What's the name of the African theater?

[Volklin]

ETO= Europe
PTO= Pacific

Is Africa, ATO?

[Sturmmann_Fritz]

I believe so

[Xavier]

mediterranean theatre I think was called officially
(it encompassed all mediterranean coast)

regards


Xavier
Instandsetzungtruppfuhrer

[Luftman129]

mediterranean theatre I think was called officially
(it encompassed all mediterranean coast)

regards


Xavier
Instandsetzungtruppfuhrer

Yes, I do believe you're right Xavier

[Volklin]

So N.Africa is considered Mediterranean?

[Jon G.]

The British called North Africa the 'Western Desert', a misnomer that only makes sense if you sit in Cairo and refer to Palestine, the Transjordan and Iraq as the 'Eastern Desert'. Only the Western Desert name stuck.

[Dwight Pruitt]

Originally it was NATO- North African Theater of Operations. As of 1 Nov 44 it was changed to MTO-Mediterranean Theater of Operations.

[baldviking]

The allies use of the phrase "theater" in this context, meaning command level above army group and front, was very new to me, me never having read any WW2 history in english. I thought Stavka invented this, by having South West, Nort West and East theaters of war during WW2, their western front beeing too big and different in nature to have one top level command...

Do any members of the forum know when this phrase came into military use and what nation invented it?

[Dwight Pruitt]

Webster's says the word theater was first used in the military sense in Great Britain around 1890.

[RichTO90]

Originally it was NATO- North African Theater of Operations. As of 1 Nov 44 it was changed to MTO-Mediterranean Theater of Operations.

Yep, and the US forces in North Africa was NATOUSA - North African Theater of Operations United States Army (later MTOUSA). Which resulted in a rather amusing exchange I ran across between two British First Army officers, the one carefully explaining to the other that 'Natousa' was not a town somewhere in Tunisia that he was unable to find, but was rather a US military postal address.

[Michael Emrys]

The allies use of the phrase "theater" in this context, meaning command level above army group and front, was very new to me, me never having read any WW2 history in english. I thought Stavka invented this, by having South West, Nort West and East theaters of war during WW2, their western front beeing too big and different in nature to have one top level command...

Do any members of the forum know when this phrase came into military use and what nation invented it?

Only the Soviets used the term 'Front' to refer to a grouping of armies. Everybody else used the term 'Army Group', but the two terms are equivalent.

And the Soviets did have a single top-level command: Stavka. Or you could take it further and say that supreme command resided in the person of Stalin.

[Volklin]

what'd the afrika korps refer to the region in which they were fighting?

[Christoph Awender]

what'd the afrika korps refer to the region in which they were fighting?

The german OKH and OKW reports used the terms "Nordafrika, italienisch Ostafrika, Libyen, Cyrenaika" to name a few examples.

\Christoph

[Montys Foxhounds]

For the British at least, the fighting zone of North Africa was known as the Western Desert, however, on all Rolls of Honour for KIA`s it always stated and still does in many cases "Middle East" .

The soldiers name for the fighting zone was the "Blue"


Hope it helps.