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    Kasserine Pass 1943: Rommel's last victory
    Kasserine Pass 1943: Rommel's last victory
    Kasserine Pass 1943: Rommel's last victory
    Ebook209 pages1 hour

    Kasserine Pass 1943: Rommel's last victory

    By Steven J. Zaloga and Michael Welply

    3.5/5

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    About this ebook

    A highly illustrated account of The North African campaign of November 1942-May 1943 during World War II.

    This campaign was a baptism of fire for the US Army. After relatively straightforward landings, the US II Corps advanced into Tunisia to support operations by the British 8th Army. Rommel, worried by the prospect of an attack, decided to exploit the inexperience of the US Army and strike a blow against their overextended positions around the Kasserine Pass.

    However, the Germans were unable to exploit their initial success, and later attacks were bloodily repulsed. The fighting in Tunisia taught the green US Army vital combat lessons, and brought to the fore senior commanders such as Eisenhower, Patton, and Bradley.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherBloomsbury Publishing
    Release dateJan 20, 2013
    ISBN9781472800152
    Kasserine Pass 1943: Rommel's last victory
    Author

    Steven J. Zaloga

    Steven J. Zaloga received his BA in History from Union College and his MA from Columbia University. He has worked as an analyst in the aerospace industry for three decades, covering missile systems and the international arms trade, and has served with the Institute for Defense Analyses, a federal think tank. He is the author of numerous books on military technology and history, including NVG 294 Allied Tanks in Normandy 1944 and NVG 283 American Guided Missiles of World War II. He currently lives in Maryland, USA.

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    3.5/5

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    • 1/5
      could not download onto my computer, tried several times today
    • 4/5
      I think it is a very concise and well told description of the events in North Africa during WWII. A minor quibble I do have with the author is calling the battle of Kasserine Pass an American victory. I would say that Rommel won a minor local tactical success by breaking the defenses at the pass. It would be due to lack of logistics, and focus in addition to Allied determination that prevented him from going any farther. All in all, however, a very good book.

    Book preview

    Kasserine Pass 1943 - Steven J. Zaloga

    (NARA)

    INTRODUCTION

    The battle for Kasserine Pass in February 1943 was the baptism of fire for the US Army in the European theater in World War II. The German offensive to capture the mountain passes at Kasserine was Rommel’s last attempt to regain the strategic initiative in North Africa. In spite of the initial success of Operation Sturmflut, the offensive quickly faltered and the Axis forces remained trapped in Tunisia. The US forces regained their balance and kept the Germans at bay at El Guettar a few weeks later. The noose around Army Group Afrika quickly tightened as joint attacks by Montgomery’s Eighth Army and Anderson’s First Army gradually enveloped and overcame the Axis defenses in the spring of 1943. The US Army’s enlarged and strengthened II Corps was shifted to the northern front against Bizerte. Hitler refused to evacuate the trapped German and Italian forces, and in early May 1943 the Axis sacrificed over a quarter of a million troops, comparable in size to those lost a few months earlier at Stalingrad. The focus of this book is the battles for the Kasserine-Faïd passes and the subsequent efforts by the US Army to recover from this defeat in the final phase of the Tunisian campaign.

    THE STRATEGIC BACKGROUND

    North Africa was a peripheral theater of operations for both Germany and the United States, but both were cajoled into military operations by their allies. In Germany’s case, Italy made a bold gamble in 1940 to expand its African colonies, a venture that quickly went sour with a sound British rebuff. The embarrassing Italian defeat in Africa prompted Hitler to dispatch a small force led by Erwin Rommel that arrived in February 1941. The Deutsches Afrika Korps’ (DAK) victories against the overextended British Eighth Army led to a steady trickle of reinforcements to Rommel, but never enough for a decisive edge. Hitler’s attention was shifting eastward towards Russia.

    Africa was important in British grand strategy because of Britain’s imperial commitments in Africa, the Middle East, and India. The Mediterranean was the vital link to the Middle East, and the Suez Canal controlled access to the trade routes to India. Furthermore, Britain was primarily a naval power with an army too small to single-handedly challenge that of a major continental power such as Germany. Britain’s traditional approach for more than a century had been a strategy of peripheral engagement, taking advantage of the strategic mobility of its fleet to wear down the enemy in secondary theaters until a coalition could be formed to directly confront an adversary on land. Once the threat of a direct German invasion of Britain had abated in late 1940, Britain built up its forces in Egypt with the aim of defeating the Axis forces in this theater. The campaign in North Africa remained at a stalemate through most of 1941 and early 1942 with the battle line shifting east and west whenever either side enjoyed temporary advantages in forces, supplies, and new equipment. However, following Germany’s invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941, the prospects for the Afrika Korps faded. Russia became the Wehrmacht’s primary theater of operations, and by the summer of 1942, the balance of forces in North Africa was shifting decidedly in Britain’s favor.

