An Army at Dawn: The War in North Africa, 1942-1943

World War II Liberation Trilogy #1

by Rick Atkinson

WINNER OF THE PULITZER PRIZE AND NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER

In the first volume of his monumental trilogy about the liberation of Europe in WW II, Pulitzer Prize winner Rick Atkinson tells the riveting story of the war in North Africa

The liberation of Europe and the destruction of the Third Reich is a story of courage and enduring triumph, of calamity and miscalculation. In this first volume of the Liberation Trilogy, Rick Atkinson shows why no modern reader can understand the ultimate victory of the Allied powers without a grasp of the great drama that unfolded in North Africa in 1942 and 1943. That first year of the Allied war was a pivotal point in American history, the moment when the United States began to act like a great power.

Beginning with the daring amphibious invasion in November 1942, An Army at Dawn follows the American and British armies as they fight the French in Morocco and Algeria, and then take on the Germans and Italians in Tunisia. Battle by battle, an inexperienced and sometimes poorly led army gradually becomes a superb fighting force. Central to the tale are the extraordinary but fallible commanders who come to dominate the battlefield: Eisenhower, Patton, Bradley, Montgomery, and Rommel.

Brilliantly researched, rich with new material and vivid insights, Atkinson's narrative provides the definitive history of the war in North Africa.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, World War II, Military History, War, Military Fiction, Africa

681 pages, Hardcover

First published October 2, 2002

About the author

Rick Atkinson is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of seven works of history, including The Long Gray Line, the Liberation Trilogy (An Army at Dawn, The Day of Battle, and The Guns at Last Light), and The British Are Coming, the first volume of the Revolution Trilogy. His work as a historian and journalist has won numerous awards, including three Pulitzer Prizes.

Reviews

[Matt · Rating 5 out of 5]

“In the tradition of government-issue graves, the stones are devoid of epitaphs, parting endearments, even dates of birth. But visitors familiar with the American and British invasion of North Africa in November 1942, and the subsequent seven-month struggle to expel the Axis powers there, can make reasonable conjectures. We can surmise that Willet H. Wallace, a private first class in the 26th Infantry Regiment who died on November 9, 1942, was killed at St. Cloud, Algeria, during the three days of hard fighting against, improbably, the French. Ward H. Osmun and his brother Wilbur W., both privates from New Jersey in the 18th Infantry and both killed on Christmas Eve 1942, surely died in the brutal battle of Longstop Hill, where the initial Allied drive in Tunisia was stopped – for more than five months, as it turned out – within sight of Tunis. Ignatius Glovach, a private first class in the 701st Tank Destroyer Battalion, who died on Valentine’s Day, 1943, certainly was killed in the opening hours of the great German counteroffensive known as the battle of Kasserine Pass. And Jacob Feinstein, a sergeant from Maryland in the 135th Infantry who died on April 29, 1943, no doubt passed during the epic battle for Hill 609, where the American Army came of age…”
- Rick Atkinson, An Army at Dawn: The War in North Africa, 1942

My first introduction to the U.S. Army’s invasion of North Africa in World War II came from Samuel Fuller’s The Big Red One. The film, starring Lee Marvin and Mark Hamill, opens with the Torch landings, and combines elements of tragedy and farce predicated on the uncertainty over whether or not the French would fight on Hitler’s behalf. Initially, the French played the villains; in other words, they act French. The Americans are pinned down by heavy fire. Explosions throw up gouts of sand. Men die. Just as soon as the real sharp fighting begins, however, the French throw down their arms and begin hugging the U.S. infantrymen. Jaunty music begins playing. All in all, the scene is laced with dark humor.

Rick Atkinson’s An Army at Dawn tells the full story of the U.S. Army’s involvement in North Africa, from the landings in Morocco and Algeria to the final push into Tunisia. Like Fuller’s film, this Pulitzer Prize-winning account has elements of farce and tragedy. Unlike the movie, however, Atkinson’s tale is laced mainly with blood and hard lessons.

It is the first volume of what Atkinson calls “the Liberation Trilogy.” Subsequent entries cover the invasions of Sicily, Italy, and Normandy. Thankfully, Atkinson finished the third volume is sublime fashion, so this is a trilogy you should definitely dive into. (In other words, you won’t be like every fan of George R.R. Martin or Robert Caro, waiting half a decade for the next book, wondering if there will be a next book).

As far as World War II books ago, heck as far as history books go, this is a gem. It is a triumph of narrative, characterizations, and sober analysis. Even if you’ve never read a single book about World War II (I’ve been told such people exist), you can dive right in. And even if you’ve read a hundred books about World War II, there is still much here to enjoy.

The quality of nonfiction is usually a compromise between accessibility and scholarship. The ease with which a book is read – the more you enjoy it – is usually inverse to its academic merits. And vice versa. Atkinson proves this doesn't have to be the case. He’s turned an obscure, neglected theater of World War II into a rousing saga that also has 80 pages of endnotes.

One of the things I most appreciated about Army at Dawn is that it doesn’t mess around. This isn’t one of those histories that takes around 100 pages to get the context just so. Instead, things are well under way in about 50. The story gets moving instantly, and never stops. This is a beach read for the beach reader who looks at the waves and sand and imagines an amphibious assault.

Partially, Atkinson gains this momentum because he doesn’t spend a lot of time debating the Torch landings. I’m fine with that authorial choice.

Briefly, Atkinson argues that the Torch landings were necessary in the paradigm in which they occurred. It was a doable operation, it helped ease pressure on the Russians, it set up a potential invasion of Sicily and Italy, and it blooded the American Army. There isn’t a lot of time spent on this argument because Atkinson’s entire book really supports it. The North African landings were all mitigated disasters. They succeeded, but only as bloody messes. Had the Americans thrown themselves straight at the Continent - an early D-Day, if you will - they would have been torn to shreds by the Wehrmacht. It's not just cheerleading or revisionism to say that North Africa was a vital proving ground. Had America tried to prove itself elsewhere, it might have been annihilated.

As a storyteller, Atkinson is engaging and efficient. Take, for instance, this paragraph, which neatly encapsulates the enormity of the undertaking, while never forgetting its human dimension:

Into the holds went tanks and cannons, rubber boats and outboard motors, ammunition and machine guns, magnifying glasses and stepladders, alarm clocks and bicycles. Into the holds went: tractors, cement, asphalt, and more than a million gallons of gasoline, mostly in five-gallon tins. Into the holds went: thousands of miles of wire, well-digging machinery, railroad cars, 750,000 bottles of insect repellant, and 7,000 tons of coal in burlap bags. Into the holds went: black basketball shoes, 3,000 vehicles, loudspeakers, 16,000 feet of cotton rope, and $100,000 in gold coins, entrusted to George Patton personally. And into the holds went: a platoon of carrier pigeons, six flyswatters and sixty rolls of flypaper for reach 1,000 soldiers, plus five pounds of rat poison per company.

A special crate, requisitioned in a frantic message to the War Department on October 18, held a thousand Purple Hearts.

Atkinson is masterful in his descriptions of combat, utilizing both primary remembrances and vivid prose. Overconfidence, under-planning, and the perfidious French create a brisk and violent confrontation on the beaches. Later, as the Allies move slowly into the desert, their tanks come up against the superior German panzers:

Another Stuart [tank] was hit, and another. They brewed up like the first. Crewmen tumbled from the hatches, their hair and uniforms brilliant with flame, and they rolled across the dirt and tore away their jackets in burning shreds. Others were trapped in their tanks with fractured limbs, and their cries could be heard above the booming tumult as they burned to death in fire so intense it softened the armor plates…

An Army at Dawn introduces dozens of memorable individuals, from the famous, such as George Patton and Bernard Montgomery, to lesser known but equally deserving men such as Terry De La Mesa Allen, Teddy Roosevelt, Jr., and Patton’s son-in-law, John Waters. In telling his story, Atkinson moves easily from the top down and from the bottom up. At the very end of this food chain, looming over everyone, is Dwight D. Eisenhower.

It would be going way too far to suggest that Atkinson is critical of Eisenhower. In the realm of World War II, he’s something of a sacred cow, where even his flaws are deemed virtues in the larger scheme. But in this volume, Eisenhower is just one step removed from failure. Atkinson paints him as a man stretched right to the breaking point, chugging enough coffee and smoking enough cigarettes to give the reader lung cancer. One early British complaint about Ike was his penchant to play politics; of course, it would later be his political abilities that made him such an asset to the Allies.

A few years ago, the Greatest Generation was in high fashion. Tom Brokaw, Stephen Ambrose, and their many dollar-sign-eyed imitators scooped up just about every “We Saved the World” story they could find and put it between hard covers. The glut of books that came out in this time created a distorted view of what World War II was, what it was like, and what it meant.

In many ways, Atkinson can’t quite contain his hero worship. He speaks of the American Army – here in its infancy – with the pride of a father speaking of his child.

But he is also clear-eyed enough to call a mistake a mistake, and to separate the George Patton’s from the Lloyd Fredenhall’s. He takes time to explain all the foul-ups, but he never excuses them. And though his sentences occasionally soar too high, he always brings you back down to the few inches of sand and fear and whining bullets where the war actually took place.

An Army at Dawn is the slightest of the three entries in the Liberation Trilogy. Yet it tells you something about the magnitude of Atkinson’s achievement that that it is also a masterpiece.

[Michael Finocchiaro · Rating 5 out of 5]

Long-winded, but incredibly well-written and exhaustive, An Army at Dawn by Rick Atkinson was definitely a choice pick for the Pulitzer for History 2003. The book is simply brilliant is demonstrating that friction between British and America commands nearly imploded the effort in Africa and how close the battle for Tunisia really was. The psychological portraits of the legendary characters of Ike, Patton, Montgomery and Rommel were fascinating. The detailed battle maps were also incredibly useful. As a natural pacifist, I felt that Atkinson was writing from a cynical American perspective: we were very, very far from perfect and committed our share of atrocities but believed we were in a holy war against the Axis and that German brutality at Stalingrad - which made even German officers pale and disheartened - reinforced this belief. I think his thesis that the Africa campaign was a necessary warmup for the Italian campaign (subject of the second book of his trilogy) and Normandy (subject of the 3rd book) is probably accurate. While I still detest war and am bereaved at the thought of so much senseless death, it was clear that Hitler had to be stopped and was clearly engaged in a suicidally insane war on two fronts and that he would never yield until all hope was annihilated.
Atkinson 's book is a critical read for those wanting to understand this little known campaign and see that the Hollywood version of our GIs is simply lies and damned lies. Yes, they were heroic at some points, but they were also frail humans and despite the glory history subsequently heaped on their shoulders, many decisions of the upper chain of command had catastrophic results on the field. If I had to sum it up in a phrase, it is kind of the equivalent of Howard Zinn's extraordinarily eye-opening People's History of the US but instead focused on the African campaign of the Allied forces striking west to east from 1942-1943.

