Erwin Rommel Historical Figures Books : Campaign 196: Gazala 1942: Rommel s greatest victory (Campaign) (Campaign)

Campaign 196: Gazala 1942: Rommel s greatest victory (Campaign) (Campaign)

£6.75


Good text marred by sloppy prints and sometimes hurried maps. - I am quite impressed with the text of Gazala 1942 - Rommel s greatest victory. This campaign book fits very nicely between Tobruk 1941 (Campaign 80) and El Alamein 1942 (Campaign 158) and together they bring a very clear picture of the desert war. Especially since Gazala begins with an overview of Crusader that lifted the siege of Tobruk and ends at the First Battle of El Alamein.Ken Ford manages to paint a clear picture of events and captures the highlights well as the reasons for them, the defiant and brave stands of the 150 Brigade of the 50 Northumbrian Division and the Free Franch Brigade at Bir Hacheim. Both stands showed the quality of the allied troops but the British High Command failed to utilize them to their advantage.The different style of leadership is clearly portrayed, Rommel leading from the front and even taking command at platoon level to see an attack through while the British leaders failed time and time again, not obeying orders and failing to understand the concepts of tank warfare. At Gazala the British had for the first time a tank that could match the Germans - the Grant and a powerful enough anti-tank gun the 6 pdr. With numerical superiority their rigid and static thinking became their bane. I have read quite a few books on the Desert War and I think this one captures Gazala best in the big picture.There are plenty of maps, and these are usually good but have a hurried feel at times since the unit markings are sometimes wrong (like Trento and Brescia are labled as tank divisions on one map but were in fact infantry divisions) so bad proof reading there. But overall the maps are plentiful and appropriate to the text.There are only 2 colour plates in this book which is less than standard but that is fine since one is below medium and the other is plain bad and neither adds anything to the book. There are however plenty of good photographs from the battle that make up for this and the book would have been better had the colour plates been omitted altogether.So with a well written and informative text by Ken Ford and very good photographs I recommend this book. It is good that this important battle has the attention it deserves.




Campaign 196: Gazala 1942: Rommel s greatest victory (Campaign) (Campaign)