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34 of 34 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A Great Book on a Great Battle, June 12, 2005
The war in the desert during the Second World War has been the source of renewed interest in recent times, not just from the British, who always had great fondness for it, but elsewhere as well. A number of books have appeared but this one is the best. drawing on recent scholarship, it explains how and why this battle was fought.
The war in the desert during the Second World War has been the source of renewed interest in recent times, not just from the British, who always had great fondness for it but elsewhere as well. A number of books have appeared but this one is the very best. Drawing on recent scholarship, it explains how and why this battle was fought.
As the title says, there were three battles in 1942 around El Alamein, which was not a town but a railway stop in the desert. The first, in July 1942, is known as the First Battle of Alamein and was the battle at which the British Eighth Army halted the German and Italian advance into Egypt. The second, in August, known as the Battle of Alam Halfa, saw the defeat of Rommel's attempt to break through. The third, and most famous, in November, was the Second Battle of Alamein, in which the German-Italian Panzerarmee was defeated and forced to retreat from Egypt and Libya.
Prior to the fighting at El Alamein, the British Eight Army was spectacularly defeated by Rommel at the Battles of Gazala and Mersa Matruh. Barr explains how the Eighth Army was handicapped by poor leadership, faulty tactics and inadequate equipment. One might think that the Eighth Army turned the situation around by changing these factors but, as Barr shows, there was no time for this. The First Battle of Alamein was won in spite of these factors, through hard fighting.
Barr goes into the nuts and bolts of the fighting. He expertly explains the tactics of both sides and how these were determined by their weapons. He goes into the details of the all-important logistics, which alone explains how the two armies were able to fight in the desert. The importance of the storemen and mechanics is underlined. Nor is the important role of the air and naval forces in the fighting ignored.
He goes into the critical role of intelligence, particularly <span style="font-variant: small-caps">Ultra</span> - intelligence gathered from codebreaking activities. Barr does not flinch from explaining that the Germans had broken the American codes and Rommel was receiving first rate intelligence from the American liaison officer. He also tells of the much-neglected signals intelligence - listening in to radio traffic, both friendly and enemy - and the vital edge that it gave to Rommel, at least until his signal unit was destroyed by the 9th Australian Division.
It's easy for a historian to record that Lieutenant General L. J. Moreshead's 9th Australian Division was the Eighth Army's best division but Barr explains exactly why this was the case. In writing the book, he travelled to Australia and New Zealand and was rewarded not only with detailed documents about their national forces but translations of German and Italian documents.
A curiosity of El Alamein is that the reputation of the defeated Rommel remains solid but that of the two victorious Eighth Army commanders, General Sir C. Auchinleck and Lieutenant General B. L. Montgomery, remains controversial. Barr is critical of both, as well as Auchinleck's eccentric and controversial deputy chief of staff, Major General E. Dorman-Smith. while attempting a rehabilitation of Lieutenant General W. H. E. Gott, who was killed by the Luftwaffe on the brink of assuming command of the Eighth Army.
You will not find a better account of this battle than this one.
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21 of 21 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
AN IMPORTANT ADDITION TO MILITARY HISTORY, May 2, 2005
Those with an interest in and knowledge of battle history will find an eye opener in Niall Barr's account of a pivotal battle in World War II, the battle of El Alamein. A Senior Lecturer in Defense Studies at Kings College London Barr has published prolifically in the field of military history. In addition, he is respected for the tours he conducts of battlefields, among them three to El Alamein.
A prodigious researcher, he presents much original proof in support of his theses. His sources include official documents from British, Australian and New Zealand as well as translated German material. His narrative is more than just a history as it is often presented in first-person accounts, bringing the North African campaign to vivid life.
While the Alamein campaign has been presented as very much a contest between Britain's Montgomery and Field Marshal Erwin Rommel, the author posits that this approach has only muddied the true story of this campaign.
