Northwest Africa: Seizing the Initiative in the West (Annotated Version)

Description

This edition of Northwest Africa, Volume I, includes:

• A new Introduction by Jim Pitrat giving the historical context

• A Note on This Edition on the two-volume division of Howe’s history

• A new index for this volume

“A school of coalition warfare and a graduate school of Axis tactics.”

On 8 November 1942, Allied forces came ashore at Safi, Fedala, Mehdia, Oran and Algiers. Operation TORCH was the first great expeditionary assault in the West. George F. Howe’s official history follows it from the Allied decision to occupy French North Africa through the landings, the Clark–Darlan negotiations with the French and the race into Tunisia, to the stalemate before Tunis at Longstop Hill in December.

Howe writes the campaign as a history of two opposing coalitions, tracing parallel decisions from heads of government to the combat zones, and draws on captured documents and German officers to recover “the enemy side.”

First published in 1957 by the Army’s Office of the Chief of Military History, the history is in the public domain. This Edge Weaver Legacy edition divides Howe’s single volume into two at the natural break in the campaign and adds new material: an Introduction by Jim Pitrat, A Note on This Edition, new 8.5 x 11 typesetting and an index for this volume. Howe’s text and notes are as first published, with 15 original maps.

Volume I of Northwest Africa: Seizing the Initiative in the West, continued in Volume II, The Tunisian Campaign.