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North Africa - Part 2

© William Waller

Hitler now had to make a hard decision. In Russia on every front he stood repelled or stalemated, with a disaster about to happen at Stalingrad, and there was no way of gauging what reinforcements might be able to do, even if they could be brought into the battle. In North Africa he would certainly lose the remnants of Rommel's force if he did nothing but, again, there was no assurance that reinforcements would be able to expel the Allied forces. Finally, he ordered the forming of a bridgehead in Tunisia, between Rommel and the Allies; one of Eisenhower's objectives in the initial landings had been Tunisia but Hitler managed to beat him to it with a first contingent of what was to be 250000 German and Italian troops.

In retrospect, it is easy to see that the Allied plan of landings near Casablance, Oran and Algiers was a mistake, splitting a quite limited force of 110000 men over a huge area of territory but, at the time, no one was certain what Vichy France would do, Morocco and Algeria being French colonies having considerable French forces in occupation. In the event, there was some quite strong resistance at first in Morocco but this soon ceased on the news of Hitler's entry into southern France. The decision to defend what territory was left to him in North Africa must have been Hitler's but it is difficult to understand why he should have continued sending in more and more reinforcements. The Allies commenced their strike from the west on 25th November but progress was slow against determined German defence. The tide of the fighting ebbed and flowed but, slowly and surely, the Germans were forced back and back until, by mid April, they were contained within a 100 mile perimeter around Tunis and Bizerte. Although difficult, a Dunkirk style retreat was perfectly feasible through the port of Tunis but, and again the decision must have been Hitler's, the remaining German force fought on until, on 7th May, the Allied armies entered Tunis.

With the prisoners taken both German and Italian, during Rommel's retreat, the total loss to Hitler was some 500,000 men, whereas it could have been half that number. Once again Hitler was showing that he was not competent to run a war by himself, in fact no one man could take on the whole direction of a modern war but Hitler persisted in trying, against the advice of his generals. He could not afford to squander the 250,000 men that now surrendered especially as they were the last Axis troops in North Africa. From now until the bitter end, he had a war on two fronts with a vengeance.