The short front line and secure flanks favoured the defensive and Rommel had time to develop the Axis fortifications, sowing minefields with c. 500,000 mines and miles of barbed wire.

Earlier in the Western Desert Campaign, neither side had been able to exploit a local victory sufficiently to defeat its opponent before it had withdrawn and transferred the problem of over-extended supply lines to the victor.

Until June 1942 Rommel had been receiving detailed information about the strength and movement of British forces from reports sent to Washington by Colonel Bonner Fellers, the U.S. military attaché in Cairo.

[25] For the first night of the offensive, Montgomery planned for four infantry divisions of XXX Corps to advance on a 16 mi (26 km) front to the Oxalic Line, over-running the forward Axis defences.

Rommel was ill and in early September, arrangements were made for him to return to Germany on sick leave and for General der Panzertruppe Georg Stumme to transfer from the Russian front to take his place.

Before he left for Germany on 23 September, Rommel organised the defence and wrote a long appreciation of the situation to Oberkommando der Wehrmacht (OKW armed forces high command), once again setting out the essential needs of the Panzer Army.

His only hope now relied on the German forces fighting in the Battle of Stalingrad quickly to defeat the Red Army, then move south through the Trans-Caucasus and threaten Iran (Persia) and the Middle East.

By dawn on 24 October, paths still had not been cleared through the second minefield to release the 22nd and 4th Light Armoured Brigades into the open to make their planned turn north into the rear of enemy positions 5 mi (8.0 km) west of Deir el Munassib.

The Axis forces were stunned by British attack and their messages became confused and hysterical, with one Italian unit communicating to Germans that it had been wiped out by "drunken negroes with tanks".

The lifting of mines on the Miteirya Ridge and beyond took far longer than planned and the leading unit, the 8th Armoured Brigade, was caught on their start line at 22:00—zero hour—by an air attack and were scattered.

The place was strewn with burning tanks and carriers, wrecked guns and vehicles, and over all drifted the smoke and the dust from bursting high explosives and from the blasts of guns.At 16:00, Rommel launched his major attack.

Once Thompson's Post was captured, the Australians were to cross the railway to the coast road and advance south-east to close on the rear of the Axis troops in the coastal salient.

The objective of this operation was Tel el Aqqaqir, the base of the Axis defence roughly 3 mi (4.8 km) north-west of the Kidney feature and situated on the Rahman lateral track.

New Zealand engineers cleared five lines through the mines allowing the Royal Dragoons armoured car regiment to slip out into the open and spend the day raiding the Axis communications.

General von Thoma's report to Rommel that night said he would have at most 35 tanks available to fight the next day and his artillery and anti-tank weapons had been reduced to ⅓ of their strength at the start of the battle.

[110] On 2 November, Rommel signalled to Hitler that The army's strength was so exhausted after its ten days of battle that it was not now capable of offering any effective opposition to the enemy's next break-through attempt ... With our great shortage of vehicles an orderly withdrawal of the non-motorised forces appeared impossible ...

[112]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.

When it became obvious to Rommel that there would be little chance to hold anything between El Daba and the frontier, his Panzers dissolved, disintegrated and turned tail, leaving the Italians to fight a rear-guard action.

[123]By late morning on 4 November, Rommel realised his situation was desperate, The picture in the early afternoon of the 4th was as follows: powerful enemy armoured forces ... had burst a 19-kilometre hole in our front, through which strong bodies of tanks were moving to the west.

[124][125] Any chance of getting them away with an earlier move had been spoiled by Hitler's insistence that Rommel hold his ground, obliging him to keep the non-motorised Italian units well forward until it was too late.

[131] Rommel intended to fight a delaying action at Sidi Barrani, 80 mi (130 km) west of Matruh, to gain time for Axis troops to get through the bottlenecks at Halfaya and Sollum.

By nightfall on 11 November, the Egyptian wall was clear but Montgomery was forced to order that the pursuit should temporarily be continued only by armoured cars and artillery, because of the difficulty in supplying larger formations west of Bardia.

[31] According to Maurice Remy (2002), Hitler and Mussolini put pressure on Rommel to advance, the importance to them being the need to capture the Suez Canal and seize the Middle East and Persian oil fields.

[15] The Eighth Army was surprised by the Axis withdrawal and confusion caused by redeployments between the three corps meant they were slow in pursuit, failing to cut off Rommel at Fuka and Mersa Matruh.

[143] The Desert Air Force failed to make a maximum effort to bomb a disorganised and retreating opponent, which on 5 November was within range and confined to the coast road.

Supply shortages and a belief that the Luftwaffe were about to get strong reinforcements, led the DAF to be cautious, reduce the number of offensive sorties on 5 November and protect the Eighth Army.

On 12 December the 2nd New Zealand Division started a deeper flanking manoeuvre to cut the Axis line of retreat on the coast road in the rear of the Mersa Brega position.

[149] The Eighth Army reached Sirte on 25 December but west of the port, were forced to pause to consolidate their strung out formations and to prepare an attack at Wadi Zemzem, near Buerat 230 mi (370 km) east of Tripoli.

[150] Rommel had, with the agreement of Field Marshal Bastico, sent a request to the Italian Comando Supremo in Rome to withdraw to Tunisia where the terrain would better suit a defensive action and where he could link with the Axis army forming there after the Operation Torch landings.

[151] The port of Tripoli, 150 mi (240 km) further west, was taken on 23 January as Rommel continued to withdraw to the Mareth Line, the French southern defensive position in Tunisia.