiers did encounter Rommel, the jokes about flight withered in the speakers’ mouths. The first battle of El Alamein had checked the German Eighth Army in its advance against Alexandria, but it had not been as successful as the second battle, under Bernard Montgomery. Like Wellington, ‘Monty’ was a martinet who cared deeply for his troops and received from them a respect leavened by wry affection. Sir John Cowley, recalling his first meeting with Montgomery, was to say that it took only the sight of that slight, wiry figure unhitching his jacket and rolling up his sleeves to know that all would be well. Lord Dowding, who commanded the air force, was of similar constitution; stern in most other ways, he would call his men his ‘lambs’.

The first battle, in the summer of 1942, had stopped the Axis advance. The second went much further, resulting in the retreat of the Afrika Corps and the German surrender in North Africa in 1943. It was the turning point of the war, the culmination of the Allied desert campaign that changed the whole conflict. If the invincible Rommel could be stopped, what else might be achieved? That turning of the tide was matched with the Russian defence of Stalingrad and the ability of British and Commonwealth troops to expel the Germans from Egyptian territory. This may have been the moment when Hitler and his officers were revealed as superior only in the art of killing. The campaign was related to ‘Operation Torch’, devised to expel the Germans from North Africa with 300 warships, a large force of merchant ships and over 100,000 men. The church bells rang through England.

In the same month as the invasion began, November 1942, the Red Army launched an opposing force against the Germans north of Stalingrad, before moving south of the enemy forces and encircling them. The siege of Malta was also broken. Roosevelt and Churchill met at Casablanca, with Churchill insisting that the Allies ‘cannot let Russia down’. It was also agreed that ‘Hitler’s extinction’ must take priority over the defeat of Japan. The Stalingrad trap had caught the Germans, and the Axis surrendered the city. It was a great victory and must have suggested to Hitler and his cohorts that the writing of destiny was on the wall, not that Hitler had succumbed internally. The air raids against Germany continued day and night. Preparations were now being made for a cross-Channel invasion, with an elaborate deception arranged to convince the Nazis that the Americans and English were to aim for Pas de Calais rather than their true destination of Normandy. The monthly loss of German aircraft rose to 1,581.

Both Western and Eastern Fronts were now being attacked by the Allied forces, with mutual distrust set aside. The nightmare of Hitler’s Aryan empire was being torn apart piece by piece. The Red Army had advanced almost 1,000 miles in a year, while the breaking of the Enigma codes gave the Allies an accurate and invaluable insight into German military preparations. The situation in Berlin became disordered, yet still the Germans threw more and more innocents upon the fire. Several thousand Jews were sent each day to Auschwitz, including more and more from newly annexed Hungary. The most obscure islands in the Aegean were raided to find the handful of Jews who had escaped the Greek mainland, and all this while the Allies marched further north and approached the gates of Rome. The Reich had reached the last limits of self-delusion.

By 6 June, the Allies had landed on the strand in Normandy, and in less than twenty-four hours 155,000 were assembled there. Hitler, not knowing the enemy’s true destination, was for once unsure of himself. At the same time Churchill was informed that the Axis was running out of aircraft fuel. Its empire had been sustained by resources plundered from other nations, which were slowly being detached from their conqueror. A more private note of revenge was struck when a group of conspirators attempted to destroy Hitler; after its failure, the would-be assassins were hanged or shot, with Hitler invited to watch their bodies swinging.