I Prefer El Alamein’s Early Stuff (with Pierre Novellie) | Monty vs Rommel (Part 3/4)

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0:30Patients with these conditions before injection are at highest risk. Side effects may include allergic reactions, neck and injection site pain, fatigue, and headache. Allergic reactions can include rash, welts, asthma symptoms, and dizziness. Don't receive Botox if there's a skin infection. Tell your doctor your medical history, muscle or nerve conditions, including ALS Lou Gehrig's disease, myasthenia gravis or Lambert-Eaton syndrome, and medications, including botulinum toxins, as these may increase the risk of serious side effects. Why wait? Ask your doctor, visit BotoxChronicMigraine.com, or call 1-800-44-BOTOX to learn more.

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1:57Welcome back to part three of Monty and Rommel. We are finally joined by one of our most long-trailed guests. Yeah, my God. The phenomenon, Flanovelli. I mean, there's a million things we could get him on to talk about. It was almost choice paralysis. Yes, it was. What you're going to guest on. because I mean you could talk about nearly anything and as we will find out he will talk about all of it we were just talking about cattle bolt guns we were being schooled on the logistics of a cattle bolt gun Pierre Nivelli people don't know one of my oldest friends in comedy one of the greatest stand ups of certainly our generation and I mean that and also card carrying autist yeah yeah probably you and it's a toss up between you infer and brady as to when you got your diagnoses that i went the most like oh right obvious yeah you know it made so much sense there was a game with how long before pierre mentioned the tanks yeah yeah there was a game which was how long will pierre before pierre talks about military history in an insanely detailed way you know military history better than any anyone i know yeah maybe i don't know you've met almery now okay fair enough yeah fair enough but okay before that Before him.

3:08Yeah. Before Al's kind of horrifying universe level knowledge of World War II. Also, first debut for Jeans on the podcast. You never had Jeans on the show? That's true. I've gone for a kind of Robin Williams character look. Yes. I'm going to say it's not your fault a lot. A bit more laid back. Yeah. But we talked about Monty and Rommel. Now, last episode we got to Rommel had the first battle of El Alamein. Yeah. I imagine you know all about this. Are you more of a first or second El Alamein guy? Is there a second? A second. I just don't know if there's like a hipster tape. Actually, the first time.

3:42I prefer just earlier stuff. LMA1's got a lot going for it. So to recap, Rommel is on meth in the desert. He's pushed the Brits. He's sort of like Johan Cruyff. He's playing total football with tanks. He's pushed the Brits all the way back into Egypt on Operation Zollenblume. Morale is low. Morale's low. Tobruk has been relieved finally. the Australian rats the rats not my words they've been relieved by the RAF and at the first battle of El Alamein it's ended in stalemate and now the great hero much as in this series the great autistic hero has arrived to save the Brits because we got a bit lost we did get lost it was just too many details about the kind of going back and forth in the desert and you're losing morale at the end of the second episode and we've flown in an autist yes our own Monty To boost morale.

4:37To be rude but correct about things. Oh, God. I so wish I had that label. Or is it rude but incorrect? Yeah, yeah. No, it's just rude at the moment. I'm just rude. Really hoping for some kind of label. Your opinion on Montgomery first before we crack into it? Or maybe your opinion on the North African theatre, which in my opinion is the most important theatre of World War II. Yeah, of course. It's the defining theatre, you'd say. Well, it's the best way to drain the enemy of resources is make them go to the desert for no reason and fart around. Are you aware of a game that we highlighted? You are aware of it.

5:11The huge board game. Did I not bet you in the last episode that he's heard of it? It takes 20 years to complete. I want to play this so much. And I couldn't find seven or eight people who would join us. You could find seven or eight people. Easily. Really? Easily now. Can you name them? Because I take issue with the idea that eight people waiting to play the campaign for north africa over 20 years so how would you so it's a 20 year game and what you need to choose your stage of life are you thinking like 60 to 80 are you thinking what do you want to be a bit more compus mentis do you want to be a bit more is it 40 to 60 i think you've just got to see it as you know the this is my life now this is my every second sunday as long as you do it for a full sunday that's gonna take 40 years though no it's every two weeks isn't it no if you met every week it's every two weeks if you met once a month he knows he already knows he knows everything twice a month baby and the problem with the i know in the in the board game the italians it's like they need more water and stuff because they're constantly boiling pasta and things genuinely yeah christ which is mad genuinely i it's like a fucking jack gpt yeah they based that on pia yeah exactly um yes they just came in while i slept and they you have yes you have to account for the evaporation of water more so if you're british because they're using jerry cans rather than drops but this theater no one has ever finished it really supposedly no one's ever finished it we shouldn't tell him that because also you will do it now for the next 20 years and that is when you'll see if you have any kids that will be just sorry i was playing the campaign if you're fighting an actual war maybe the worst thing would be playing it for 18 years and then you see on the news someone has finished it yes And you're like two years away.

