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    The Mareth Line 1943: The end in Africa
    The Mareth Line 1943: The end in Africa
    The Mareth Line 1943: The end in Africa
    Ebook220 pages1 hour

    The Mareth Line 1943: The end in Africa

    By Ken Ford and Steve Noon

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    A highly illustrated account of the hard fighting in North Africa, from the battle of El Alamein to defeat of the Axis forces in May 1943.

    The battle of El Alamein saw the shattering of Germany's hopes for victory in North Africa and from this point on the end was inevitable. In the six months that passed before the final surrender there was much hard fighting, as the defeated German and Italian armies sought to hold off the encroaching Eighth Army.

    Rommel, his health suffering, fought a number of major actions during this campaign before his forces settled into the pre-war French defensive position the Mareth Line. All the way he was pursued by an increasingly confident Eighth Army under the command of General Montgomery, although he was unable to outflank the retreating German and Italian forces decisively, and Rommel was even able to divert forces to inflict a sharp defeat on the newly arrived US forces at Kasserine Pass in February 1943. This was one of Rommel's last acts in the Desert War as his health problems forced his return to Germany shortly afterwards.

    In this detailed examination, Ken Ford explores the lead-up to and execution of the last great battle of the Desert War, as the veteran formations of the British Eighth Army took on their foes in the Afrikakorps for the final time in the major set-piece battle for the Mareth Line.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherBloomsbury Publishing
    Release dateOct 20, 2012
    ISBN9781782002994
    The Mareth Line 1943: The end in Africa
    Author

    Ken Ford

    Ken Ford was born in Hampshire in 1943. He trained as an engineer and spent almost thirty years in the telecommunications industry. He now spends his time as an author and a bookseller specialising in military history. He has written a number of books on various Second World War subjects. Ken now lives in Southampton.

    Read more from Ken Ford

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      The Mareth Line 1943 - Ken Ford

      Allies.

      ORIGINS OF THE BATTLE

      On 4 November 1942, the defeat of Panzerarmee Afrika under the command of Generalfeldmarschall (GFM) Erwin Rommel by Lieutenant-General (Lt. Gen.) Bernard Montgomery’s Eighth Army in the battle of El Alamein proved to be the climax of the Desert War. The struggle that had begun in September 1940 against Italian forces on the Libyan–Egyptian border had by then reached its critical moment – a trial of strength in which a dramatic breakthrough would have been possible by whoever proved to be the most determined. It was Montgomery who succeeded.

      The conflict in North Africa had progressed from a fight between two colonial powers into a theatre of war which captured the attention of the whole world. After Britain’s repulse in the Battle of France in June 1940 and its exit from the continent of Europe through Dunkirk, the North African desert was the only place in which its land forces opposed the enemy.

      The theatre was the scene of many large-scale battles, especially after Italian troops were joined by those from their ally Germany under the command of Erwin Rommel. Actions were fought over wide-open tracts of desert in a harsh environment that punished the unwary. As one side moved away from its supply bases, the other side grew closer to its own. Growing strength on one side was met with gradual weakening on the other. Progress was a to-and-fro trek between the deserts of Libya and Egypt as each side in turn gained the upper hand.

      A soldier examines an Italian M13/14 tank that had been knocked out at Alamein. (DA-02734, War History Collection, Alexander Turnbull Library, Wellington NZ)

      Italian prisoners in captivity after the battle. Most had been left behind without transport as the Germans rushed away from the battlefield in their tanks and trucks. (IWM, E21541)

      A New Zealand padre conducts a burial service for some of the fallen at El Alamein. (DA-11753, War History Collection, Alexander Turnbull Library, Wellington NZ)

      Over a period of more than two years, many leading commanders had seen their reputations won or lost in the desert through the battles they had fought. The disaster of the loss of Tenth Army by the Italian commander Graziani was in great contrast to the success gained by Lieutenant-General Richard O’Connor, whose outflanking movements across vast wastes were later employed by Rommel. This initial success was soon followed by General Archibald Wavell’s efforts throughout 1941. With few resources and the need to supply troops to diversions in Greece and Crete, Wavell’s command brought little reward. Auchinleck, who followed him, could count the successes of Operation Crusader and First Alamein amongst his battle honours, but he, like Wavell, fell victim to Prime Minister Winston Churchill’s impatience for greater victories.

