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North Africa Campaign, 1940 — historical photograph 32.9°N 13.2°E North Africa
1940 · 32.9°N 13.2°E

North Africa Campaign

North Africa · campaign · North Africa

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

An Army at Dawn cover
An Army at Dawn Rick Atkinson · 2002

The first volume of the Liberation Trilogy, covering the US Army's education in North Africa.

Intermediate
SAS: Rogue Heroes cover
SAS: Rogue Heroes Ben Macintyre · 2016

The authorized history of the SAS — misfits and poets blowing up airfields behind Rommel's lines.

Accessible

Historical Fiction

The Young Lions cover
The Young Lions Irwin Shaw · 1948

Three soldiers — two American, one German — converge across the whole war toward a single clearing in Bavaria.

Intermediate
Catch-22 cover
Catch-22 Joseph Heller · 1961

A darkly comic novel about a bombardier trapped by the absurd logic of military bureaucracy.

Intermediate
The English Patient cover
The English Patient Michael Ondaatje · 1992

A burned man in a ruined Italian villa, a Canadian nurse, a Sikh sapper, and a thief — four lives wrecked by the desert war.

Academic

Memoir

Here Is Your War cover
Here Is Your War Ernie Pyle · 1943

Pyle's first collection — the green American army learning war in the North African desert.

Accessible
Crusade in Europe cover
Crusade in Europe Dwight D. Eisenhower · 1948

The Supreme Commander's own account of the war in the West, from Torch to the German surrender.

Intermediate
The Rommel Papers cover
The Rommel Papers Erwin Rommel · 1953

The Desert Fox's own campaign narratives and letters, recovered after his forced suicide and edited by Liddell Hart.

Intermediate

Timeline Position

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