Strangling the Axis: The Fight for Control of the Mediterranean during the Second World War
Cambridge Military Histories
(Cambridge University Press - August 2020)
by Richard Hammond
304 pages - hardback
$53.75
"This is a major reassessment of the causes of Allied victory in the Second World War in the Mediterranean region. Drawing on a unique range of multinational source material, Richard Hammond demonstrates how the Allies' ability to gain control of the key routes across the sea and sink large quantities of enemy shipping denied the Axis forces in North Africa crucial supplies and proved vital to securing ultimate victory there. Furthermore, the sheer scale of attrition to Axis shipping outstripped their industrial capacity to compensate, leading to the collapse of the Axis position across key territories maintained by seaborne supply, such as Sardinia, Corsica and the Aegean islands. As such, Hammond demonstrates how the anti-shipping campaign in the Mediterranean was the fulcrum about which strategy in the theatre pivoted, and the vital enabling factor ultimately leading to Allied victory in the region."
Review blurb - John Gooch, University of Leeds
"Charting the interplay of means, methods and measures, and resting on meticulous research, Richard Hammond's authoritative account of a neglected but decisive campaign explains for the first time exactly how air and sea power throttled the Axis forces in North Africa, laying the foundations for victory in the Mediterranean."
Table of Contents
Introduction
1. The descent to war in the Mediterranean
2. Resisting Mare Nostrum: the early anti-shipping
3. Enter Germany: January–July 1941
4. Progress: August–December 1941
5. Axis ascendency, January–August 1942
6. The end of the beginning, Alam Halfa and El Alamein
7. The end in North Africa and the shipping
8. After North Africa
Conclusion.
About the author
"Richard Hammond is a Lecturer at Brunel University and is Vice-President of the Second World War Research Group. He is the recipient of the Society for Military History's Moncado Prize and the Corbett Prize in Modern Naval History (Proxime Accessit).
https://www.cambridge.org/us/academi...-war?format=HB