6:59Yeah, 100%. But also, I don't know what the post-nut clarity will be like when you finish that game. Because it'll be like, well, that's it. 20 years. No, no, no. Then you make a new one called Barbarossa. Yeah. And you just have to. You have to have something going. Because I think afterwards where it's like, well, I guess that's it. Yeah. Yeah. Invasion of Sicily. Roll dice to try and seduce the Mafia into helping you. Husky. Operation Husky. Or you play a much shorter game, which is just dropping a bomb in Japan. Yeah. you go is that sort of like it's the opposite this just takes one turn there's two turns two turns and they thought it would only take one turn yeah it did yeah it took fucking two that's okay another one why not why not we're here now go on um so yeah we're in the desert and as you say this this this theater is all about resources yeah it's it's the most logistical of the yeah so how do you think compared to you know a lot about world two how do you think is this part of world two where does this rank with your some of your favorite bits is this like b tier a tier it's it gets everything gets overshadowed by normandy right if you're if you're from the west right if you're russian you just think that you did it on your own and you don't care about anything anyone else did so whatever but d-day and all the and saving private ryan and all the video games but it is north africa is great because you've got like two a super villain and a superhero it's a spinoff right yeah oh man and and like the thing that makes it difficult is the to-ing and fro-ing it's exactly what you guys got demoralized we've lost to brook again yeah yeah it changes hands three times in the course of the war absolutely mad and also it's all basically the only inhabitable bit is is a whatever and everything else is is desert yeah and it's it's it's horrible to imagine like being 40 degrees and like the best places to be is the best place to be is inside a metal tin yeah it's horrible horrible horrible so uh after the first battle of el alamein the hipster's choice um Churchill decides to initiate the not everyone's heard of the first battle of el alamein but everyone who has went on to fight the second of if you were hipsters are calling people out girls call them out for wearing a t-shirt with the first battle well it's because they primark sell them i'm going around even studied the first battle i'm going around rough trade wearing a t-shirt saying first battle i'm getting nookie name three brigades you best believe you best believe i'm getting some eighth army tang right now uh winston churchill after the first battle of el amain institutes the cairo purge okay uh he pushes for a complete overhaul of the leadership so at this point it's uh orc yep who is a repressed homosexual he's a gayman to use the language i like saying gayman because it sounds like it's a position in the tank infantryman you've got a gayman but it also seems like a that would be how you pronounce it in the old days yes yeah yeah now his plan is for someone called is it gort to take control yeah gort right is flying from uh from london to north africa to take up the role his plane gets shot down because the germans think that churchill's in that plane right so they think they've killed churchill because churchill is going to north africa which he doesn't really need to be doing yeah uh but anyway was there like a churchill wrap around the plane with like a picture of yeah yeah yeah it was a tour bus yeah churchill posted a selfie on board a private plane and they thought that's gonna be it got or got got got gets shot down which means that enter Monty a difficult man but the right man a difficult pint no doubt anti-booze yes that's as difficult as it gets I'm anti-booze and I'm rude you have to have both that's true actually to be sober and rude is a real just white knuckling it he seems like a rude guy he's not like one of those rude for straight people who's just short with you he'll sit and do a session of being rude he's not leaving he'll be rude all night he'll keep going he's the sort of person who follows up a question almost immediately with well yeah yeah there's a lot of that vibe coming from him yeah chronic migraine 15 or more headache days a month each lasting four hours or more can make me feel like a spectator in my own life botox on a botulinum toxin a prevents headaches in adults with chronic migraine it's not for those with 14 or fewer headache days a month.

11:25It's the number one prescribed branded chronic migraine preventive treatment. Prescription Botox is injected by your doctor. Effects of Botox may spread hours to weeks after injection causing serious symptoms. Allerge your doctor right away as difficulty swallowing, speaking, breathing, eye problems, or muscle weakness can be signs of a life-threatening condition. Patients with these conditions before injection are at highest risk. Side effects may include allergic reactions, neck and injection site pain, fatigue, and headache. Allergic reactions can include rash, welts, asthma symptoms, and dizziness.

