XVIII. Designer's Notes and Advice on Play of the Game: A. Designer's notes: Organizationally, the Germans always evidenced superior operational and tactical speed and flexibility--displaying their mobile, Blitzkrieg/"Lightning War" abilities--and that is replicated by 1ST ALAMEIN's dynamic Axis movement/attack capability, reactiveness of otherwise uninvolved defending German units to adjacent Allied attacks, and the Axis ability to call off allocated attacks at the last moment. While I considered discriminating between German and Italian units in this regard, Rommel had a galvanizing effect on Italian as well as German units. It should be noted that although many Italian soldiers fought with great bravery and gallantry--and had good artillery and excellent small arms--their tanks were as flimsy as the early British "cruiser" tanks, many of their generals did not understand mobile warfare, and many Italians were already disillusioned with the war. "Depressions" are as important as they are in the game because they offered some degree of concealment to the units in them on an otherwise flat, barren, and exposing terrain surface. Digging entrenchments in the terrain around El Alamein was extremely difficult, usually requiring blasting and power tools. I would like to thank my son, Robert, for his active interest and input to the game--and for the superb aircraft, vehicle, and even troop units he created for it. He taught *me* Computer Aided Design. B. Advice on Play of the Game: Both players should be careful not to let their units become surrounded--and able to be eliminated by an R2 combat result. The Axis Reconnaissance Gruppe is very handy for a dependable yet elastic defense of flanks ... among other things. Infantry units must be looked after, since they are so vulnerable outside fortifications. Players should be wary of concentrating their forces unnecessarily and inviting enemy air attack. IX. Historical Commentary and Insights, regarding The Battle of Alamein In contrast to the total, inhuman warfare waged on the Russian Front (which spared neither soldier nor innocent civilian) the war in the desert from 1940 to 1943 was characterized by a desolate terrain and climate which enabled the combatants to wage warfare with laboratory-like clinical detachment. There even developed a sense of mutual respect and chivalry, once the adversaries had taken each other's measure. The combat leader who won the greatest prestige in this barren arena was the German Afrika Korps (and then Panzerarmee Afrika) commander, General Erwin Johann Rommel. He became known as "The Desert Fox." His style was characterized by personal leadership on the battlefield and aggressive--even reckless--initiative. Occasionally, he made serious mistakes, but his audacity frequently turned them into success. (Rommel later agreed to support a new German government, if the July 1944 plot on Hitler's life succeeded. It unfortunately failed, and he was ordered by Hitler to take poison. His wife and son would have suffered, and he would have been put on trial and executed anyway, if he hadn't.) Although the British had initially chased the Italians deep into Libya, Rommel's arrival in February 1941 signaled the end to easy Allied victories. By mobility and bluff, he chased the Allied troops out of Cyrenaica and besieged the fortress port of Tobruk, where the Australian garrison held against determined German-led assaults. Allied counterattacks in May and June of 1941 failed with hideous losses of tanks from the German 88mm antiair/antitank guns. After British Prime Minister Winston Churchill replaced the British generals, another attempt to relieve Tobruk was made in November-December 1941: "Operation Crusader." Halfway through the battle, the British 8th Army commander, General Cunningham--exhausted and about to give up the attack--was removed from command by the theater commander, General Claude Auchinleck, who took personal command of 8th Army and renewed the offensive. The principal Allied armor formation in this battle was the 7th Armoured Division, nicknamed "The Desert Rats." Even though the British forces were decimated, The Desert Fox lost when he tried to panic the Allies by plunging into their rear area with his "Race to the Wire"(--to the Egyptian border). Unfortunately for the Axis, Rommel just missed (by a kilometer or so) the huge but skillfully camouflaged Allied supply dumps. He succeeded only in over- extending his units, out of supply. Isolation and exhaustion eventually prevailed and Afrika Korps had to fall all the way back to its February 1941 position at El Agheila. Naturally, Rommel was not about to