Tunisgrad

The Sunday Times bestselling author's gripping new history about World War II campaigns in Africa

'Terrific – full of drama … it has profoundly altered my understanding of the Second World War' PATRICK BISHOP

FROM THE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLING AUTHOR OF SKY WARRIORS AND SBS COMES AN EPIC HISTORY OF THE ALLIED VICTORY IN NORTH AFRICA DURING THE SECOND WORLD WAR.

'Terrific – full of drama … it has profoundly altered my understanding of the Second World War' PATRICK BISHOP

FROM THE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLING AUTHOR OF SKY WARRIORS AND SBS COMES AN EPIC HISTORY OF THE ALLIED VICTORY IN NORTH AFRICA DURING THE SECOND WORLD WAR.

On 8 November 1942, British and American troops invaded French North Africa as part of Operation Torch, the largest amphibious operation of the war to date. The Germans responded by flooding troops into Tunisia and the stage was set for one of the most decisive clashes of the war.

For months the outcome hung in the balance. The Allies failed to capture Tunis before Christmas, and early in the New Year the legendary German commander Erwin Rommel ( the ‘ Desert Fox ’) inflicted a series of crushing defeats on inexperienced American troops in the mountain passes of central Tunisia. But once the two Allied armies – the First and the Eighth – had joined hands in southern Tunisia in early April, the defeat of Axis forces was inevitable. The end came on 13 May when the remnants of the First Italian Army surrendered to British troops in northern Tunisia, leaving the Allies ‘ masters of the North African shores ’.

It was, with Guadalcanal in the Pacific and Stalingrad in Russia, one of three Axis defeats in early 1943 that changed the course of the war. Historians have recognized the significance of the others, but not Tunisia which they have either ignored or characterized ( as the Americans did at the time ) as a sideshow. Yet it ended Axis sea power in the Mediterranean, destroyed more than 2,400 Axis aircraft ( 40 per cent of the Luftwaffe ’ s strength ), and resulted in the surrender of over 250,000 German and Italian troops, more than were captured at Stalingrad. Such was the scale of their defeat that the German public wryly dubbed it ‘ Tunisgrad ’.

It was...read more...