Combat and Morale in the North African Campaign
The Eighth Army and the Path to El Alamein

Military professionals and theorists have long understood the relevance of morale in war. Montgomery, the victor at El Alamein, said, following the battle, that 'the more fighting I see, the more I am convinced that the big thing in war is morale'. Jonathan Fennell, in examining the North African campaign through the lens of morale, challenges conventional explanations for Allied success in one of the most important and controversial campaigns in British and Commonwealth history. He introduces new sources, notably censorship summaries of soldiers' mail, and an innovative methodology that assesses troop morale not only on the evidence of personal observations and official reports but also on contemporaneously recorded rates of psychological breakdown, sickness, desertion and surrender. He shows for the first time that a major morale crisis and stunning recovery decisively affected Eighth Army's performance during the critical battles on the Gazala and El Alamein lines in 1942.

Awards

• Joint Runner-up, 2011 Templer Medal Book Prize, The Society for Army Historical Research

Reviews & endorsements

"[This] book is a tremendous work of scholarship. It is an archivally driven study that impresses the reader on nearly every page with the breadth and depth of its analysis. In many respects it sets a new standard for the study of the British and Commonwealth armies in the Second World War and the study of morale more generally in the twentieth century."
James Kitchen, English Historical Review

Customer reviews

Product details

• Date Published: March 2011
• format: Hardback
• isbn: 9780521192705
• length: 362 pages

• dimensions: 235 x 161 x 20 mm
• weight: 0.71kg
• contains: 31 b/w illus. 13 maps 13 tables
• availability: Available