Pendulum of War: The Three Battles of El Alamein Reprint Edition

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.

This is a first-rate account of the crucial battle of El Alemein, in which the British prevented Rommel's Afrika Corps from taking over Egypt and the vital Suez Canal. But Pendulum of War, while exciting and even something of a page turner, is very much an account of military tactics and strategy.

It sticks closely to the detailed maneuvering of the fighting. This occasionally get so complicated that it is easy for a lay reader gets confused or lost. Niall Barr sticks to the warfare. He does not stray into peripheral subjects: there are few human interest accounts of the lives of individual soldiers and relatively little material concerning the larger political context of the war. The narrative also centers almost entirely on the British side, so that one occasionally wishes to know more about the Axis's thinking and planning.

Pendulum of War is nonetheless an absorbing and authoritative account of El Alemein, the justly famous desert battle which proved so important a turning point in World War II.

I spent three years of my childhood in Tripoli, Libya during the 60s. At that time the North African campaign of World War II fascinated me, because the battles were fought nearby. The sixth grade boys at school talked about the German caves in our area where the Nazis had supposedly stored their supplies during the war to avoid Allied air attacks. And one time a boy brought a badly rusted German helmet to school. His father had found it in the desert while working on the oilrigs.

I read Niall Barr's book to finally learn more about the North African campaign. The book is dry reading, at first. It starts out slowly and methodically. It is not a book I would recommend to the casual reader. But it is phenomenal because it explains, in great detail, just how the British Army went from a string of defeats to victory. Along the way Barr dispels myths surrounding Montgomery and Rommel and backs his assertions with detailed references. After reading the book I felt that I had taken a course at Royal Military Academy Sandhurst.

Examples of what I learned: In May, 1942, the British captured German 75mm armor-piercing ammunition and modified it to fire in their American Grant tanks. The modified shells were superior to the American 75mm ammunition designed for the tank. Later the ammunition was re-captured by the Germans. At one point, 85% of the trucks used by the German Army were captured from the British.

The Australians captured a German intelligence company that had been supplying Rommel with accurate information gleaned from British radio traffic. Rommel was furious because with the loss of that company went his legendary "battlefield intuition."

Barr explains that one of the greatest lessons learned by the Eighth Army was intricate support between artillery, armor, and infantry. That was General Auchinleck's concept, not Montgomery's.

Great book

I haven't read all there is to read about El Alamein but I have read some accounts, including Montgomery's own and that found in the "Monty" biography by Hamilton. I found this book to be of great value in its analysis of the strengths, and many weaknesses, of the Eighth Army and the lessons learned. His detailed explanation of the individual units maneuvers also brought the battle down to earth and illustrated what Montgomery's contributions really were to the campaign. He gives Monty his due but knocks him down to size, which is very refreshing. I also appreciated the specifics of his conclusion that many of the lessons learned by the Eighth Army in the Desert Campign were inapplicable to its future campaigns and his explanation of the lessons that were transferable. Very well written with much detail but not so as to be unapproachable or "technical" in the bad sense.