North Africa campaigns, (1940–43), in World War II, series of battles for control of North Africa. At stake was control of the Suez Canal, a vital lifeline for Britain’s colonial empire, and of the valuable oil reserves of the Middle East.
After the invasion of Ethiopia by Italian troops in October 1935, the British and French proposed a secret agreement that would have ceded the bulk of Ethiopian territory to Italy in exchange for a truce. The Hoare-Laval Pact was crafted in the hopes of preserving the Stresa Front, an April 1935 alliance that had pledged Britain, France, and Italy to jointly oppose German rearmament and expansion. In fact, just the opposite happened: fascist Italy turned its back to the democratic West and took to the road of alliance with Nazi Germany. On October 25, 1936, the Rome-Berlin Axis was proclaimed, but Italy, its strength depleted by the Ethiopian campaign and by its support for Nationalist forces during the Spanish Civil War, was in no condition to support Germany during the first nine months of World War II. It was not until June 10, 1940—just four days before the Germans entered Paris—that Italy declared war on Britain and France. Although the issue in France had already been virtually settled, Italy’s entry into the war meant chiefly that the threat of naval conflict in the Mediterranean had now—not unexpectedly—become a reality.
…decided to strike first in North Africa. On December 7, 1940, some 30,000 men, under Major General Richard Nugent O’Connor, advanced westward, from Mersa Matruh, against 80,000 Italians; but, whereas the Italians at Sīdī Barrānī had only 120 tanks, O’Connor had 275. Having passed by night through a gap in…
READ MOREEgypt and Cyrenaica (June 1940–June 1941)
When Benito Mussolini took Italy into the war, the Italian forces in North and East Africa were overwhelmingly superior in numbers to the scanty British forces opposing them. Commanding the British was Gen. Archibald Wavell, who had been appointed to the newly created post of commander in chief for the Middle East in July 1939, when the first steps were taken to strengthen the forces guarding the Suez Canal. Barely 50,000 British troops faced a total of 500,000 Italian and Italian colonial troops. On the southerly fronts, the Italian forces in Eritrea and Ethiopia mustered more than 200,000 men. On the North African front a still larger force in Cyrenaica under Marshal Rodolfo Graziani faced the 36,000 British, New Zealand, and Indian troops guarding Egypt. The Western Desert, inside the Egyptian frontier, separated the two sides on that front. The foremost British position was at Mersa Matruh (Marsā Maṭrūḥ), roughly 120 miles (190 km) inside the frontier and about 200 miles (320 km) west of the Nile River delta. Instead of remaining passive, Wavell used part of his one incomplete armoured division as an offensive covering force, keeping up a continual series of raids over the frontier to harass the Italian posts.
It was not until September 13, 1940, that the Italians, after massing more than six divisions, began a cautious move forward into the Western Desert. After advancing 50 miles (80 km), less than halfway toward Mersa Matruh, they established a chain of fortified camps at Sīdī Barrānī that ultimately proved to be too widely separated to support one another. Weeks then passed without any attempt to move on. Meanwhile, further reinforcements reached Wavell, including three armoured regiments rushed from England. Though still at a significant numerical disadvantage, Wavell chose to seize the initiative with an operation that was planned not as a sustained offensive but rather as a large-scale raid. It nevertheless led to the destruction of Graziani’s forces and the near collapse of the Italians’ hold on North Africa.
The strike force, under Maj. Gen. Richard Nugent O’Connor, consisted of only 30,000 men, against an opposing force of 80,000, but it had 275 tanks against 120 Italian tanks. The British tank force included 50 heavily armoured Matilda IIs of the 7th Royal Tank Regiment, which proved impervious to most of the enemy’s antitank weapons. O’Connor was also supported by the Long Range Desert Group, a lightly armed reconnaissance unit whose activities behind enemy lines would provide valuable intelligence for the Allies throughout the North Africa campaigns. O’Connor’s force moved out on December 7, 1940, passing through a gap in the enemy’s chain of camps the following night. On December 9 the Italian garrisons at Nibeiwa, Tummar West, and Tummar East were taken, and thousands of prisoners were captured, whereas the attackers suffered very light casualties. The 7th Armoured Division, whose accomplishments in North Africa would earn its men the nickname “the Desert Rats,” drove west and reached the coast road, thus blocking the Italian line of retreat. On December 10 the 4th Indian Division moved north against the cluster of Italian camps around Sīdī Barrānī. After being checked initially, a converging assault from both flanks—with two additional tank regiments sent back by the 7th Armoured Division—was launched in the afternoon, and the greater part of the Sīdī Barrānī position was overrun before the day ended. The reserve brigade of the 7th Armoured Division was then brought up for a further enveloping attack to the west: it reached the coast beyond Buqbuq, intercepting a large column of retreating Italians. Over three days, the British had captured nearly 40,000 prisoners and 400 guns.
