As the Nazis sweep all before them in Europe, the Anglo-Australian garrison in the small town of Tobruk in North Africa inspires the world by resisting the most celebrated German general of the Second World War.

A brilliant Axis intelligence coup helps Erwin Rommel's Afrika Korps sweep forward to threaten Cairo and the Suez Canal. At a tiny railway halt called El Alamein, the Allied Eighth Army draws a line in the sand and fights a battle that will transfix the world and transform the Second World War.