In 20 Battles, military historians Evert Kleynhans and David Brock Katz investigate how South Africa’s way of war evolved over a 100-year period. They track the evolution of the doctrine and structure of the South African defence forces, rediscovering historical continuity, if any, and the lessons learned in past battles and operations.
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Jan Smuts’s abilities as a general have been much denigrated by modern historians. David Brock Katz makes use of multiple archival sources and many of the official accounts of the participants to provide a long-overdue reassessment of Smuts’s generalship and his role in furthering the strategic aims of South Africa and the British Empire in Africa during the First World War.
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Relying on deep research in South African and British archives, Katz recounts a side of the Desert War that has never received the attention it deserves. It is the story of an army committed somewhat reluctantly to a war it did not fully support, an army ill-prepared for the campaigns it was tasked with waging and forced to learn as it fought, an army committed to battle on the orders of its senior alliance partner. But at its heart this is the story of men at war.
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