The Tactics Society

This course is a case study covering the fighting in North Africa from 1940-1943 during the Second World War. The North African campaigns provide a particularly useful case topic for military professionals since they offer insights about how military forces learn from mistakes and adapt to the changing character of war. The lessons learned in North Africa, set the conditions for victory in Europe.

Below is our general “roadmap” for building out the case study project. As with all of our learning materials, we intend this case topic to be a series of “living” resources and documents that we will constantly improve, refine and upgrade over time with the help of our readers and scholar community (for more information about how we create “living” learning content click HERE). This general roadmap will offer an outline or structure that our writers, contributors and community members can use to develop new content and incorporate it into the larger body of learning materials. While the structure can and will evolve over time, we chose to start by focusing on the following themes.

Theme 1: Logistics

The campaigns in North Africa offer particularly useful insights on logistics. The demands of the desert environment made effective logistics critically important and there is a great deal of practical wisdom to be gained from studying the experience of both Allied and Axis forces.

Theme 2: Battlefield Learning

The fighting in North Africa took place early in the war. Thus, all of the combatants (particularly the United States) were in the process of learning how to fight and win on the modern battlefield. Examining the early "teething" periods for any military force is particularly useful in understanding how leaders capture, analyze and disseminate lessons learned.

Theme 3: Doctrine Development

Successful military forces codify the lessons from "battlefield learning" into formal doctrine. Much of the military doctrine that would help to secure victory in World War II can trace its roots to the experience in North Africa.