Other pillars of smoke indicated where lorries for which there was no petrol had been destroyed. The German observers of that sad scene would also have seen spread before and below them a panorama of the whole of 8th Army's armoured might as it moved towards the Tarhuna pass. Against the full weight which Montgomery could commit to battle the Panzer Army Africa could send in only 23 panzers and 16 Italian tanks. Then, as this last remnant battled with the British, a telegram was received from Mussolini complaining that the Buerat position had been abandoned prematurely.
From the direction of Montgomery's thrust Rommel appreciated that the British intention was to bypass Tripoli and then to wheel inwards. Thus the Germans would be pinned with their backs to the sea. They would be cut off from Tunisia and the whole of the southern Tunisian flank would stand open to 8th Army's direct assault. He signed the order to evacuate Tripoli with a heavy heart for he realised that this meant to his Italian allies the end of the empire but Rommel knew that if he was to save the Panzer Army then there was no other decision he could make.
With the evacuation of Tripoli and the withdrawal into Tunisia the desert campaign came to an end but in the northern bridgehead Rommel still hoped that there might be more hopeful prospects and that a position could be held from which, with the promised reinforcements and fresh supplies there might one day again burst forth from the confines of the Tunisian bridgehead a reborn Panzer Army Africa.
Tunisia Campaign 1942
During the late summer of 1942 the attention of the western Allies as well as that of the OKW was directed towards the western Mediterranean in general and upon the North African colonies of France in particular.
The Anglo-Saxons were concerned to relieve pressure upon the Russians by mounting a so-called Second Front but the British, aware that Allied forces were at that time too weak to undertake successfully a landing and a campaign in north-west Europe, suggested other alternatives. In a memorandum President Roosevelt offered his military chief of staff three options. The top priority was given to the idea of a landing in French North Africa and by a rapid advance eastwards to cut off the enemy armies in the desert. The second option was for the Americans to link up with the British 8th Army in Tripoli and by joint action defeat Rommel and his Italian allies. Finally there was the option of landing in France and then establishing in the southern part of that country a bridgehead out of which, at some future date, reinforced Allied armies would burst in a campaign of liberation. But whatever the choice Roosevelt's order was that an offensive operation on land, and in the European theatre of operations, had to be launched during 1942. As Commander-in-Chief he
committed the United States to the first option. Reluctantly the American chiefs of staff agreed; French North Africa was to be invaded.
That this undertaking, code-named Operation Torch, would entail an armed assault upon the territory of a neutral nation was dismissed. The fact that the Axis powers had so completely respected French neutrality, that there was no German or Italian soldier stationed in any of the French possessions, was considered a positive advantage, for thus there would be no opposition to overcome on the road to Tunis. Further to smooth the path of the invaders secret service agents had contacted French officers and civilians loyal to the Allied cause and on the basis of their reports it was anticipated that resistance to the attack would be minimal. It was further expected that both the native population and the French colonial settlers would welcome the Allied forces as liberators, although as liberators from what or from whom was never made clear.
General Eisenhower was appointed to command this first offensive undertaking by the American Army in the western hemisphere and the choice of an American commander was intended to convey to the French in North Africa who may have had anti-British feelings, the totally false impression that Operation Torch was an entirely United States operation.
There were four strategic areas which the western Allies could have chosen as target areas but only two had the qualifications necessary for the success of a major naval and military operation. Of these two we can ignore the landings in western Algeria. We are concerned only with the assault upon eastern Algeria, and upon the Allied formations which debarked upon the shores of that region. The troops of that Anglo-American force were directed to thrust towards Tunisia and to seize the principal towns of Tunis and Bizerta. The capture of these major ports as well as that of less important harbours would bring an Allied army into position behind the Axis troops, at that time fighting in Tripoli, and thus between those troops and the ports from which they might make their escape to the mainland of Europe. The success of Operation Torch would make the question of whether the Axis or the Allies won the war in Africa academic. All that was needed, so it seemed to the Allied planners, was to race for Tunis sweeping aside any weak resistance from the Germans or Italians who might be encountered on the way.
Adolf Hitler, reviewing the strategical situation from his headquarters, came to the conclusion that if there was to be an Allied landing then this would take place either on the islands of Sardinia or Corsica, or possibly in southern France. The Fiihrer excluded North Africa completely from the possible targets for a sea-borne assault. German naval headquarters in the Mediterranean was not so confident, and, anticipating Allied landings, had drawn up plans for U-boat action against these. By a coincidence the Axis planners, as early as July 1942, chose as the most likely debarkation points those areas along the French North African shore which the Allied strategists themselves had selected. As U-boat strength in Italian waters was not enough to mount a whole series of widespread assaults against the ships of the Allied armada and was too weak to cover all possible target areas, a pair of intercept patrol lines was charted in the waters of the western half of the Mediterranean sea across which the Allied ships would have to sail to their landing areas and along which they could be attacked.
Reports reaching German naval headquarters which spoke of a concentration of shipping in Gibraltar were misinterpreted by Axis supreme commands, as was later intelligence of this build-up as a major convoy to Malta. But then reports reaching Rome brought graver and reliable news so that by 4 November it was clear that the naval preparations which the Allies were making presaged an invasion of North Africa. The evidence convinced both Mussolini and Kesselring, the German Supreme Commander South, but Hitler still clung to his beliefs of a landing upon Corsica or Sardinia, although on 6 November he did send a signal to the senior German naval officer in the Italian waters telling him that the fate of the army in Africa depended upon the destruction of the Gibraltar convoy and demanding from the U-boat crews relentless and victorious action.
During the night of 6/7 November every submarine which could be pressed into service headed westwards to the patrol lines, on an intercept course with the Allied convoy of 190 ships which was now sailing, completely blacked out, through the waters of the Mediterranean.
At 04.00hrs on the morning of 8 November the Allied assault opened at selected points along the Algerian coast and continued throughout the day. In some areas there was little or no opposition but in others there were French naval forays of such ferocity that the intervention of American heavy naval units was required to overcome them. By the morning of the following day an Allied army was ashore and was streaming along the roads towards Tunisia.
Hitler received the news of the invasion while at a wayside railway station en route to Munich and his immediate decision was to hold Tunisia. There would be no retreat. As a first reaction he offered air support to help Vichy France (the French under Petain) in its defence of the North African possession and under cover of this offer Luftwaffe units began to move into Tunisia during the night of 9 November. Meanwhile a telephone conversation between Hitler and Kesselring had taken place.