[Lizzy · Rating 5 out of 5]

"For among mortal powers, only imagination can bring back the dead."

Rick Atkinson’s An Army at Dawn: The War in North Africa, 1942-1943 was my introduction to WWII African campaign. I found it masterful, thoroughly researched, and bestowed with a well-crafted and colorful narrative. It brings the war, with its scalding heat and contrasting cold nights of the desert turned bitter with icy winds; and gifts the readers with tales about the protagonists, depositing them right on the battlefields. Thus, it enables us to hear the sounds of fighting and dying with the cries of the wounded. It allows us to witness the lives of individual survivors, of the dying, as the dead are brought forth with the power of Homer's Iliad. Indeed, [t]his is an ancient place, built on the ruins of Roman Cartage and a stone’s throw from the even older Punic city. It is incomparably serene. Serene, but not for long.

We are introduced to General Eisenhower, Rear Admiral Hewitt, General Patton, General Fredendall, General Bradley, among innumerable others (see below), as the Allies begin to plan and mount attacks in Morocco, Algeria but mainly in Tunisia. Throughout, the commanders competed with and criticized each other, led many times by politics and not common sense or military strategy, generating unimaginable tragedies and casualties that could probably have been avoided.

The Americans were unprepared…

The main impression I came away with was just how poorly prepared the U.S. military was for the war they faced. In many ways, North Africa was a training ground for bigger battles to come in Italy and Normandy, and it's a very good thing the Allied troops started in Africa, rather than launching straight into an invasion of France, as many American commanders were advocating. As for combat, TORCH revealed profound shortcomings in leadership, tactics, equipment, martial élan, and even common sense.

From the start problems and errors started to accumulate. To begin with, the landing on the beaches was extremely problematic, not a single transport could be found in the right location, and some were six miles out of position. “To be perfect honest,” one naval officer confessed, “I am not right sure exactly where we are.”

Once the landing was accomplished, however, things did not improve. Again lost, the troops had to go on. Major Robert Moore, former Boy captain from Villisca, hours after landing found himself and his inexperienced regiment in Lambiridi, just west of Algiers. He heard gunfire and a machine gun overlooking the road killed two soldiers and wounded two more. Things got worse, he now commanded fragments of all three of the regiment’s battalions. Another machine gun killed more soldiers wounding a captain. Moore rose for a look, suddenly he was on his back, stunned and confused. Moore unsnapped his own chin strap and removed his helmet. …a snapper’s bullet ran across the crest like a black scar.

That was a lesson not to be forgotten,

For the first time, Moore realized how frightened he was. Even nameless skirmishes could be lethal. “I thought the fight with the snipers was quite a battle,” he would say months later, after receiving the Silver Star for his valor at Lambiridi. “Now I it was just a comic-opera war.” Still, good men lay as dead as if at Antietam or the Meuse-Argonne."

In these first hours of the war, Moore had learned several vital lessons that thousands of other American soldiers were also learning around the rim of Africa. Some lessons were fundamental: stay low; take a few extra moments to study the map before setting off. But the others involved the nature of combat and leadership: a realization that battlefields were inherently chaotic; that improvisation was a necessary virtue; that speed and stealth and firepower won small skirmishes as well as big battles; that every moment held risk and every man was mortal.

In the beginning they were fighting the Vichy French, which they erroneously expect not to fight at all. American troops believed French defenders would be so cowed that they would greet the invaders with ‘brass bands’. However, Franco-American amity was rapidly reestablished. Algiers was fairly easy to conquer; later the capture of Oran required more fighting but gave the Allies virtual possession of Algeria.

But even the cautious commander felt a little cocky: the White House was told to expect the occupation of Tunis and Bizerte in December and the fall of Tripoli in late January.

Nevertheless, the big problem with the American troops was they couldn't fight. They seemed unprepared for what they were facing. For one, they believed they were being forced into a war that was not theirs; and, once bullets started flying many were too frightened to fire their weapons. Thus, running to the rear screaming seemed natural to expect. That did not help morale. The result was vastly favorable to the Germans, affording them in the beginning easy victories.

Light snow fell on the Americans and British soldiers picking their way through Kasserine Pass on the morning of February 25. The desolate landscape was "cluttered with wrecked German and American airplanes, burned out vehicles, abandoned tanks, [and] scattered shell cases," Robinett reported. Ratio tins, unfinished love letters, a pair of boxing gloves: the detritus of battle lost and won.

“The proud and cocky Americans today stand humiliated by one of the greatest defeats in our history.” Harry Butcher scribbled in his diary, "There is a definite hangheadedness.

On learning how to win a war...

The men had seen things they could never imagine before: men incinerated; other eviscerated; and soldiers killed by booby traps. The list is endless. As a result,

They were becoming hard-bitten. They were wary of excessively gungho leaders – known as ‘questers for glory’ – but appreciative of those who remained calm and tactically alert. They had learned that combat was slower than expected, a choreography of feint, thrust, withdrawal, and parry; that the battlefield often seemed empty and lonely; that death was ubiquitous, a fifth element to air, fire, water and earth. True, they did not hate yet; but they were developing the capacity for hatred, which required a nihilistic core of resignation and rage.

Undoubtedly, the American troops had finally attained the right demeanor for war:

"Ernie Pyle now noticed in the troops "the casual and workshop manner in which they talked about killing. They had made the psychological transition from their normal belief that taking human life was sinful, over to a new professional outlook where killing was a craft." The American combat soldier had finally learned to hate.

Amazingly, barely two months would elapse between the “hangheadedness” of Kasserine and the triumph of total victory in Tunisia."

Fedendall was relieved and Patton would command the II Corps, but for a short time before resuming his preparations for Sicily. Omar Bradley, Patton’s deputy, would take charge after him. As command was transferred the American forces were learning how to fight. Their ultimate success came in 1943 when the Germans were defeated, now the Americans had a core of soldiers, over 100,000 men, who knew how to kill and would put that to use in Italy and France. Plus Eisenhower had learned his first lessons on how to run a war.

Some conclusions...

Atkinson presents a remarkable detailed picture of the African campaign, with an unrelenting focus on the very human men who managed, or were learning to manage, the war. There is everything you would expect to read about when considering men: egos, intelligence, fears, desires, competition. All together his prose helps to make this a very compelling story.

Through exhaustive research, personalizes the story at every turn; the author’s prose is full of fascinating anecdotes worth quoting here, but one in particular gives a taste of the ambience:

To deal with the inevitable traffic fatalities a sliding scale of reparations was established, paid the oversize French currency GIs called wallpaper: 25,000 francs ($500) for a dead camel; 15,000 for a dead boy; 10,000 for a dead donkey; 500 for a dead girl.

On the whole, the Germans were simply better at fighting a war. Well, they had been at war for over two years. ”Had the landings been opposed by Germans,” Patton later conceded, “we would never have gotten ashore.” It’s a frightening prospect to imagine an Axis that had access to the materiel wealth that the Allies eventually enjoyed.Even near misses from the German guns were devastating… Compared to the German tank guns, the Stuart 37mm ‘snapped like a cap pistol,’ a platoon leader observed.

Ultimately, the overwhelming materiel superiority of the Allies was defining. It seems they could afford to make mistakes. Several, in fact. Atkinson concludes:

“The battle,” Rommel famously observed, “is fought and decided by the quartermasters before the shooting begins.” The shooting had begun months before in northwest Africa, but now the quartermasters truly came into their own. The prodigies of American industrial muscle and organizational acumen began to tell.

From February to March 1943, 130 ships sailed to Africa with 84,000 troops, 24,000 vehicles and a million tons of cargo. The Germans were fortunate to slip a handful of ships across the straits from Sicily against Allied bombing.

Arrogance, error, inexperience, and 70,000 allied casualties served to strengthen the Americans: Generals sacrificed troops as they learn how to command; mid-level officers did or died; support troops built desert cities; and the troops learn to hate or be killed. Yes, it is in fact an army at dawn, with a Supreme Commander that balances politics and war and often comes up short. Atkinson’s review of the terrible aftermath of Sid bou Zid is specially revealing:

In truth, Eisenhower – preoccupied with strategic and political issues, and having no personal combat experience – had simply failed to grasp the tactical peril on that Valentine’s Day morning. In trying to serve as both supreme commander and field general, he had mastered neither job. The fault was his, and it would enlarge him for bigger battles on future fields. But it was not his fault alone. Mistakes clattered down the line, along with bad luck, bad timing, and the other handmaidens of havoc.

So, Eisenhower learned to command and the troops learned not only to hate but kill more effectively.

So, what else do we learn with Atkinson’s narrative? Mainly that nothing, absolutely nothing goes according to plan. It’s surprising how little information planners had on hand, who yet confidently drew up ambitious battle plans. What’s even more surprising is how often the Army managed to pull them off, regardless. And, ultimately, the important thing is not how you play the game, it is whether you win or lose.

For months, Eisenhower had worried that Axis troops would convert the Cap Bon peninsula into a diehard redoubt. But once Bizert and Tunis fell, fuel shortages and Allied alacrity prevented Arnim from regrouping. Bradley's soldiers cut the last Bizerte-Tunis road at daylight May 9, effectively ending American combat in Tunisia. Now there was nothing but smoke out renegades and escort prisoners to their cages.

For the British farther south, the end was less tidy, although the Axis troops still holding the Enfidaville line lacked enough gasoline to fall back forthy miles on Cap Bon unless they abandoned their heavy weapons.

Atkinson closes here confirming that the now Americans certainly were an Army and Eisenhower a mature commander.

