The conquest of Italian East Africa during World War ll has been called  “a feat of spontaneous exploitation unsurpassed in war.”  As such, however, the unmitigated success of this campaign was overshadowed by the simultaneous withdrawal of the ill-fated British expedition from Greece and its eventual evacuation from Crete.  The 1940-1941 Abyssinian campaign, which is ably placed within the strategical context of the immense operational responsibilities of the vast Middle East Command, is the subject of this book.

Glover, a noted historian and author of books dealing mainly with Wellington and the Napoleonic era, has put together a highly readable book.  This book successfully describes the difficult terrain (which one participant called, “a tormented landscape like a stormy sea moved by the wrath of God”) and the (at times) high-quality Italian opposition encountered by the forces of Generals Platt and Cunningham.  This campaign was a logistician’s nightmare, with the desert and the mountain terrain hostile to the invader and the distances great: the Eleventh African Division, for example, completing an advance of seventeen hundred miles in fifty-three days.  Though this book is well written and highly readable, it states nothing new, being merely a synthesis mainly of readily available secondary sources.

Nine excellent maps and nineteen interesting photographs enhance the test.  An order of battle of the British forces is included as an appendix, giving the reader a good appreciation of the heterogeneity of the forces.  A three-page bibliography is included, although it lists only the major works on the subject.

General Wavell, the British Commander-in-Chief, Middle East, is deservedly lauded as “the presiding genius of the campaign.”  However, on page 123, the author attributes a quote to an entry made by Wavell in his diary; this is inaccurate, since Wavell is known not to have kept a diary.  This quote, as well as three others (on pages 35, 40, and 120) are from Wavell’s unpublished autobiography “Reminiscences,” and have been lifted verbatim and without credit from John Connell’s Wavell:  Scholar and Soldier (London: Collins, 1964), pages 265, 267, and 375 (twice).  These are significant shortcomings, as is Glover’s incorrect assertion on page 133 that, on about 25 March 1941, “it was known that the Afrika Corps was going to attack in the Western Desert at any moment.”  The German attack which materialized was totally unexpected at that time by the C-in-C and his Intelligence Officer, and is an example that an author/historian should refrain from using hindsight and subsequent information in making historical judgments.

This detailed, analytical, and interesting book, although containing flaws, is valuable in that it brings to contemporary military literature the story of a little-known but important campaign which resulted in the complete destruction of an Italian army of a quarter million men and eliminated the Italian East African Empire.

Book Review, An Improvised War, by Michael Glover, Journal of Military History
53 (April 1989): 198-199.