32.9°N 13.2°E North Africa North Africa Campaign
Briefing
From 1940 to 1943 the desert war swung back and forth across Libya and Egypt as Rommel's Afrika Korps duelled the British Eighth Army over supply lines and oil. The British victory at El Alamein in late 1942 and the Anglo-American Torch landings caught the Axis in a vice, ending with the surrender of over 250,000 Axis troops in Tunisia in May 1943 — the US Army's first hard schooling against the Wehrmacht.
Books Covering This Event (8)
Popular History
The first volume of the Liberation Trilogy, covering the US Army's education in North Africa.
The authorized history of the SAS — misfits and poets blowing up airfields behind Rommel's lines.
Historical Fiction
Three soldiers — two American, one German — converge across the whole war toward a single clearing in Bavaria.
A darkly comic novel about a bombardier trapped by the absurd logic of military bureaucracy.
A burned man in a ruined Italian villa, a Canadian nurse, a Sikh sapper, and a thief — four lives wrecked by the desert war.
Memoir
Pyle's first collection — the green American army learning war in the North African desert.
The Supreme Commander's own account of the war in the West, from Torch to the German surrender.
The Desert Fox's own campaign narratives and letters, recovered after his forced suicide and edited by Liddell Hart.