cover information:

ABOUT The Desert Generals

" ... a well-documented and important contribution to the history of World War II. The plain-speaking text is supplemented by . . . numerous sketches which enable the reader to grasp the battle plans."--St. Louis Post-Dispatch

"The Desert Generals is brilliant biography and history, stimulating and exciting and quite naturally, controversial. . . . Here are the battles, in detail and on the broad canvas of the desert, the men and their decisions, heartbreak and victory."--Chicago Sunday Tribune

" ... a vivid presentation of the whole war in North Africa; of the exactions imposed by the desert's bleakness and its extent; of the ingenuity with which handicaps were created and overcome; of the massive errors in Rome and Berlin as well as in London; of the tremendous stakes in the struggle. None of the familiar earlier books on this subject has presented the whole picture so fully and readably."---Saturday Review

"Extraordinary fine piece of military research and writing.... It should be widely read...."---Army

THE DESERT CAMPAIGN OF 1940-43 is a story unique in the annals of warfare. In the wastelands of Libya and Egypt, men of ten nations strove for victory amid the mechanical tumult of a kind of battle never seen before, a fierce combat of tanks and guns and men with few roads or towns or civilians to interfere. It was war in its purest --- and most deadly --form.

The German leader was Field-Marshall Erwin Rommel, the wily Desert Fox, a master of the lightning attack and strategic withdrawal. On the British side was a succession of five generals, O'Connor, Cunningham, Ritchie, Auchinleck and Montgomery. This is the story of these five men, of their triumphs and defeats, their strengths and weaknesses, their day-to-day struggles which led to the final, crushing victory.

AUTHOR'S PREFACE

The theme of this book is the struggle of individual will against circumstance. The subject matter is human character. In these five uncommon men during the Desert Campaigns, as in the condensed action of a tragedy, were displayed nobility, frailty, resolution, loyalty, indecision, vanity, fear, simplicity, selfishness, greatness and littleness. The creation of literary portraits of living men is both easier and more difficult than with the dead. Some things that are known cannot be written; other things will not be known until death has opened all private records. Yet to meet and talk with the subjects of the portraiture and with their friends and colleagues is to gain vivid and detailed impressions that no correspondence of the dead, however copious, can yield. The shaping of these various impressions into accurate pictures is a complex process, They have to be balanced against one another, against the author's own judgment of the main subjects, and against his own impression of each witness.

Apart from human character, the Desert Campaign has other fascinations. There is the pleasure of seeking out the truth; there is the excitement of watching two men fight a battle, possibly the most complete human activity, since generalship involves all the intellectual, physical and moral power in a man. Historically, the Desert Campaign constitutes the last act of the British Empire as a great independent, and united, power. It ironically epitomises the suicide of the old Europe: today neither German, Italian nor Briton controls the Middle East for which they fought so bitterly. Again the Desert Campaign reveals clearly the twentieth-century national characters and talents of Germany and Britain---and confounds accepted images. The methods of thinking, organising and fighting of each side also adumbrate their industrial and commercial methods in the post-war era.

Yet, above all, the Desert Campaign of 1940-43 is an addition to the great epics. It is the story, set in the wasteland, of how the men of ten nations strove for victory amid the mechanical tumult of a kind of battle never seen before, and likely never to be seen again.

CORRELLI BARNETT

CONTENTS

Author's Preface Acknowledgments List of Sketch Maps PART I. THE FORGOTTEN VICTOR General Sir Richard O'Connor, G.C.B., D.S.O., M.C. Chapter One Chapter Two Chapter Three PART II. THE BLUNT BATTLEAXE An Interlude PART III. THE PRICE OF DUTY General Sir Alan Cunningham, G.C.M.G., K.C.B., D.S.O., M.C. Chapter One Chapter Two PART IV. THE IMAGE OF A GENERAL General Sir Neil Ritchie, G.B.E., K.C.B., D.S.O., M.C. Chapter One Chapter Two Chapter Three THE VICTOR OF ALAMEIN Field-Marshal Sir Claude J. E. Auchinleck, G.C.B., G.C.I.E., C.S.I., D.S.O., O.B.E., LL.D. Chapter One Chapter Two Chapter Three Chapter Four PART VI. MILITARY MESSIAH Field-Marshal The Viscount Montgomery of Alamein, K.G., G.C.B., D.S.O. Chapter One Chapter Two Chapter Three Sources Appendices work under copyright copies may be available at: