Harold Alexander was one of Britain's most accomplished and respected field marshals of the Second World War, a calm, courteous, and capable commander who led Allied armies to victory in North Africa and Italy. Born in London into an aristocratic Anglo-Irish family, he was educated at Harrow and Sandhurst and served with distinction as a young officer in the First World War, earning a reputation for coolness under fire.
In the early years of the Second World War he oversaw the final stages of the British evacuation from Dunkirk and later commanded the difficult retreat from Burma in the face of the Japanese advance. His talent for handling desperate situations with composure marked him as a rising star.
His greatest successes came in the Mediterranean. As commander-in-chief in the Middle East, Alexander oversaw the campaign — with General Bernard Montgomery leading the Eighth Army — that drove the German and Italian forces out of North Africa. He then directed the Allied invasions of Sicily and Italy, commanding the multinational armies that fought the long, grinding campaign up the Italian peninsula against determined German resistance.
Admired for his ability to weld together the diverse and sometimes prickly Allied forces under his command, Alexander was a general respected by Americans and British alike. After the war he served as Governor General of Canada and then as British minister of defence. Raised to the peerage, he died in 1969.