A full assembly of all 249 maps and sketches from UNITED KINGDOM MILITARY SERIES: OFFICIAL CAMPAIGN HISTORY - THE MEDITERRANEAN AND MIDDLE EAST. Although often considered to be a 'side show' during the Second World War, the campaign in the Mediterranean and Middle East was one of the most complex, interrelated, extensive and certainly most enduring theatres of that conflict. The Italian dictator, Benito Mussolini, initiated hostilities in the region in June 1940, which did not end until the final surrender of Axis forces in northern Italy on 2 April 1945. Fighting took place over an extensive area, including Italy, Greece and the Balkans, Libya and Egypt and French North Africa as well as shorter, distinct campaigns in Syria, Iraq and Ethiopia. As Britain's major theatre of war from 1940 until 1943, the campaign is given considerable coverage in the eight volume official history. The role and importance of the Italian armed forces in the theatre has often been overshadowed by the more dramatic German interventions into a theatre that Hitler never considered more than a distraction but, more recently, a number of histories have begun to redress that balance. With our 2021 reprint of the eight text volumes of THE MEDITERRANEAN AND MIDDLE EAST - OFFICIAL CAMPAIGN HISTORY all colour and b&w maps are present and correct; a larger printing size has been adopted to allow little or no reduction to this Supplementary Atlas Volume.