‘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 November 8, 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 sending troops into Tunisia, setting the stage for one of the most decisive clashes of the war.

For months, the outcome was uncertain. 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 – joined forces in southern Tunisia in early April, the defeat of Axis forces was inevitable. The end came on May 13 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, along 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 recognize 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 naval power in the Mediterranean, destroyed more than 2,400 Axis aircraft (40 percent 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 called it ‘Tunisgrad’.

It was the first campaign fought by the Anglo-American alliance and would determine how and where the Allies fought for the rest of the war. It was where America first brought to bear the full weight of its industrial strength, and where the Allies learned, after early setbacks, how to defeat the Germans with a combination of air, land, and sea power. It featured many of the great commanders of World War II, including ‘Ike’ Eisenhower, George S. Patton Jr., Omar N. Bradley, Harold Alexander, Bernard Montgomery, and Erwin Rommel. But the campaign’s main significance is that it extinguished any lingering hopes in Italy that the war could be won and led, inexorably, to the dissolution of the Axis in Europe. By destroying the Axis, it marked, for Hitler, the beginning of the end.

Tunisgrad is the first comprehensive 360-degree history, told from the perspective of all the combatants, ranging from politicians and senior commanders to ordinary servicemen fighting in and over the mountains of Tunisia and across the Mediterranean. Using a variety of first-hand sources, it restores the campaign to its rightful place as a defining moment of the war.

Pages: 576, Year of Publication: 0331, Dimensions: 15.9x15.9cm