Download or read book Allied Fighting Effectiveness in North Africa and Italy 1942 1945 written by and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2014-05-15 with total page 271 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Allied Fighting Effectiveness in North Africa and Italy, 1942-1945 offers a collection of scholarly papers focusing on heretofore understudied aspects of the Second World War. Encompassing the major campaigns of North Africa, Sicily and Italy from operation TORCH to the end of the war in Europe, this volume explores the intriguing dichotomy of the nature of battle in the Mediterranean theatre, whilst helping to emphasise its significance to the study of Second Word War military history. The chapters, written by a number of international scholars, offer a discussion of a range of subjects, including: logistics, the air-land battle, coalition operations, doctrine and training, command, control and communications, and airborne and special forces. Contributors are Matthew C. Ford, Simon Godfrey, John Greenacre, Andrew L. Hargreaves, James Hudson, Alan Jeffreys, Kevin Jones, Paul Lemaire, Ross Mahoney, Christopher Mann, Cesar Campiani Maximiano, Patrick J. Rose, and Grant T. Weller.
Download or read book The North African Campaign of World War II written by Charles River Charles River Editors and published by Createspace Independent Publishing Platform. This book was released on 2017-09-12 with total page 78 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: *Includes pictures *Includes contemporary accounts of the fighting *Includes online resources and a bibliography for further reading "It may almost be said, 'Before Alamein we never had a victory. After Alamein we never had a defeat.'" - Winston Churchill The fighting in North Africa during World War II is commonly overlooked, aside from the famous battle at El Alamein that pitted the British under General Bernard Montgomery against the legendary "Desert Fox," Erwin Rommel. But while the Second Battle of El Alamein would be the pivotal action in North Africa, the conflict in North Africa began all the way back in the summer of 1940 when Italian dictator Benito Mussolini declared Italy's entrance into the war. From his perspective, the fact that the British and French had their hands full with the Germans created an opportunity for Italy to enlarge its colonial holdings in Africa by seizing portions of the British Empire. However, British troops in the colony of Egypt responded to Italy's declaration of war by driving through the Egyptian-Ethiopian border and attacking Italian troops stationed in the Italian colony of Ethiopia. By September 13, 1940, Italian commanders in Ethiopia were finally ready to put Mussolini's plan into action and attack British colonial holdings, but British troops had already attacked a series of Italian frontier posts and had inflicted 3,500 casualties among Italy's North African troops. Although British maneuvering in North Africa began successfully against the Italians, the British forces suffered a series of defeats over the next two years, due to several problems the British army faced as a result of inadequate preparation and weaponry. For example, when the war began, junior officers were unprepared for the kind of cooperation between units that was necessary in the battles of North Africa. At the same time, while British tanks were capable of opposing Italian tanks, they were vastly inferior to German models. Dealing with the Italians was one thing, but the British faced an entirely different monster in North Africa when Erwin Rommel, a German general who had gained much fame for his role in the invasions of Poland and France, was sent to North Africa in February 1941. Rommel's directives from the German headquarters were to maneuver in a way that would allow him to hide the fact that his ultimate goal was the capture of Cairo and the Suez Canal. The ultimate plan was that Rommel would not reveal the Germans' true intentions in North Africa until after the Germans had made headway in their invasion of the Soviet Union. The Second Battle of El Alamein was a turning point in the campaign. While the scale of the battle paled in comparison to the battles of the Eastern Front, where the majority of German troops were concentrated, it still marked an important victory in World War II, especially from the British perspective. The British, who had suffered through three years of war in which they seemed to teeter on the brink of defeat, were able to hang their hats on the victory, reviving the nation's morale and reaffirming its military might. Over the next few weeks, the Allies made steady progress and forced Rommel to conduct a fighting retreat to safety until his army linked up with another Axis army in Tunisia, but the fighting at the end of 1942 inevitably compelled all Axis forces to quit the theater, the first time since the beginning of the war that Africa was safe for the Allies. The North African Campaign of World War II: The History and Legacy of the Decisive Allied Victory in North Africa examines one of the most important campaigns of the war. Along with pictures depicting important people, places, and events, you will learn about the North African campaign like never before.
Download or read book An Army at Dawn written by Rick Atkinson and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 2003-10 with total page 707 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The first volume in a three volume work about the liberation of Europe opens in North Africa in 1942 and charts America's rise to world-power status by its involvement in a war on two fronts.
Download or read book Desperate Venture written by Norman Gelb and published by William Morrow. This book was released on 1992 with total page 376 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The 1942 invasion of North Africa, which developed the strategy and techniques crucial to Germany's ultimate defeat, is re-created by historian Gelb. This impeccably researched account tells how the Allies learned to work together in the midst of confusion, blunders, and bitter conflicts. Maps, notes, and photographs.
