Book Review: Das Afrika Korps: Erwin Rommel and the Germans in Africa, 1941-43

Book Description
Publication Date: April 1, 2010
This action-packed history of the Germans in Africa in World War II covers one of the most famous military units of all time under one of the best commanders.

Bought this book from Amazon for USD26.95. Below is a review from Sci-fi and history reader (NJ, USA) that sums up my views about the book.

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Franz Kurowski's narration of the German perspective on the fight for North Africa in World War Two reads quickly in this book. The primary focus is on the fight prior to Tunisia and provides a general overview. Von Mellenthin's Panzer Battles provides greater detail on the operational and strategic fight during his time there.

This book is a good introduction for those seeking to learn about the battles in North Africa. A key point to this book is how critical logistics (fuel and water) is to the success in desert warfare. Rommel's panzer forces simply did not have enough supplies, equipment, and most importantly tanks, to survive the attritional battle to attain victory. The key to the Allied success was the convoy interdiction at Malta that prevented German reinforcements and replacements.

The book does describe the Italian effort and gallantry while fighting under Rommel's command. Rommel did have his weakness in being overly aggressive in sending his overextended and understrength units to attack numerically superior Allied forces. In one case, this resulted in the destruction of an entire German battalion against the motivated and hardened Australian 9th Infantry Division at Tobruk. Had Rommel been more patient in attacking fixed locations, those setbacks could have been avoided.

Rommel's brilliance was in the defense/ counterattack and his knack for directing the tactical battle at the key moment. Even after the Battle of El Alamein, where the British started with approximately 1,000 tanks to the roughly 200 German tanks, Rommel and his key leaders were able to prevent their Army's destruction while retreating to Tunisia.

Overall this is good book to borrow from the library. Kurowski's Ace's series of books is more entertaining to read and own.