To answer the question on the number and type of troops which could be rushed without delay to bar the Allied advance, Kesselring could reply that only two battalions of Lieutenant-Colonel Koch's 5th Parachute Regiment and his own headquarters defence battalion were immediately available. 'Fling in everything you can', was the Führer's dramatic command. The orders for their despatch went out to the units on standby and then Kesselring's staff officers swung into a long-planned routine; the transport of a complete division from the strategic reserve in Sicily. But the German Supreme Command did not have the same view of Mediterranean strategy as Kesselring and, determined not to infringe French neutrality, refused to allow this stand-by division to be deployed to Tunisia. Not until 24 hours after the first Allied landings had taken place did Kesselring receive from Hitler the powers he needed, but even then the French authorities were handled with extreme delicacy. Permission was sought and obtained from Marshal Petain allowing the German troops to move into Tunisia.
Then began what has been described by some German military commentators as 'the poor man's war'; for with only a small force of troops, one wing of fighter aircraft, and a general without a staff, the German forces which had begun to land in Tunisia were ordered to stop the advance of the onrushing Allied troops by forming a bridgehead with a short, defensible perimeter and situated at an adequate distance from the main ports of Tunis and Bizerta.
Either as a bluff or as a piece of absolute cynicism Kesselring commented that a general should be sent to Tunisia — one with the wide red stripes of the general staff on his breeches — for his presence would be reported back to Eisenhower via the intelligence network, and who on the Allied side would believe that a German general could be sent into the field without the necessary troops for him to command. On the evening of 8 November, General Nehring was recalled from convalescence and ordered back to Africa. But not to his old command, for in Rome fresh orders awaited him. He was to take charge of operations in the Tunisian area and was quickly briefed on the task he had been given.
The terrain over which the battles of the next six months were to be fought was hilly, almost mountainous, particularly in the west and in the northwestern frontier area where it bordered Algeria. To the east and to the south the ground became more flat, leading to a plain, and in some areas there was marsh. In the valleys between the western hills and on the plain there was extensive cultivation but the hills themselves were bleak and covered with scrub. The lie of the land favoured the defence for the high ground ran in a general north-easterly direction and the defenders would withdraw from peak to peak while denying the valley roads to an Allied advance. This was particularly the case on the eastern side of the country where the Mediterranean formed one flank which could not be turned. On this coastal side of Tunisia the mountains reached, at some places, almost to the sea and thus formed narrow gaps across which the Axis armies formed defensive lines.
The Tunisian road network was poor both in number and durability and only the few macadamised highways could be used in the rainy period which extended through the winter and into spring, by unhappy coincidence, the two seasons of the campaign. In the winter the principals were torrential rain creating mud and destroying the secondary roads, and low cloud, which curtailed combat flying, and bitter cold which could not be escaped by the infantry since the hills in which they had to live were generally devoid of man-made or even natural cover. By the middle of March the returning warm weather dried out the ground allowing wheeled movement off roads. There was much horticulture, with orchards of olive trees, cork forests, wheat and fruit growing. The cactus bush was every where and was used widely to form hedges, particularly around the larger, French-owned farms. When the Germans took over these buildings and prepared them for defence the cactus formed a natural type of barbed wire entanglement and helped to turn these farms into fortresses, almost unassailable by infantry and armour.
The few strategic and all-weather roads extended from the capital or from the principal port of Bizerta westwards towards Algeria, south-westwards to Kairouan, or southwards to Tripolitania. The junctions of roads were of strategic importance and whoever controlled these and the towns which had grown up around them dictated the course of the fighting. As this narrative of the events which took place in Tunisia between November 1942 and May 1943 unfolds then the names of those towns and villages which were important to the campaign will become familiar: Beja, Mateur, Tebourba. Kasserine, Enfidaville, and Medjez el Bab. It is this last named place which was the key to the whole campaign and its capture by the British opened the great offensive which finally brought the war in Africa to a close.
Roads, then, and particularly road junctions were strategically important but it was not necessary to have troops on the highway itself; possession of high ground overlooking the road produced the same result. Thus each side fought to attain or to eject the other side from the mountains or the valley road. [18]
The population of Tunisia was predominantly Arab with a large number of French inhabitants, both military and civilian, and a lesser but still sizeable Italian contingent. These latter hoped for an Axis victory and many were called up to serve in locally raised Italian regiments. The French were divided into those who supported the western Allies and those whose sympathies lay with the Government of Marshal Petain. The Arabs had no strong feelings and were capable of betraying British soldiers to the Germans and German positions to the British with complete impartiality.
The Tunisian campaign can be seen to fall into three distinctive phases. In the first of these, lasting from the Allied landings to the end of December, there was a race to obtain tactically and strategically important positions. During this first period the descents upon Tunisia by both sides were followed by a thrust made by a force, mainly British in content, and aimed at the capture of Tunis and Bizerta. A German counter-attack drove back the weak Allied force and a line was formed along which there was for some time a stalemate.
The second phase began with a resumption of the German offensive aiming to expand the bridgehead area. These attacks lasted until April and within this period there was the major assault upon the American forces forming the right flank of the Allied army in Tunisia. When the United States' forces drove back Rommel's panzer thrust they joined hands with the British 8th Army which had entered Tunisia from the south and thus formed a noose around the Axis armies.
The third phase saw the build-up of strong Allied forces, the tightening of the noose, the switching of some 8th Army Divisions to the 1st Army, and the final thrust from Medjez el Bab which smashed the Germans and their Italian allies.
When compared to the battles of the Titans which were being fought in Russia the events in Tunisia seem of small proportion. The whole Axis force which fought there was not even half the size of any one of the army groups fighting on the eastern front, but it was a campaign that was significant for it showed that the Anglo-Saxon Allies had the capability and the knowledge successfully to mount a major sea-borne invasion. This fact was not lost upon the German High Command who as early as February 1943 telexed an Abwehr [19] appreciation that further sea-borne landings could be expected to take place during March in the Mediterranean area and aimed either at Sicily, Crete, Sardinia, or Corsica.
The Tunisian campaign also 'blooded' the green Americans enabling both the leaders and the led to learn the business of war at combat and at command levels. These lessons they then applied to the fighting which was carried out in Sicily and in Italy where the terrain was much the same as Tunisia. As a military parallel the war in Tunisia was, by accident, to the Allies the same sort of testing ground that Spain had been for the Axis forces.