El Alamein was a small Egyptian settlement along the railroad that followed the coastline of the Mediterranean Sea. About 60 miles west of Alexandria, it was the scene of two important battles in the Western Desert Campaigns.

The first was a defensive stand by the Eighth British Army under General Claude John Ayre Auchinleck against Erwin Rommel's Panzer Army Africa during July 1-4, 1942. Auchinleck succeeded in checking Rommel's advance at Ruweisat Ridge. Admirers of Auchinleck attribute this success to the general's skillful determination, whereas his many detractors simply claim that Rommel's troops were exhausted and that the German withdrawal was strategic rather than an actual defeat. In either case, the first engagement at El Alamein resulted in a British defensive triumph.

The prize Rommel wanted was the Suez Canal, and he was determined to strike at the British Eighth Army again. In September 1942, he attacked at Alam Halfa but was again repulsed. After this, Bernard Law Montgomery, the new commander of the Eighth, decided to seize the initiative and to attack Rommel. Montgomery wanted to take advantage of the fact that Rommel had temporarily assumed a defensive position west of El Alamein because he was short of fuel and other supplies. On the move, Rommel was a most formidable opponent, well deserving of his sobriquet "the Desert Fox," but in a situation of static defense, Montgomery reasoned, he was just as vulnerable as any other commander. Worse for Rommel, he had fallen ill and, on September 23, left his 15th Panzer Division to go on sick leave. (He would not return until October 25, two days after the Second Battle of El Alamein had begun.) Before he left, however, he prepared very strong defenses, the most important of which was a dense minefield consisting of some half a million antitank devices. Interspersed among this so-called Devil's Garden were many more antipersonnel mines. Additionally, well aware that the Italian units that now formed part of his force were markedly inferior and therefore vulnerable, Rommel ensured that they were stiffened ("corseted") by German units, which, he hoped, would put some iron into this most dubious of allies. Finally, Rommel gave great thought to the deployment of his defenses, carefully dividing his troops and tanks into six groups ideally placed to detect and repulse attacks from virtually any direction. . .

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