11:52Don't receive Botox if there's a skin infection. Tell your doctor your medical history, muscle or nerve conditions, including ALS Lou Gehrig's disease, myasthenia gravis or Lambert-Eaton syndrome, and medications, including botulinum toxins, as these may increase the risk of serious side effects. Why wait? Ask your doctor, visit BotoxChronicMigraine.com, or call 1-800-44-BOTOX to learn more. Close your eyes, exhale, feel your body relax, and let go of whatever you're carrying today. Well, I'm letting go of the worry that I wouldn't get my new contacts in time for this class. I got them delivered free from 1-800-CONTACTS.

12:25Oh my gosh, they're so fast. And breathe. Oh, sorry. I almost couldn't breathe when I saw the discount they gave me on my first order. Oh, sorry. Namaste. Visit 1-800-CONTACTS.com today to save on your first order. 1-800-CONTACTS. You want to impress them on a first date, but also play it cool. So what do you do? I'm Rufy Thorpe and I wrote and read a real love story about a hinged couple that navigated exactly that Listen to the free audiobook now 13th of August, 42, Monty takes command of the 8th Army He immediately orders a no withdrawal, right, no fucking leaving We don't go further back than this line He makes everyone burn the pamphlets and instruction booklets on how to retreat in good order Really?

13:12That's nice, brilliant But that's one of his skills is morale boosting, right? Yeah So like symbolic things of saying like, we're definitely going to win. Burn that stuff like that was actually pretty goaded. I think it's, it's such a morale boost for someone to come in and channel the maddest PE teacher you had. Yes. Because that's who you want. I think in that situation. Wait, is it getting big salmon to avoid relegation? It's totally that. It's Mike Bassett tank commander. It's what he is. It's totally that. It's 4-4-2. None of this fucking total football nonsense. We tried it with a European manager.

13:44It was too expensive. We don't know the players. get Sam in let's make sure we can survive it's totally what he does up to this point you've had a bunch of old guys with pipes and then a little weird man with a moustache shows up and it's just incredibly rude about how fat and unfit everyone is and makes everyone go on jogs and it's not nice but it does make you go oh obsessed with fitness but as we were saying fitness is very different then because the bodies it didn't look ripped or anything no it's just a lot of star jumps I imagine so many star jumps like sprinting around with a rifle fully above your head yeah yeah yeah climbing over a rope and then dropping down yeah yeah yeah yeah trying to trying to desperately turn tinned corned beef into muscle yes but then that is actually opt it's optimal isn't it because there's no there's no like sugar and stuff like there is now yeah if you have soup it's just soup it doesn't have glucose in it i imagine and there's no waste of like excess muscle where it's like well i can lift up this heavy weight and it's like well if it's heavier than your rifle you've wasted your time yeah yeah it's all you need to tell you what we should do we should place this is what we always do pierre is that we place a date with something anything in history that happened before or after i imagine you'd be very good at this and it has become a sort of spectator sport where you try and get it as close as possible okay it doesn't have to be though you can you can do it we've had some people would like the big bang uh okay and like the birth of greg wallace it's like you can like you know do whatever you want so 13th of august 1942 okay what's that before what's that after.

15:1313th of August 1942. Yeah, it can be anything. if it's shoot from the hip, whatever comes out, it comes out. Okay. It's after sliced bread. Let's have a check. Double check. Send that up to the bread. After sliced bread. 1928. Here we go. Incredibly late for sliced bread. Very, very late for sliced bread. I feel I would have come up with that as soon as bread was invented. When was the bread knife invented? Because was that the 6th of August 1928? No, no. I'm glad we're onto this because the reason I know when... It took them 30 years to go from bread knife to sliced bread. What would it do in the bread knife before?

15:47I don't know. Just talking about it. Sorry, so it's after sliced bread. Pre-miniscuit. Pre-miniscuit, 60s. Surely, surely. Yeah, that's lovely. That's a lovely cushion. You were having a sandwich, but the women, thankfully, had their legs covered. So you could enjoy your sliced bread sandwich. 64. 64, Mary Quant. So sort of like it was a Belle Epoque of the Western world, wasn't it? Sliced bread miniskirt. Before the miniskirt ruined it. Before all moral values collapsed. We had the technology and dignity. Yes, exactly. We still had social conservatism. Because 64 was... Charlie, when was the first divorce laws?

