Download or read book The Battle for North Africa written by Glyn Harper and published by Indiana University Press. This book was released on 2017-06-06 with total page 301 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “A well-researched and highly readable account of one of World War II’s most important ‘turning point’ battles.” —Jerry D. Morelock, Senior Editor at HistoryNet.com In the early years of World War II, Germany shocked the world with a devastating blitzkrieg, rapidly conquered most of Europe, and pushed into North Africa. As the Allies scrambled to counter the Axis armies, the British Eighth Army confronted the experienced Afrika Corps, led by German field marshal Erwin Rommel, in three battles at El Alamein. In the first battle, the Eighth Army narrowly halted the advance of the Germans during the summer of 1942. However, the stalemate left Nazi troops within striking distance of the Suez Canal, which would provide a critical tactical advantage to the controlling force. War historian Glyn Harper dives into the story, vividly narrating the events, strategies, and personalities surrounding the battles and paying particular attention to the Second Battle of El Alamein, a crucial turning point in the war that would be described by Winston Churchill as “the end of the beginning.” Moving beyond a simple narrative of the conflict, The Battle for North Africa tackles critical themes, such as the problems of coalition warfare, the use of military intelligence, the role of celebrity generals, and the importance of an all-arms approach to modern warfare.

Download or read book Alamein written by Simon Ball and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2016-08-17 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: El Alamein was one of the pivotal battles of the Second World War, fought by armies and air forces on the cutting edge of military technology. Yet Alamein has always had a patchy reputation - with many commentators willing to knock its importance. This book explains just why El Alamein is such a controversial battle. Based on an intensive reading of the contemporary sources, in particular the extensive and recently declassified British bugging of Axis prisoners of war, military historian Simon Ball turns Alamein on its head, explaining it as a cultural defeat for Britain. Alamein is a military history of the battle - showing how different it looks stripped of later cultural excrescences. But it also shows how 'Alamein culture' saturated the post-war world, when archival sources mingled with film, novels, magazines, popular histories, and the rest of Alamein's footprint. Whether you are interested in the battle itself or its cultural afterlife, if you have an opinion about Alamein, you'll question it after reading this book.

Download or read book The Greatest Battles in History written by Charles River Charles River Editors and published by Createspace Independent Publishing Platform. This book was released on 2018-02-13 with total page 92 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: *Includes pictures. *Discusses both the First and Second Battle of El Alamein. *Includes accounts of the fighting by soldiers and important generals. *Includes a bibliography for further reading. "The desert was quivering with heat. The gun detachments and the platoons squatted in their pits and trenches, the sweat running in rivers down their dust-caked faces. There was a terrible stench. The flies swarmed in black clouds upon the dead bodies and excreta and tormented the wounded. 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." - Cecil Ernest Lucas-Phillips "It may almost be said, 'Before Alamein we never had a victory. After Alamein we never had a defeat.'" - Winston Churchill The United States began 1942 determined to avenge Pearl Harbor, but the Allies, now including the Soviet Union by necessity, did not agree on war strategy. In 1941, both the Germans and British had moved armies into North Africa, where Italy had already tried and failed to reach the Suez Canal, and the British sought American help in North Africa, where British General Bernard Montgomery was fighting the legendary "Desert Fox," General Erwin Rommel. At the same time, Stalin was desperate for Allied action on the European continent that could free up the pressure on the besieged Soviets. Roosevelt eventually sided with Churchill and decided to land American forces on North Africa to assist the British against Rommel, much to Stalin's chagrin. With the Axis forces trying to push through Egypt towards the Suez Canal and the British Mandate of Palestine, American forces landed to their west in North Africa, which ultimately compelled Rommel to try to break through before the Allies could build up and overwhelm them with superior numbers. Given that the combined Allied forces under Montgomery already had an advantage in manpower, Montgomery also wanted to be aggressive, and the fighting would start in late October 1942 with an Allied attack. At Alamein, 195,000 troops in 11 divisions faced off against 50,000 Germans (four divisions) and 54,000 Italians (eight divisions), where they were able to use their superior numbers and weapons to defeat the Axis troops. 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 Second Battle of El Alamein was a turning point in the two-year conflict between Allied forces and a combined German-Italian force in North Africa. 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. The Greatest Battles in History: The Battle of El Alamein comprehensively covers the entire military situation that led up to the two battles of El Alamein, analyzes the decisions made by the battles' most important leaders, and explains the aftermath of the Allied victory. Along with a bibliography and pictures of important people and places, you will learn about El Alamein like never before, in no time at all.

