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North Africa: ‘A great general’

Mussolini’s adventures in North Africa were to prove as fruitless as in the Mediterranean. On 13 September 1940, from their bases in Libya, Italian forces invaded British-controlled Egypt. British and Commonwealth forces, vastly outnumbered, beat the Italians out of Egypt, back into Libya and, along the way, took a number of Libyan coastal towns, including Tobruk, which was to play a strategic and symbolic part in the North African campaign, changing hands several times between the advancing and retreating armies. The British were within striking distance of Libya’s capital, Tripoli, but with the Greeks now facing the Germans, Churchill diverted most of the advancing troops from Libya to help in Greece.

Mussolini had become a burden, and in February 1941, Hitler sent to North Africa his ablest soldier, Erwin Rommel, of whom Churchill said: ‘We have a very daring and skilful opponent against us, and may I say across the havoc of war, a great general.’ Over the next two years the British and Commonwealth armies and the German and Italian forces fought a see-saw war, the Axis pushing the Allies back east into Egypt, then the Allies pushing the Axis back west into Libya. The further one army reached, the further their supply lines were stretched and the easier it became for the other to fight back. One constant thorn in the German side was the Mediterranean island of Malta, from where British forces continuously disrupted the German flow of supplies from Italy to Tripoli. Despite severe bombing, Hitler’s attempts to smash the island failed. Britain’s King George VI awarded the island, as a collective, the George Cross.

In June 1942, the British had entrenched themselves in the small Egyptian town of El Alamein, sixty miles west of Alexandria. Significantly for the Germans, they were 1,400 miles from Tripoli. The first battle of El Alamein, in July 1942, ended in stalemate. The second battle, with the Allies now led by Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery, or ‘Monty’, resulted in a Commonwealth triumph. Rommel, his tanks greatly outnumbered and supplies running thin, was, bit by bit, pushed back, the British retaking Tobruk on 13 November.

British infantry advancing during the battle of El Alamein, October 1942

Five days beforehand, fresh British and American forces had landed to the west in North Africa, in Morocco and Algeria, where they met limited resistance from the Vichy French, who, after only three days, surrendered. Hitler viewed their performance as treacherous and responded by occupying the Vichy-controlled part of France. Montgomery’s men eventually captured Tripoli in January 1943, and two months later had chased the Germans further westwards into Tunisia. On 9 March, Rommel was invalided back home, and soon after the Allies breached the fortified Tunisian–Libyan border, pushing the Germans into Tunis. Despite Hitler pouring more troops in, and their tenacious defence, the Germans finally surrendered on 13 May, 1943. The Allied victory in North Africa prompted Churchill to say: ‘This is not the end, nor is it even the beginning of the end, but it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.’