Kategoria BISAC: History >> Wars & Conflicts - World War II - Mediterranean Theater

The Mediterranean theater in World War II has long been overlooked by historians who believe it was little more than a string of small-scale battles--sideshows that were of minor importance in a war whose outcome was decided in the clashes of mammoth tank armies in northern Europe. But in this ground-breaking new book, one of our finest military historians argues that the Mediterranean was World War II's pivotal theater.

Douglas Porch examines the Mediterranean as an integrated arena, one in which events in Syria and Suez influenced the survival of Gibraltar. Without a Mediterranean...

Gazala was Rommel's greatest victory in World War II (1939-1945). After a period of stalemate in the desert war, during which both the British Eighth Army and the Afrika Korps had rested and regrouped, he carried out a daring flanking movement around the strong Allied defensive position. The British command could not match Rommel's masterly co-ordination of armor, artillery and infantry, even when encircled in an area that became known as "the Cauldron," and his outstanding generalship and a timely break-through by his Italian troops enabled him to win a clear victory after 16 days of...

Following a lull in the desert war which saw the Germans and British reinforce their armies, Rommel suddenly attacked British fortifications with an assault on the northern sector of the British line near Gazala. Pinning down the British in the north and outflanking the 1st Free French Brigade, Rommel succeeded in encircling the main British positions, trapping them in what became known as 'The Cauldron'. With thousands of British soldiers killed or taken prisoner, this was a devastating defeat for the Allies.

Accompanied by contemporary photographs and maps depicting the movement of...

Established in June 1940, as the brainchild of scientist and soldier Major Ralph Bagnold, a contemporary of Lawrence of Arabia, the Long Range Desert Group (LRDG) allowed the British Army to gain a crucial advantage in the North African Front of World War II.

Traversing great swathes of the desert that had never before been explored by Europeans, the LRDG was able to launch hit-and-run raids against remote enemy targets, such as the fort and airfield at Murzak. From December 1941 until the end of the Desert War in May 1943, the LRDG carried out numerous missions in tandem with the...

In 1940, the strategically vital island of Malta was Britain's last toehold in the central Mediterranean, wreaking havoc among Axis shipping. Launching an air campaign to knock Malta out of the war, first Italy and then Germany sought to force a surrender or reduce the defenses enough to allow an invasion.

Drawing on original documents, multilingual aviation analyst Ryan Noppen explains how technical and tactical problems caused the original Italian air campaign of 1940-41 to fail, and then how the German intervention came close to knocking Malta out of the war. Using stunning full...