    US vehicles taking part in the Operation Torch landings were prominently marked with US flags in the hope that the French would hold their fire. This is an M7 105mm howitzer motor carriage, the standard US self-propelled artillery in Tunisia.

    Hitler’s declaration of war on the United States in December 1941 reinforced British strategic predilections, and Churchill set about trying to convince Roosevelt of the advantages of a Mediterranean strategy. This approach was not widely shared in the United States, and in particular the US Army Chief of Staff, Gen. George C. Marshall, strongly favored a commitment of Allied forces into France as early as possible, preferably in 1943. As it would transpire, the Allies were not ready for a major land campaign in France in 1943. In a series of conferences between senior Allied leaders, the British gradually convinced their American counterparts to participate in Mediterranean operations in 1942–43 as a means to keep the pressure on the Wehrmacht until a landing in France was possible. In addition, Stalin and the Soviet leadership were also advocating combat action by the western Allies since the Red Army had been bearing the brunt of German attacks for more than a year. Roosevelt and Marshall finally acceded to British pressure, but the US commitment to the Mediterranean theater was half-hearted.

    OPERATION TORCH

    The Anglo-American plan for new North African operations was codenamed Operation Torch. By late October 1942, the British Eighth Army had secured the strategic initiative in North Africa at the second battle of El Alamein. German and Italian forces were in headlong retreat through Libya. The aim of Operation Torch was to squeeze the Axis forces out of North Africa from the other side. An Allied landing would be conducted at three locations in French North Africa by a primarily American force. The decision to rely on US forces in Operation Torch was due both to Britain’s existing commitments in North Africa, as well as to the rancor between Britain and France in the aftermath of the 1940 French defeat. Not only had Britain evacuated its army from France in 1940 prior to the French surrender, but afterwards the Royal Navy attacked elements of the French Navy in Mers-el-Kebir harbor rather than permit major French warships to fall into German hands. The presumption was that American forces might not elicit the type of resistance that was likely to ensue if British forces were the most prominent element of the Torch landing force.

    The race to seize Tunis was won by the Germans, who quickly deployed forces into the Tunisia bridgehead in December 1942, including this PzKpfw IV. (NARA)

    France’s response to the forthcoming invasion of its North African colonies was in question. The Pétain government in France was careful to avoid antagonizing Germany for fear that Hitler would occupy the remainder of central and southern France, as well as the overseas colonies that were still under the control of the French Vichy government. Nevertheless, North Africa was a refuge for many military officers and officials who resented Pétain’s collaboration with Germany since the 1940 armistice. The United States began dispatching secret agents to North Africa before the landings in the hope of convincing senior officials to side with the Allies. When the landings took place in November 1942, the French reaction was mixed. Although there was some resistance in a few locations, by and large the landings took place without serious opposition.

    Hitler’s reaction to the Allied landings was predictable: the remainder of France was occupied by the Wehrmacht, and Pétain was dismissed. This left the situation in the French colonies such as Tunisia and Algeria in doubt. With Rommel’s star in the decline after the defeat at El Alamein, Hitler dispatched a second German contingent under Gen. Nehring to occupy the Tunisian bridgehead. A race developed to see who would seize Tunisia first—Anderson’s First Army, marching from Algeria, or the 5th Panzer Army, arriving in Tunisia by aircraft and ship from Italy. The Germans won the race, and by mid December, a stalemate had developed along the Tunisian frontier with the Allies still too weak to overcome the Wehrmacht defenses, and the German forces too poorly supplied to drive the Allies back into Algeria. The winter weather was so cold and wet that the Allies presumed a major offensive would wait until spring.

    The other ingredient in this volatile mix was the clash between the Eighth Army and Rommel’s Panzerarmee Afrika retreating through Libya. Mussolini pleaded with Hitler to make a stand in Libya lest he lose face in yet another military disaster for the hapless Italian army. Rommel bluntly warned the high command that unless he was provided with reinforcements and supplies, he would have no choice but to retreat to more defensible ground across the Tunisian frontier. Rommel was out of favor with Hitler and was warned that supplies would not be forthcoming. Disregarding instructions that he stage a last ditch defense of Libya, he managed to extricate most of the German units and some of the better Italian units into Tunisia by February 1943, shielded behind the French-built Mareth Line.

    French forces in North Africa

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