16:30I think it's 67. You know, the miniskirt started... This is Wilson's Britain. It is a train of events that resulted in the family unit being shattered. 69. 69. Divorce form act. There you go. No fault concepts. Just basically it was meaningless. Marriage was meaningless. It means nothing anymore. Look at the legs on that woman. I want a divorce. I don't care that my bread's sliced. I don't care. My whole reality's collapsed. I want to put her in two slices of bread. This is all over. It's all over. Now, Monty's arrived. Yes. Mini skirts are not yet a thing. they are introduced but sort of 12 years before Monty dies and you must imagine it started his death I think so I think he got ill when he saw the first miniscope so the conditions when he arrives you've got sand going up everywhere the flies sinkholes that would just open up and just swallow a vehicle we've got a quote from Monty actually fine sand in the desert infiltrated everything vehicles, weapons, food and bodily orifices said very seriously I imagine sandstorms are stopping the fighting scorpions spiders the fly apparently they all say in their memoirs flies were the like worst they're just constant flies dead bodies corned beef flies but then the australians perform the best in this theater arguably and that's probably because they're used to this i think this is it they got those hats with the corks and stuff yeah they're built for it yeah and you're saying to them it's really hot and you're going to have to be really aggressive yeah hang on great what else yeah fine so uh monty's leadership style is the antithesis of rommel's rommel is improvisational speed literally whereas Monty doesn't really want to attack Josie Montigno lovely absolutely terrific Jose Montigno he only wants to attack when he absolutely knows for sure that he's going to win yeah which when you put it like that you're like well yeah yeah me too I'd do that it's mad that that's just just being autistic enough to say no yeah not yet it's like a super we can defer I was sure you'd like to know what the social plan is.

18:33Plan it. Yeah. Yeah. You want to know who's going to be there. You want to know your escape route. Yeah. Which Germans will be there? Which Italians will be there? What kind of weapons will they have? Come on. Yeah. I guess you don't want to leave the house unless you know for sure you won't be humiliated. Yeah. Who can I talk to about military history who can go blow for blow? That's it. I need to know that there's at least a couple of... How many Italian paratroopers will be there? That's what I want to know. Yeah. There was a table at your wedding of Italian paratroopers. that's a slur I use but anyway the Allied forces are completely fucked they're exhausted so and Monty as we saw when he was in World War I you know he has a pretty harrowing I mean there's no un-harrowing World War I experience but he gets shot in the lung it's quite a British experience I think being stuck under another body and just lying there and being like that's fine yeah and lying there for like two days wait till night time yeah Just waiting for the sun to go down.

19:31Hello? While just thinking, I wonder what's happening with that lung of mine. Yeah. An upper lip has never been so stiff. Oh, the stiffest of upper lips. Yeah. And the knobbliest of knees. It does also kind of look like my granddad. So I feel a very, a very sort of sense of, I don't know, there's a grandfatherness to him. Yeah. So he really cares about human life, which is actually quite rare amongst World War II generals. Is it an empathetic thing or is it a tactical thing? it's hard to know. Yeah, it doesn't strike me as someone who has much empathy. Yeah, he's not like a bleeding heart sort of.

20:03It's a waste. Yes, it's resources. Yeah. The men are resources. And I've spent so long getting them good at cross-country. Yes, yeah. What a shame to lose them. Well, many of them die during cross-country. Yeah, the most dangerous part of being in Monty's army is the training. Constantly training. Some of them die. So, after the first battle of Alain, a million hipster's choice, Rommel plans another offensive entitled Operation Surf. this would be the last big Axis offensive of the desert campaign. Yes. And so he basically tries to defeat the 8th Army before Allied reinforcements arrive. Now, can you explain to our thick listeners and ourselves what is going on in Crete at this time that's taking resources away?

20:47Like, why is the Allied, why are they not pouring absolutely everything into the North African tier? They're sending a lot of stuff to Greece. because there's loads of stuff going on in Greece at the minute Churchill had a real boner for the idea of invading up through Greece and Yugoslavia for a while into the German occupied soft underbelly he was on a real jag about it for a while and just wouldn't let it lie and they thought they could save Greece from the Italians and they almost did but then like always with the Italians in World War II they went we need help suppressing the population and Germany went fine we send people we send someone to pick you up in an Uber We were saying there's an argument the Italians lose Germany the war because they delay Barbarossa by six weeks, which ends up being crucial because the Italians don't have any plan at all.