The remnants of the Italian forces took refuge in the coastal fortress of Bardia (Bardīyah), where they were promptly encircled by the 7th Armoured Division. The British lacked the infantry necessary to capitalize on the Italians’ demoralization, however, and three weeks elapsed before the 6th Australian Division arrived from Palestine to aid with the British advance. On January 3, 1941, the assault on Bardia was launched, with 22 Matilda II tanks leading the way. The Italian defense quickly collapsed, and by the third day the whole garrison had surrendered, with 45,000 prisoners, 462 artillery pieces, and 129 tanks falling into British hands. The 7th Armoured Division then drove westward to isolate Tobruk until the Australians could mount an assault on that coastal fortress. Tobruk was attacked on January 21 and fell next day, yielding 30,000 prisoners, 236 artillery pieces, and 37 tanks.
All that remained to complete the conquest of Cyrenaica was the capture of Benghazi, but on February 3, 1941, air reconnaissance revealed that the Italians were preparing to abandon the city. O’Connor therefore dispatched the 7th Armoured Division with the aim of heading off the Italian retreat. By the afternoon of February 5, a blocking position had been established south of Beda Fomm (Bayḍāʾ Fumm), across the enemy’s two routes of retreat. After capturing the surprised advance units of the Italian column, the British engaged the main Italian force on February 6. Although the Italians boasted 100 cruiser tanks and the British could field fewer than one-third of that number, British tank commanders utilized the terrain far more skillfully. When night fell, 60 of the Italian tanks had been crippled, and the remaining 40 were found abandoned the following day; only 3 of the British tanks had been knocked out. The Italian infantry and other troops surrendered in crowds when their protecting armour was destroyed. The British force of 3,000 men took 20,000 prisoners along with 216 artillery pieces and 120 tanks.
The complete extinction of Graziani’s army had left the British with a clear passage to Tripoli, but their drive was stopped by British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, who redeployed a significant portion of the North African force in an ultimately disastrous effort to oppose German ambitions in Greece. Thus, the opportunity for a speedy resolution in the North African theatre was lost. The depleted British force would soon find itself facing one of the most-heralded commanders in the entire war. On February 6, 1941, the very day that Graziani’s army was being wiped out at Beda Fomm, Gen. Erwin Rommel was ordered to take command of a small German mechanized force that was to be sent to the Italians’ rescue. It would consist of two under-strength divisions, the 5th Light and the 15th Panzer, but the transportation of the first unit could not be completed until mid-April, and the second would not be in place until the end of May. When the British did not continue their advance, Rommel, having arrived early in Tripolitania, attempted an offensive with what forces he had. His initial aim was merely to occupy the bottleneck along the coastal road at Agheila (al-ʿUqaylah), but in that he succeeded so easily—entering Agheila on March 24 and taking Mersa Bréga (Qașr al-Burayqah) on March 31—that he endeavoured to push on.
Disregarding orders to hold his position until the end of May, Rommel resumed his advance on April 2 with 50 tanks, followed up more slowly by two new Italian divisions. British forces hastily fell back in confusion and on April 3 evacuated Benghazi. O’Connor was sent to advise the local commander, but his unescorted staff car ran into a German advance group on the night of April 6, and he was taken prisoner. By April 11 the British had been swept out of Cyrenaica and over the Egyptian frontier. The sole exception was the garrison of Tobruk (dominated by the 9th Australian Division), which succeeded in repelling Rommel’s successive efforts to storm that fortress. By the time Rommel had reached the eastern frontier of Cyrenaica, however, he had overstretched his supply lines and was compelled to halt. After a tentative effort to relieve Tobruk in mid-May 1941, Wavell made a greater one in mid-June, with fresh reinforcements. Rommel countered the offensive with a well-gauged armoured thrust against its flank. Churchill’s disappointment and dissatisfaction were shown in his removal of Wavell to India. The former commander in chief in India, Gen. Sir Claude Auchinleck, then succeeded Wavell as commander in the Middle East.