accept this. As soon as his losses were replaced--thanks to temporary successes by the Italian Navy--he bundled the Allies back to the Gazala Line, west of Tobruk. Although outnumbered, Rommel's Afrika Korps seized the initiative and attacked in May 1942, attempting to flank the Allied line by an end run down into the desert and around the Free French Brigade fortified in Bir Hacheim at the south end of the Gazala Line. However, the French did not cooperate and panic as expected--indeed, they resisted heroically--and Afrika Korps was soon out of supply. By punching back into the Gazala Line's 150th Brigade Box from the east Rommel was finally able to reopen supply to his forces--but only after 10 anxious days during which he melodramatically confided to a captured British officer that he was on the verge of surrendering. Although the British typically enjoyed numerical superiority, German knowledge/intelligence of events and forces--thanks to local air superiority, better control and monitoring of radio communications, and the "Belly Dancer Spy Ring" in Cairo--intimidated Allied commanders at critical moments. They argued with 8th Army's new and untested commander, General Ritchie, and the Allied forces milled about in confusion. Rommel concentrated Afrika Korps to engage and methodically annihilate British tank strength. The entire position collapsed, and-- to Churchill's horror--Tobruk itself finally fell on June 22nd, 1942. With that, 8th Army "galloped" back to Mersa Matrah, Egypt, where it was again outflanked out of its positions. Auchinleck finally stopped the retreat, standing in the middle of the Coastal Road at El Alamein, to route and rally his reeling army. Then, under his direct command, 8th Army stopped and then bloodied Afrika Korps in a series of battles at El Alamein in July 1942. (I might add that the historical locations of the Allied "boxes" were hexes G4 and J2--far too exposed and isolated.) Rommel's forces had large numbers of captured trucks and tanks and quantities of captured supplies. They were an exhausted, decimated, and motley band of victorious and confident veterans. Hearing stories of an "El Alamein Line" which he falsely assumed to be as formidable as the Gazala Line had been, Rommel paused to regroup. On July 1st, he threw his Panzerarmee Afrika into the attack. The Indian 18th Infantry Brigade was destroyed in the Deir el Shein, although inflicting heavy losses and decisive delay on the Axis. (Tragically and typically, 8th Army headquarters only found out about the 18th's plight late in the day ... too late--even though the 18th was just 10 miles/16 kms south of El Alamein, itself.) On July 2nd, the 90th Light (German) Division tried to push past the El Alamein Box, only to be pounded so unceasingly by Allied artillery and airpower that--to Rommel's shock--it began to break and run. By this time, the British armor had had time to regroup, and to steel the Allied positions. Rommel was utterly frustrated and demoralized by this solid rebuff, as attested by his letters at the time to his wife. He knew how close he had come in those first days of July 1942--the subject of 1ST ALAMEIN--to stampeding 8th Army on through the El Alamein bottleneck ... and to the conquest of the Nile Delta and Suez Canal. The physical exhaustion and medical toll of his marathon exertions of command and of will finally began to catch up with him. One heartening development was the aerial reappearance of the Luftwaffe, which had caught up with the Afrika Korps, on July7th. Having flushed "The Desert Fox" before, Auchinleck sensed Rommel's weakening resolve and now threw everything he had into the struggle. An attack combining the New Zealand division with brigades of the 1st Armoured Division resulted in the overrunning and obliteration of 4th New Zealand (infantry) Brigade ... and accusations that the tanks had deserted the infantry on the battlefield. (It might be remembered, though, that the "premature withdrawal" by a New Zealand battalion from its key position overlooking Maleme Airfield in 1941--the handful of German parachute troops who launched a final, suicidal charge up the hill (with little or no ammunition) were bewildered to find it abandoned!