Some Desert War books to check out for the coming weeks

Hi all,

With Rommel coming into play I thought it would be helpful to start a thread on useful texts to help everyone out so they can follow the Desert War as it starts to heat up.

Here are a couple of great Osprey Publishings which you can get electronic copies of online. The are great reads that include orders of battles for both sides, clear and easy to follow maps, and some great illustrations of key events.

Operation Compass: Wavell’s Whirlwind Offensive

Yes, Compass is over but this is too good of a book to miss. This is a quick read that will get you up to speed on what’s happened up until now and will get you set for Rommel’s upcoming offensive.

Tobruk 1941: Rommel’s Opening Move

Here’s where things get fun. This great little book setups up the opening phase of the campaign from the end of this month all the way through the spring and summer and into August. It follows Rommel’s opening strike, the siege of Tobruk itself, and into the British counter punches of Operations Brevity and Battleaxe.

A superb support to these two books would be Barrie Pitt’s excellent series: The Crucible of War. This is a three volume set written by a veteran of the campaign who had access to many of its important figures like General O’Conner, Walther Nehring, and others. His books shed a lot of light on details that the Osprey books can’t touch on and he does so with a very engaging prose. The actual books are better, IMO, than the Amazon Kindle, but they can be hard to find and rather expensive. Besides, if you have the Osprey books then you have all of the maps that you really need.

https://www.amazon.com/Crucible-War-Complete-Volumes-ebook/dp/B07WGHDLXV/ref=sr_1_1?qid=1583111727&refinements=p_27%3ABarrie+Pitt&s=digital-text&sr=1-1&text=Barrie+Pitt

Feel free to toss in other book suggestions. It’s so much fun to follow the war in “real time” and it’s even better to find new accounts of the conflict so please share what treasures you have.

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Britain’s Desert War in Egypt and Libya by David Braddock (Timeghost team uses it from time to time)
The Life And Death of Afrikakorps by Roland Levin
8th Army by Robin Niellands
Rommel’s Desert War by Martin Kitchen
Early Victories of 8th Army by Adrian Stewart
Greatest Victories of Eighth Army by Adrian Stewart (Adrian Stewart is almost master reasoning and analysing victories defeats failures and triumphs of British Commonwealth Desert Army)
Pendelum of War , Three Battles of Alamein (forgotten the writer but a very good book covers all campaigns in North Africa in 1941-1942 very well)

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And for something different, a woman’s view on the war in the desert:

Tomorrow to be brave, biography of Susan Travers, the only woman to serve with the French Foreign Legion, official driver of General Koenig, was present during the Bir Hakeim siege at the Battle of Gazala, May-June 1942.

https://www.amazon.com/Tomorrow-Be-Brave-Memoir-Foreign/dp/0743200012/

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