This is a disappointing book. I picked it up and read it because I thought it would provide a good biography of Rommel as well as giving a good fresh accounting of the early battles of the Afrika Korps (i.e. up to and including the failed first attempt to take Tobruk from the Brits). Indeed it is categorized as "biography/history" and so my expectations were not unreasonable. However, the book completely fails to live up to its advertisement. It is nothing more than a synthesis of two existing books: Irving's The Trail of the Fox and Young's Rommel: The Desert Fox both of which are still available. All of the tables, quotations, and interviews were taken directly from these books, and the story of the battles is essentially a reprint of the accounts by Irving and Young. If you've read either of these, or the exquisitly researched Knight's Cross by David Fraser, there will be absolutely nothing new in this book. Furthermore, Triumphant Fox isn't even as good as these others; written in a style fitting for high school students, I found parts of this book that would be insulting to an adult reader with even a passing knowledge of military history. This book is a waste of time and money.

As a biography, it is a pathetic offering. For "research" material it only draws on Iving's accounts of his interviews with Rommel's son. So Mitcham's "information" is 3rd-hand at best; why not read the book written by the author that actually conducted the interviews? Mitcham even ignores The Rommel Papers which are Rommel's own diaries, orders, and journals kept during the war, usefully annotated by Liddel-Hart. How a "biography" that ignores first-hand primary material such as the subject's own diaries and journals got published is beyond me. Mitcham also only gives passing reference to Rommel's development as a military commander. The section on Rommel's battles against the Italians in WWI is thin, and the reference to his book Infantry Attacks only discusses how well it sold.

As a history of the early battles of the Afrika Korps, the book isn't any better. The accounts of the battles are simply Irving and Young's assessments re-written. Poor maps make the read extra frustrating. Few points of reference are identified, map scales are not given, and unit positions are impossible to discern.

Mitcham is also sloppy in his telling of the battles. Unit identification is sometimes incorrect. Map names do not match the spelling in the text, and his assessments about troop and tank quality are often off the mark. The importance of air power is glossed over, referenced only when a strafing attack was made by the RAF on some HQ. The battles for the frontier garrisons of Bardia, Sollum, and Halfaya Pass are dispensed with in a paragraph, despite the fact that they played an important role by pinning down half of the British army. Sloppiness appears elsewhere in the book as well: captioning of the included pictures is poor. A PzKw III is identified as a PzKw IV, a PzKw IV is labeled a PzKw III, and on one occasion pictures and captions are reverserd.

Perhaps most egregiously, Mitcham universally dismisses the Italian troops as "useless". Indeed they form a negligable part of any description of the fighting, even those battles where Italian troops outnumbered German troops. Part of this is due to his heavy dependence on Young's book, first published in the 1950s when it was common to dismiss Italian contributions. Young himself was strongly prejudiced against the Italians, and Mithcam does not filter this out, nor base his book on more contemporary research. This ends up to be very misleading for a reader unfamiliar with the early desert battles. The Italians, despite their problems, outnumbered the small Afrika Korps and often were key units in significant battles. For example, while the Afrika Korps was charging around the desert, it was primarily Italians that contained the Tobruk garrison and/or were involved in large battles on the flanks. Reading Mitcham's account, the reader is left with the impression that there were hardly any Italians present and those that were there didn't do anything except retreat. I encourage those interested in the Italians' contributions to Rommel's battles in North Africa to read Rommel's North Africa Campaign by Jack Greene and Alessandro Massignani. It is safe to say that Rommel would not have been able to be nearly as aggressive if the Italians were not involved.

I do not recommend this book. If you are looking for a biography, read Irving, Young, or better yet, Fraser. If you are looking for information specific to the first offensive of the Afrika Korps and the first attack on Tobruk (and related battles, such as The Sunday of the Dead or the Dash to the Wire), look elsewhere. There must be a hundred books on Rommel, and this has to be among the worst.

In a nutshell: Worst book I've read in while.

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