Pendulum of War: Three Battles at El Alamein

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.

The Battle of El Alamein is popularly considered a turning point of the Second World War and the making of Bernard Montgomery's reputation as a premier general. As Niall Barr documents in "Pendulum of War," the whole story is a bit more complex. El Alamein was actually a five-month campaign, in which the British Eighth Army finally stopped the advance of Rommel's Panzerarmee into Egypt, then painfully went over to the offensive. The British counter-attack in October-November 1942 was a narrow victory that owed as much to the work of Montgomery's predecessor and to the gritty resilience of the Eighth Army as it did to Montgomery's confident leadership. Barr opens his superb narrative with a brief account of the Desert War prior to July 1942, as British pushed Italian forces deep into Libya, then were themselves driven back by a German-Italian force boldy led by General Rommel and spearheaded by the legendary Afrika Corps. The Eighth Army suffered from problems common to the British Army at the beginning of the war, including rapid expansion, obsolete equipment and inadequate doctrine, while the desert imposed its own challenges. The retreat of the battered Eighth Army to El Alamein in June 1942 was a crisis threatening the loss of the vital British position in the Middle East. General Auchlinlek somehow pulled the Eighth Army together, and the army itself somehow fought an overstretched Panzerarmee to a standstill. Auchinleck understood his challenges and their solutions but lacked resources for more than limited counter-attacks. His relief, General Montgomery, would have the time to absorb new equipment and supplies and to train for a deliberate counter-offensive. Barr captures the campaign from start to finish, including the struggles of individual units and the personality clashes of various generals. The German side is more lightly sketched, but the reader can understand the effects of poor German decisions and a fraying logistical tether. Barr has included a good selection of maps and photographs. "Pendulum of War" is very highly recommended as a superbly written and detailed account of the three battles of El Alamein, likely to be of great interest to students of the Second World War and to the general reader.

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 t

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 Ultra - 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

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