North African Campaign

NORTH AFRICAN CAMPAIGN

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NORTH AFRICAN CAMPAIGN. After two years of desert skirmishes among the British, Italians, and Germans, the North African campaign opened on 8 November 1942, when Anglo-American forces under U.S. Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower landed in French Morocco and Algeria near Casablanca and met bitter French resistance. An armistice brought the fighting to an end on 11 November, and the French forces soon joined the Allies.

Allied units under British Gen. Kenneth Anderson tried to take Bizerte and Tunis quickly, but Italian and German troops held firm. Field Marshal Erwin Rommel's Italo-German army, defeated at El Alamein, Egypt, in October, retreated across Libya and at the end of the year took defensive positions around Mareth, Tunisia, to halt the pursuing British under Gen. Bernard L. Montgomery. Bad weather brought operations to a close. While the seasoned Axis forces built up strength, the Allies suffered from an inadequate supply line, faulty command arrangements, and American battle inexperience and overconfidence.

In February 1943 the Axis forces, in the Battle of Kasserine Pass, drove the Americans and French back about fifty miles in southern Tunisia. Allied confidence was restored with the arrival of new field commanders, British Gen. Harold Alexander and American Gen. George S. Patton Jr. In March 1943, the Allies attacked and pushed Rommel's army into northern Tunisia. Bizerte and Tunis fell on 7 May, Arnim surrendered, and the last organized Axis resistance in North Africa ended on 13 May, with more than 250,000 prisoners taken. With North Africa secure, the stage was set for operations in Europe.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Blumenson, Martin. Kasserine Pass. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1967.

Howe, George F. Northwest Africa: Seizing the Initiative in the West. Washington, D.C.: Center of Military History, 1991.

Moorehead, Alan. The March to Tunis. New York: Harper and Row, 1967.

Strawson, John. The Battle for North Africa. New York: Scribner, 1969.

Martin Blumenson / a. r.

See also Kasserine Pass, Battle of ; World War II .