Egypt and Libya (Autumn 1941–January 1943)
On November 18, 1941, the British Eighth Army, as the forces in the Western Desert had been rechristened, launched Operation Crusader. The British undertook that offensive with more than twice as many tanks as their opponent. In addition, some one-third of Rommel’s tanks were poorly armed Italian ones. Rommel handled his tanks more skillfully than the British, however, and he made clever and effective use of concealed antitank guns. Thus, he was able to claim the advantage over the British in the first few days of the battle, despite their four-to-one superiority in the air (and despite the fact that two-thirds of Rommel’s meagre air force consisted of obsolete Italian planes).
Rommel’s advance and the fall of Tobruk
The situation was so dire that the commander of the Eighth Army, Gen. Alan Cunningham, thought of breaking off the battle. Auchinleck ordered the continuation of the offensive, and Cunningham was replaced by Gen. Neil Methuen Ritchie on November 25. Eventually, after two more weeks of hard struggle, the numerical superiority of the British prevailed, and Rommel’s depleted forces were pushed out of Cyrenaica. Rommel retreated to a position near Agedabia (Ajdābiyā), and in late December 1941 he was reinforced with two tank companies and a few batteries of artillery. On December 26 he repulsed a British attack, and on January 21, 1942, Rommel unleashed an offensive that took the British by surprise, throwing back the Eighth Army in disorder and forcing it to abandon most of its newly won ground. The British regrouped along the Gazala–Bir Hakeim line, just west of Tobruk, and both sides received additional reinforcements.
Although Churchill had pressured Auchinleck to mount an attack, Rommel struck first. On the night of May 26–27, 1942, he passed around the southern flank of the British position with three German divisions, followed by an Italian armoured division and an Italian motorized infantry division. He left four unmotorized Italian divisions as a holding force opposite the Gazala line. The British response was piecemeal, but Rommel could not complete a drive to the sea that would have enveloped the British on the Gazala line. Unbeknownst to Rommel, the Eighth Army had been reinforced with more than 200 M3 General Grant tanks from the United States. In Rommel’s words, the Grants’ 75-mm guns “had torn great holes in our ranks,” and his renewed effort to reach the sea on May 28 brought little progress. The following day, he ordered his striking force to take up a defensive position.
That position, dubbed “the Cauldron,” was a precarious one, because it left Rommel separated from the rest of his forces by the British garrison and an extensive belt of minefields. During the first days of June 1942, Rommel’s force was pummelled by the Royal Air Force (RAF) while the Eighth Army attacked it on the ground. Believing that Rommel was now trapped, the British continued to spend their diminishing armoured reserves in costly and ineffective assaults on the Cauldron, as Rommel’s surrender was regarded as inevitable. The events of June 11, 1942, changed that outlook dramatically. Rommel’s panzer divisions struck east, trapping the bulk of the remaining British armour in a narrow corridor where it was bracketed with converging fire. British tank strength, which had numbered some 700 just weeks earlier, was now barely one-tenth of that. Ritchie abandoned the Gazala line on June 14 and started a rapid retreat to the Egyptian frontier, leaving the troops in Tobruk isolated. On June 21 Rommel captured the fortress of Tobruk, its 33,000-man garrison, and an immense amount of stores. The defeat was regarded as Britain’s worst military disaster of the war next to the fall of Singapore.
The First Battle of el-Alamein
In maintaining the pursuit of Ritchie’s forces into Egypt, Rommel was greatly assisted by the huge haul of supplies that he had obtained at Tobruk. Gen. Fritz Bayerlein, chief of staff of Rommel’s Afrika Korps, estimated that 80 percent of that unit’s transport at that time consisted of captured British vehicles. Ritchie’s intention was to make a stand at Mersa Matruh, but on the evening of June 25, Auchinleck assumed command and decided to fight a more-mobile engagement in the area around el-Alamein. On June 30, 1942, Rommel was barely 60 miles (100 km) from Cairo, and the keys to Egypt seemed within his grasp. Throughout July 1942 Auchinleck mounted a stubborn defense at el-Alamein, however, and Rommel’s thrusts were not only parried but answered with telling ripostes. The troops of the Afrika Korps were too tired and too few to make a fresh effort, and Rommel had to break off the attack, even though it meant giving Auchinleck time to bring up reinforcements. Auchinleck, for his part, was not content with stopping Rommel: he sought to turn the tables decisively. The British troops were as exhausted as the Germans, however, and soon afterward Auchinleck had to suspend his attacks. By the end of July, Rommel’s drive into Egypt had been stopped, and his army was once again on the defensive.
