Siege: Malta, 1940-1943 Hardcover – January 1, 1986

An excellent account of all aspects of the great siege of Malta during World War 2. Informative and entertaining to read, this book lends important insight into the strategic value of Malta in the Mediterranean theater of the war. That said, I must also point out that the Kindle edition is absolutely riddled with typographical errors. I really wish I had purchased the print edition. It is a really good book but a terrible Kindle implementation.

In January and February of 1942, an island fortress in the middle of the Mediterranean called Malta was attacked relentlessly by the Luftwaffe, Hitler’s air armada, and the Regis Aeronautica, Mussolini’s fighters and bombers. A relentless blitz with an average of eight airborne attacks a day, each attack employing over a hundred aircraft, over 150 in the last two weeks of January alone, pummeled the Maltese people and the British forces tasked with defending them on their tiny but strategic island. The story of these intrepid individuals and the Royal Air Force and Royal Navy engaged in the conflict is detailed in two books, one by Ernle Bradford, published in 1986, called Siege: Malta, 1940-1943, and the other by David Wragg, published originally in 2004, called Malta: The Last Great Siege 1940-1943.The Siege of Malta by Hitler and Mussolini, which lasted over two years from June 11, 1940, to November 20, 1942, was a pivotal victory for the Allies and an overwhelming one, but one gained at a great cost in terms of people killed, wounded, almost starved to death, and sickened from resulting diseases, and the destruction of the island’s infrastructure. To get an idea about the cost in blood and treasure for the enemy, here is an excerpt from the Wragg book:“On 26 May 1943, for the first time in almost three years, a convoy arrived in Gibraltar from Alexandria without losing a single ship. Italy had surrendered. The Mediterranean was no longer ‘Mare Nostrum’, ‘Our Sea’, to the Italians. The effort to make it so had cost Germany and Italy almost a million dead and wounded, as well as 8,000 aircraft, 1,500 of them shot down over Malta, 6,000 guns, 2,500 tanks and 70,000 motor vehicles, in addition to 2,400,000 tons of shipping. By contrast, the Allies had lost just two percent of the ships sent into the Mediterranean, with 70,000 men dead and wounded.”Malta was crucial to the British (when they stood alone against the Nazis) and subsequently to the Allies. On a secrecy level, it was critical in the intelligence war against the Axis powers as a listening post in the Allies Ultra network that intercepted enemy communications, and on a war strategy level, it was essential for the defeat of Nazi general Erwin Rommel in North Africa. The British and Maltese fighting teams saved their island fortress and were instrumental in halting Mussolini and Hitler’s race to capture the Suez Canal in North Africa. The canal was a short sea route between Britain and Middle East oil supplies. Rather than sailing around the southern tip of Africa, a route that was a much longer and prone to deadly U-boat attack, the Allies used the canal to ship troops, equipment, fuel, and raw materials around the world to where they were needed.My wife Catherine and I have been to Malta three times on various cruise vacations, and although we learned a bit about the bravery of the Maltese people during World War II, their valor in that war never came as vividly alive as in these books. Like their ancestors, who defeated the Ottoman Empire in 1565 thus saving Christianity and Europe from the Moslem Turks, the Maltese are gentle and God-loving people who become fierce and clever warriors when they have their backs against the wall. And they certainly had their backs against the wall from 1940 to 1943.If you only wanted to read one about the siege, I would recommend the Wragg book The Bradford book got four stars from me rather than five because of the following:• The author could have been less redundant.• The book could have had a better editor.• In the Kindle edition, maps and photos would have been helpful.Bradford does tell the stirring story of Malta’s defiance in the face of overwhelming odds comprehensively with some élan and with a definite respect for the Maltese and the British forces that fought on the ground, in the air, and on and under the waves. The Wragg book, which is just as comprehensive, is better organized, edited well, has a helpful chronology of events at the end, and has better stories about what happened on the island and how the Maltese coped, displaying that same awesome respect as in the Bradford book. In the last chapter of the Wragg book, called What Might Have Been, the author gives cogent arguments about the lack of military and civilian preparation regarding Malta before the start of the war. Those preparations might have made history a lot better for the island fortress and its inhabitants. For all these reasons, I gave the Wragg book five stars.Ultimately, saving Malta was significant in preventing Hitler’s dream of subjugating all of Europe. The Allies eventually launched their attacks into Sicily and the “soft underbelly” of the Axis powers using Malta as a jumping off location. As David Wragg concludes in his excellent book:“Without Malta, the Second World War would have taken much longer, certainly in Europe…Without the disruption of the Axis supply lines to North Africa inflicted by forces based in Malta, the Axis armies would almost certainly have had all of the material necessary to sweep eastwards to the Suez Canal. Without the defeat suffered by the Axis forces in North Africa…with their supplies hindered by Malta-based forces, the invasion of Sicily would have been immeasurably more difficult, and possibly the landings on mainland Italy and then in the South of France might not have taken place…meaning that everything would have depended on the Normandy landings. Without German preoccupation with the situation in Italy, and the loss of so much in North Africa, resistance in Normandy could have been much stronger…The consequences of defending Malta were grim indeed, and costly, but the consequences of not defending Malta would have been far worse.”On April 15, 1942, at the height of the siege, the Maltese people received the George Cross, the highest honor Britain can bestow on civilians, from King George VI in recognition of their extraordinary courage. Because of the war, the delivery of the cross to Malta and her people didn’t occur until September 13. Here is the citation that accompanied the award that says it all about the Maltese who fought totalitarianism and prevailed:“To honour her brave people, I award the George Cross to the Island Fortress of Malta to bear witness to a heroism and devotion that will long be famous in history.”

