Correlli Barnett on Auchinleck's failings

Correllis Barnett wrote that Auchinleck's second mistake was retaining Neil Ritchie as army commander after the Crusader battle. The first mistake was putting Alan Cunningham in place as 8th Army commander. Cunningham was up to colonial warfare in East Africa, but did not have the experience to command a modern mechanized army. Correlli Barnett quotes General Galloway as saying that Auchinleck failed : "from his inability coldly to conisder whether a man was really up to the job". General Ritchie had been a staff officer in Cairo, and now he was thrust into position of field commander, a job that he proved to be incapable of performing.