In light of those developments, Churchill decided to fly to Egypt to assess the situation, and he arrived in Cairo on August 4, 1942. Though Auchinleck had checked the German advance, Rommel still stood within striking distance of Alexandria and the Nile delta. Already inclined to make a change, Churchill made up his mind when Auchinleck insisted on delaying a renewed offensive until September so that reinforcements might have time to become acclimatized to desert conditions. Churchill appointed Gen. Sir Harold Alexander as commander in chief in the Mediterranean and Middle East and gave the command of the Eighth Army to Lieut. Gen. William Gott. After Gott was killed on August 7, when his transport was shot down en route to Cairo, Gen. Bernard Law Montgomery was brought out from England to fill the vacancy. Ironically, those changes meant that the British offensive would be resumed at a much later date than Auchinleck had proposed, as the impatient Churchill had to give way to Montgomery’s determination to wait until preparations and training were completed. That conceded the initiative to Rommel, but even his skill and audacity could not make up for the widening gap in the quality and quantity of the opposing forces.
Montgomery in the desert
During August 1942 Rommel was reinforced with a brigade of German paratroops and a division of Italian paratroops. He had about 200 medium tanks in his two panzer divisions and 240 in two Italian armoured divisions. While the Italian tanks were older models, Rommel’s force included 74 Panzer IIIs mounted with 50-mm guns and 26 Panzer IVs mounted with new 75-mm guns—an important qualitative advantage. However, British tank strength at the front had been increased to more than 700 (including some 160 Grants). Rommel had hoped to achieve a quick breakthrough that would disrupt the Eighth Army’s communications, but when his attack was launched on the night of August 30–31, 1942, it became bogged down in a minefield. The delay doomed the offensive. The RAF asserted complete control of the skies, making resupply hazardous for the German-Italian force, and Rommel’s assault on the British 22nd Armoured Brigade’s position southwest of the ʿAlam al-Halfaʾ ridge was rebuffed. Subsequent probing attacks and local flanking maneuvers were checked by robust British defenses. Faced with critically low fuel reserves and subjected to almost continuous air attacks, on September 2 Rommel broke off the offensive and made a gradual withdrawal. For the Eighth Army, the sight of the enemy retreating, albeit only for a short distance, far outweighed the disappointment of failing to cut them off.
Seven weeks passed before the British launched their offensive. Churchill chafed at the delay, wishing to achieve a decisive victory over Rommel in advance of Operation Torch, the planned Allied landings in Tunisia in November 1942. Montgomery was determined to wait until he could be reasonably sure of success, however, and he had Alexander’s support. The offensive was to begin with a night attack, and adequate moonlight was needed for the process of clearing gaps in the German minefields. The assault was scheduled for October 23, 1942, the night before the full moon.
By that time the British superiority in strength—both in numbers and in quality—was greater than ever before. On paper the two sides had the appearance of being evenly matched: each had 12 divisions, of which four were armoured. On the ground, the balance was very different. The Eighth Army’s fighting strength was 230,000, whereas Rommel had fewer than 80,000 infantry, of whom only 27,000 were German. More striking still was a comparison of actual tank strength: when the battle opened, the Eighth Army had a total of 1,440 medium tanks, of which 1,230 were ready for action. Rommel had only 260 German tanks (of which 20 were under repair, and 30 were light Panzer IIs), and 280 Italian tanks (all of obsolete types). Thus, because only the 210 German medium tanks could be counted on in the armoured battle, the British held a six-to-one superiority in numbers. In addition, the British had 1,000 more tanks in reserve. In terms of quality, the British advantage was even greater, as Sherman tanks had been arriving from the United States in large numbers. At the start of the battle, the Eighth Army had more than 500 Shermans and Grants, whereas Rommel had only 30 of the new Panzer IVs.
In the air, the British also enjoyed a greater superiority than ever before, with more than 1,500 first-line aircraft against some 350 German and Italian planes. Much more important for the issue of the battle, however, was the indirect and strategic action of the RAF, together with the Royal Navy’s submarines, in strangling the enemy’s sea arteries of supply. In October 1942 the interruption of Axis supplies became still greater, and less than half of what was sent arrived in Africa. Artillery ammunition ran very short, and because of the sinking of oil tankers (none reached Africa during the weeks immediately preceding the British offensive), Rommel was left with one-tenth of the fuel necessary for sustained operations. The loss of food supplies was an important factor in the spread of sickness among the troops; Rommel himself fell ill, and in September he was sent back to Europe to recover. His convalescence in Austria was cut short by a telephone call from German leader Adolf Hitler, prompting Rommel to fly back to Africa. He arrived near el-Alamein on the evening of October 25 to take charge of the defense.