No soldier in Africa had changed more – grown more than Eisenhower. He continued to pose as a small-town Kansan, insisting that he was “too simple-minded to be an intriguer or [to] attempt to be clever,” and he retained the winning traits of authenticity, vigor, and integrity. He had displayed admirable grace and character under crushing strain. But he was hardly artless. Naiveté provided a convenient screen for a man who was complex, shrewd and sometimes Machiavellian. …The failings of Fredendall and other deficient commanders had taught him to be tougher, even ruthless, with subordinates. And he had learned the hardest lesson of all: that for an army to win a war, young men had to die.

A great end for a book that is agonizing, alluring, ingenious, and gripping. Highly recommended.

----
Note: quotes in italics.

The Commanders

General Eisenhower
Thirty months earlier, Eisenhower had been a lieutenant colonel who had never commanded even a platoon in combat.

Once Eisenhower had settled in Algiers with his staff, however, the majority of his time was not on the front. …In truth, he spent at least three-quarters of his time worrying about political issues, and the preoccupation poorly served the Allied causes.

Eisenhower had yet to bend events to his iron will, to impose as well as implore, to become a commander in action as well as in rank.

Rear Admiral Hewitt
“You do everything you can,” he liked to say, “then you hope for the best.”

Commanding Task Force 34, a convoy of more than 100 ships in nine columns, it approached the Moroccan coast on November 7, minutes ahead of schedule. However, the weather might not help. The forecast of landing conditions were ‘very poor’.

The lives of 34,000 men rested heavily on his musings; history had often punished invaders who disregarded the weather. But a decision was required. From London, the commander of amphibious forces, Lord Mountbatten, had the same grim forecasts. ’I hope to God,’ Mountbatten said, ‘Admiral Hewitt will have the guts to go through with it.’ This crucial choice was Hewitt’s, not Eisenhower’s nor Patton’s who was to assume command once landed. Thankfully, Hewitt announced his decision to execute Plan One as scheduled, without betraying the turmoil churning within him.

General Patton
“He was a paradox and would remain one, a great tangle of calculated mannerisms and raw, uncalculated emotion. Well-read, fluent in French, and the wealthy child of privilege, he could be crude, rude, and plain foolish. He had reduced his extensive study of history and military art to a five-word manifesto of war: “violent attacks everywhere with everything.”

Once he reached Fedala, he lost no time in displaying his most conspicuous command attributes: energy, will, a capacity to see the enemy’s perspective, and bloodlust.

Yet Patton’s defects also were revealed: a wanton disregard for logistics; a childish propensity to feud with other services; an incapacity to empathize with frightened young soldiers; a willingness to disregard the spirit if not the letter of orders from his superiors; and an archaic tendency to assess his own generalship on the basis of personal courage under fire.

General Bradley
On Thursday morning, April 22, Patton’s successor arrived by jeep on the crest of a leafy hill outside Béja. He was a bespectacled six-footer, with a high, convex forehead and thin hair that had been greying since his cadet years. Now he was fifty, just. Omar Nelson Bradley had moved to center stage; there he would remain for the duration and beyond. Like Patton, Bradley could be simple, direct, ruthless, but the similarities ended there. …he also possessed an intolerant rectitude and a capacity for dissimulation that in lesser men might devolve into deceit.

He had a born infantryman’s feel for terrain, with a detailed mental map of every significant swale and ridge from Bédja to Bizerte.

General Fredendall
But who would command II Corps? Eisenhower had just the man, and in him the making of a disaster.

Unencumbered with charisma, Fredentall substituted bristling obstinacy. Truscott found him ‘outspoken in his opinions of superiors and subordinates alike.’

Fredendall chose as avenue for the operation was on the eastern border of Algeria in ancient Tébessa. …Soon Fredendall and his staff officers had established residence in Speedy Valley but also known as ‘Lloyd’s Very Last Resort’ and ‘Shangri-La, a million miles from nowhere.’ Speedy Valley was seventy miles from the front.

Brigadier General Robinett
Yet for his bumptious gall, Robinett possessed an unsparing analytical mind. He recognized that he himself was culpable of the rout, having failed to organize a night counterattack that might have saved more Surreys, Hampshires, and Americans. He had ‘not foreseen the possibility and had no plan for such a contingency,’ he later admitted. ‘Frankly, I was too new at the game.’

Major General Ward
Commander of ‘Old Ironsides’ – the 1st Armored Division – had waited first in Britain and then in Oran for permission to unify his force at last. Ward was a quiet, genteel man, with large sensitive eyes set in an oval face; some thought he resembled a schoolmaster more than a tank commander. …The other peculiar trait was an instant willingness to take offense from General Fredendall, his superior officer. He soon concluded that Fredendall and the II Corps staff were not even studying the map carefully before drafting deployment orders ‘on absurd lines.’

In the American Army few relieved commanders got a second chance to lead men in combat; Ward was an exception because he was exceptional. But first he had to do penance for his virtues as well as his sins.

General Alexander
Under a proposal from General Brook, the combined chiefs agreed that a single general would command both Anderson’s First Army and Montgomery’s soon-to-arrive Eight Army in Tunisia. That commander would be Eisenhower; but three British deputies would handle daily sea, air and ground. The ground commander due to assume command in February, would be Alexander.

General Montgomery
Hardened in the trenches – he had been wounded at Ypres – he was hardened more by the early death of a wife he adored. After taking command in Egypt in mid-August 1942 under Alexander’s indulgent supervision, Montgomery had whipped Rommel first at Alam Halfa, then a second, decisive time at El Alamein.

And yet. Sparks flew up around Montgomery. He was puerile, petty, and egocentric, bereft of irony, humility, and a sense of proportion. It would not suffice for him to succeed; others must fail. Swaggering into Tunisia, Montgomery and his army were also thoroughly overconfident. He envisioned a grand sweep to Tunis, with more laurels and church bells awaiting him.

Field Marshall Rommel
Like most of history’s conspicuously successful commanders, Rommel had an uncanny ability to dominate the mind of his adversaries. …with neither Prussian blood nor the crimson trouser stripe of General Staff alumnus, he embodied several traits of his native region: self-reliance, thrift, decency, and a dour common sense.

Rommel’s first successes in Africa manifested the audacity, tactical brilliance, and the personal style – he occasional hunted gazelle with a submachine gun from star car – that contrasted so invidiously with British lumpishness and won him the sobriquet of Desert Fox.

[Jill Hutchinson · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read this book ten years ago and decided to revisit it due to its excellence. This is the first of the Pulitzer Prize winning trilogy of books by Rick Atkinson about WWII and it is a real winner. This edition concentrates on the war in North Africa and the Allies' confrontations with Rommel and von Armin and the Afrika Corps.

The initial landing on the continent of Africa, Operation Torch, was pretty much a fiasco and the Americans were green and inexperienced. Men were not prepared for the horrors of warfare and the British who had been in Africa for a while were totally disgusted with the American troops. The choice of Eisenhower as Commander-in-Chief was not well received and when Patton arrived even the troops under his command were at a loss to understand his tactical moves and his insistence on being on the front lines. The political situation among the Allies often was at the breaking point with the goal being who got the glory rather than fighting the enemy as a combined force, utilizing the strengths of both the British and the Americans.

It's an insiders look at the behind the scenes machinations of battle with fascinating detail Boys became men and the commanding officers either exhibited their talents or their inability to lead. Africa was the training ground, especially for Americans for the battle to come on the continent of Europe. I highly recommend this book for the WWII history buff.

[Ali · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Liberation Trilogy is what happens when an English literature MA graduate with experience in frontline reporting (of the Gulf War type), decides to write military history. Hence there is something for everybody in these books (I’m currently midway through The Day of Battle): for military buffs, there are tactical discussions of the finest quality coupled with great maps; for lovers of ancient Greek mythology, comparable heroic feats from Iliad and Aeneid are included; for those with a penchant for literature, there are enchanting paragraphs that are breath-taking and majestic (I needed to use OED a lot though); and for those who love a detailed storytelling of war with biographical sketches and authorial sense of humor, Atkinson is here to gratify.

Atkinson has done extensive (repeat extensive; I’m mimicking Ike) research and has visited the battlefields to enhance his narrative:

A visit to the Tunisian battlefields tells a bit more. For more than half a century, time and weather have purified the ground at El Guettar and Kasserine and Longstop. But the slit trenches remain, and rusty C-ration cans, and shell fragments scattered like seed corn. The lay of the land also remains—the vulnerable low ground, the superior high ground: incessant reminders of how, in battle, topography is fate.
Yet even when the choreography of armies is understood, or the movement of this battalion or that rifle squad, we crave intimate detail, of individual men in individual foxholes.
...The dead resist such intimacy. The closer we try to approach, the farther they draw back, like rainbows or mirages. They have outsoared the shadow of our night, to reside in the wild uplands of the past. History can take us there, almost. Their diaries and letters, their official reports and unofficial chronicles—including documents that, until now, have been hidden from view since the war—reveal many moments of exquisite clarity over a distance of sixty years. Memory, too, has transcendent power, even as we swiftly move toward the day when not a single participant remains alive to tell his tale, and the epic of World War II forever slips into national mythology. The author’s task is to authenticate: to warrant that history and memory give integrity to the story, to aver that all this really happened.
But the final few steps must be the reader’s. For among mortal powers, only imagination can bring back the dead.

It is a testimony to the vastness and the globality of World War II that the North African Campaign, which lasted from November 1942 to May 1943 for the Americans and was a bit of a sideshow compared to other fronts, was so involved and complex. The biggest large-scale amphibious operation in the history of warfare yet still minor in comparison to the limitless carnage of the war.

Rick Atkinson captures the complexity of this campaign in the best possible way. Nothing is neglected. The challenges faced by military and civilian leaderships of the Allies are intimately portrayed and analyzed; the inexperience of the US Army is exposed and explained. The agonies and triumphs of the soldiers are also to be found aplenty. I can say this is the finest type of military history that I’ve read.

North Africa was a campaign full of errors and shortcomings at every level of command. Tactical miscalculation was the order of the day in many a fight. Sound coordination between different branches of the Armed Forces was hard to achieve and failure to do so, produced needless and avoidable disasters.