Download or read book El Alamein written by Bryn Hammond and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2012-06-20 with total page 516 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: El Alamein, Britain's victory in the deserts of North Africa in 1942, was the first major reversal of fortunes for Hitler's Third Reich. Before the Battle of El Alamein in 1942, the British had never won a major battle on land against the Germans; nor indeed had anyone else. Drawing on a remarkable array of first-hand accounts, this book reveals the personal experiences of those on the frontline and provides fascinating details of how the war was actually fought. It also includes analysis of the strategic decisions made by the generals. El Alamein is the story of exactly how a seemingly beaten and demoralized army turned near-defeat into victory in a little over four months of protracted and bloody fighting in the harsh North African desert.

Download or read book Battle Story El Alamein 1942 written by Pier Paolo Battistelli and published by The History Press. This book was released on 2011-09-30 with total page 138 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Second Battle of El Alamein marked a major turning point in the Western Desert Campaign of the Second World War. El Alamein saw tow of the greatest generals of the war pitted against each other: Rommel and Montgomery. Through key profiles and a chapter devoted to 'The Armies' Battle Story: El Alamein explores what made these men inspired leaders and what led to their respective defeat and victory. Montgomery's success ensured that the Axis army was unable to occupy Egypt and therefore gain control of the Suez Canal or the Middle Eastern oil fields, thereby preventing a major source of income and power for them. The background and impact of the battle are explored in separate chapters, so offering the reader a clear insight into why what happened in this remote part of Egypt was so central to the Allied cause. Through quotes and maps the text explore the unfolding action of the battle and puts the reader on the frontline. If you truly want to understand what happened and why - read Battle Story.

Download or read book What Ifs of Jewish History written by Gavriel D. Rosenfeld and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2016-09-08 with total page 419 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Counterfactual history of the Jewish past inviting readers to explore how the course of Jewish history might have been different.

Download or read book Alamein written by C E Lucas Phillips and published by Sapere Books. This book was released on 2021-04-19 with total page 494 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 'Quite the best detailed story of that great battle I have ever read ... a superb book' Field Marshal Montgomery The perfect book for those who enjoy the work of James Holland, Ian W. Toll and Anthony Beevor. The Second Battle of El Alamein was a crucial turning point in the Second World War. In the words of Winston Churchill: 'It may almost be said: "Before Alamein we never had a victory. After Alamein, we never had a defeat".' How had Bernard Montgomery and the Eighth Army been able to turn back the might of Rommel's Axis forces? Alamein uncovers the actions of Allied and Axis forces before and during the ferocious battle in vivid detail. It explains who the commanders were, what forces they had, how they were arranged and what strategies were used by both sides to try to defeat their enemies. C. E. Lucas Phillips fought in the battle as a commander of one of Montgomery's regiments. Yet, his account is not simply that of an eyewitness, instead, using a variety of personal and official sources, he provides a thorough overview of the conflict. 'Absorbing and inspiring' Daily Telegraph 'He has drawn upon a considerable body of personal diaries, letters, narratives and interviews from which come significant details.' Army Magazine 'A crisply written account of the action that turned the tide of war in North Africa in 1942.' Military Review 'this is an excellent and possibly definitive work.' Kirkus Reviews

Download or read book Great Battles of World War II written by Ole Steen Hansen and published by Raintree. This book was released on 2001 with total page 68 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Great Battles of World War II examines the political decisions, military strategy, and human cost of the war's bloodiest battles. Begun in Europe in 1939 in response to Hitler's invasion of Poland, the war soon escalated into a truly global conflict. How did the Allies win early military victories in the Mediterranean and Pacific? What was the nature of the fighting in Eastern Europe? What was the impact of the U.S. and Japan entering the war? How did the Allies win back Nazi-occupied territories? Answers to these questions are provided along with analyses of the most important battles of World War II-- in North Africa, in the Pacific, on the Eastern front, in the Atlantic, and at Normandy. Learn about the military maneuvers and tactics that determined the outcome of World War II.