The Second Battle of el-Alamein
The British infantry assault at el-Alamein was launched at 10:00 pm on the night of October 23, 1942, after a furious 15-minute bombardment by more than 1,000 guns. German minefields proved a greater obstacle than had been initially reckoned, and when daylight came on October 24, British tanks were still transiting the paths that had been cleared by engineers. It was only on the second morning of the battle, after additional night attacks by the infantry, that four brigades of armour had succeeded in deploying 6 miles (10 km) beyond the original front. They had suffered much loss in the process of pushing through the constricted passages. The subsidiary British attack by the XIII Corps in the south had meanwhile met similar trouble and was abandoned. Nevertheless, the wedge that had been driven into the German defenses in the north looked so menacing that local defending commanders threw in their tanks piecemeal in efforts to stanch the British advance. That action fulfilled Montgomery’s calculation and enabled his armour, now established in good position, to inflict heavy losses on those spasmodic counterattacks. By the time Rommel had arrived in the evening of October 25, half of the defense’s effective tank force had been lost. The British resumed the attack the following day, but their attempt to push forward was checked, and their armour paid a heavy price for the abortive effort. The chance of developing the breach into a breakthrough had faded, and the massive British armoured wedge was embedded in a strong ring of German antitank guns. Montgomery deduced that his initial thrust had failed, that the breach was blocked, and that he must devise a fresh plan, while giving his main striking forces a rest.
Montgomery’s new offensive, dubbed Operation Supercharge, opened on the night of October 28 with a northward thrust from the wedge toward the coast. His intention was to pinch off the enemy’s coastal pocket and then launch an exploiting drive westward along the coast road, toward Daba and Fūka. That offensive too became hung up in the minefield, and its prospects waned when Rommel opposed it with the veteran 90th Light Division. Rommel could not continue to parry such attacks indefinitely, however. Montgomery was losing four tanks for every one that he knocked out, but even at that rate of attrition, the British still held the advantage. The Afrika Korps had only 90 tanks left, while the Eighth Army had more than 800. As soon as he saw that his coastward thrust had miscarried, Montgomery decided to revert to his original line of advance, hoping to profit from the northward shift of the enemy’s scanty reserves. The new attack, begun in the early hours of November 2, again bogged down in the minefields, and resistance proved tougher than expected. The situation looked gloomy, but things were far worse for Rommel.
By the end of the day on November 2, Rommel had depleted his resources almost completely. The core of his defense—the two Panzer divisions of the Afrika Korps—amounted to only 9,000 men at full strength, and combat had withered that number to little more than 2,000. Worse still, the Afrika Korps had barely 30 tanks fit for action, whereas the British could field more than 600. That night Rommel decided to fall back to Fūka in a two-step withdrawal. That redeployment was well in progress when, soon after midday on November 3, an overriding order came from Hitler, insisting that el-Alamein must be held at all costs. The turnabout doomed any chance that Rommel may have had of making an effective stand, as a resumption of the defense of el-Alamein was an exercise in futility. The 51st Highland and 4th Indian divisions were the core of an infantry attack on the night of November 3 that succeeded in piercing the joint between the Afrika Korps and the Italians. Soon after dawn on November 4, three armoured divisions passed through the opening thus created, with orders to swing northward and bar the enemy’s line of retreat along the coast road. Their exploiting drive was reinforced by the motorized New Zealand Division and a fourth armoured brigade.
The initial pursuit of Rommel was not sufficiently direct or extensive to catch the bulk of the forces retreating along the coast road. The British then attempted an encirclement near Mersa Matruh but were hampered by a fuel shortage and heavy rain. Once Rommel had slipped through the jaws of his armoured pursuers, he did not pause until he had reached Agheila at the far end of Cyrenaica, some 700 miles (over 1,100 km) from el-Alamein. A pause of three weeks occurred before the Eighth Army could mount an offensive against the Germans’ new position. Rommel slipped away again, and although a British flanking maneuver cut off his rearguard, that rearguard was able to break through the encirclement and escape. Rommel halted at Buerát (al-Buʾayrāt), an additional 200 miles (320 km) distant, where he stayed for three weeks. When the Eighth Army launched its next offensive, in mid January 1943, Rommel fell back again, making an almost continuous 350-mile (560-km) withdrawal, past Tripoli, to the Mareth Line inside the Tunisian frontier. His decision was the consequence not merely of his weakness in forces and in supplies but also of the new situation produced by the Anglo-U.S. invasion of Morocco and of Algeria in November 1942.