After Americans united with the British Eighth Army to expel the Axis forces from Tunisia, interallied harmony was seriously strained. This brotherly collision continued to be a major theme until the Liberation of Berlin. Dwight D. Eisenhower, as Supreme Commander of the Allied Forces, was responsible for keeping that harmony intact and generally he succeeded, despite his initial wobbly leadership.

All the battles are described with patience and the depictions are rich in detail. One bloody engagement after another, GIs and Tommies pushed the Germans (and Italians) back until the enemy was confined to a limited zone in Tunisia. With all their failures and frustrations, the Allied Forces managed to throw the German forces out of Africa, this time for good. The next stop was Sicily and — possibly though not certainly — mainland Italy.

The title An Army At Dawn captures the essence of the story: this was after all the first campaign of the Liberation of Europe and the defeat of Nazi Germany during which “The American Army came of age”.

[Anthony · Rating 4 out of 5]

The First Gamble

Volume one of Rick Atkinson’s Liberation Trilogy, An Army at Dawn accounts the Second World War in northern Africa, where raw American troops encountered the dangerous and professional Wehrmacht for the first time. Atkinson tells the story of how and why the allies came to fight in Africa and the slow and violent victory to free that theatre from fighting.

One of the key points of this book is that the American leadership I’m under General Dwight D Eisenhower did not understand the German war machine and it took them along time to learn to fight. This is a refreshing narrative far removed from the Hollywood built myth of American GIs automatically being the best soldiers in the world. After easily overwhelming an apathetic Vichy French force they were completed unprepared for the Germans who fought and thought differently. The Germans were war hardened, had panzer tanks and an inspirational leader in Erwin Rommel. This was a slow lesson to learn, with disasters such as Kasserine Pass teaching then the hard way. However, as Atkinson writes, this built Eisenhower and commanders such as Generals George S Patton and Omar Bradley. Crucially the Americans learn to fight, became a first class force and was ready to take on ‘Fortress Europe’ itself in order to win the war. This couldn’t have been done with North Africa.

Atkinson writes An Army at Dawn with his journalistic flare (he cut his teeth as a war journalist) and is careful to include the view of the ordinary soldier and the internal clashes of the allies, almost as significant as the combat with the Germans. This comes from the criticisms of the British against the standards of soldiers the Americans first brought across, to Patton’s demanding of the sacking of Orlando Ward. Ward hadn’t done much wrong but Eisenhower obliged. The battle for Tunisia is much of the focus of the book and possibly the entire campaign. What I feel is true is that the allies needed this campaign to learn to fight the Axis Powers on continental Europe. An invasion into France before 1944 would have ended in disaster. Of course, the Mediterranean theatre got downgraded to third place after Germany first, then Japan second after the Casablanca Conference.

Overall An Army at Dawn is a good book, with detail of the destruction and death in the fighting. The heavy casualties the allies endured is on par with Normandy at time. Atkinson also explores the tensions and pressures of command and working with an ally, as I mentioned above, alongside the major issue of logistics. This is all intermingled with the personal experiences of those caught up in the fighting. What is significant about this campaign however is that Eisenhower rose to prominence and the US became the senior partner. Implications which would in turn massively influence the direct of both the war and peace. However, I still feel I don’t know enough about this campaign and will look to read other books on the subject to fill my gaps.

[Joy D · Rating 5 out of 5]

“Memory, too, has transcendent power, even as we swiftly move toward the day when not a single participant remains alive to tell his tale, and the epic of World War II forever slips into national mythology. The author’s task is to authenticate: to warrant that history and memory give integrity to the story, to aver that all this really happened. But the final few steps must be the reader’s. For among mortal powers, only imagination can bring back the dead.”

The first book in the Liberation trilogy provides a riveting account of the Allied landings in North Africa during World War II. Allied troops landed in Algeria and Morocco, overpowered the Vichy French, and fought the Axis forces on the way to Tunisia, the planned launching point for the invasion of Italy. It is a detailed description of tactics, strategy, and impact of military operations. It includes profiles of many commanders, including Commander-in-Chief Eisenhower, Alexander, Bradley, Montgomery, Patton, Rommel, and von Arnim.

This is an exceptional work of non-fiction. Atkinson’s writing is outstanding. As I read this book, the descriptions were so vivid that I felt as if a movie were running through my head.

“Not until dusk did the British vanguard reach the col below Longstop’s northwest face. Rain had transformed the Medjerda valley into a vast brown sea too quaggy even for mules. A brace of bullocks was harnessed to pull a few guns forward. Wheeled vehicles bogged down 5,000 yards from the hill. Even tracked carriers could get no closer than Chassart Teffaha, a farm hamlet two miles away. There, in a damp cellar that stank like a slaughterhouse, surgeons worked by candlelight over boys beyond surgeoning; stretcher bearers dumped another load and headed back into the night without even bothering to fold stretchers stiff with blood.”

The author inserts plentiful quotes from journals, correspondences, and official documents to support his conclusions. I appreciated the inclusion of the many maps, photos, and endnotes. We get a “behind the scenes” view of the interpersonal conflicts and military politics among commanders, but it is not just a view from the top. It is also sprinkled with stories of individual soldiers. Atkinson highlights both mistakes and triumphs. “Confusion and error, valor and misdeed marked this first night of green troops in combat.”

North Africa provided a training ground for the previously untested American troops. By the time they reached Tunis, the troops were battle-hardened and ready for the fierce battles to come. It is important to understand the North African campaign in order to get a full picture of the road to the ultimate victory in Europe. I plan to read the final two books in the trilogy. This is history at its finest. I highly recommend it.

[Elizabeth Theiss Smith · Rating 5 out of 5]

If I didn't know the end of this story, I would swear the Allies are about to lose World War II. Eisenhower stays in Gibraltar for the early months, taking care of politics instead of coordinating the war effort in North Africa. Later he moves to Algiers, far from the battle front. Americans and British make every amateur mistake in the book: failure to do reconnaissance prior to engagement, dividing rather than concentrating forces, incomprehensible broken communications systems, sticking to plans conceived in ignorance rather than updating with new information. The German army by contrast runs like a well-oiled machine. Rommel stays in close communication with officers who lead well-disciplined troops. He is a brilliant strategist.

American troops were inexperienced on the battlefield and American leadership was sadly deficient. Tension among the British and American officers ran high and the troops harbored stereotypes that made it hard to communicate well. The British infuriated Americans by charging them with timidity on the battlefield, suggesting that units be evacuated to the rear and retrained "under British guidance."

Worst of all were intelligence failures that disastrously influenced military strategy.

So how ever do the Allies win? Overwhelming air superiority was critical, as it allowed the Allies to destroy critical Axis infrastructure and supply chains. Ultra allowed Allies to decode Axis communications, giving them advance notice of troop, materiel, and supply movements. Battalions were reduced to skeletons by attrition from battles and defections, especially from Italian units.

In the end, it was a war of attrition. Germans had brilliant strategists in Rommel and Kesselring but lacked replacement troops, infrastructure, and materiel. Winning is impossible without an army and Hitler could little afford to send more troops to Africa.

I read this on a Kindle and strongly advise obtaining a copy of the physical book instead. Maps were very hard to decipher and I would have greatly appreciated knowing more about the terrain.

[Rick Riordan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Atkinson's An Army at Dawn covers the 1942-1943 war in North Africa, from the initial Allied invasions to the drawn-out siege of Tunisia. Like all great history books, this one reads like a cracking good novel. Atkinson brings his characters to life, from Supreme Commander Ike Eisenhower to the soldiers on the front line, using personal diaries, letters home, and declassified official accounts. He evokes the North African terrain in vivid detail and really makes the reader feel as if he or she is on the ground with the troops. His vignettes are by turns touching, terrifying, and absurdly funny -- such as the time Winston Churchill is found wandering along the North African beach, serenading random soldiers, until challenged by an American sentry who calls up headquarters: "Hey, there's a drunk guy down here singing to us. He says he's the prime minister of Britain." The main impression I came away with was just how poorly prepared the U.S. military was for the war they faced. In many ways, North Africa was a training ground for bigger battles to come in Italy and Normandy, and it's a very good thing the Allied troops started in Africa, rather than launching straight into an invasion of France, as many American commanders were advocating. This is a long, detailed book covering lots of ground (both literally and figuratively) but it's first-rate writing about an important campaign that forged the Allies into an effective fighting force.

[Stefania Dzhanamova · Rating 5 out of 5]

The first volume of the Liberation Trilogy covers the crucial first years of America's involvement in the Second World War. Rick Atkinson has written a compelling narrative of the actions in North Africa from the initial planning to the final victory in May 1943.
The book depicts the U.S Army's introduction to modern warfare. Atkinson leaves no doubt that the effort spent on North Africa was highly important because it enabled the inexperienced, bumbling army to transform into an effective fighting machine.
The Tunisian campaign, he shows, was undertaken by an American army lacking in training alongside a British one whose prevalent experience had been of defeat. Neither Eisenhower nor the GIs realized how much fury it would take to defeat General Rommel's Afrika Corps. The relative ease with which American soldiers pushed aside Vichy French forces led US generals to expect only a token resistance from the Germans. They couldn't have been further from the truth.
Untested American forces soon found themselves brutally manhandled by a much more experienced enemy and disparaged as inferior soldiers by their British allies. Clashes between and within the Allies seemed at times to overshadow even the battles with the enemy. (Atkinson's most telling example of that is the relationship between Second Corps commander George Patton and his subordinate Orlando Ward. The latter was a decent commander, who however, lacked the ruthlessness that takes a division forward in the face of heavy casualties and obstacles. With Eisenhower's approval, Patton fired him, and the result – as Goebbels called it – was a "second Stalingrad".)

The author describes Eisenhower's gradual awakening to the need to protect American morale from British ridicule as crucial to finding balance between command and international politics. Atkinson also examines how early battle failures, such as Kasserine Pass, strengthened American soldiers and their leadership. Commanders like Patton and Omar Bradley rose to refute British criticism, while GIs learned that defeating the veteran Axis forces would take much more sacrifice and personal discipline than they had imagined. By the end of the North African campaign, Atkinson convincingly argues, the American army was ready to lead Allied forces onto the European continent to end the Nazi threat.

