KASSERINE PASS, BATTLE OF

KASSERINE PASS, BATTLE OF. In a series of engagements in Tunisia during World War II that reached a climax near the Algerian border at the Kasserine Pass, combined Italian and German forces in February 1943 drove American and French troops back about fifty miles from the Eastern to the Western Dorsale mountains. These events grew out of two actions: the British victory at El Alamein on 23 October 1942, which precipitated the retreat of German General Erwin Rommel's army across Libya and into southern Tunisia; and the Anglo-American invasion of French North Africa on 8 November 1942, which prompted the Axis nations to dispatch troops from Italy to northern Tunisia. By January 1943, Rommel's troops, pursued by Lieutenant General Bernard L. Montgomery's Eighth Army, were settling into the Mareth positions. At the same time, General D. Juergen von Arnim held Bizerte and Tunis against Lieutenant General Kenneth Anderson's First Army, composed of British, French, and American units.

The Americans were inexperienced and overconfident, and the French lacked modern and mechanized weapons and equipment. There were too few men for the large area they defended, yet the roads and railways from Algeria made support for larger forces impossible.

The battle opened 30 January 1943, when Arnim overwhelmed the French at Faïd Pass, and the Americans failed to restore the situation. Arnim attacked again on 14 February and marooned American forces on the Lessouda and Ksaira hills. At Sidi bou Zid he soundly defeated the U.S. First Armored Division, which lost ninety-eight tanks and about half of its combat effectiveness in two days. Allied troops abandoned Gafsa, Fériana, and Thélepte after destroying equipment and supplies, including facilities at two airfields, and the Americans were forced out of Sbeïtla.

Hoping to gain a great strategic victory by a wide envelopment through Tebéssa to Annaba (Bone), which would compel the Allies to withdraw from Tunisia, Rommel continued the offensive on 19 February. He thrust north from Sbeïtla toward Sbiba and sent two columns through the Kasserine Pass, one probing toward Tebéssa and the main effort toward Thala. After fierce fighting, all were stopped by determined defensive work. On 22 February a discouraged Rommel sent his units back to the Mareth positions to prepare for Montgomery's inevitable attack. Unaware of Rommel's withdrawal, the Allies moved cautiously forward, retook the Kasserine Pass on 25 February, and found the Italians and Germans gone.

The Americans learned their lessons and restructured their training programs. Major General George S. Patton Jr. replaced Major General Lloyd R. Fredendall at the head of the II Corps and restored the fighting spirit of the troops. General Harold Alexander instituted a better command system for the ground forces, and the French were rearmed and reequipped. Less than three months later, the Allies defeated the Italians and Germans and won control over all of North Africa.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

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

Greenfield, Kent R. American Strategy in World War II: A Reconsideration. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1963.

Macksey, Kenneth. Crucible of Power: The Fight for Tunisia, 1942–1943. London: Hutchinson, 1969.

MartinBlumenson/a. r.

See alsoNorth African Campaign ; World War II .

Kasserine Pass, battle of (see Map 60). In February 1943, at a crucial stage in the North African campaign, Rommel's German–Italian Panzer Army, and Arnim's Fifth Panzer Army, launched a counter-stroke to prevent Eisenhower's Allied forces from reaching the central Tunisian coast and splitting the Axis forces in two. The first phase of this offensive forced the withdrawal of Allied forces to the Western Dorsale mountains, which protected the Allied flank in Tunisia; and to guard the passes which bisected them were the inexperienced reserves of Lt-General Lloyd Fredendall's 2nd US Corps.

A miscalculation, caused by the difficulties of interpreting available ULTRA intelligence, led to the British land commander, Lt-General Kenneth Anderson, deploying the main Allied reserves further north, leaving only a mixed force to guard the pass. It was made up of one battalion of Colonel Robert Stark's 26th US Infantry Division, elements of the 19th US Combat Engineer Regiment, the 33rd US Field Artillery Battalion, the 805th US Tank Destroyer Battalion, and a battery of the French 67th African Artillery. During the first night of the battle these units were reinforced by a battalion from 6th US Armored Infantry Regiment, and by a mixed British force rushed forward from Thala. This miscellany of units proved quite inadequate to cope with an Afrika Korps assault group which was reinforced by part of Arnim's 10th Panzer Division. When Rommel's intentions became obvious Fredendall told Stark to take command at Kasserine and ‘pull a Stonewall Jackson.’ Stark managed to keep the Germans at bay on the first day, 19 February, but that night Rommel switched his attack north-westwards, and by the next afternoon his assault group, with additional support from an Italian armoured division and infantry, was through the pass and heading for Tébessa, while the 10th Panzer Division struck out for Thala. By that time Fredendall's command system was, as one official historian has remarked, a tangled skein of misunderstanding, duplication of effort, overlapping responsibility, and consequential muddle. However, the Germans were also in some confusion. Rommel and Arnim had conflicting strategies, so that Kasserine was only one of three uncoordinated attacks, and after the breakthrough occurred, Rommel was ordered by Comando Supremo to attack towards Le Kef, where the Allied reserves were, instead of towards Tebessa. Heavy fighting continued the next day in the rain storms which fell throughout the battle, but on 22 February Rommel, deterred by the poor terrain for mobile operations, by increasing Allied opposition, and by Arnim's lack of co-operation, called off the offensive.

Although a great shock at the time, and an unfortunate misjudgement by Allied intelligence, the US defeat around Kasserine had no long-lasting adverse effect on Allied strategy, and by 24 February the pass had been reoccupied. But losses of men and matériel—and confidence—was high. Eisenhower therefore replaced Fredendall with Patton, and he also replaced his chief intelligence officer.

Kasserine Pass, Battle of a mountain pass where, on February 20, 1943, American forces attempted to force their way past Gen. Erwin Rommel's German and Italian armored units as part of the Allied effort to expel the Axis from North Africa. Rommel turned back the inexperienced American troops, but it proved to be his last major desert victory. Well-supplied Allied forces won back the pass despite heavy losses on February 25.

Kasserine Pass , gap, 2 mi (3.2 km) wide, central Tunisia, in the Grand Dorsal chain (an extension of the Atlas Mts.). A key point in the Allied offensive in Tunisia in World War II, the pass was the scene of an Axis breakthrough (Feb. 20, 1943), but it was retaken with very heavy losses by U.S. forces on Feb. 25. See North Africa, campaigns in .