Publisher Description

Alan Moorehead was sent to cover the North Africa campaign in 1940 by the Daily Express, and he followed its dramatic course all the way to 1943. The three books he subsequently wrote about his experiences - collected here as The Desert War - were swiftly acclaimed as classic accounts of the tussle between Montgomery's Eighth Army and Rommel's Afrika Corps, amidst the endless harsh wastes of the Western Desert. It was Moorehead who was responsible for the celebrated insight that tank battles in the desert are like battles at sea, the lumbering tanks like ships lost in a vast ocean of sand. The New Statesman could not have put it better when it described his achievement in this riveting book: 'There is something of genius in the breadth and penetration of his vision which encompasses the whole panorama of war and then narrows it down to the particular: the soldier stubbing out his cigarette before going into action, the expression on a tank commander's face as he is hit . . . The story of the African campaigns will go down in history as one of the great epics of mankind, largely thanks to Mr Moorehead's account.'

The reputation of Alan Moorehead as the greatest war correspondent of WWII'The very best book written by a war correspondent in this war' - The Times Literary Supplement. 'A classic ... Moorehead is more than a first-calss reporter. He is an artist ... Some of the battle scenes stand comparison with the famous battle descriptions of Stendhal and Tolstoy.' - The Observer

Alan Moorehead was a peerless war correspondent who covered the entire war in North Africa from 1940-1943. The trilogy of books he wrote on the prolonged battles between Montgomery's Eighth Army and Rommel's Afrika Corps immediately drew universal acclaim, and remains and epic account as extraordinary now as it was then. This reissue of Alan Moorehead's classic trilogy on the North Africa campaign 1940-1943 will coinide with the 75th anniversary of the Battles for El Alamein in July and October 1942.

The Anglo-Italian campaign of 1940-41 resulted in one of the most lopsided operational victories of the entire Second World War. Strategic misjudgement at the highest levels of British political and military leadership would discard the opportunities won by its fighting forces in North Africa and commit them to a catastrophic intervention in Greece. In 1940, Italy fielded a numerically overwhelming, but technologically deficient, conscript military force on the continent of Africa. Italy’s political leaders expected her 500,000 strong North African army to quickly defeat the British troops stationed in the theater of operation. The British forces, though inferior in numbers, were well-trained regulars who possessed more superior weaponry than their Italian foes. In the brief, high intensity conflict waged in the North African deserts from December 1940 to February 1941, the British would annihilate an Italian army of 130,000 soldiers. On the verge of complete victory in the North African theater, the British would commit an act of extraordinary strategic misjudgement and divert their efforts to Greece in order to engage the Axis forces on the continent of Europe. The discarded early victory in North Africa would lead Britain to catastrophe in Greece, cost them the initiative in the war, and nearly led to their defeat in North Africa.

Covering the North Africa campaign in 1940, this acclaimed account of the tussle between Montgomery's Eight Army and Rommel's Afrika Corps is a remarkable account of one of the most complicated and epic stand-offs in the history of World War II. Beautifully documented and historically relevant, Moorehead's celebrated insight that tank battles in the desert reflected battles at sea--the lumbering tanks like ships lost in a vast ocean of sand--and the breadth and penetration of his vision that encompasses the whole panorama of war, illustrate why this account is considered to be the definitive reference of the African campaigns. From describing the soldier stubbing out his cigarette before going into action to the expression on a tank commander's face as he is hit, this poetically scribed documentation is a thorough and fascinating journey into one of history's most pivotal war campaigns.

Few of the major campaigns of World War II aroused as much controversy as the War in North Africa, 1940-1943. Figures such as Rommel, Montgomery, and Eisenhower would become world famous because of the fighting in North Africa. This book opens with seven historiographical essays that evaluate and critically assess the major contributions to the literature on the War in North Africa. It then includes an alphabetically arranged bibliography of the 504 entries cited in the essays. The material is easily accessible, with cross-references between the text and the bibliography and a full index. The volume includes chapters on the Desert War, 1940-42; the Axis Powers in North Africa; Montgomery, Alam Halfa and El Alamein; TORCH: the Landings in French North Africa, and the Tunisian Campaign. Full attention is given to questions and issues historians have raised on such controversies as the Auchinleck-Montgomery dispute, the debate over Operation TORCH, and the Darlan affair. Emphasis is on English-language works, but the most significant Italian, German, and French works are cited and assessed. The book has been written for use in public, college, university, and institutional libraries, and to serve general readers and military historians.