TUNISIA AND THE END OF THE AFRIKA CORPS

The autumn of 1942 had brought major Allied successes in North Africa. Having been roundly defeated by the British 8th Army at El Alamein, Field Marshal Rommel was, during November, retreating as fast as he could to Tunisia, in the hope that he would be able to inflict there a crushing defeat on the recently arrived American and British forces under General Eisenhower. Because the agreed plan for Operation Torch had precluded any landing where fighter air cover was not available, there had been no Allied landings East of Algiers, some 400 miles from Tunis. Rommel knew that, if he could get to Tunis soon enough, the potential was there for inflicting considerable damage on the British 1st Army formation under Lieutenant-General Anderson.

The German and Italian High Commands, not for the first time, saw things rather differently. Hitler ordered Rommel to hold and defend the position at Marsa el Brega, which General Montgomery and the Eighth Army approached on December 13th 1942. The Italians had earlier ordered him to hold the Sollum-Halfaya line, a patent impossibility given the great superiority of equipment that Montgomery's army had after Alamein, and Rommel had treated the Italian command with the contempt it deserved. However, the Fuehrer's order to hold Marsa el Brega, on the extreme western edge of Cyrenaica, was not entirely without merit. Field Marshal Kesselring, no mean tactician, believed that Montgomery's advance could have been delayed for weeks or even months if he had been made to fight for the 700 miles between Marsa el Brega and Gabes, a town in Tunisia on the western side of the great gulf that forms the Libyan coast. Rommel nonetheless resolved to retreat from Libya as rapidly as possible, believing that if the remains of Panzerarmee Afrika made a stand, it would achieve little, and that by strategic withdrawal to Tunis and Bizerta, the veterans of the Afrika Korps could first take part in the battle in Tunisia, and then, if that went badly, as Rommel believed it would, be repatriated safely to Europe to continue the war.

In fact, although by his retreat he envisaged lending the weight of his army to the Axis defence of Tunisia, he also assisted the Allied assault on Tunisia by bringing Montgomery's 8th Army to bear on the South-East of the country as Eisenhower's forces, including the British 1st Army under General Anderson, attacked in the North-West. Throughout the latter part of November and December, the build-up of German forces in Tunisia under Colonel-General Hans-Jurgen von Arnim had continued. After December 8th, these were known as the 5th Panzerarmee , and by December 31st, von Arnim was in command of 47,000 German troops and more than 17,000 Italians, a battalion of Tiger tanks and the 10th Panzer Division, brought in from a comparatively peaceful existence in France. The Luftwaffe in North Africa, under the energetic overseeing eye of Kesselring, had been extensively re-equipped and had during December regained effective control of Tunisian airspace, thereby limiting drastically the availability of photo-reconnaissance information to the Allies, and wreaking destruction on Allied supply convoys and troop movements.

Since the negotiated armistice with the French forces in North Africa following Operation Torch in November, substantial French formations had become available to Eisenhower, and the resourceful Frenchmen had miraculously "rediscovered" large stocks of pre-war vintage arms that had been concealed from the Armistice Commission after the fall of France in June 1940. The French 19th Corps in particular was well dug into defensive positions on the Eastern Dorsale, a mountainous area overlooking the coastal plain of Tunisia, in the vicinity of the holy city of Kairouan and the coastal ports of Sousse and Sfax, and the Barre Group was similarly dug in along the Medjerda River. Their task was to cover the US forces entering the front line between Gafsa and the Mediterranean, along the western edge of Tunisia.

On January 18th 1943, a German force of infantry and tanks attacked and surprised the Barre Group, completely outclassing their outdated French guns with the latest Tiger tanks. Von Arnim followed up this success at the Medjerda River with a push south, but was repulsed by a counter attack by the US Army II Corps. The inability of the French troops, equipped as they were, to fight the German formations on equal terms lent support to changes in the command structure brought about by the Casablanca conference, which took place in Morocco at the same time as these events were occurring. From the beginning of 1943, the French troops were absorbed directly into the British 1st Army. General Juin, who had commanded the French forces in North Africa, was given the task of creating and training the French Expeditionary Corps, later to play an important part in the battle of Monte Cassino.

At the end of January, Rommel finally withdrew from Tripoli and into Tunisia, and viewed with some scepticism the arrival in Tunisia of General Giovanni Messe to command the new Italian 1st Army, made up of the German and Italian Axis forces pulled back from Tripoli. Rommel's view of Italian military achievement was never enthusiastic, and the idea of handing over his command to an Italian General did not appeal to him at all. However, since he was organising the defences along the Mareth line, and had not been recalled as expected by OKW, Rommel decided to make use of the unexpectedly long time that Montgomery was taking to move up to the attack. He embarked upon an assault against the US Army II Corps, which was comparatively close to his forces, in the mountainous area to the West of his positions. Rommel knew that, by virtue of his own position between Montgomery and the Americans, there was little likelihood of the British 8th Army being able to assist their Allies, and reinforcements for his army were arriving steadily, although he was still very short of tanks and artillery. Leaving two Italian Corps and the German 90th and 164th Light Divisions at the Mareth line to keep Montgomery busy, he pulled together at Sfax the 10th and 21st Panzer Divisions under Lieutenant-General Ziegler, and the Italian "Centauro" Armoured Division and his own Afrika Korps under his own command. Ziegler's formation was given the task of a surprise attack against Major-General Orlando Ward's 1st US Armoured Division at Faid Pass, while Rommel's force was to head South-West to Gafsa. Once they had succeeded in their initial objectives, the two formations were to join at Sbeitla and attack the Allied position in the Grande Dorsale.

