Two decisive battles
By coincidence the date of October 23rd marked two decisive battles of World War II. On that date in 1942 Lieutenant-General Bernard Montgomery launched his 8th army into an attack on the German and Italian positions near the railway halt of El Alamein. Montgomery had chosen his field carefully, with quicksands to his South barring Rommel's favoured flank attack. He had overwhelming superiority in equipment, largely because Rommel's extended supply lines had to run the gauntlet of Allied attack in the Mediterranean, and then faced air attack on their way to reach Rommel's position in Egypt.
The battle lasted 10 days and resulted in a total Allied victory. It heralded the beginning of the end of the Western Desert Campaign, eliminating the Axis threat to Egypt, the Suez Canal and the Middle Eastern and Persian oil fields. The battle revived the morale of the Allies, being the first big success against the Axis. Winston Churchill said, "Before Alamein we never had a victory. After Alamein we never had a defeat." He ordered church bells to be rung cross the country in celebration.
On the same date two years later, October 23rd 1944, began the largest naval battle of World War II, possibly the largest in history, with over 200,000 personnel involved. It took place at Leyte Gulf off the Philippines. It could easily have gone Japan’s way, since US Admiral Halsey took the bait of pursuing the Japanese Northern carrier force, not realizing it was a decoy fleet that could only muster 100 planes with inexperienced pilots. He left the US landing force undefended as Japanese battleships and cruisers attacked, but the Japanese were unnerved by the aggression of the outgunned US defending forces, and withdrew in disorder.
It was a total Allied victory, like El Alamein, with the American losing 7 warships to the 26 lost by the Japanese, including carriers, battleships and heavy cruisers. It signalled the effective end of Japan’s navy. It remaining ships lacked oil because of the US submarine blockade, and lacked air cover.
Both battles saw the Allies up against countries gripped by poisonous ideologies whose troops revered their leaders as gods or near godlike figures. Both countries were brainwashed into a belief in their racial superiority, and both committed unspeakable atrocities. In Japan’s case, Leyte Gulf saw the first use of Kamikaze suicide attacks, evidence of a fanaticism that led America to atom bomb them into surrender.
El Alamein and Leyte Gulf were won by superior forces backed by high morale and determination. The sudden, unprovoked attacks by the Axis powers, Blitzkrieg, Barbarossa and Pearl Harbour, gained early victories, but provoked outrage and stiffened Allied resolve. Then the remorseless build-up of Allied strength eventually took its toll. US factories switched from making cars to making tanks and planes, and even prefabricated ships.
The lessons were not lost during the Cold War. NATO resisted Soviet aggression with resolve and resources, using technology to close the gap caused by brute Soviet strength. Eventually the USSR could not match the sophistication of their opponents, not browbeat them into submission, nor subvert them by employing their “useful idiots” in the Western media, and left the field in disarray, just as their predecessors had done at El Alamein and Leyte Gulf. Their ideology, as destructive as that of the Japanese and the Nazis, and just as corrosive of human rights and human values, went into history’s trash-can, just as the others had done.