The main strength of the book are the engrossing battle-by-battle accounts, which will appeal to any WWII buff. The majority of us know about World War II, but beyond the most familiar aspects – the invasion of Poland, Pearl Harbor, Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the Holocaust – how much deeper does our knowledge go? As Atkinson clearly shows, the world once watched North Africa, and battles like Kesserine Pass, Mareth, and El Guettar made headlines. In my opinion, they are as interesting and worth studying as the most famous aspects of the war.

Complementing the battlefield feats, Atkinson draws upon myriad letters, memoirs, diaries, and official and unofficial records that unpack very interesting facts. For example, he discovers Churchill, in Casablanca to meet Roosevelt, lounging about in a pink gown and sipping breakfast from bottle of wine. We find out that Patton practiced his signature scowl in a mirror, while Montgomery kept a photo of his archnemesis Rommel hanging above the desk throughout the whole campaign. And after Hitler angrily rejected one of his suggestions, Rommel confided to his son about the Führer: Sometimes you feel that he is not quite normal.

Rick Atkinson's Army at Dawn is an outstanding blend of engaging storytelling and historical fact. At every page, the narrative is textured with the words of men who were there, providing additional insight. Along with using their words directly, Atkinson combines these collective observations in his own way to create a vivid picture of the goings on. The book goes far beyond the "when" and "where" of the battles. It allows us a look into the lives and deaths of the soldiers. Army at Dawn is a brilliantly written narrative, which is not only informative, but also conveys the unfathomable emotions of war.

[Boudewijn · Rating 4 out of 5]

Combining storytelling with historical facts, this book really stands out and truly is worth its Pullitzer in every sense

An Army at Dawn is the first book in a trilogy, where Rick Atkinson covers the liberation of Europe during World War II. This book covers the Allied landings in North Africa, starting in 1942 until the Allied victory on the Axis forces in Tunisia, ending in 1943.

The book starts with the early planning stages of the Allied invasion (Operation Torch). The big question that puzzled the Allies was on how the French would react. Intelligence gave the image that the French would offer only token resistance. The reality was different: more than token resistance, but dogged resistance resulting in some disastrous battles. Once the French were overcome, the next step was to create a cooperation between the English and Americans, while the Germans moved on them to prevent them from reaching Tunis. The Americans, naively convinced they would give the Germans a route, were waken up by the defeat at Kasserine, where the American army got a bloody nose. But after the first defeat, the Americans grew though and laid the groundwork for their victories in the coming years.

It is not only a story of soldiers, but also commanders. Atkinson shows us how Eisenhower, starting as a rather timid guy intending to keep everybody as a friend, in the end grows as well. He sacks the incompetent Fredendall, who gets a scathing review by Atkinson, and many other American commanders until Patton saves the day.

The book is an incredible combination between storytelling and historical facts, which makes it stand out from all other books. Atkinson’s reliance on battle memoirs and letters from soldiers give it a personal touch. At the same time, he paints the greater setting: the conference at Casablanca and the preparations for the invasion of Sicily.

All in all, an outstanding book which explained to me in great detail a lesser known period in the war and truly deserving its Pullitzer Price.

[Sara]

خب بالاخره شکست رو‌ میپذیرم و کتاب رو رها میکنم.
اودیوبوکش رو خود نویسنده به صورت خسته ای داشت میخوند.
حالا همون موقع که شروع کردم هم عجیب بود ولی علی گفته بود اشاره به اسطوره هم داره وسوسه شده بودم، بعد به طور جدی ای تلاش کردم این بازه از تاریخ رو این مدلی بخونم ولی دیگه قبول کردم که این مدل برا من نیست حداقل فعلا نمیتونم بخونم و مغزم گنجایش اضافه کردن چیزایی که براشون سوالی نداشته رو نداره.
برا تاریخ خوندن به همون تاریخ سامورایی ها و ژاپن و نهایت تاریخ های سمت خودمون روی میارم.

[Mike · Rating 5 out of 5]

An Army at Dawn: The War in North Africa, 1942-1943 gets 5 Big Stars for reaching that rare pinnacle—a war history that can be read enjoyably by novices and historical experts. Rick Atkinson stands equal with Max Hastings and Cornelius Ryan in making this subject come alive. He uses the same techniques, walking you through how the leaders developed grand strategy and then taking you right down into the foxholes, ships and armored vehicles in the heat of battle. He uses vignettes of various parts of the battles to tell the overall story, following various participants through the campaigns. Some survive, some don’t. My copy has a forest of little scraps of paper marking key passages. I would sit down to read and suddenly would be 50 pages down the road without even noticing the passage of time. Amazing writing from start to finish.

Here are some samples:

The French surrender Algiers and the combined American/British task force flagship comes to dock in the harbor:

At dawn on Monday, the task force flagship, H.M.S. Bulolo, steamed with imperial dignity toward the Railway Jetty, unaware that an earlier near-miss from a Luftwaffe bomb had damaged her engine room telegraphs. A routine docking order from the bridge for full steam astern went unheard. The French welcoming committee on the jetty watched with mounting alarm as the ship loomed nearer at twelve knots. Officers on the bridge debated whether Bulolo’s masts would more likely shear forward or backward upon impact. Shrieking bystanders scattered; the captain yelled “Everyone lie down!” to his crew; and the great bow heaved up onto a fortuitous mudbank, demolishing the seawall and nicking a waterfront house before settling back into the harbor, intact. Applauding spectators recovered their wits and agreed that the Royal Navy knew how to make an entrance.

Throughout the book, Atkinson conveys a sense of the campaign in just a few words:

Five hundred and sixty road miles separated Algiers from Tunis, and the first Allied troops cantered eastward in the rollicking high spirits obligatory at the beginning of all military debacles .

In individual battle scenes, Mr. Atkinson brings a vision to your mind of what the fighters experienced. Here he relates the results of an ill-planned attack on prepared defense:

Then the trap was sprung. German antitank gunners opened from three sides. “The velocity of the enemy shells was so great that the suction created by the passing projectiles pulled the dirt, sand, and dust from the desert floor and formed a wall that traced the course of each shell,” Lieutenant Laurence Robertson later recalled. Shells zipped through the American formation, trailed by thick coils of dust tinted bright green by the tracer magnesium burning on the German rounds. Within ten minutes, more than half the American tanks were ablaze; flames licked from the hatches and exhaust vents, and each wounded Sherman frothed with its thirty pounds of chemical fire retardant. Back the surviving tanks raced, as fast as reverse gear could carry….

Notable and poor performance from the lowest soldier to the highest level is highlighted and how it impacted the course of battle is discussed. The good and the bad laid out for all to read and consider…I like that approach. None are spared the microscope. Here is a wonderful paragraph, describing the meeting of Churchill and Roosevelt in Casablanca. In just a few sentences, we get a glimpse at Churchill’s appreciation for the grapevine; French colonial rulers complaining about the demands of the ruled; and Roosevelt’s casual anti-Semitism:

A state dinner for the sultan of Morocco and his grand vizier went well, though Churchill grumbled because, in deference to Muslim sensibilities, no alcohol was served. The prime minister insisted on a postprandial open bar so he could recover from the pernicious effects of teetotalism. At noon on January 17, Roosevelt received General Nogues, still clinging to power as Moroccan resident-general. When Nogues complained that Jews in Morocco and Algeria were demanding restored suffrage, Roosevelt jauntily replied, “The answer to that is very simple, namely, that there just aren’t going to be any elections, so the Jews need not worry about the privilege of voting.” The president also proposed restricting Jewish participation in law, medicine, and other professions to reflect Jewish percentages in “the whole of the North Africa population”. This, he told Nogues, would “eliminate the specific and understandable complaints which the Germans bore towards the Jews in Germany” for disproportionately dominating certain occupations. Despite his commitment to the large freedoms underpinning the Allied cause, Roosevelt no less than Churchill could be “a great man for the status quo.”

I could rave on about the book but here are just some of the areas that I found most interesting:

The French fight the Americans and the British during the Torch landings with some vigor. But they do not even say a cussword when the Germans land in Tunisia. Guess the French hadn’t decided who their friends were but they knew what the Germans would do if opposed.

Eisenhower is a poor commander in this first big operation. He is a staff guy, doesn’t know much about conducting war and not yet ruthless. He is too concerned with politics, to the detriment of the battles. He will get his ass chewed by Marshall, he will have a major “fail” when presenting a battle plan to the combined US/Brit chiefs and he will be uncertain if he will survive this assignment. But you start to see why he was the right man for the job.

The Brits run circles around the US guys at the Casablanca Conference and get their way on continuing the fight in the Mediterranean. The US wanted to attack mainland Europe ASAP and thought the Brits were focused on strategies that would help maintain her “Empire”. There is deep mistrust on both the US and British sides of each other. The convoluted command structure is explained. We see the continued failure to concentrate forces and soldiers are thrown into battle in small “penny packets”. The Brits distrust US force performance after the defeat at Kasserine Pass. Monty comes into the picture and is an ass. Overall, the Americans from the top down are not yet ruthless enough. Incompetent leaders are weeded out; battle teaches the need for new tactics.

The only complaint I have (it is a major one but I’m not deducting a star) is that Atkinson almost ignores the impact of airpower on the fight. Much of the campaign was fought without Allied air superiority. In fact, the Germans had great air support for most of the campaign. There is just too little on this aspect of the war. The Allies have air superiority at the end of the campaign but there is nothing here on how that happened. A major oversight.

Highest possible recommendation for anyone interested in WWII, expert or just curious. Read this one to learn about the brave young men who fought and died at the start of the American entry to the European campaign. They deserve as much attention as the ones who later fought in Italy, France, Holland and Germany.

[Ed · Rating 5 out of 5]

Book One of the Liberation Trilogy, this is one of the most well written WWII history books I've ever read. Atkinson is an accomplished researcher but also brings his research to life with well placed anecdotes, memoranda, letters and documented conversations. It's almost like reading a novel.

The only drawback is the overwhelming scope of his narrative. I sometimes had to read the same material twice to get it into proper context. I also accessed the index many times to refresh my memory on names and places that were referred to earlier in the book.

The maps helped me understand the details of the various battles but there were times I wished I had a huge map of the area being discussed so I could better follow the narrative of what Atkinson was describing.