Download or read book The Allure of Battle written by Cathal Nolan and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2017-01-02 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: History has tended to measure war's winners and losers in terms of its major engagements, battles in which the result was so clear-cut that they could be considered "decisive." Cannae, Konigsberg, Austerlitz, Midway, Agincourt-all resonate in the literature of war and in our imaginations as tide-turning. But these legendary battles may or may not have determined the final outcome of the wars in which they were fought. Nor has the "genius" of the so-called Great Captains - from Alexander the Great to Frederick the Great and Napoleon - play a major role. Wars are decided in other ways. Cathal J. Nolan's The Allure of Battle systematically and engrossingly examines the great battles, tracing what he calls "short-war thinking," the hope that victory might be swift and wars brief. As he proves persuasively, however, such has almost never been the case. Even the major engagements have mainly contributed to victory or defeat by accelerating the erosion of the other side's defences. Massive conflicts, the so-called "people's wars," beginning with Napoleon and continuing until 1945, have consisted of and been determined by prolonged stalemate and attrition, industrial wars in which the determining factor has been not military but matériel. Nolan's masterful book places battles squarely and mercilessly within the context of the wider conflict in which they took place. In the process it help corrects a distorted view of battle's role in war, replacing popular images of the "battles of annihilation" with somber appreciation of the commitments and human sacrifices made throughout centuries of war particularly among the Great Powers. Accessible, provocative, exhaustive, and illuminating, The Allure of Battle will spark fresh debate about the history and conduct of warfare.

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 Battles of El Alamein written by Ben Skipper and published by Pen and Sword Military. This book was released on 2022-03-18 with total page 226 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The early battles of North Africa between the Axis powers and the British Commonwealth and her European allies were among the very last clashes of chivalry. At the small town of El Alamein belligerents met and fought, on two occasions, for overall control of both Egypt and the Suez in the latter half of 1942. For the Allies, the battles were also a chance to destroy Axis ambitions in the Western Desert, while gaining mastery of the Mediterranean and a foothold in Southern Europe. The two battles, in July, and October to November 1942, were to see men and equipment tested to the very limit of their capabilities. They were also the first major battles where Allied intelligence and all arms planning played a key part in defeating an experienced adversary. These battles would cement the two armies' and their commanders' reputations in perpetuity and sows the seeds for the steady defeat of the Axis in the West. This Battle Craft title also looks at four pieces of military hardware that were involved in these legendary battles. Representing the land forces are the Crusader and Panzer III, both working to the limits of their designs and already legends in their own rights. The Desert Air Force’s Curtiss P40Es and the Luftwaffe’s Messerschmitt Bf109 Es represent the battle for air superiority that raged overhead. The Quartermaster section provides the modeler with an insight into the development and operational use of the four chosen vehicles and aircraft that were involved in the Battles of El Alamein. A selection of historical and contemporary photos and illustrations feature alongside stunning showcase builds, providing the modeler with subjects to whet the creative appetite. It also features details of model kits and extras that can really help the modeler bring military history to life.

Download or read book The Battle of El Alamein written by Fred Majdalany and published by University of Pennsylvania Press. This book was released on 2003-02-11 with total page 180 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Majdalany recounts the battle with the clarity of full comprehension."--

Download or read book Alamein written by Stephen Bungay and published by White Lion Publishing. This book was released on 2002 with total page 298 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the struggle against Hitler, each of Britain's armed forces fought a battle it had to win. For the Royal Air Force it was the Battle of Britain. For the Royal Navy it was the Battle of the Atlantic. And for the army it was El Alamein. In 1940 the Battle of Britain had kept Britain in the war, only for two years of almost unrelieved disaster to follow: humiliating defeats in Greece and the Far East, and the seemingly inexorable German advance into the Soviet Union. By the summer of 1942 documents were even being burned in Cairo, as Germany's brilliant celebrity general Erwin Rommel threatened to sweep aside the Eighth Army and drive his forces through to the Suez Canal. But then in October 1942, with Churchill's government in desperate need of a military victory, British and Common-wealth troops under Montgomery embarked on a First World War-style battle of attrition in Egypt's Western Desert. After twelve days and thirteen nights they broke through the German and Italian lines at El Alamein. It was a defeat from which Rommel would never recover, and a turning-point in the war famously celebrated by Churchill as 'the end of the beginning' -- the line in the sand Hitler's forces were unable ever to cross. Like his magisterial history of the Battle of Britain, The Most Dangerous Enemy -- already acknowledged as the definitive account -- Stephen Bungay's Alamein is a trenchant re-examination of an event now cloaked in myth. Though the propaganda of the time focussed on personalities, this was a desert war, he reveals, determined largely by logistics. In a conflict that for two years had ebbed and flowed along the North African littoral, victory was always going to go to the side that mastered its supply lines -- in Britain's case not least by withstanding the epic siege of Malta. He also gets beyond the polemics and eulogies of many past writers in re-assessing Alamein's chief protagonists, Montgomery and Rommel, to show how it was precisely the most unattractive side of Montgomery's character that was needed to transform the Eighth Army into a force capable of fighting a battle it could win. But above all Alamein is a magnificently readable narrative illuminating every aspect of the desert war, from the grand strategy of the wider struggle for control of the Mediterranean to the movingly human, in a graphic evocation of the phantasmagoric blur of thunderous cannonade, baking heat and tormenting flies that was the soldier's war. In the year of the sixtieth anniversary of Alamein, this superb book is a gripping re-telling of one of the crucial battles of the war. Book jacket.

