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Second Battle of El Alamein article. This is not a forum for general discussion of the article's subject. |
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result – optional – this parameter may use one of two standard terms: "X victory" or "Inconclusive". The term used is for the "immediate" outcome of the "subject" conflict and should reflect what the sources say. In cases where the standard terms do not accurately describe the outcome, a link or note should be made to the section of the article where the result is discussed in detail (such as "See the Aftermath section"). Such a note can also be used in conjunction with the standard terms but should not be used to conceal an ambiguity in the "immediate" result. Do not introduce non-standard terms like "decisive", "marginal" or "tactical", or contradictory statements like "decisive tactical victory but strategic defeat". Omit this parameter altogether rather than engage in speculation about which side won or by how much.
Decisive is as gone as Secretary Green. Keith-264 ( talk) 08:19, 20 November 2017 (UTC)
The arguments put forward over at the BoF debate apply here also:
And I'll say it again: the infobox is not the place to accommodate nuance. It was an Allied victory. We don't need to know any more than that at this point in the article. If this victory was decisive enough that it warrants a local consensus override of both template documentation and MILMOS, then it should receive appropriate coverage in the article. Factotem ( talk) 19:33, 26 March 2018 (UTC)
I've tagged "decisive" in the infobox result parameter with citation needed lead. As part of the lead, the infobox should summarise the salient points discussed in the main body of the article, per MOS:LEAD. This article, however, does not discuss anything about the nature of the victory. Assuming that gets addressed, we can maybe then discuss whether the victory was decisive enough to ignore the template documentation and MILMOS, which advise against the use of qualifiers such as "decisive" in presenting the result in the infobox. Factotem ( talk) 20:39, 1 January 2019 (UTC)
The study of the war has moved on from the Anglocentric fatuities of the 60s and 70s; you should too. Look at Tooze The Wages of Destruction: The Making and Breaking of the Nazi Economy and Germany and the Second World War, Volume IV: The Attack on the Soviet Union (2015)
by Horst Boog and Jürgen Förster and Volume VI: The Global War (2015) by Horst Boog, Werner Rahn, Reinhard Stumpf et al. Keith-264 ( talk) 23:25, 16 January 2019 (UTC)
You're entitled to your opinion but it is OR; you might be treating decisive as a synonym of 'big' but in military history it means a war-deciding event, like the Battle of Smolensk in 1941. Regards Keith-264 ( talk) 08:49, 2 April 2024 (UTC)
When compared to the larger and far more rabid battles in Eastern Europe, the battles of El Alamein and North Africa was in size even less than a modest battle. It wouldn't even be all wrong to label it as a tiny battle. British author
Norman Davies states a total of 4,650 soldiers died in North Africa between September and November 1942. Just as an example, during the 1941 battles around Ukranian Capital Kiev, 657,000 solders died between July and September in that year, within a similar time frame. A 130 times bloodier battle !!!. Davies counts the numbers of killed soldiers on all sides disregarding whom the dead had fought for. - Reference Norman Davies "Europe at War", chapter 1 (in the Swedish 2006 translation a table of killed in battles at page 40; page numbers may differ between languages but also between printings and especially between regular books and pockets).
If Davies' figures are wrong I doubt they are of a different magnitude. I think this is a typical case where older literature (closer to the event in time) is more likely to exaggerate. In order to compare the scale of war between Hitler's Nazi Germany and Stalin's USSR 1941-45, Davies uses "man monthts", One "man month" equals one soldier (or officers) engaged in front war during a month. If accepting this as a measurement, the western front during May-June 1940 used 9 million man-months totally. And between D-Day and the end of the war in Europe, 16,5 million man-months were used in the west. But just 5 million man-months were used in Northern Africa 1941-43 and another 4,4 during the remaining war in Italy. The figures for Hitler's war with Stalin overshadows everything else - 406 million man-months (including the 7 most bloody battles). Suggestion - somewhere here, and the earlier the better, point out that this was a minor battle in terms of the war in total.
Also - Goebbels "made" Erwin Rommel, colleagues like von Kluge meant that he lacked experience of leading large military units. Also Montgomery never really proved himself at the strategical level. Eisenhower did though.