For someone like myself, who was raised with the myths of WWII, this book was an eye-opener. Atkinson discusses the personalities and failings of all the key players, Eisenhower, Giraud, Patton, Alexander, Bradley, Montgomery, Rommel, Von Arnim, Kesselring, Darlan, etc., etc. It appears their failings, at this point in the war, far outweighed their strengths. Those failings almost always resulted in unnecessary casualties. The Generals decide; the soldiers, sailors and airmen die.

I was also able to finally understand the politics of the invasion and the resistance of the Vichy French. The French, by the way, come off as almost comic opera personalities. The North African Arabs and other native peoples in the area are characterized as thieves and opportunists as might be expected of a people under the colonial yoke of France, caught between warring Western powers.

The book is most comprehensive and I could go on for much longer describing its various facets. I would like to just say, though, for anyone interested in understanding the 1942 North African Invasion, this book is a must read.

I am looking forward to attacking Volumn Two, covering the Sicilian and Italian campaigns.

[Terence · Rating 3 out of 5]

I started Atkinson’s Liberation Trilogy with his second book - The Day of Battle - but that was such an informative and well written account of the Italian campaign that when I came across a copy of An Army at Dawn in a local used bookstore, I picked it up immediately.

Overall, I wasn’t disappointed.

Despite the occasionally overwrought prose (which I don’t remember so much from The Day of Battle), Atkinson manages to relate the invasion of North Africa and the subsequent campaign to take Tunis with bracing clarity and drama. The careless reader might get lost in the forest of names and fast-breaking events but that’s why God invented indices and cartography – both resources with which this book are amply equipped.

Atkinson is not a historian and the chief theme underlying his story is that North Africa was the crucible that forged an effective Allied army and made or broke the careers of the men who would lead it, particularly Eisenhower. Somehow Eisenhower’s superiors saw something in the relatively young, untried officer and promoted him over a number of senior officers. These qualities were well hidden, however, in the initial stages of the African campaign. Ike didn’t have any experience commanding an army and he was a tyro in dealing with the delicate egos of politicians and generals. As a consequence, the battles were ill planned and stalled with the coming of winter in 1942. It also meant that incompetent commanders were left in command for far too long, with disastrous results for the men they led. The “poster boy” of this contingent was the general of the II Corps, Lloyd Fredendall, whose cowardice and incompetence finally forced Eisenhower to cashier him but only after thousands had paid the price.

From my readings in WW2 history (admittedly not as extensive as they could be), I would tend to agree with Atkinson’s point. If the Allies had invaded northern Europe in 1943 as Roosevelt and Churchill contemplated, it would have been an unmitigated disaster. We may still have won eventually but it would have taken a measure of political will that probably would have been absent without victories to bolster morale; and it would have been devastating to military confidence.

Beyond that, there were several events/themes that stood out to me:

(1) It’s a little advertised fact that the first troops we engaged in battle were Vichy French. I suppose this sticks in my mind only as in illustration of the complexities of reality. The Allies were never of one mind about the course of the war and its aftermath, and the French were not just waiting for their Allied friends to arrive so that they could through in with them.

Another illustration of this was Roosevelt’s assertion of “unconditional surrender” at the Casablanca conference. A move that surprised and chagrined Churchill, who had discussed the idea with the Americans but certainly hadn’t committed himself.

(2) On the whole, the Germans were simply better at fighting a war. This doesn’t mean their commands weren’t riven by political and personal animosities or that incompetence didn’t rear its ugly head – they were and it did - but the commanders were more professional, the men better trained, the commands better integrated (the Germans tended to ignore their Vichy and Italian allies in planning campaigns, and not without cause), and German logistics better coordinated (the Germans did more with far less than the Allies). It’s a frightening prospect to imagine an Axis that had access to the materiel wealth that the Allies eventually enjoyed.

(3) Which brings us to my third point: the overwhelming materiel superiority of the Allies. They could afford to make mistakes. Several, in fact. Atkinson quotes an unnamed general as saying, “The American Army does not solve its problems, it overwhelms them.” (p. 145) From February to March 1943, 130 ships sailed to Africa with 84,000 troops, 24,000 vehicles and a million tons of cargo. The Germans were fortunate to slip a handful of ships across the straits from Sicily against Allied bombing.

(4) For me, the most interesting part of the book was finding out about the Allied commanders – who they were, their personalities and how they coped with the realities of battle (a new experience even for the WW1 vets as technology had made the Second World War and entirely new way of fighting). I’ve already mentioned Eisenhower and Fredendall but we meet any number of lower ranking officers of varying qualities and competencies, including George Patton, the icon of the can-do, hard-charging American soldier. My feelings of loathing for this borderline psychopath were only reinforced despite Atkinson’s generally admiring treatment. One of Atkinson’s strengths, though, is his evenhanded treatment of the subject – no commander is perfect and all made some truly egregious errors that cost tens of thousands of lives. The better learned from their mistakes; the best also realized the human cost of their folly.

Atkinson’s breakdown of the problems of command is a salutary antidote against the armchair generals who look back at Kasserine Pass and other battles and say, “Well, if only they had done this,” or ask, “Why didn’t he throw X brigade into the line at this point?” It’s surprising how little information planners had on hand, who yet confidently drew up ambitious battle plans. What’s even more surprising is how often the Army managed to pull them off, regardless.

I would definitely recommend this book as well as The Day of Battle to anyone interested in military and/or WW2 history, and I look forward to the third installment, which promises to deal with the D-Day invasion and its aftermath.

[Henry · Rating 5 out of 5]

A monumental work recounting the beginning of the liberation of Europe by Allied Forces. Incredibly detailed history of the battles, the players, and the strategies (or lack thereof). It reads like a novel. This is the first volume of Atkinson's Liberation Trilogy. I am looking forward to the next two.

[Steven Z. · Rating 5 out of 5]

For those who are interested in the military history of Europe during World War II but do not enjoy dealing with the minutiae of military detail for each battle Rick Atkinson has done us all a service. He has produced what has been labeled as the “liberation trilogy” which he has just completed with the publication of THE GUNS AT LAST LIGHT THE WAR IN WESTERN EUROPE, 1944-1945. Mr. Atkinson has spent the last fifteen years researching and writing his history of the war in Europe. In 2002 he presented AN ARMY AT DAWN, THE WAR IN NORTH AFRICA, 1942-1943, and in 2008, THE WAR IN BATTLE: THE WAR IN SICILY AND ITALY, 1943-1944 was published. The project has been a remarkable undertaking and I felt a void in my own study of the war having not engaged these volumes until now. After watching a series of interviews of the author the last few weeks I decided to undertake the joyful task of tackling the first volume dealing with the war in North Africa. To say the least, I have not been disappointed. Mr. Atkinson writes in a fluid manner, presents the necessary background, detail, and analysis of each confrontation, in addition to character studies of the important personages who led the allied armies, and leaves the reader with the feeling he has accompanied allied troops from the landing in November, 1942 to final victory in North Africa in May, 1943.

The reader follows the journey of untrained American troops who make up a somewhat ragtag army through months of fighting emerging as an effective fighting force that learns the key lesson for military success, the ability to hate. The themes that the author develops are ostensibly accurate throughout the narrative. He begins by arguing that the invasion of North Africa was a pivotal point in American history as it was the place where the United States began to act as a great power. The invasion defined the Anglo-American coalition and the strategic course of the war. The decision to invade North Africa found President Roosevelt going against the advice of his generals who favored a cross channel landing on the French coast. Roosevelt, ever the political animal was facing the 1942 congressional elections saw the need for a positive military result and North Africa seemed like the safest bet. By going along with the British Roosevelt made the correct decision because it was unrealistic to expect a successful cross channel invasion in 1942 or 1943.
Atkinson presents the infighting among the allied generals as plans for Operation Torch evolved. The reader is taken into the war councils and is exposed to the logic of each position as well as the deep personality conflicts that existed throughout this period between the leading actors in the American and British military hierarchies. The British made known their contempt for the fighting ability of American troops in addition to their disdain for American military leadership throughout this period. The Americans reciprocated these feelings at the haughtiness and egocentric attitudes of British planners. The vignettes dealing with Generals George S. Patton, Theodore Roosevelt, Jr., and Omar T. Bradley on the American side and those of Generals Harold Alexander and Bernard L. Montgomery are brutally honest. We see the development of Dwight David Eisenhower, who is periodically stricken with self-doubt into a confident Supreme Commander. The relationship between Winston Churchill and Franklin Roosevelt does not break any new ground but Atkinson summarizes their relationship nicely developing the most salient points relating to political and military decision making.

The most interesting part of the book involves American GIs. From the outset Atkinson’s goal is to present the war from the perspective of those who groveled, crawled, marched, and died in the North African campaign. The author’s discussion of the 34th Infantry Division provides insights into the problems of creating an invasion force without the requisite training. The issue of “time” to prepare American troops has a lasting impact on the early conduct of the invasion and the attempt to push the Germans out of Tunisia. The discussion of the “34th” is a microcosm of the war American troops faced and the problems that had to be overcome during the six months of combat that led to victory over the Germans in North Africa in May, 1943. Perhaps the author’s greatest success is creating the “fog of war” accurately. The needless death due to planning errors, the civilian casualties, the emotions displayed by the troops are all on display. In all of these instances Atkinson provides unique examples to supplement his comments. Whether he is describing the battle for Hill 609 in northern Tunisia, the landings in Oran, Algeria, or the fighting at the Kasserine Pass the reader cannot help but be absorbed in the narrative. It is not a stretch to come to the conclusion that Mr. Atkinson is a superb writer of military history.

Another area that Atkinson excels is his discussion of wartime diplomacy. The issue of how the French would react to the invasion would go a long way in determining the length and depth of the fighting and its ultimate results. Portraits of the two key French figures; Admiral Jean Louis Darlan and General Henri Honore Giraud, both Vichyite collaborators and their negotiations with General Mark Clark and Robert Murphy reflect the tenuous nature of Franco-American relations during the war and by integrating the role of General Charles De Gaulle we have a portent of the problems that will exist during the war and after. The competition between Patton and Montgomery and other officers is on full display throughout the book. Eisenhower’s greatest accomplishment was his success in dealing with the diverse egos he was presented with. Eisenhower’s realization of his lack of combat experience and its impact on his decision making is used by Atkinson to explore his evolution as a successful military leader. The North African campaign provided Eisenhower with the training ground in his development as the man who would lead the allies to victory by 1945.