--had been decisive to the loss of the island of Crete. Not only did Commonwealth forces then take grievous losses in ships and men in the evacuation attempt: the proud and brave people of Crete would suffer terribly under Nazi subjugation.) Still determined, Auchinleck later threw in the newly arrived 23rd Tank Brigade, with its now second-rate Vickers Valentine infantry tanks, and 161st Indian Motorized Infantry Brigade. Writes British tank expert Kenneth Macksey on Page 109 of his book TANK FORCE: ALLIED ARMOR IN WORLD WAR II, "Lacking knowledge of the minefields and blissfully ignorant of enemy marksmanship they `thundered past our northern flank at a great pace,' a New Zealander noted, `a real Balaclava Charge'" (... of the Light Brigade). Of the original 104 tanks, only 11 survived to the next day. Crew casualties--the 88mm gun was again the principal executioner--were hideous, and there are photos of charred, mangled corpses being extracted from wrecked tanks which should dispel anyone's illusions about war being glamorous. So Auchinleck finally relented, to regroup and reinforce. The ever impatient Winston Churchill was sorely displeased when he was told that 8th Army could not be ready for a new attack until September. In reward for Rommel's victories--which dazzled even British officers to the point that his charisma had become an Allied morale problem-- Hitler promoted him to Field Marshal. Churchill replaced Auchinleck with General Alexander and put Dunkirk veteran General Bernard Law Montgomery in command of 8th Army. "Monty" was a military scholar rather than genius. He was an analytic military administrator and strategist with a keen eye for detail. Control was Monty's game, and he soon had everyone (including Rommel) dancing to his tune. British counterintelligence apprehended the belly dancer (along with dissident Egyptian Army officers Gamal Abdel Nasser and Anwar Sadat), and Montgomery clamped down on loose Allied lips over the airwaves and everywhere else. At Alam el Halfa Ridge, in August 1942, Monty's 8th Army stopped cold Rommel's renewed attempt to break through the Alamein chokepoint. Monty then set about re-equipping and retraining 8th Army, preparing it for his own offensive. September came and went, and Churchill squirmed and fumed. Finally, in late October and early November of 1942--in what would become known as THE Battle of Alamein--Montgomery's own slow, methodi- cal, "setpiece" World-War-I-like attack (through the maze of Axis forts and incredibly dense minefields known as "Rommel's Gardens") "crumbled" and ultimately ... barely ... broke through Afrika Korps' defenses. Rommel was forced to order in his Panzer reserves, under the command of Blitzkrieg veteran General von Thoma. They were decimated (and von Thoma gratefully captured) by 8th Army's growing antitank abilities and vigorous armored counterattack. Afrika Korps' back was broken. Thus, finally--thanks also to the Royal Navy's reclamation of the Mediterranean, to overwhelming material strength, to Monty's ruthless tightening of Allied security, and to the implacable "British steel" determination of the Commonwealth soldier--Rommel was battered back out of Egypt, through Libya, and into Tunisia. There, with American and Free French participation, his Panzerarmee Afrika would be isolated and captured in May 1943, after "The Desert Fox" himself had escaped. Although our Soviet allies were all the time bitterly denouncing the lack of a "second front" to distract German strength from the Russian Front, the Western Allies' Mediterranean campaigns were exactly that. Not only were many Axis tanks lost in the Mediterranean Sea and on the North African desert, the diversion and loss of Axis airpower was strategically crippling. Coming at the same time as the great Soviet victory at Stalingrad, the elimination of Panzerarmee Afrika was a clear signal of the inevitability of Axis defeat. The soldiers of the British Commonwealth and of the other Western Allies had withstood and beaten Nazi Germany's best. The tide had finally and irrevocably turned against the evil Axis empires ... everywhere. XX. Bibliographies A. Books: Cave Brown, Anthony. BODYGUARD OF LIES. New York: Harper & Row, 1975. 947p An account of the "Belly Dancer Spy Ring" in Cairo is included. Connell, John. AUCHINLECK: A BIOGRAPHY OF FIELD-MARSHAL SIR CLAUDE AUCHINLECK. London: Cassell, 1959. 975p Crisp, Robert. BRAZEN CHARIOTS: AN ACCOUNT OF TANK WARFARE IN THE WESTERN DESERT, NOVEMBER-DECEMBER 1941. New York: W.W. Norton, 1960. 223p The all-time best account of experiencing (desert) war in a tank. The conclusion is a sobering reminder of war's reality. Irving, David J. C. THE TRAIL OF THE FOX: THE LIFE OF FIELD-MARSHAL ERWIN ROMMEL. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1977. 