A well written historical fact of WWII Malta. This little Island was so strategic to the Allies to win the battles of North Africa and the Mediterranean sea. Like to definitely visit Malta someday soon.

Yes, this book is a history of Malta during the siege it endured during World War 2. It is also a mix of Maltese history prior to that time along with unsubstantiated military history commentary.When I read a book that contains any degree of military history commentary, and this book does that when it is not talking about daily life in Malta during the siege, then I like to see annotations indicating where that information was obtained as that allows me to judge the quality of the author's sources and accuracy of the author's commentary; some authors "fudge the facts" or "invent out of whole cloth" based on a single reference. This book sorely lacks any serious effort at professional historical research. For example, there was a comment (I can't find the exact chapter right now) about the British knowing in advance of Italian plans to invade Malta - BUT that comment is completely unsupported with any reference as to it's source. Should the reader assume the author is omniscient and therefore a trusted presenter of facts? That's why I like to check an author's facts and their sources; I do not like to assume "omniscience" by any author.What this book does add to the body of knowledge about this particular siege of Malta are a number of human stories, and again many are not annotated with source references. There are some interesting maps to be found in the pages of this book but some of the details on those maps changed during the siege making "undated" maps of marginal value to any true historian and historical reader.This book gets confusing when it detours into the Axis airborne invasion of Crete and how the Allies defended Crete. Again, more unsupported military history commentary appears. Why this topic was inserted into this book is beyond me without crawling through the text of this book to look for answers. Perhaps there was some desire by the author to compare & contrast the German airborne invasion to the difficulty the Axis might have encountered (being 'ambiguous' here since we are talking of a "What If?" scenario) by implementing such an assault on Malta.Then there is the language used in this book. Many sentences are littered with colorful adjectives, for example, "jinx-winged" in reference to German Stuka dive bombers. Is that adjective actually necessary or simply the author employing colorful metaphors because he can? Why the author thinks his book needs such colorful metaphors I do not know but I found it seriously detracted from reading this book; I wanted to focus on any available facts this author might have to add, but found few facts worthy of note. Given that this book has 32 chapters, and just over 300 pages cover-to-cover (hardback), I found the structure of this book to be more like a series of 5 to 10 page essays that are loosely associated with each other, like an Old English literary folio.In closing, this book lacks a Bibliography. It desparately needs a proper Bibliography so readers can study the sources used by this author. What bibliographical references that do exist can be found 12 pages of Chapter Notes presented in a smaller typeface than the main text and more closely spaced, and thus annoying to read.

I thought I knew quite a bit concerning WWII but hadn't ever seen much about Malta. Bought the book to broaden my knowledge and was literally blown away by how uninformed I was concerning Malta during WWII.The author does an excellent job of combining Malta's past history with that of WWII. The I depth struggle the population endures along with the thoughts and problems of the British services on the island were first rate.The actual combat actions incurred in and around Malta were covered with accurate and enlightening facts which increased the concepts of the struggles the island withstood.One of the very best WWII books I have read.