      The Desert War was dominated by the charismatic German commander Erwin Rommel. After his arrival in Libya on 12 February 1941, the situation changed completely. Rommel brought with him the units that were to become the famed Deutsches Afrika Korps (DAK). His expertise, daring exploits and bold leadership created a type of warfare that had the British reacting to his moves. There is little doubt that his superiority in generalship, and the greater effectiveness of his tanks and weapons, always placed his opponents at a disadvantage. His greatest problem was one of supply and it was this shortcoming that compromised his plan to capture Egypt and cross the Suez Canal into the Middle East. Whether this might actually have been a possibility remains a subject for historians to debate, but there is little doubt that if his Panzerarmee Afrika had had sufficient strength to go on the offensive at Alamein, the outcome of the Desert War might have been quite different.

      Lieutenant-General Bernard Montgomery had arrived in Egypt at a most opportune moment. General Claude Auchinleck before him had by then halted Rommel’s advance into Egypt and had won the first battle of El Alamein. When Montgomery took over Eighth Army in August 1942, he had only part of Auchinleck’s old command to deal with. Auchinleck before him was Commander-in-Chief Middle East and had responsibility for the war in North Africa and for the troubles in Iraq, Persia, Palestine, etc. Montgomery was given just Eighth Army and reported to General Sir Harold Alexander who held responsibility for the remainder of the Middle East. Montgomery also had the luxury of not attacking until Eighth Army had been massively reinforced, retrained and had plentiful supplies. This superiority in numbers of troops, weapons and new skills after so many years of having to make do with what was available, was the means with which he was able to overwhelm Rommel on the battlefield.

      Field guns of the Italian Divisione Corrazzata ‘Ariete’ left on the battlefield after Alamein. The division suffered appalling losses and very few men or tanks survived to begin the retreat. (DA-11211, War History Collection, Alexander Turnbull Library, Wellington NZ)

      The British Eighth Army that Rommel and his Panzerarmee Afrika faced at El Alamein was, at that time, the most powerful formation that Britain had put into the war. If it had been defeated then the whole of the nation’s presence in the Middle East would have been compromised. Both sides had fought at El Alamein knowing that failure would mean the end. For his part Rommel understood that if he could not overwhelm Eighth Army, then he could not stay in Egypt or possibly even remain in Libya. Montgomery also knew of the importance of winning. He realized that if he failed, it would be months, or even years, before Eighth Army could regain Egypt and rebuild its strength to go on the offensive again.

      A South African-built Marmon Herrington armoured car passes a burning Panzer after the battle of Alamein. The picture appears to have been set up for the cameraman, for the tank looks as though it had been wrecked some time earlier and a small fire started on it for effect. (IWM, E23088)

      Transport on the road to Mersa Matruh during the opening stages of Eighth Army’s pursuit. In the mid distance one of the trucks has hit a mine that had been sown on the desert floor just off the road. (DA-06877, War History Collection, Alexander Turnbull Library, Wellington NZ)

      A captured Kfz15 passenger car, liberated from the Italians, has been pressed into service to tow an ambulance out of a patch of soft sand. (IWM, 21522)

      The eventual success by the British at El Alamein ensured that they would remain masters of North Africa, provided that the Axis forces were not given the opportunity to re-form and strike back. On paper, on 4 November, the probability of the enemy striking back seemed very unlikely. The victory had been so complete that the Italian–German army could do little but flee. Its annihilation at the hands of the massed British armour that was gathering ready to pursue it looked inevitable. History, however, shows that in the months following Alamein, Rommel and his men did escape, they did re-form and they did attempt to strike back. Eighth Army proved unable to administer the final blow on its own. Rommel escaped into Tunisia with his Axis forces and it took the combined strength of two Allied armies finally to chase them from Africa.

      This second Allied army was the result of an Anglo-American invasion of North Africa on 8 November 1942. Operation Torch, commanded by General Dwight D. Eisenhower, brought a new force into the theatre when Americans arrived to fight the Axis forces. They quickly moved into Tunisia and stationed themselves in Rommel’s rear. Hitler reacted to this Allied move by immediately ordering Tunis to be seized by the few German troops already in the country and for new forces, under the command of Generaloberst Hans-Jürgen von Arnim, to be airlifted over the Mediterranean to defend the city. The speed of this deployment over the next days and weeks was formidable and took the Allies by surprise. Within 14 days there were enough Germans in Tunisia to stifle the Allied move on Tunis and to keep the city and most of Tunisia under Nazi control for six more months.

      CHRONOLOGY

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