Download or read book Operation Torch written by William B. Breuer and published by . This book was released on 1985-01-01 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Relates the compelling story of the Allied campaign to invade French Northwest Africa in 1942.
Download or read book The Italian Army in North Africa written by Walter Zapotoczny and published by . This book was released on 2018-03-22 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When most people think of the Italian Army in North Africa during the Second World War, they tend to believe that the average Italian soldier offered little resistance to the Allies before surrendering. Many believe the Italian Army, as a whole, performed in a cowardly manner in North Africa. The reality is not so simple. The question remains as to whether the Italians were really cowards or actually victims of circumstance. While the Italian soldier's commitment to the war was not as great as that of the German soldier, many Italians fought bravely. The Italian Littorio and Ariete Divisions earned Allied admiration at Tobruk, Gazala, and EI Alamein. The Italian Army played a significant role as part of the German Afrika Korps and made up a large portion of the Axis combat power in North Africa during 1941 and 1942. In the interest of determining how the Italian Army earned the reputation that it did, it is necessary to analyze why and how the Italians fought.
Download or read book Fighting the Desert Fox written by John Delaney and published by Burns & Oates. This book was released on 1999 with total page 155 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the spring of 1941, Britain's position in North Africa appeared secure. The Italians had been spectacularly defeated, and there was even the possibility that Italy would drop out of the war. The situation changed dramatically with the arrival of Rommel and the Deutsches Afrika Korps. Instead of fighting an incompetent and ineffective Italian High Command, the Allies found themselves up against the latest strategic and tactical concepts, carried through by a dynamic, aggressive leader. For the British this was a time of trial. On several occasions they seemed to be on the brink of total defeat, and by August 1942 the Afrika Korps stood facing the British Eighth Army at El Alamein, a mere 70 miles from Alexandria.
Download or read book Army at Dawn The War in North Africa 1942 1943 written by Rick Atkinson and published by Turtleback Books. This book was released on 2003-10-01 with total page 681 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this first volume of the Liberation Trilogy, Atkinson focuses on 1942 and 1943, showing how central the great drama that unfolded in North Africa was to the ultimate victory of the Allied powers and to America's understanding of itself.
Download or read book Torch written by Vincent P. O'Hara and published by US Naval Institute Press. This book was released on 2015 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: World War II had many superlatives, but none like Operation Torch--a series of simultaneous amphibious landings, audacious commando and paratroop assaults, and the Atlantic's biggest naval battle, fought across a two thousand mile span of coastline in French North Africa. The risk was enormous, the scale breathtaking, the preparations rushed, the training inadequate, and the ramifications profound. Torch was the first combined Allied offensive and key to how the Second World War unfolded politically and militarily. Nonetheless, historians have treated the subject lightly, perhaps because of its many ambiguities. As a surprise invasion of a neutral nation, it recalled German attacks against countries like Belgium, Norway, and Yugoslavia. The operation's rationale was to aid Russia but did not do this. It was supposed to get Americans troops into the fight against Germany but did so only because it failed to achieve its short-term military goals. There is still debate whether Torch advanced the fight against the Axis, or was a wasteful dispersion of Allied strength and actually prolonged the war. Torch: North Africa and the Allied Path to Victory is a fresh look at this complex and controversial operation. The book covers the fierce Anglo-American dispute about the operation and charts how it fits into the evolution of amphibious warfare. It recounts the story of the fighting, focusing on the five landings--Port Lyautey, Fédala, and Safi in Morocco, and Oran and Algiers in Algeria--and includes air and ground actions from the initial assault to the repulse of Allied forces on the outskirts of Tunis. Torch also considers the operation's context within the larger war and it incorporates the French perspective better than any English-language work on the subject. It shows how Torch brought France, as a power, back into the Allied c& how it forced the English and the Americans to work together as true coalitions partners and forge a coherent amphibious doctrine. These skills were then applied to subsequent operations in the Mediterranean, in the English Channel, and in the Pacific. The story of how this was accomplished is the story of how the Allies brought their power to bear on the enemy's continental base and won World War II.
Download or read book Air Force Combat Units of World War II written by Maurer Maurer and published by DIANE Publishing. This book was released on 1961 with total page 520 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book North Africa and Italy 1942 1944 written by Will Fowler and published by Ian Allan Publishing. This book was released on 2003 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Continuing the story of Germany's amazing Blitzkreig tactics during the Second World War.