21:36The only thing that Mussolini's thought of is, I want to ride bareback on a horse through Cairo and we'll just work the rest out. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then they surrender immediately. So you were saying their main weapon is that they're a liability to look after. To have 100 ,000 prisoners of war is a nightmare. It's a logistics nightmare. It's absolutely insane. just to be like, we didn't have enough awful beef for us, really. Yeah, yeah. Now we've got to put you somewhere. And they're not even eating it. No. Because it's not made by my mom. That's their punishment for declaring war. Yeah, that's a war crime.

22:06You have to eat British food. Yeah. They torture me. They torture me. I have to eat British food. He speaks from a tin, please. Brewer the slice. So Rommel's idea is to swing around south through the Katara Depression. I don't know if you've struggled with Katara depression around the British flank cut it's all about swinging around flanks because you have this massive sand sea that's sort of an open if you can use that then you can kind of infinity landmines both sides put in those landmines mainly the Germans constant and still now better winds keep getting blown up walking to school bang up in the air I mean that's I guess it's just it seems quite reckless to me laying landmines you don't really think about the future are you no it's because you just lay them down it's just like with this area just it's farting the lift and then just leaving straight away it's farting it has the doors I can see it doors closed I don't know where that's going fuck you then yeah it's like you're saying a dumb waiter a fart and a dumb waiter up to the top floor and Princess Diana's next campaign how she lived was about people who fart in lifts was it yeah she was big on that really big on that you had a big blue ribbon anyway so we get to the battle of alam el haifa yeah or halfa you just set you off you know what that is yeah on the ridge they they yeah on the ridge gone talk talk us through the battle of alam el halfa they they knew that ramo was going to do this broadly right because of the enigma code yes yeah yeah we're reading all their post because this is the first time the enigma codes come into proper effect is it i thought that had happened in battle of britain somewhat there's ultra and then there's enigma or the other way around but but what was useful here was they realized the germans have been getting loads of stuff for ages from the american ambassador the italians had broken the code by going into the embassy in rome and finding it in a desk or something pathetic yeah and then he'd been telling america all the cool stuff from cairo and that had been fucking everything up they figured that out and then they always knew when the germans were sending ships full of fuel they always knew who was where they always knew i mean it was mad the amount they knew when rumble was back in a spa having little fish eaters yeah and the revisionism about monty because he was obviously he sold himself as a genius yeah and that's the narrative for the first and then it slowly when people revisited his his legacy in the 60s they kind of put a lot more into the fact that he just had the iniquity he basically had the cheat code we will also we will get to why people decide that it wasn't him with what he says in the 60s we'll get to that we'll get to that next episode but he was smart because if you know that rumble's coming up for the south they left he left it very like empty in the big open shitty bit that is like hard to defend yeah and just covered a ridge overlooking the area with anti-tank guns and and and tanks dug in tanks and yeah he dug in tanks so that what like the barrel would stick out yeah and then it would essentially be like a anti-tank gun but it's a tank cover the front and sandbags and wood and is that going to be cooler to be in the tank if it's covered in sand or really hot after one night i think cool but in the day you're like i hate this so yeah I hate this so much.

25:11Because the tanks are small. Fuck, man. I just... They're like jockeys, right? You have to be a certain size to fit in a tank, do you? Yeah. But they're all tiny back in the day when, though. They're all pretty small. I think it helped, the lack of nutrition. Apart from the head of the SAS, David Sterling was 6 '6". Yes. It was been fucking huge back then. It must have been like having an ent. Yeah. I've come to fight the Germans with you. So this is Monty's first battle in command, 30th of August to the 5th of September. so yeah he leaves this kind of trap from all around the south yeah uh and then they i guess they stumble into it would you say it's a kill zone yeah yeah would you say it's a kill zone would you say so well then i say it's a kill zone then um and ron was not got enough fuel so every time he does anything with tanks he's using up like yeah the last bit of petrol yeah and it has to work and it just doesn't and as as we know the bags run out as we know from the from the board game you have you have to plan enough fuel this is a theater of war about logistics supplies yeah and his supply line is all the way back to tripoli yeah tripoli yeah uh and we're on the patreon uh which we'll be sticking around for we're talking about the sas yeah by this point they've become quite effective at disrupting normal supply lines yeah yeah yeah sticking around but it was a trial and error we talked about this on the other the start is quite funny because the beginning begins of them just jumping out of planes and breaking their legs just into a sandstorm just just jumping out of the parachute yes we do it turns out we do it's easy to say with hindsight that's a bad idea sacred cows should be slaughtered parachutes work so yeah we're looking at a map now i imagine i imagine pierre this is the kind of stuff you've got in your room yeah you've framed and you're were just tattooed all over me like a prison break yeah never forget do you understand how to read these sorts of things i when i'm reading military history books i find them quite choppy and then i get to things like this and it breaks my head a bit these charts i think a box with a cross in it is an infantry regiment and a box with a cross and a kind of circle is a tank it's like the shape of a tank from world war one oh yeah okay i see right um and then there's like a thing with a parachute in as parachutists and then there's a couple of others where i sort of don't really know what the hell they're about.