Ziegler's surprise attack at Faid on February 14th was entirely successful, and disorganised the thinly-spread American defending force so much that II Corps withdrew entirely into the Grande Dorsale. Next day Rommel, in the confusion, took Gafsa without a shot being fired, and the two German columns merged for their assault upon the Grande Dorsale. At this point, Rommel, whose position thus far in the command structure had been somewhat vague, was belatedly appointed to the command of a new "Army Group Africa", perhaps to try and bring him under control. Undeterred by his regained authority, Rommel pressed on, and, after an initial reverse when the French 19th Corps repulsed the 21st Panzer Division at Shiba Pass, the 19th Panzer Division broke through the Kasserine Pass and headed for Tebessa over the Algerian border, an important supply centre for the Allies. Rommel wanted to push on quickly, as he had done so often before, and take not only Tebessa but also Bone, thereby cutting the British 1st Army's communications and greatly delaying the expected Allied offensive.

Rommel's success rattled the command structures of both the Allies and the Axis. The Allies saw the probability of Rommel attacking Tebessa and argued about the steps to take if he did. The Axis split three ways - von Arnim wanting to hold the assault at Kasserine, Kesselring supporting Rommel's plan and the Italian Comando Supremo overriding all of them with an order to turn North-West and attack along a line from Thala to Le Kef, right into the positions of the greatest Allied strength. Rommel was appalled at the order - but did as he was told, meeting fierce and well-organised resistance from the British 6th Armoured Division. Not surprisingly, with his supplies running low, Rommel's attack failed. But the ten days of actions had cost the Americans over 4,000 prisoners, almost 3,000 dead and substantial losses of equipment.

Now Rommel turned South again with his 10th and 21st Panzer Divisions to join Messe and Ziegler in tackling Montgomery's impending attack at the Mareth Line - an assault by the German armour from the mountains to Medenine and the Gulf of Gabes, designed to surprise Montgomery's army in the rear, while the Italian 1st Army attacked the British head-on from the front. Typically, the cautious yet intuitive Montgomery guessed what the Axis plan was likely to be, and prepared a welcome for when the attack came on March 6th. A precision artillery barrage pinned down the German attack with deadly effect. The Germans lost 52 tanks; the British just one Sherman.

This misguided offensive, which Rommel knew could not succeed, was the last of Rommel's battles in Africa. He received orders to return to Germany, and Colonel-General von Arnim became the commander of Army Group Africa. But von Arnim faced an impossible task. His supply lines were being harassed on land, and the shipping that brought his reinforcements, his fuel and his replacement vehicles was being decimated by the ever more effective Allied Mediterranean fleet. Knowing that the Axis forces were gradually being hemmed in, the Allied commanders formulated a plan to bring the Tunisian campaign to a successful end in time for the landings in Sicily to go ahead in July, as decided at the Casablanca conference.

On March 20th, the 8th Army's final push northwards from Mareth to Tunis began. The initial frontal assault by Montgomery's artillery was followed by an attack by XXX Corps on the coast, and the plan called for a dash for the Gabes gap and the plain beyond, but appalling weather, swollen rivers and effective resistance bogged down the assault. Not until March 26th did the attack finally break out at El Hamma, assisted by fierce and constant air support from the Desert Air Force. The bulk of the Italian defending army was able to withdraw to Wadi Akarit, but the Allied advance was at last under way. On April 5th/6th the XXX Corps again attacked Messe's positions and, after initial reverses, the British force found its enemy in retreat. It later proved that Messe had wanted to hold his position, but that von Arnim, knowing that the fearsome General Patton was approaching the Italian Army's right, had decided to pull Messe's force back to regroup for what promised to be a major battle.

The tough, uncompromising General Patton had in fact been having a successful few weeks after revitalising the morale of II Corps, and had taken Gafsa on March 17th, and El Guettar, Maknassy and Sbeitla before the end of March. Now he was ready to join up with the British 8th Army, which he did on April 8th, a link which created a unified arc of Allied forces from the US II Corps to the British 1st Army, through the French 19th Corps to the 8th Army. The scene was almost set for the final Allied victory in Africa.

To meet the requirements of General Alexander's plan finally to push the Axis forces back to Tunis and Bizerta, the US II Corps was moved the following week to the right of the 1st Army, to the centre of the attack, and, as this was taking place, lost their charismatic commander. General Patton had a new task - the organisation of the US participation in the forthcoming landings in Sicily. The task of taking the US Army to Bizerta fell to General Omar Bradley, Patton's second in command.

Through the last week of April and the first of May, the attack spearheaded by the British 1st Army under Lieutenant-General Anderson, and the US II Corps under General Bradley went ahead, advancing slowly, losing some of its encounters but winning most. On May 5th, General Bradley's masterly grasp of tactics enabled his 1st Armoured Division to descend from the high ground it had been holding above Mateur and seize the vital Tunis to Bizerta railway line, which the Axis was using for supplies. Gradually the armies closed in, and on May 7th the first units of the British 7th Armoured Division entered Tunis, the US 9th Division reached Bizerta, and the 1st Armoured Division linked up with the 7th. On May 9th, the commander of the Axis troops in the northern part of Tunisia, General Vaerst, asked for an armistice.

On May 12th, the southern forces were surrounded and forced to surrender, General von Arnim being among the men captured after fierce fighting. Virtually the entire Axis army was captured; only a few hundred escaped to Italy to continue their war. Almost a quarter of a million prisoners were taken.

Thus ended the battle for North Africa, the reign of the Desert Fox, and one of the fastest moving campaigns of the Second World War. Almost 50,000 Allied soldiers were killed or wounded in the seven months' campaign for Tunisia. Eisenhower's, Alexander's, Montgomery's and Patton's success was not without price, but final victory could not have been achieved without it.