Download or read book Britain s War A New World 1942 1947 written by Daniel Todman and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2020-03-17 with total page 864 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The second volume of Daniel Todman's account of Great Britain and World War II The second of Daniel Todman's two sweeping volumes on Great Britain and World War II, Britain's War: A New World, 1942-1947, begins with the event Winston Churchill called the "worst disaster" in British military history: the Fall of Singapore in February 1942 to the Japanese. As in the first volume of Todman's epic account of British involvement in World War II ("Total history at its best," according to Jay Winter), he highlights the inter-connectedness of the British experience in this moment and others, focusing on its inhabitants, its defenders, and its wartime leadership. Todman explores the plight of families doomed to spend the war struggling with bombing, rationing, exhausting work and, above all, the absence of their loved ones and the uncertainty of their return. It also documents the full impact of the entrance into the war by the United States, and its ascendant stewardship of the war. Britain's War: A New World, 1942-1947 is a triumph of narrative and research. Todman explains complex issues of strategy and economics clearly while never losing sight of the human consequences--at home and abroad--of the way that Britain fought its war. It is the definitive account of a drama which reshaped Great Britain and the world.
Download or read book World War II A Very Short Introduction written by Gerhard L. Weinberg and published by OUP Oxford. This book was released on 2014-11-13 with total page 153 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The enormous loss of life and physical destruction caused by the First World War led people to hope that there would never be another such catastrophe. How then did it come about that there was a Second World War causing twice the 30 million deaths and many times more destruction as had been caused in the previous conflict? In this Very Short Introduction, Gerhard L. Weinberg provides an introduction to the origins, course, and impact of the war on those who fought and the ordinary citizens who lived through it. Starting by looking at the inter-war years and the German invasion of Poland in September 1939, he examines how the war progressed by examining a number of key events, including the war in the West in 1940, Barbarossa, The German Invasion of the Soviet Union, the expansion of Japan's war with China, developments on the home front, and the Allied victory from 1944-45. Exploring the costs and effects of the war, Weinberg concludes by considering the long-lasting mark World War II has left on society today. ABOUT THE SERIES: The Very Short Introductions series from Oxford University Press contains hundreds of titles in almost every subject area. These pocket-sized books are the perfect way to get ahead in a new subject quickly. Our expert authors combine facts, analysis, perspective, new ideas, and enthusiasm to make interesting and challenging topics highly readable.
Download or read book The Indian Army 1939 47 written by Patrick Rose and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-03-03 with total page 257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The sheer size and influence of the British Indian Army, and its major role in the Allied War effort between 1939 and 1945 on behalf of a country from which it was seeking independence, maintains its fascination as a subject for a wide variety of historians. This volume presents a range of papers examining the Indian Army experience from the outbreak of world war in 1939 to the partition of India in 1947. With contributions from many of those at the forefront of the study of the Indian Army and Commonwealth history, the book focuses upon a period of Indian Army history not well covered by modern scholarship. As such it makes a substantial contribution across a range of subject areas, presenting a compendium of chapters examining Indian Army participation in the Second World War from North Africa to Burma, plus a variety of other topics including the evolution of wartime training, frontier operations, Churchill and the Indian Army, the Army's role in the development of post-war British counterinsurgency practice, and of particular note, several chapters examining aspects of the partition in 1947. As such, the book offers a fascinating insight into one of the most important yet least understood military forces of the twentieth century. It will be of interest not only to those seeking a fuller understanding of past campaigns, but also to those wishing to better understand the development and ethos of the present day military forces of the Indian subcontinent.
Download or read book Fighting the People s War written by Jonathan Fennell and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2019-01-24 with total page 967 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Jonathan Fennell captures for the first time the true wartime experience of the ordinary soldiers from across the empire who made up the British and Commonwealth armies. He analyses why the great battles were won and lost and how the men that fought went on to change the world.
Download or read book The Empire Has An Answer written by Tony James Brady and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2019-06-05 with total page 357 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: ‘If we do not win the battle of training, we shall win no other battle in the air.’ In 1943 the Royal Air Force recognised that training a vast amount of aircrew for a high attrition war was essential to an Allied victory, and that the key to winning the ‘battle of training’ was the Empire Air Training Scheme (EATS). 37,576 Australian aircrew graduated from the EATS. Over 300 were killed whilst training for war and 9874 aircrew were killed or listed as missing while on active duty. Those who fought under this scheme during World War II amounted to just 6.7 per cent of Australian service personnel serving overseas yet the aircrew losses amounted to almost 25 per cent of all the Australian fatalities during the war. This made serving in EATS among the most hazardous duties of the war. The Empire has an Answer was researched using more than 35 000 articles, from 150 metropolitan, regional, and district newspapers, and what materialised was a story of one of, if not, the greatest training programs the world has seen. Follow the journey from the conception and implementation of the scheme, through recruitment and basic training, flight training, and then into combat. The individual accounts woven into the narrative provide a first-hand experience of the triumphs and trials of typical airmen and airwomen who performed extraordinary feats in a time of great need. The significant achievements and success of the Empire Air Training Scheme has for the most part been overlooked in our history, until now.
Download or read book The Decision to Invade North Africa TORCH written by Leo J. Meyer and published by . This book was released on 1990 with total page 32 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