Boeing720 (
talk) 04:03, 21 August 2019 (UTC)
This is OR not a description of what the RS say. Keith-264 ( talk) 14:05, 29 August 2021 (UTC)
One of the things that strikes even as a casual reader is the number and tone of the references to the fighting qualities of the Italian soldiers. I counted no fewer than half a dozen testimonials to their bravery, fighting spirit etc. We are told they “fought with exemplary courage”, “with great spirit”, that Rommel sad they “astonished the German soldier”, that the tank regiments “fought with great audacity” and much else. Now I suppose the Australian and NZ troops had a pretty good reputation as fighting men, as did many Indian units, not to mention the Germans of course. But only the Italians are mentioned in such glowing terms. We even have a whole sub-section titled “performance of Italian troops during the battle” with gushing quotes from Rommel and Churchill. And the trouble is that some of the most striking quotes are unverifiable. The Rommel quote is given a source in a book by Arrigo Petacco, which hardly inspires confidence. If Rommel really said it, we should be given the quote from a reliable source, say in his diaries. An attempt to verify the Churchill quote comes to a similar dead end. We’re told he uttered the words in a speech in the Commons “a month after El Alamein”. The source cited is an Italian news report, which gives no primary source. I suggest that the tone of panegyric should be turned down to encyclopaedic level and solid references found for the quotations, otherwise we might as well eliminate them as well as the section on “performance of the Italian troops” from the article, where they certainly stick out incongruously. Even if someone feels a psychological need to boost the Italians, this boosterism really defeats its purpose. METRANGOLO1 ( talk) 11:39, 23 September 2020 (UTC)
Thanks. So I guess I can take some of this out in the next few days, unless there are reasoned objections. METRANGOLO1 ( talk) 04:48, 24 September 2020 (UTC)
I went ahead and removed the section titled "Performance of the Italian troops". I will look through to see whether anything else needs to be edited. METRANGOLO1 ( talk) 17:02, 28 September 2020 (UTC)
For some reasons people keep labeling the main image of this article here and in other articles as it was recently added as the main image for the Western desert campaign as being Australians in this case directly said to be the Australian 9th division who where involved in the Western Desert campaign. From looking at the original source this assumption that the soliders in the photograph are Australian is incorrect as the Imperial War museum who holds the photograph has a caption saying the soliders are British so unless somehow they put Australians in the same category as British troops the soldiers in the photograph are British meaning the caption on the image is incorrect as this was stated to be the case by the photographs owners who I assume are correct. I have already corrected the caption this image has on the western desert campaign article to British troops charging as this is what the source says they are. I will do the same with this next day if nobody tells me why the soliders are Australian and not British as the photographs owner the Imperial War museums says they are. I am doing this solely for historical accuracy no bias intended simply want the information about the photographs to be correct Anonymous contributor 1707 ( talk) 17:26, 4 November 2020 (UTC).