27:26But how do you tell what order the arrows are moving in or are you not meant to? I always find them quite hard to read. That is hard. Sometimes they're nice and they do a kind of different colour or kind of cross hatching or something but often, especially if it's like a single day, you just think, okay, I guess I get it, whatever. So, the whole I'd go round I'd just go really far, like no one's down there so I'd go all the way down there and I'd go up and I'd go up. I guess they didn't have this. That's what he'd do. That's what he did. That's the ridge. You see that little line there above the big, the top red line.

28:00Yeah, but there's only one guy. I get most, all of them, really fast down there. And then I come back up. It's a running theme, your retrospective military. Whenever I look at these, it always seems a lot easier. Yeah. What did you say? Just go there. But they're running out of fuel and planes are coming and fucking with them from Malta. Phoebe, can you go on the research and find that image of, I think this, but it has the different countries of the regiments because it's quite funny because the Greeks are, The Greeks are there, yeah. The Greeks are here. Yeah, because it's quite... Look at this.

28:29And if I was Rommel, I would view that Greek brigade as sort of like the Ardenne Forest as a sort of break in the Maginot line. Where you can ease... I mean, that's... I mean, just put us through. Why are we lining up? Look at the Greek brigade. It's just a load of plastic chairs. They're also using an anachronistic South African flag. Yeah. Which is a bit naughty. Well, hang on. But this is not... Is that not during Naughty South Africa, though? That's Naughty Flag, yeah, but Naughty Flag wasn't in yet. Oh, okay. Oh, I see. So back then it should have just been like, you know, it's like the naval ensign for Union Jack in the Corner, classic, whatever.

29:02That wasn't the flag. That's the apartheid flag? Yeah, big time. So Phoebe has deliberately chosen the apartheid era. It's fine. It's fine. She's dyslexic. I don't think that counts with flags, though. I think flags were invented to help dyslexia. I think people online, when they make these diagrams, just choose that flag to minimize the amount of Union Jacks on the visual field. field. So Monty, how does that battle end of Half a Ridge? Is it sort of Rommel retreats, I imagine? Rommel has to pull back. They lose roughly equal numbers of tanks, but that's the first time that the German tanks haven't just steamrolled everything.

29:38So it's seen as like a stalemate slash victory. Have the Shermans come in yet? Yes. The American Sherman tanks? Yes, I think so. Yeah, I believe so. This is the, even though we did it without the help of the American, not Ben Sherman. No, not Ben Sherman. It's not loads of Ben Sherman shirts coming in. And it's like, fuck, these guys look awesome. They look good, to be fair. I can't. It's good for us. It's good for us. Monty brings in Ben Sherman. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, the Sherman tanks, what were we using before? Matilda's, Valentine's. Matilda's, what a great name. These are British tanks, right?

30:09Those are British, yeah. And the best tanks were the German tanks, but now the Americans have invented a better tank than the Germans, and we're getting those ones. Kind of, yeah. The Sherman's useful because it's just like fucking Lego. Just stick it together from old bits, and like if it gets blown up often the crew survive and just get out the back i think bill burr said we basically mcdonald's them yeah yeah which is such a funny because that's what they did like they was donald's russia like they just fucking 100 they just built them like a fucking hamburger so uh uh the rommel said or a german said the sand was alive with fire every ridge seemed to hold guns waiting for us yeah so into a trap essentially rommel retreats uh and at this point uh monty's reputation is enhanced now let's just chat a bit about his kind of look because he makes his own again it's a part of this aura he's an influencer he's very brand aware yeah yeah totally yeah yeah uh he he gets he wears a black beret big shorts this is the high point for british big shorts big shorts after this the shorts get longer and they become trousers and we and we lose our grip on something the press in world war ii plays much bigger role than world war one you don't really have these sorts of celebrities yes sort of the birth of this black berets is is armored divisions so it's like a the tank guys are like yeah he's one of ours interesting it's like a kind of nod to them they get a real kick out of but then you know with the sas they started wearing a beige berets but then uh when they would go back to cairo after missions fights would break out because they're all very difficult men and they would get laughed at as being big sissies uh gamins for having white berets and And then fights break out.