Download or read book Great Battles The Battle of Alamein written by Colin Smith and published by Penguin UK. This book was released on 2011-12-01 with total page 112 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Penguin Specials are designed to fill a gap. Written to be read over a long commute or a short journey, they are original and exclusively in digital form. In this Special, Colin Smith and John Bierman make the battle of Alamein come alive. A turning point in the Second World War, the battle of El Alamein was the culmination of a military campaign like no other. Fought across desolate arid terrain, the brutal fighting was matched by a camaraderie and respect between enemies as witnessed in no other theatre of war. Combining gritty personal testimonies with thorough journalistic investigation, John Bierman and Colin Smith present a compelling account of a ferocious but compassionate battle and a journey through the unforgiving North African landscape.

Download or read book Rommel s Afrika Korps written by George Bradford and published by Stackpole Books. This book was released on 2008-10-21 with total page 208 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Portrait of this famous World War II unit at the height of its success Completely illustrated with photos, maps, and diagrams--in color where available In the sands of the Western Desert in 1941-42, Erwin Rommel made history as the Desert Fox, waging a brilliant and bold campaign against the British. Beginning at El Agheila in March 1941, the Afrika Korps--frequently outnumbered--drove the British steadily east across Libya and into Egypt. The German offensive eventually ground to a halt in a series of battles at El Alamein. In impressive detail, George Bradford depicts what it was like to serve and fight in the Afrika Korps, from its tanks and equipment to its battles and daily life.

Download or read book Patriots from the Barrio written by Dave Gutierrez and published by Westholme Publishing. This book was released on 2019 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Named One of the 24 Best History Books of All Time by Book Riot The Inspiring True Story of a Segregated Unit Whose Exploits Underscore the Forgotten Latino Contribution to the Allied Victory in World War II As a child, Dave Gutierrez hung on every word his father recalled about his cousin Ramon, "El Sancudo" (the mosquito), and his service in World War II, where he earned a Silver Star, three Purple Hearts, and escaped from the Germans twice. Later, Dave decided to find out more about his father's cousin, and in the course of his research he discovered that Ramon Gutierrez was a member of Company E, 141st Infantry, a part of the 36th "Texas" Division that was comprised entirely of Mexican Americans--the only such unit in the entire U.S. Army. The division landed at Salerno, Italy, in 1943, among first American soldiers to set foot in Europe. In the ensuing months, Company E and the rest of the 36th would battle their way up the mountainous Italian peninsula against some of Nazi Germany's best troops. In addition to the merciless rain, mud, and jagged peaks, swift cold rivers crisscrossed the region, including the Rapido, where Company E would face its greatest challenge. In an infamous episode, the 36th Division was ordered to cross the Rapido despite reports that the opposite bank was heavily defended. In the ensuing debacle, the division was ripped apart, and Company E sustained appalling casualties. The company rebounded and made the storied landings at Anzio and ultimately invaded southern France for a final push into Germany. The men of Company E distinguished themselves as rugged fighters capable of warring amid the rubble of destroyed villages and in the devastated countryside. Based on extensive archival research and veteran and family accounts, Patriots from the Barrio: The Story of Company E, 141st Infantry: The Only All Mexican American Army Unit in World War II brings to life the soldiers whose service should never have gone unrecognized for so long. With its memorable personalities, stories of hope and immigration, and riveting battle scenes, this beautifully written book is a testament to the shared beliefs of all who have fought for the ideals of the American flag.

Download or read book El Alamein written by Philip Arthur Sauvain and published by . This book was released on 1992 with total page 32 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An account of the pivotal World War II battle in which the German and Italian forces were defeated by the Allies in North Africa.