The depth of Atkinson’s work makes it an exceptional read. He argues correctly that the key to the allied victory in North Africa and the war in general was that the United States was the “arsenal of democracy.” As the British kept pointing out it was American industry and its capacity to produce that made up for any military errors the allies may have made. What also separates Atkinson’s work from other histories dealing with North Africa is the human drama that explores the daily activities of the men who fought. Whether describing battle scenes, the plight of the wounded, and the impact of casualties on the home front, and other aspects of combat Atkinson has done justice to his subject. Whether talking about such diverse topics as the $26,000,000 life insurance policy purchased by an American division before battle, the role of General Edwin Rommel, or negotiations at Casablanca the reader can trust the material presented. If you are a World War II scholar, or are simply interested in a narrative of what for me is the turning point for the United States in the Second World War, the first volume of the “liberation trilogy” is worth exploring and I recommend it highly.

[Chrissie · Rating 3 out of 5]

An Army at Dawn: The War in North Africa, 1942-1943 by Rick Atkinson shows the North African military campaign to have been the training ground for American generals and armed forces. With the conclusion of the campaign, Hitler and the Axis powers had lost strategic significance, France had returned to the Allied fold and within the Allied forces a shift of power had taken place, leadership had shifted from Britain to the United States. The completion of the North African campaign set the stage for the imminent invasion of Sicily and the Italian mainland.

The book covers both overall war strategies as well as details of individual battles. The number of casualties, the tactics employed, the composition and size of the troops, the state of the morale--all such is detailed. Mini-biographies are drawn of generals and other commanders and leaders. We read of Dwight D. Eisenhower, George S. Patton, Bernard Montgomery, Allen Brooke, Omar Bradley, Harold Alexander and more. One gets a feel for the character of each. The bickering between the navy and army, as well as between national powers is spoken of.

The telling moves forward in chronological order—starting with the amphibious landing in Morocco, the battleground shifting to Algeria and then Tunisia where the fighting was carried out in several stages. The road toward victory took its time.

“For an army to win, young men must die.”
We see how irony and cynicism infiltrated the ranks.

Rick Atkinson narrates his own book. He speaks in a calm and level tone, without dramatics. The narration is good, but it doesn’t stand out as being special, and so I am rating the narration three stars. There are no maps. They should have been provided on an accompanying PDF. The detailed recounting of the battles necessitates them.

The epilogue, which is on the long side, concludes on a sentimental tone. A deceased stretcher-bearer’s letter home to his mother ends the book. I could have done without this. The final lines do not fit the straightforward, informative style of the rest of the book; the final lines are more suited to the schmaltzy end of a panoramic TV show!

Detailed battle descriptions are normally not my cup of tea. I am nevertheless glad to have read this book. It is clear and succinct. Having previously read much about the Second World War, I still had too little knowledge about the North African campaign. The gap has now begun to be filled.

[A.L. Sowards · Rating 4 out of 5]

A detailed account of the campaign in Northern Africa, from the Allied landings in November 1942 until the capture of Tunis. Atkinson’s books are dense, packed with facts, and always take me a while to get through (not because of any flaw with the writing, there’s just so much to absorb). Full of interesting stories and tidbits, plus an overall informative big-picture look. The conclusion: the campaign in N. Africa wasn’t elegant, but the Allies got the job done.

[Mark · Rating 5 out of 5]

I am a historian by training and know from past experience just how difficult it is to write readable military history, combining the objectivity needed to explain the complexity of overall strategy whilst capturing first hand the bitter experience of the front line soldier in combat. But Rick Atkinson pulls it off seamlessly and with apparent ease. This work is a masterpiece and will, I am sure, become the 'definitive history' of the Allied North African Campaign.

Meticulously researched and written on an epic scale but always manageable the text is detailed but studded with human bravery and courage. The horror of battle is laid bare. But the author has the ability to combine light and amusing anecdotal evidence, as he does with aplomb, for instance with the with the heavy weight diplomatic negotiations between Roosevelt and Churchill, which he handles with light touch and his account is gripping like a page-turner. The narrative flow from the diplomatic and human background to mounting the daring amphibious Operation Torch, through the landings in Morocco and Algiers, to the fighting on the ground, is as fascinating as it is enthralling, and the book is eminently readable for all students of history, at whatever level, and for the general reader, too. Masterly and magisterial in scope and delivery. Spell binding human history.

[Ozymandias · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is probably the best account of World War 2 that I have ever read and the go-to standard for anyone looking to learn up on the war. So with that out of the way, I’m going to get my main criticisms out of the way by making clear what it isn’t. This is not an account of the entire African campaign. The action starts with Operation Torch in late ‘42 and ignores all earlier campaigns between Rommel and the British. Following on from that, it is not an overview of both sides of the African theater. Rather, it is focused myopically on the Americans and to a lesser extent those British and French serving alongside them. We’re given glimpses of German strategies and views, but never anything much more than is necessary for us to understand the shape of the offensive.

So with those two big limitations in mind, what is it about this book that makes it so good? Essentially, the book reads like a novel for all that it is properly sourced and accurate. You have your main characters (Ike, Patton, Monty and the rest) and a series of objectives. Narration takes us from the heights of command through the experience of the average soldier in his foxhole to a more detached and tactical perspective. And it does this while getting across a very clear sense of the nature of war and how it felt to participants. Never (except maybe towards the climax) do the accounts of seizing well-defended hilltops or defending against advancing panzer formations feel anything but nerve-wracking. The war feels bloody and ugly in a way that’s very hard to achieve in nonfiction.

Having read Atkinson’s latest book (The British Are Coming) gave me some idea of the author’s strengths and weaknesses. He is excellent at selecting snappy quotes that perfectly embody the tone he wants to convey. But in that book he faced a lack of such primary documents and was forced to rely on secondary sources to lesser effect. Here he has a surplus of such sources, not always from survivors either, which makes the story really sing. Constant comments taken from diaries, letters, memoirs, newspaper articles, etc. give voice to the dead to a degree that it is hard to match. Characters are complicated, including the generally simplistic Patton and the generally decent Eisenhower. Neither one is wholly what they seem, and careful perusing of diaries and other documents left behind shows much of what lies behind the screen.

This grasp of character is matched by an equal match of strategy and tactics. The summary of grand strategic differences between the British and American strategies is so brilliantly clear as to place things in a new light for me. He’s right: preferred American strategy is to charge straight at the target (see basically every major Civil War campaign outside the west) while the British one is to attack from the periphery (see Wellington’s Spanish Campaign and basically any non-colonial war of the 19th century). This basic difference explains much of the Allied frustrations. Tactical acumen is good too, aided by helpful maps. An understanding of character and of tactical plans are rarely found in the same place. That they are both so well understood here is something to be praised.

The major theme of this book is the blooding of the army, including the commanders. The American Army made a fairly poor showing in Africa, only showing its potential towards the end. Their soldiers had to learn to put peace aside and really hate the enemy, while the officers needed to learn how (and when) to translate training into battlefield practice. It’s perhaps comparable to the British experience in France, where they found themselves up against an army that had just conquered Poland and was to slice through them like butter. Perhaps surprisingly, the British didn’t find themselves overly sympathetic to American struggles in similar circumstances and instead regarded their combat skills as poor.

That’s the other great theme of the book: the petty squabbling between various nationalities and individuals. This discussion can be a bit facile, with excerpts from generals’ comments popping up whenever a multinational handoff goes badly. There’s certainly plenty to work with. The English generals tended to look down on the newcomers and American generals like Patton truly loathed the Brits. But then Patton wasn’t exactly glowing with praise for his fellow American generals anyway. All generals were massive egotists and if it was harder to forgive criticism from an outsider that shouldn’t obscure the countless feuds between fellow countrymen. I guess I’d have just been more interested in common soldiers’ reactions. This theme seems set to be a key one in the following books as a better-unified alliance is credited for a large part of the Allies’ success against the Axis.

I really enjoyed reading this book. Few historical accounts can take you inside the minds of the key players or provide such a strong grasp for the feel of combat. I felt that it even manages this better than works of historical fiction (eg. Jeff Shaara’s whitewashed WW2 series) which have key advantages that nonfiction lacks (namely the ability to make up stuff). The book reads almost like a novel and is certainly structured that way. You won’t learn much about events beyond the front lines or command tent, but you will understand something about what participants felt.

[Keith · Rating 5 out of 5]

In this, the first volume of his "Liberation Trilogy," Rick Atkinson delivers a stirring yet critical narrative of the war in North Africa. This was the scene in 1942 of the first combat clashes between green and untested American soldiers and the long-bloodied Afrika Korps of Erwin Rommel. The greatest strength of this book is Atkinson's marvelous style and his ability to tell the tale with both metaphorical flourishes and precise statistical accuracy. Atkinson is not a historian by training, he has a MA in English Literature and has worked as a journalist. Perhaps this experience serves the story better. While I am sure that there are more analytically discerning accounts of this phase of the war in Europe, Atkinson's style give this account great narrative thrust. It's more than 700 pages long but parts read like a thriller.

Atkinson's high style and awareness of the stakes is in evidence in this quote from the opening chapter:

It was a time of cunning and miscalculation, of sacrifice and self-indulgence, of ambiguity, love, malice, and mass murder. There were heroes, but it was not an age of heroes as clean and lifeless as alabaster; at Carthage, demigods and poltroons lie side by side. . . . Only seers or purblind optimists could guess that these portents foreshadowed victory. The Allies were not yet winning, but they were about to begin winning. Night would end, the tide would turn, and on that turning tide an army would wash ashore in Africa, ready to right a world gone wrong.

Or the surreal humor of war:

American combat engineers heading through the mountain pass called Kasserine found themselves detained at a border post by French customs officials who demanded that duty be paid on all matériel. After realizing that Frenchman and Arab alike were mesmerized by the power of official stamps, the engineers fabricated their own rubber imprimatur and “just stamped the hell out of everything.”

