Amazon.com description: Product Description: This book, which is based on new research in military archives in Britain, the United States and Germany, tells of the bitter in-fighting which occurred at every stage of the Tunisian campaign, between generals, armies and nations. It offers a panoramic view of the vast struggle which does not neglect the political background nor the experiences of the men who had to do the fighting. Making extensive use of letters, diaries and other accounts the author shows throughout this book how the ordinary soldier, sailor and airman fought for personal survival and what it was like to face instant death in this theatre of war, made even more deadly by the latest inventions of modern destruction. Against a background of secret service operations three massive Task Forces delivered over 100,000 British and American troops to the coast of North Africa in November, 1942. At the time, the TORCH landings comprised the greatest and most complex amphibious operation ever mounted. Yet from Churchill and Roosevelt downwards, no one on the Allied side knew for sure whether or not the men struggling ashore would be driven back into the sea by violent French resistance. When the Anglo-American force landed Hitler responded at once by sending a force of highly experienced troops. Eventually, many thousands of men were ferried to Tunisia in order to support Rommel's Panzer Army which was retreating ahead of the British Eighth Army. Before the build-up was complete the Allies thought that they could smash their way into Tunis but lost the race in bitter fighting around the mist-shrouded peak barring their way, which the Germans called "the Christmas Mountain". During the early months of 1943 the Allies tried in vain to break through the cleverly organized German and Italian defences, and the Americans suffered a severe mauling at the Kasserine Pass, which brought into question the whole of their training programme and their fighting ability. Eventually, as the noose tightened on the Axis troops the Allies secured mastery of the seas and skies, denying the enemy supplies and disrupting his communications. Still the ever-optimistic Kesselring, prompted by Mussolini and Hitler, managed to pour in men who were engaged in a desperate struggle to stave off the inevitable catastrophe until their resistance suddenly collapsed in the face of an overwhelming armoured onslaught. As the fighting ended in early May, 1943, over 250,000 men trooped into captivity. Following, as it did, a few weeks after the surrender of von Paulus at Stalingrad, "Tunisgrad" dealt the Axis Powers a devastating blow. In Tunisia, for the first time in World War II, Americans and British learned to fight together. Here were seen for the first time many of the great commanders who were to take the Allied war machine deep into Europe: Eisenhower, promoted from nowhere to the head of a combined fighting force, "blood and guts" Patton, the "GI General" Bradley, and the ambitious Mark Clark. On the British side stood the partrician figure of Alexander, the supremely confident Montgomery, who to his own surprise became a popular hero, Horrocks and Leese, and that dour Scot, Sir Kenneth Anderson of First Army, who bitterly resented the publicity given to the famed "Desert Rats". From the Commonwealth came the indomitable New Zealanders, commanded by a man of great personal courage, Bernard Freyberg, VC, and the hillfighters of "Gertie" Tuker's 4th Indian Division. Tunisia was also to prove the graveyard of several reputations and the making of even more.