The Eighth Army versus Rommel: The War in the Desert, Tactics, Training and Operations

The Eighth Army versus Rommel: The War in the Desert, Tactics, Training and Operations With James Colvin Part of a series of shows to commemorate the 80th anniversary of the battle of El Alamein on WW2TV Today, James Colvin will examine the undertrained and underfunded pre-war British Army, contrasting its leadership with its opposite numbers in Germany, and demonstrate how and why Eighth Army had difficulties in its first 18 months of fighting the Afrika Korps. He will go on to talk about the Eighth Army’s victory at the Second Battle of El Alamein. In doing so, he will discuss the perspective of the commanders, the decisions they made, and how cultural influences effected tactics and decisions of the Eighth Army high command. Ultimately, British commanders were as much the product of their military culture and education as Rommel and his commanders were of theirs, but British military culture and education was, for much of this period, markedly less fit for purpose than the German.