The narrative is full of other voices, not just the command officers but the ordinary soldier with background stories and quotes from letters home, as well as the dispatches of the war correspondents. Eisenhower's appointment as supreme commander rubbed many the wrong way, particularly senior British generals and their attempts to undermine Ike were costly. Atkinson demonstrates how Eisenhower grew into the role history has frozen him into but it wasn't easy:

In truth, [Eisenhower] spent at least three-quarters of his time worrying about political issues, and that preoccupation poorly served the Allied cause. Had he shunted aside all distractions to focus on seizing Tunis with a battle captain’s fixed purpose, the coming months might have been different. But a quarter-century as a staff officer, with a staff officer’s meticulous attention to detail and instinctive concern for pleasing his superiors, did not slough away easily. Eisenhower had yet to bend events to his iron will, to impose as well as implore, to become a commander in action as well as in rank.

This is a very good military history and I'm looking foward to Volumes Two and Three

[Karl Jorgenson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Winner of the Pulitzer prize, Atkinson has done an incredible job of researching operation Torch and the war in North Africa and converting it to narrative non-fiction. How does one human have time for all this research? I am left with the impression that he has read everything: every government document, every letter home, every after-action report, every supply request, every shipping manifest, every newspaper article. The charm of his prose is that he has found the small things, the oddities, the quirks that make the story come alive. Atkinson's writing is comparable to Cornelius Ryan ('The Longest Day', 'A Bridge Too Far', 'The Last Battle'.) Atkinson is, perhaps, not as good as Stephen Ambrose, whose works give us the day-to-day life of the average foot soldier. Atkinson focuses on the commanders--good, but perhaps not the best.
An Army at Dawn has a point to make, as well. Torch and the North African campaign are typically glossed over in a few words: 'Rommel and the Afrika Corps are reeling back before the British 8th Army and the Americans land in his rear, sealing his fate.' That happened, more or less, but the real story is more interesting and more important. The American army arrived, clueless about how to fight a modern war, and ignorant of which of their peace-time soldiers would turn out to be warriors. Having watched the Nazi's blitzkrieg offense for three years, the British alternately triumph and collapse in the Libyan desert for two, and the Soviets go to the brink of destruction and then rebound twice, one would think American strategists and tacticians would have learned a thing or two about the function of a modern army. One would be wrong. American soldiers arrive in Africa unaware that the wermacht knew how to use their weapons to maximum advantage, unaware that German defensive tactics had evolved, through three years of war, to be highly effective. The American army arrived from another planet, ready to try out some peace-time theories, confident that they were as capable and knowledgeable as anyone else. Thousands of unnecessary casualties and dozens of dismissed commanders later, they learned. Tragic and foolish as this was, Eisenhower, Bradley, Patton, and, to a much lesser degree the Brits, learned from the mistakes. The school of hard knocks made the invasions of Sicily, Italy, and eventually Normandy possible, leading to the victory in Berlin.

[Dimitri · Rating 4 out of 5]

The desert sands were reserved for Monty's Rats. Their American cousins instead landed in a reprise of Western Front mud and sleet as they learned to soldier with hate in the Tunesian mountains.

Rick Atkinson writes with the elegance of a ballroom dancer.

[Paul · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is one of those books that every person that wants to know about World War 2 must read, but it’s primarily about the United States’ entry into the war in the European Theater (or African/Mediterranean Theater, if you prefer).

It’s always been hard for me to read about the Africa campaign from the U.S. perspective because – as the title implies – the American military was so unprepared for war. Problems with logistics, with command structure, and even the desire to kill the enemy had to be learned in painful lessons, and if Rommel had sole command (instead of the “Commando Supremo” in Italy) to make decisions, he may have driven the Americans back to Morocco.

This is a definitive account of the U.S. entry into the war, but the English and Commonwealth armies had already been fighting, and the conflicts and rivalries are manifest in the failures and eventual success of this campaign – a hard learning experience (and my enthusiasm for it waned at times because of the futility of the untried troops), but necessary before attacking Fortress Europe.

[Leftbanker · Rating 5 out of 5]

This dude can flat out write, like few other historians I’ve read before, and I’ve read a few. An unputdownable 700-page doorstop that makes me grateful for my eReader so I didn’t have to carry around a brick of a paperback. I don’t know if the hardback would fit in my backpack.

The book caught my eye because although I feel that I’ve read way more than my fair share of histories about World War II, the North Africa campaign is my weakest link in understanding the entire conflict. What a lucky choice I made in this, the first volume in The Liberation Trilogy.

I just finished this so forgive me for going backwards, but the epilogue was so incredibly masterful that I have to comment on it first. His thumbnail sketch of Eisenhower was more insightful than many doorstop biographies of the former general and U.S. President.

However, if you read the very first paragraph of the prologue, you will be hooked. It is a moving description of the military cemetery at Carthage, Tunisia. It is utterly humbling.

TWENTY-SEVEN acres of headstones fill the American military cemetery at Carthage, Tunisia. There are no obelisks, no tombs, no ostentatious monuments, just 2,841 bone-white marble markers, two feet high and arrayed in ranks as straight as gunshots. Only the chiseled names and dates of death suggest singularity. Four sets of brothers lie side by side. Some 240 stones are inscribed with thirteen of the saddest words in our language: “Here rests in honored glory a comrade in arms known but to God.” A long limestone wall contains the names of another 3,724 men still missing, and a benediction: “Into Thy hands, O Lord.”

What the book showcases is how the American Army entered the war in Africa like a clueless child on the first day of school. They were quick learners.

American military officers who had spent the past two decades perfecting cavalry charges on windswept posts in the middle of nowhere could be pardoned for having limited political acuity. The truth was that a callow, clumsy army had arrived in North Africa with little notion of how to act as a world power. The balance of the campaign—indeed, the balance of the war—would require learning not only how to fight but how to rule. Eisenhower sensed it; he wrote Beetle Smith, 'We are just started on a great venture.'

He plays down the hagiography so common among war historians.

Sixty years after the invasion of North Africa, a gauzy mythology has settled over World War II and its warriors. The veterans are lionized as “the Greatest Generation,” an accolade none sought and many dismiss as twaddle. They are condemned to sentimental hagiography, in which all the brothers are valiant and all the sisters virtuous. The brave and the virtuous appear throughout the North African campaign, to be sure, but so do the cowardly, the venal, and the foolish. The ugliness common in later campaigns also appears in North Africa: the murder and rape of civilians; the killing of prisoners; the falsification of body counts.

“The American Army does not solve its problems,” one general noted, “it overwhelms them.”

That, for me, was the most trenchant line in the entire book, perhaps in the trilogy. Something that I have said many times in other words. The industrial might of America was simply too much for the combined efforts of the Germans and the Japanese armies.

Sometimes his writing borders on comedy, as with this slight misdirect:

One-third of the Italian merchant fleet had been interned when Rome entered the war; by September 1942, half of the remainder was at the bottom of various seas. Then things got worse.

Or the author simply relays quips from others who lived through the chaos. This bit was about the enormous size of the Pentagon:

A Western Union Courier could enter the Pentagon on a Friday and come out a Lt Colonel on a Monday.

Or G.I.s doing what they do best, complaining about the brass:

Never before have so many been led by so few from so far."

There are so many zingers in the book you need to work hard to keep up.

Ugh, now I have to tackle the next in the series, the 998-page leviathan, The Day of Battle-The War in Sicily and Italy, 1943-1944.

[Checkman · Rating 4 out of 5]

Solid very readable popular military history. In November 1942 the United States Army (the entire United States military establishment for that matter) was green and it embarked on a major land campaign against the German Army. Arguably one of the best armies in the world at that time and an army that had been basically fighting non-stop for the past three years. Not surprisingly the Germans delivered several stunning kicks to the American jaw, but thanks to many factors (to include just dumb luck), the Germans were defeated and the Allies emerged victorious in North Africa.

Rick Atkinson shows that things were not perfect in the Allied camp. For those readers who have studied World War II in depth there is nothing really new here. There is the political scheming among the Vichy French, the clash of egos in the Allied command, the less than effective weaponry that the United States Army employed at this stage of the war, the superior German tactics and weapons, and the friction between the British and the Americans. However Atkinson covers these aspects very competently and it all flows together. This is a book written by a journalist with both professional and personal connections to the United States Army. It's apparent that he has feelings for the institution and is proud of it, but wants the reader to see that it is made up of Humans and isn't perfect. As a result the victory (and it was a victory for the enemy surrendered in large numbers and retreated)in North Africa is shown to be more impressive than is generally recognized by many military historians. It's a good book.

However it isn't a hardcore military history treatise. Which is a plus in my opinion. I majored in history and I've read many an in-depth scholarly historical text over the years. You want to know something? Most of them are incredibly dry and dull. Atkinson brings the Human element into his account and I like that. He is from the Ryan and Ambrose school of military history. Snobs might not like the school, but then snobs seem to forget that history is the story of Humans and Human events.

In closing I strongly recommend An Army At Dawn. One might not agree with all of Atkinson's opinions and the book could have used a few more maps, but it's a well written,engrossing, in-depth look at the U.S. Army/Allies at the beginning. This isn't the muscular, seemingly invincible Allied war-machine of 1945. This is a book about the beginnings and it's a good one.

[N.N. Heaven · Rating 5 out of 5]

Atkinson has written the definitive history of the War in North Africa from Torch to the end. He takes the gloves off and there is no reverence for leader or soldier in this writing. It is realistic and at times disturbing but the truth is the truth.



Atkinson seems to have issues with some famous generals * some that I worship * but be that as it may, this is the history of this part of World War II.



It will take a treasured spot on my military history book shelf and now I must acquire the next two copies of this series.



My Rating: 5 stars



Reviewed by: Mr. N



This review first appeared: https://www.nnlightsbookheaven.com/si...

[Daniel Ligon · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent; well researched and well written. Not as lyrical or as sentimental, but it reminds me a bit of Bruce Catton.

[Shannon Callahan · Rating 4 out of 5]

A lot of details

What an unbelievable mess beginning! Who knew that Americans sucked at the first confrontation but ended up contributing to the winning campaign in North Africa. This author seems to be focused on the bottom heavy with details of overall tactics and situations. They were good to know but seems like he kept switching between fronts and Eisenhower. I mean it wasn’t too bad but the choice of style could be improved.