War in the Desert
The shipping lanes of the Mediterranean Sea have historically been vital to France and England in support of their commerce with the Middle East and Asia. In 1939, even though war was imminent in Europe, the Mediterranean seemed secure, with strong British and French naval and ground forces in place and an ostensibly neutral Italy. This picture changed dramatically with the defeat of France. On June 10, 1940, the day after the fall of Paris, Italy declared war on the Allies. With an Italian army and navy opposing them and a French fleet potentially in enemy hands, Britain suddenly faced a crisis on another front.
With visions of a new Roman Empire, Mussolini ordered his forces in Libya to begin a land offensive on September 13 to seize Egypt and the Suez Canal. Marshal Graziani, with two hundred fifty thousand troops available in Libya, ordered the Italian 10th Army to advance into Egypt. They were opposed by thirty thousand British, Indian, and Australian troops under Gen. Archibald Wavell. After advancing about one hundred kilometers, the Italian advance was stopped at Sidi Barrani and was then routed by a counterattack that advanced five hundred miles back into Libya.
To shore up his faltering ally, Hitler deployed Luftwaffe units to Italy in December 1940 to interdict British shipping and to keep supply lines open to North Africa. The Afrika Korps was organized under Gen. Erwin Rommel and began moving to Africa in early 1941. It consisted initially of one light division and one panzer division, and was later expanded into the Panzer Army Africa. Rommel soon earned the nickname, “Desert Fox,” and began to make his presence felt.
Disregarding instructions from Italian authorities and his own superiors, the German general quickly launched an offensive that penetrated almost to Egypt. He finally had to stop in late May to resupply and reorganize his forces. From this point on, for over a year, the war in North Africa became a back-and-forth struggle along a narrow one-thousand-mile strip of Libyan and Egyptian coastline. Each side sought to build up strength for the next offensive while seeking some way to outflank or outguess the enemy.
During this period the supply lines of the opposing forces became the key to victory or defeat in North Africa. The British Navy and air units stationed on Malta gradually began to turn the tide, making resupply of the Afrika Korps increasingly difficult. Finally, in September 1942 the British 8th Army, under Gen. Bernard Montgomery, launched a major offensive that decisively penetrated the German line at El Alamein. Rommel did not have the resources to stop this advance and was forced back across Libya and into Tunisia.
Throughout 1942, the United States prepared for its role in the widening war. The site of America’s entry into the European theater was hotly debated by the Allies. Even though American military leaders favored a direct strike at Germany, President Roosevelt finally succumbed to Churchill’s insistence on an invasion of North Africa. Operation Torch commenced on November 8, 1942, with more than one hundred thousand British and American troops, commanded by Gen. Dwight Eisenhower, landing at three widely separated objectives: Casablanca, Oran, and Algiers. Ironically, these landings were initially opposed by French forces occupying these areas under the control of the Vichy French government. The Operation Torch forces ultimately met the British 8th Army in Tunisia, successfully driving the Axis out of North Africa in May 1943.