"Pendulum of War" covers the fighting in 1942 from July to November. This followed the British army's disheartening rout by Rommel's Panzerarmee Afrika at the Libyan town of Tobruk. We read that this defeat puzzled Churchill and other observers: "During May, when the two armies had confronted one another along the line of defences which the British had built stretching from Ain el Gazala near the coast to Bir Hacheim in the far desert, the odds had seemed to favour the British. Yet this was only the most recent astonishing reversal of fortune that had taken place in nearly two years of war in the desert."
Barr posits that this army learned from bitter defeats and was able to forge itself into troops capable of overcoming their enemy, the dreaded Afrika Korps. He pokes holes into some of the theories that have long been advanced re Eight Army leaders, Generals Auchinleck and Montgomery, and delves deeply into desert warfare tactics. His account is bolstered by maps, appendices, and a lengthy bibliography.
"Pendulum of War is fine reading and an important addition to the archives of military history.
- Gail Cooke
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15 of 15 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
An Excellent Military History, December 26, 2005
Niall Barr, a professor at King's College in London, has written an excellent military history of the three battles fought at El Alamein in Pendulum of War. Barr's narrative includes far more detail about the three battles (First El Alamein, Alam Halfa and Second Alamein) that decided the seesaw struggle between the German Afrika Korps and the Commonwealth 8th Army. This history is well organized, well argued, impressively documented and abounds with new details and analysis about a well-known subject. Pendulum of War is highly recommended for military officers or historians who wish to read a good case study of how armies transform themselves in wartime.
Pendulum of War consists of 19 chapters that trace the operations of the 8th Army from the fall of Tobruk in July 1942 to the pursuit of the Afrika Korps after Operation "Supercharge" in November 1942. Four appendices cover several key 8th Army planning documents and 24 maps complement the narrative. The author is meticulous and covers virtually everything, although unlike Jon Latimer's recent book on El Alamein, Barr does not include an order of battle. However, Barr is to be commended for his even-handedness and objectivity, particularly involving his analysis of the relative contributions of the 8th Army's two commanders in this period - Auchinleck and Montgomery. Barr does not defend either man's faults (although I think he goes a bit easy on Montgomery at times) and concludes that Auchinleck's basic plans for fighting at El Alamein were sound, but his command of 8th Army was less effective and less sure than Montgomery's.
Readers will find the first half of the book, somewhat different from the standard histories that have been heretofore available on this subject. While other histories acknowledge that the 8th Army often suffered heavily at the hands of the Afrika Korps, Barr makes clear that such a view is an understatement. Operations such as "Bacon," "Splendour" and "Manhood" rarely get much mention, but Barr expertly details how these fumbling attempts by 8th Army to stop the victorious Afrika Korps ended in one disaster after another. Indeed, before the decisive Second Battle of El Alamein, 8th Army had frittered away much of its infantry in near futile small-scale counterattacks. Military professionals will be surprised to see the planning and execution of brigade-size night attacks that expected the Commonwealth infantry to advance 6-10 kilometers at night through minefields and then seize a fortified position. Amazingly, the Commonwealth forces (particularly the ANZACs) proved quite adept at night infantry attacks, but time and again they were unable to consolidate on the position before the inevitable German counterattacks. Indeed, it is hard to view the British performance in July 1942 as clumsy and it is amazing to see how often the same mistakes were repeated.
In the run up to Second El Alamein, Barr spends a gratifying amount of time examining even possible facet of the coming battle, including the engineer effort, the evolving British artillery tactics (the introduction of the coordinated corps shoot, known as a "stonk"), logistics and intelligence. Barr argues that despite its faulty tactics in the early July battles, the 8th Army evolved into a battle-wise force by October, while the Afrika Korps never adapted to its changing opponent (this is contentious, given that the Afrika Korps escaped its pursuers). Unlike most histories, Barr claims that 8th Army never actually achieved a breakthrough during the final days of "Supercharge" but that it was Axis counterattacks that finally consumed the Afrika Korps meager resources. Barr's coverage of the Axis point of view is somewhat less in this book, with more emphasis on the internal decisions within 8th Army, but he is able to convey the growing hopelessness of the Axis position. Overall, this is certainly one of the very best books on this subject available.
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