Gazala 1942: Rommel's greatest victory (Campaign) | 
 enlarge | Author: Ken Ford
Creator: John White
Publisher: Osprey Publishing
Category: Book
List Price: $19.95
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Avg. Customer Rating:  1 reviews
Sales Rank: 249827
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 96
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.7
Dimensions (in): 9.6 x 7.2 x 0.4
ISBN: 1846032644
Dewey Decimal Number: 940
EAN: 9781846032646
ASIN: 1846032644
Publication Date: May 20, 2008
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Product Description
Gazala 1942, Rommel's Victory
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Solid, but Uninspired and Parochial June 5, 2008
7 out of 7 found this review helpful
Up front, I would say the Ken Ford's Gazala 1942: Rommel's Greatest Victory, Osprey's Campaign No. 196, is better than his previous El Alamein 1942: The Turning of the Tide. The author continues to use his method of grinding out campaign histories based upon easily available secondary sources, resulting in little if any value-added content over previous works, but this one is fairly well-written and provides a nice, Cliff Notes-style summary of this important campaign. I would rate it excellent for beginners on the subject, but much less useful for specialists in the North African campaign. Overall, Gazala 1942 is a solid and coherent, albeit uninspired and parochial, summary of one of the critical campaigns in North Africa in the Second World War.
Gazala 1942: Rommel's Greatest Victory has six 2-D maps (Operation Crusader; Rommel's attack on the Gazala line; Operation Aberdeen, 5 June 1942; 8th Army's Withdrawal and Rommel's Attack on Tobruk; 8th Army's Retreat to the El Alamein line) but only two 3-D BEV maps (Armored battles near Knightsbridge, 12-13 June 1942; Action at Matruh, 26-28 June 1942). Graphically, the maps are very nice but only depict the actions of divisions and brigades; it would have been useful to use the BEVs to show a more tactical operation like the tank battles around Knightsbridge at company/battalion-level. Readers may note that the two battle scenes by artist John White (a British Hurricane strafes a German convoy in the desert; the defense of Bir Hakeim) only depict the Allied viewpoint, aside from adding little to the narrative. The parochial nature of this volume is particularly evident in the photos used and the bibliography. A total of 61 of the 66 photos appearing in the volume are from the Imperial War Museum, a number of which have appeared many times before in other books. Looking through the bibliography, it is apparent that no German or Italian sources were consulted and that the author relied entirely on traditional English-language secondary sources, which means that readers will not be exposed to anything but the standard historiography that has been knocking about for the past three decades.
The opening sections outline the origins of the campaign, opposing leaders and opposing plans are all decently done and serve as an excellent introduction to the campaign narrative. However, the section on opposing armies is a bit weak (it virtually ignores the Italians) since it only gives the barest forces comparisons (no mention of artillery or logistic capabilities, air power glossed over too quickly). The author also undermines his credibility by routinely mis-identifying German equipment; for example, in a photo on page 24 he describes an 15cm s.FH18 howitzer as "an 88mm antiaircraft gun" and on page 58 a Pz I tank is described as a "Pz II." The order of battle only identifies brigades and divisions - no corps/army attachments and no air units. Several times the author mentions the German unit "Group Hecker" without ever specifying what this unit was (a detailed description is available on the internet). In the plans section, it might have also been useful to mention the role of Ultra and German SIGINT in shaping the respective plans, but there is virtually no discussion of the impact of intelligence and even less on logistics.
The 48-page campaign narrative is divided into four main sections: Rommel attacks, the Cauldron, the failure of British armor and the loss of Tobruk. It's a conventional telling, with only limited tactical perspective, but it does suffice to get the job done. The 10-page aftermath section details the British retreat into Egypt, the action at Matruh and the withdrawal into the El Alamein positions. Readers will note that the author offers no insight or analysis of why the British lost this campaign and fails to provide any kind of total casualty figures. The final section on The Battlefield Today, is a throw-away, which merely relates that there are some cemeteries near Tobruk and that somewhere on the internet, there is a group that run battlefield tours to Tobruk. Quite lame, really. In short, Gazala 1942: Rommel's Greatest Victory serves well if all you need is a quick, synthesized look at this important battle, but it fails to provide even a glimmer of new information for historians, specialist readers or military professionals.
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