Changing the image caption now people have had more than enough time to challenge me on it Anonymous contributor 1707 ( talk) 15:19, 9 November 2020 (UTC)
"Rommel ordered the Italian X and XXI Corps and the 90th Light Division to hold while the Afrika Korps withdrew approximately 6 mi (9.7 km) west during the night of 3 November. The Italian XX Corps and the Ariete Division conformed to their position and Rommel replied to Hitler confirming his determination to hold the battlefield. The Desert Air Force continued its bombing and in its biggest day of the battle it flew 1,208 sorties and dropped 396 long tons (402 t) of bombs.[105]
On the night of 3/4 November, Montgomery ordered three of the infantry brigades in reserve to advance on the Rahman track as a prelude to an armoured break-out. At 17:45, the 152nd Infantry Brigade with the 8th RTR in support, attacked about 2 mi (3.2 km) south of Tel el Aqqaqir. The 5th Indian Infantry Brigade was to attack the track 4 mi (6.4 km) further south during the early hours of 4 November; at 06:15, the 154th Infantry Brigade was to attack Tel el Aqqaqir. The 152nd Infantry Brigade was mistakenly told the Axis had withdrawn from their objectives and unexpectedly met determined resistance. Communications failed and the forward infantry elements ended up digging in well short of their objective. By the time the 5th Indian Brigade set off, the defenders had begun to withdraw and their objective was taken virtually unopposed. By the time the 154th Brigade moved into some artillery-fire, the Axis had left"
This entire paragraph appears to have been copied from [ here]. Or vice versa. Can anyone edit it so it isn't just paraphrasing?-- LostCitrationHunter ( talk) 10:58, 13 November 2021 (UTC)
@ Excommunicato: We should sort things out here to avoid 3RR. I gave you reasons for leaving "British" in the result section of the infobox against which you demur. Dominions weren't sovereign states and neither were emigre forces. The US was involved and this was a sovereign state but several air aquadrons amount to a contingent. The overwhelming majority of the Eighth Army was British and this should be reflected in the infobox which is not a place for nuance. Regards Keith-264 ( talk) 09:03, 5 February 2022 (UTC)
Volume IV: The Destruction of the Axis Forces in Africa, Major-General I. S. O. Playfair, Brigadier Charles Molony et al., 1966. Keith-264 ( talk) 10:14, 11 January 2023 (UTC)
@ Havsjö: see here Template:Infobox military conflict for rules on infobox usage. Regards Keith-264 ( talk) 12:19, 23 April 2023 (UTC)
Keith.
Would you stop Changing the Results as British victory . Allied victory is only the solution. There were many Allied and Commonwealth countries fought in this battle. It would be like saying that Operation Overlord was all but American victory alone. Jheeeeeeteegh ( talk) 11:39, 15 September 2023 (UTC)
This is the
talk page for discussing improvements to the
Second Battle of El Alamein article. This is not a forum for general discussion of the article's subject. |
Article policies
|
Find sources: Google ( books · news · scholar · free images · WP refs) · FENS · JSTOR · TWL |
Archives: 1, 2Auto-archiving period: 730 days |
This article is written in British English, which has its own spelling conventions (colour, travelled, centre, defence, artefact, analyse) and some terms that are used in it may be different or absent from other varieties of English. According to the relevant style guide, this should not be changed without broad consensus. |
A fact from this article was featured on Wikipedia's Main Page in the On this day section on November 3, 2009, November 3, 2010, and November 11, 2012. |
This article is rated C-class on Wikipedia's
content assessment scale. It is of interest to the following WikiProjects: | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
This page has archives. Sections older than 730 days may be automatically archived by Lowercase sigmabot III when more than 10 sections are present. |
result – optional – this parameter may use one of two standard terms: "X victory" or "Inconclusive". The term used is for the "immediate" outcome of the "subject" conflict and should reflect what the sources say. In cases where the standard terms do not accurately describe the outcome, a link or note should be made to the section of the article where the result is discussed in detail (such as "See the Aftermath section"). Such a note can also be used in conjunction with the standard terms but should not be used to conceal an ambiguity in the "immediate" result. Do not introduce non-standard terms like "decisive", "marginal" or "tactical", or contradictory statements like "decisive tactical victory but strategic defeat". Omit this parameter altogether rather than engage in speculation about which side won or by how much.