31:45So they had to then go to Red Berets. Right. Yes, yeah. It's also like, it's such a funny trap. Yeah. To give the maddest, toughest men in your military. The gayest hat. A hat that starts fights. Yeah. But Monty also, with his big shorts, had a fly whisk. Now, I did not know this was a thing. I presume it's a fly swatter. Yeah. But I imagine this is what the fly swatter originated from. I think the fly whiskers are deterrent and the fly swatter is, is, is, is a killer, a killer. Right. I see. Also, there's an element of, you know, it's just, it's much more, it's trying to swag it out a little bit.

32:24I think it's trying to aura farm a little bit. A horse's tail. Yeah. But it's much more impressive. And, but every general chose like recognizable thing. Like pattern was always seen with the, well, I guess is that just not the normal helmet, I guess. Yeah. But you're not still, it's like a, it's like a helmet. You'd, you'd wear like a general's hat as opposed to, service helmet and he seemed to be wearing a helmet wearing a helmet indoors all the time it always looked a bit weird it always looked like was he autistic as well he sort of looked like a delivery driver picking up mcdonald's he had two pile handled revolvers on each hip you got that's pretty cool that's real ouday hussein yeah but monty and him don't get on no two difficult men and i think it's monty's fault to be fair we have to concede yeah but i don't think monty got on with anyone no no um doesn't seem that way but he didn't need he wasn't there to get on with them he was there to get a job done it's very morale boosting to have any general that was willing to do even one thing that a normal soldier would do there's some german general that would always insist on still having like a infantry issue rifle with him yeah now the desert air force become plays an increasingly dominant role as well um by the time monty wants air supremacy before he will attack at second battle of it.

33:37I would as well. Yeah. Again, it sounds very obvious when he does it. He's like, well, yeah. Air superiority, I really would like that. But again, this is because the Germans have failed to knock out Malta. Yeah. There, I guess, is Greece too far to be launching air raids? Probably is. Yeah. But it's being able to like rebase stuff, right? You can hop from wherever to Malta to North Africa and back again. So there's a big old, Malta becomes very important. and it's one of the first things in the game, you have to raid Malta. That's one of the first parts of the hundred turns that is one turn. Starting or growing your own business can be intimidating and lonely at times.

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36:31Why wait? Ask your doctor, visit BotoxChronicMigraine.com, or call 1-800-44-BOTOX to learn more. I want to date with Rawls, Carty says. Rawls? Rucker asks. This is the love story of real hinge couple Carty and Rucker. Written and read by me, Nicola Dynan. Listen to the free audiobook now. but also the Enigma codes at this point has been cracked by Alan Turing so yeah another autism British autism fucking world leading world leading well it's what wins the war ultimately in this theatre fucking yeah not wasting our time funneling these kids into chess matches or something no Monty and Turing it's fucking yeah so Andy Cole in Dwight York fucking so that means that we can constantly stop uh supplies reaching rommel he runs out now rommel is absolutely knackered by uh after l halfa yeah this is when he goes back to germany september 42 yeah uh he has been on speed for 18 months a long time too long in in 40 degrees yeah yeah and he's also he's now what his lead his leadership style right is that he's very you know because he was in world war one as well and both him and Monty felt in World War I that the top brass were too disconnected.

37:54There was too big a chain of command. Yeah. Although the Germans whole thing actually was more about improvisational chaos. They were starting that in World War I. Improv guys. They're an improv troop. There's a yes and sort of. One improv troop. Jart uns. Jart uns. Snack. The Jart uns doctrine. Yeah. Yeah. They were Jart uns. Yeah. But so Rommel's thing is that he rides in the front line in an armored car with an escort and sorry, not a Southeast Asian woman. I mean, a guy with a gun, the opposite of an escort, really. That's what you're into, I guess. Sorry, there's just, every time I think of that, one of the first Gary Delaney jokes I ever heard, fill the escort up with diesel, she died.