448p Irving's history is often questionable ... and usually thought-provoking. Jackson, W.G.E. THE BATTLE FOR NORTH AFRICA, 1940-43. New York: 1975. A good, solid overview of the North Africa campaign by a British veteran of the battle for Tunisia. Jewell, Derek, ed. ALAMEIN AND THE DESERT WAR. New York: Ballantine, 1968. A fascinating little paperback containing much graphic and unusual yet important information about the North Africa campaign and especially El Alamein. Macksey, Kenneth. AFRIKA KORPS. New York: Ballantine Books, 1968. A nice summary in this excellent series of WWII histories. ____________. TANK FORCE: ALLIED ARMOR IN WORLD WAR II. New York: Ballantine Books, 1970. ____________. TANK VERSUS TANK: THE ILLUSTRATED STORY OF ARMORED BATTLEFIELD CONFLICT IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURY. New York: Crescent Books, 1991. A beautifully and instructively illustrated and graphed analysis of tank and antitank weapons and tactics since the tank's invention. Mellenthin, Friedrich W. von. PANZER BATTLES: A STUDY OF THE EMPLOY- MENT OF ARMOR IN THE SECOND WORLD WAR. Norman OK: University of Oklahoma Press, 1956. 383p This is the definitive account of German tank/antitank warfare at the operational level by a key German General Staff officer. Phillips, C.E. Lucas. ALAMEIN. Boston: Little, Brown, 1962. One of the very best treatments of THE Battle of Alamein, but weak on the earlier (July and August) battles. Playfair, Ian Stanley Ord. THE MEDITERRANEAN AND THE MIDDLE EAST. Vol. 3. BRITISH FORTUNES AT THEIR LOWEST. (Sept. 1941 to Sept. 1942). London: His Majesty's Stationery Office, 1954. Rommel, Erwin. THE ROMMEL PAPERS. New York: Da Capo Press, 1953. 545p Edited by British military pundit B.H. Lidell-Hart with the assistance of Rommel's widow and son ... and of Rommel's friend, General Fritz "Eisenarsch" Bayerlein. Schmidt, Heinz Werner. WITH ROMMEL IN THE DESERT. London: Harrap, 1951. 240p Another, excellent first-hand account of desert warfare by one of Rommel's aides. Sears, Stephen W. DESERT WAR IN NORTH AFRICA. New York: American Heritage, 1967. A good summary of the campaign, written for intelligent young readers. Young, Peter, ed. ATLAS OF THE SECOND WORLD WAR. Maps by Richard Natkiel. G.P. Putnam's Sons: New York, 1974. An basic World War II reference book--out of print, at last check--which is indispensible for game designers as well as historians. B. Games: AFRICA CAMPAIGN, by John Edwards. Cheltenham, Vic., Australia: Jedko Games, 1973. Australian John Edwards is one of the very best wargame designers in the world. Tens of thousands of copies of his classic, THE RUSSIAN CAMPAIGN, have now been sold. AFRIKA KORPS. Baltimore: The Avalon Hill Game Company, 1964. This was the first wargame on the campaign. It is one of the simplest ... and still--in many ways--the best. CAMPAIGN FOR NORTH AFRICA. New York: Simulations Publications Incorporated (SPI), 1979(?). ... the ultimate North Africa game, designed by game reviewer Richard Berg. Contains dozens of mapsheets, thousands of pieces, volumes of charts, tables, and rules. There is even a rule covering Italian units' higher water consumption, due to their need for pasta water. It is now a very rare collector's item. 8TH ARMY. Altrincham, England: Emithill, 1982. ... a fascinating and relatively simple little campaign game which includes the naval and air wars, however abstractly. EL ALAMEIN. New York: SPI, 1973. NORTH AFRICA: A SIMULATIONS PUBLICATIONS [INC.] QUADRIGAME. New York: SPI, 1976. ... basic, similarly designed games on four separate battles: Crusader[/Tobruk], Gazala[/Tobruk], Alamein, and Kasserine. OPERATION CRUSADER, by Frank Alan Chadwick. Bloomington IL: Game Designers Workshop, 1973. The definitive, researched masterpiece on Operation Crusader (Nov-Dec 1941), this has thousands of pieces, five detailed mapsheets, and hidden strength rules for both Axis and Allies. Columns of units go "swanning about" the vast desert, trying to find the enemy and take objectives. A collector's item. PANZERS AT THE PYRAMIDS, under development according to reports. ... a fascinating little "what-if" game to depict Rommel's possible conquest of the Nile Delta and the Suez Canal, on the premise that he DID break through the Alamein bottleneck in July/August 1942. (Play 1ST ALAMEIN, first, to see if he does.) ROMMEL IN THE DESERT, by Craig Besinque. Vancouver: Columbia Games, 1982. ... a highly playable North Africa campaign game. This originally Canadian company uses wooden blocks to conceal unit strengths and identifications. It has games on the Battle of Quebec (1760), the War of 1812, the WWII Russian Front, etc. SIROCCO: DESERT RAIDERS BATTLE GAME. Lake Geneva WI: TSR, 1985. This is a simple, popular boardgame of mechanized desert warfare. STRATEGO. Springfield MA: Milton Bradley, 1960. This is the ultimate, playable "hidden unit" family boardgame, still enjoyable for players of all ages.