Decisive is as gone as Secretary Green. Keith-264 ( talk) 08:19, 20 November 2017 (UTC)
The arguments put forward over at the BoF debate apply here also:
And I'll say it again: the infobox is not the place to accommodate nuance. It was an Allied victory. We don't need to know any more than that at this point in the article. If this victory was decisive enough that it warrants a local consensus override of both template documentation and MILMOS, then it should receive appropriate coverage in the article. Factotem ( talk) 19:33, 26 March 2018 (UTC)
I've tagged "decisive" in the infobox result parameter with citation needed lead. As part of the lead, the infobox should summarise the salient points discussed in the main body of the article, per MOS:LEAD. This article, however, does not discuss anything about the nature of the victory. Assuming that gets addressed, we can maybe then discuss whether the victory was decisive enough to ignore the template documentation and MILMOS, which advise against the use of qualifiers such as "decisive" in presenting the result in the infobox. Factotem ( talk) 20:39, 1 January 2019 (UTC)
The study of the war has moved on from the Anglocentric fatuities of the 60s and 70s; you should too. Look at Tooze The Wages of Destruction: The Making and Breaking of the Nazi Economy and Germany and the Second World War, Volume IV: The Attack on the Soviet Union (2015)
by Horst Boog and Jürgen Förster and Volume VI: The Global War (2015) by Horst Boog, Werner Rahn, Reinhard Stumpf et al. Keith-264 ( talk) 23:25, 16 January 2019 (UTC)
You're entitled to your opinion but it is OR; you might be treating decisive as a synonym of 'big' but in military history it means a war-deciding event, like the Battle of Smolensk in 1941. Regards Keith-264 ( talk) 08:49, 2 April 2024 (UTC)
When compared to the larger and far more rabid battles in Eastern Europe, the battles of El Alamein and North Africa was in size even less than a modest battle. It wouldn't even be all wrong to label it as a tiny battle. British author
Norman Davies states a total of 4,650 soldiers died in North Africa between September and November 1942. Just as an example, during the 1941 battles around Ukranian Capital Kiev, 657,000 solders died between July and September in that year, within a similar time frame. A 130 times bloodier battle !!!. Davies counts the numbers of killed soldiers on all sides disregarding whom the dead had fought for. - Reference Norman Davies "Europe at War", chapter 1 (in the Swedish 2006 translation a table of killed in battles at page 40; page numbers may differ between languages but also between printings and especially between regular books and pockets).
If Davies' figures are wrong I doubt they are of a different magnitude. I think this is a typical case where older literature (closer to the event in time) is more likely to exaggerate. In order to compare the scale of war between Hitler's Nazi Germany and Stalin's USSR 1941-45, Davies uses "man monthts", One "man month" equals one soldier (or officers) engaged in front war during a month. If accepting this as a measurement, the western front during May-June 1940 used 9 million man-months totally. And between D-Day and the end of the war in Europe, 16,5 million man-months were used in the west. But just 5 million man-months were used in Northern Africa 1941-43 and another 4,4 during the remaining war in Italy. The figures for Hitler's war with Stalin overshadows everything else - 406 million man-months (including the 7 most bloody battles). Suggestion - somewhere here, and the earlier the better, point out that this was a minor battle in terms of the war in total.
Also - Goebbels "made" Erwin Rommel, colleagues like von Kluge meant that he lacked experience of leading large military units. Also Montgomery never really proved himself at the strategical level. Eisenhower did though.
Boeing720 (
talk) 04:03, 21 August 2019 (UTC)
This is OR not a description of what the RS say. Keith-264 ( talk) 14:05, 29 August 2021 (UTC)
One of the things that strikes even as a casual reader is the number and tone of the references to the fighting qualities of the Italian soldiers. I counted no fewer than half a dozen testimonials to their bravery, fighting spirit etc. We are told they “fought with exemplary courage”, “with great spirit”, that Rommel sad they “astonished the German soldier”, that the tank regiments “fought with great audacity” and much else. Now I suppose the Australian and NZ troops had a pretty good reputation as fighting men, as did many Indian units, not to mention the Germans of course. But only the Italians are mentioned in such glowing terms. We even have a whole sub-section titled “performance of Italian troops during the battle” with gushing quotes from Rommel and Churchill. And the trouble is that some of the most striking quotes are unverifiable. The Rommel quote is given a source in a book by Arrigo Petacco, which hardly inspires confidence. If Rommel really said it, we should be given the quote from a reliable source, say in his diaries. An attempt to verify the Churchill quote comes to a similar dead end. We’re told he uttered the words in a speech in the Commons “a month after El Alamein”. The source cited is an Italian news report, which gives no primary source. I suggest that the tone of panegyric should be turned down to encyclopaedic level and solid references found for the quotations, otherwise we might as well eliminate them as well as the section on “performance of the Italian troops” from the article, where they certainly stick out incongruously. Even if someone feels a psychological need to boost the Italians, this boosterism really defeats its purpose. METRANGOLO1 ( talk) 11:39, 23 September 2020 (UTC)
