Short History of World War II by James L. Stokesbury

Author:James L. Stokesbury
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: History
ISBN: 9780709197362
Publisher: Robert Hale Ltd
Published: 1980-01-02T00:00:00+00:00

The Battle of Kasserine Pass was a limited engagement for the Germans; they wanted to buy time and shake up their enemies. There was not a great deal more than that that they could hope to achieve. For the Americans it was a confused nightmare, a baptism of fire that showed them they were newcomers in a tough league.

Early on the morning of February 14, the Germans opened an assault with two armored divisions, supported by fighters, dive-bombers, and mobile artillery. The Americans expected it, but not in such strength. The Germans cut off an infantry regiment and wiped it out; the Americans counterattacked with an armored regiment, and the Germans wiped it out too. The American Stuart tanks failed even to dent the heavier Germans, and the medium Shermans soon showed their shortcomings as well. In five days of steady driving, the Germans made nearly seventy miles, through Kasserine Pass toward the town of Tebessa. They lost their momentum, however; Rommel disagreed with the Tunisian commander, Jurgen von Arnim, and the Americans gradually regrouped. The Germans finally ran out of push on the 22nd, having achieved little more than a large-scale raid, and soon the lines were back where they had been before the battle. It cost them about a thousand casualties, and they inflicted well over 6,000 on the Americans. It was a small affair as battles went in World War II, but it marked two things: it was the end of American military innocence, and it was also the end of German offensive action in North Africa.

From then on it was a matter of squeezing. Montgomery linked up with the American tail of the Allied Tunisian line, and the Germans were henceforth in a pocket. Hitler thought he could hold it and he kept putting troops in, running the gauntlet of Allied air power across the Sicilian Narrows. Rommel went home sick, and left von Arnim to fight it out. Late in February, Montgomery got around the Mareth Line—his direct assault failed—and the Germans fell back; by mid-April all they held was the northeastern tip of the country. Hitler still thought he could hang on. The final Allied attack opened on April 22. The Germans and Italians held firm under heavy, steady pressure for ten days, but then they began to weaken. The Luftwaffe pulled out, leapfrogging its planes and whatever it could salvage, back to Sicily. French and Americans, now on the left of the line, pushed into Bizerte on May 7, and British troops entered Tunis. Too late, the Germans were trying to scuttle out. Convoys of the transport planes were badgered across the narrows by the R. A. F. and the Royal Navy, who hoped in vain the Italian fleet would come out to the rescue.

The final resistance collapsed on the 13th, when the Italian 1st Army, the last cohesive unit, laid down its arms. More than a quarter of a million prisoners went into the cages, the biggest Western Allied haul yet and an entirely appropriate match for the great Russian victory at Stalingrad.

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