Thanks. So I guess I can take some of this out in the next few days, unless there are reasoned objections. METRANGOLO1 ( talk) 04:48, 24 September 2020 (UTC)
I went ahead and removed the section titled "Performance of the Italian troops". I will look through to see whether anything else needs to be edited. METRANGOLO1 ( talk) 17:02, 28 September 2020 (UTC)
For some reasons people keep labeling the main image of this article here and in other articles as it was recently added as the main image for the Western desert campaign as being Australians in this case directly said to be the Australian 9th division who where involved in the Western Desert campaign. From looking at the original source this assumption that the soliders in the photograph are Australian is incorrect as the Imperial War museum who holds the photograph has a caption saying the soliders are British so unless somehow they put Australians in the same category as British troops the soldiers in the photograph are British meaning the caption on the image is incorrect as this was stated to be the case by the photographs owners who I assume are correct. I have already corrected the caption this image has on the western desert campaign article to British troops charging as this is what the source says they are. I will do the same with this next day if nobody tells me why the soliders are Australian and not British as the photographs owner the Imperial War museums says they are. I am doing this solely for historical accuracy no bias intended simply want the information about the photographs to be correct Anonymous contributor 1707 ( talk) 17:26, 4 November 2020 (UTC).
Changing the image caption now people have had more than enough time to challenge me on it Anonymous contributor 1707 ( talk) 15:19, 9 November 2020 (UTC)
"Rommel ordered the Italian X and XXI Corps and the 90th Light Division to hold while the Afrika Korps withdrew approximately 6 mi (9.7 km) west during the night of 3 November. The Italian XX Corps and the Ariete Division conformed to their position and Rommel replied to Hitler confirming his determination to hold the battlefield. The Desert Air Force continued its bombing and in its biggest day of the battle it flew 1,208 sorties and dropped 396 long tons (402 t) of bombs.[105]
On the night of 3/4 November, Montgomery ordered three of the infantry brigades in reserve to advance on the Rahman track as a prelude to an armoured break-out. At 17:45, the 152nd Infantry Brigade with the 8th RTR in support, attacked about 2 mi (3.2 km) south of Tel el Aqqaqir. The 5th Indian Infantry Brigade was to attack the track 4 mi (6.4 km) further south during the early hours of 4 November; at 06:15, the 154th Infantry Brigade was to attack Tel el Aqqaqir. The 152nd Infantry Brigade was mistakenly told the Axis had withdrawn from their objectives and unexpectedly met determined resistance. Communications failed and the forward infantry elements ended up digging in well short of their objective. By the time the 5th Indian Brigade set off, the defenders had begun to withdraw and their objective was taken virtually unopposed. By the time the 154th Brigade moved into some artillery-fire, the Axis had left"
This entire paragraph appears to have been copied from [ here]. Or vice versa. Can anyone edit it so it isn't just paraphrasing?-- LostCitrationHunter ( talk) 10:58, 13 November 2021 (UTC)
@ Excommunicato: We should sort things out here to avoid 3RR. I gave you reasons for leaving "British" in the result section of the infobox against which you demur. Dominions weren't sovereign states and neither were emigre forces. The US was involved and this was a sovereign state but several air aquadrons amount to a contingent. The overwhelming majority of the Eighth Army was British and this should be reflected in the infobox which is not a place for nuance. Regards Keith-264 ( talk) 09:03, 5 February 2022 (UTC)
Volume IV: The Destruction of the Axis Forces in Africa, Major-General I. S. O. Playfair, Brigadier Charles Molony et al., 1966. Keith-264 ( talk) 10:14, 11 January 2023 (UTC)
@ Havsjö: see here Template:Infobox military conflict for rules on infobox usage. Regards Keith-264 ( talk) 12:19, 23 April 2023 (UTC)
Keith.
Would you stop Changing the Results as British victory . Allied victory is only the solution. There were many Allied and Commonwealth countries fought in this battle. It would be like saying that Operation Overlord was all but American victory alone. Jheeeeeeteegh ( talk) 11:39, 15 September 2023 (UTC)