Kasserine taught another lesson: envious or blind officers on one’s own side can nullify the insight of a great general and prevent him from achieving a decisive victory.
When Erwin Rommel pulled his beaten panzer army into Tunisia in late January 1943, he spotted an opportunity to transform the military situation in North Africa by a single, great stroke. If it succeeded, it could throw the Allies on the defensive and possibly lead to stalemate.
Montgomery was moving toward the Mareth line with his usual agonizing slowness. His army could be ignored for a couple weeks. The Allies in Tunisia had been stopped by the rains of Mediterranean winter and were arrayed on a north-south line with the British in the north, the newly organized French 19th Corps in the center, and the U.S. 2nd Corps under Fredendall in the south.
Rommel, in the Mareth line, recognized he had landed in Napoleon’s “central position” between two enemy armies, and could strike out and defeat one before having to turn back and confront the other.
Rommel saw something else: the Americans and the French were advanced far eastward into central Tunisia holding the Eastern Dorsal passes at Fondouk, Faid, and Gafsa, and shielding the passes in the Western Dorsal Mountains sixty to seventy miles to the west.
If Axis forces could seize Faid and Gafsa, and drive on to the Western Dorsal passes beyond Feriana and Kasserine, they would arrive at the huge American supply base and headquarters of Tebessa. At Tebessa Axis forces would be well west of the Allied line in Tunisia and deep into the Allies’ communication zone. If Axis armor then struck north to the sea a hundred miles away, it might cut off the entire Allied army in Tunisia, or force it to withdraw into Algeria.
Then Rommel could turn back on Montgomery, with his own forces and Arnim’s 5th Panzer Army, and either destroy 8th Army or drive it into precipitate retreat.
General Fredendall had played into Rommel’s hand. Although Eisenhower had instructed him to set up a mobile reserve behind a screen of reconnaissance forces and light delaying elements, Fredendall had lumped his infantry on isolated djebels, or hills, along the line and scattered his reserves in bits and pieces.
On February 1, 1943, 21st Panzer Division, now under 5th Panzer Army and mounting 91 tanks (half authorized strength), overwhelmed a poorly armed French garrison at Faid pass. This caused Allied commanders to conclude the Axis were planning an offensive, but they figured it would come at Fondouk, thirty miles north of Faid. General Anderson, commanding the whole front, held back in reserve behind Fondouk Combat Command B of the U.S. 1st Armored Division, with 180 tanks and 18 tank-destroyers, half the strength of the division.
Rommel’s intention in seizing Faid was to gain a starting point to thrust on to Sidi Bouzid and Sbeitla, 15 and 35 miles west. At Sbeitla two roads led through passes in the Western Dorsals, one due north twenty miles to Sbiba, the other by way of Kasserine, twenty miles west, toward Tebessa. To assist 21st Panzer, Rommel asked Arnim to send down 10th Panzer Division, with 110 tanks, plus a dozen Tiger tanks. But Arnim envied Rommel’s fame and did not want to help him gain more. He provided only one tank battalion and four Tigers, and withdrew these shortly afterward for an attack he was planning farther north.
Meanwhile around Gabès, Rommel assembled a combat group with 26 tanks and two small infantry battalions from Africa Corps under Major General F. K. von Liebenstein. These, with the 23 obsolete tanks remaining to the Italian Centauro Division, were to seize Gafsa.
The attack from Faid opened on February 14, under the command of Lieutenant General Heinz Ziegler, Arnim’s deputy. One group from 21st Panzer made a wide sweep from the north around U.S. 1st Armored Division’s Combat Command A near Sidi Bouzid and struck the Americans in the flank, while another went around the other flank and attacked from the rear. Meanwhile, two groups from 10th Panzer swept straight through Faid pass and pinned down the Americans frontally. The Americans fled the field, leaving 40 tanks, 60 half-tracks, and the guns of five artillery battalions behind. Next morning Combat Command C counterattacked across thirteen miles of an open plain directly on Sidi Bouzid, to be met by a storm of shells when it came within range of German guns. The shellfire halted the charge, and pincer attacks on each flank routed the whole command. It lost another 54 tanks, 57 half-tracks, and 29 guns.
As the Germans swarmed through the gaps around Faid, they quickly isolated, encircled, and forced the surrender of the Americans on adjoining djebels, ending any chance to block the advance. Anderson ordered withdrawal to the Western Dorsals.
The panzers attacked the Americans in front of Sbeitla on the morning of February 17. The Americans fought stubbornly until nightfall, then fell back. In three days, the Americans had lost 150 tanks and nearly 3,000 men captured, while German losses had been minuscule.
Meanwhile the battle group under General Liebenstein occupied Gafsa, which the Americans had abandoned, and rushed on to capture Feriana, twenty miles southwest of Kasserine, on February 17, destroying a number of American armored personnel carriers (APCs) and guns, then seized the airfield at Thelepte, where the Americans destroyed thirty aircraft on the ground to prevent capture.
As the crisis unfolded, General Fredendall acted in panic, pulling American forces back to Tebessa and setting fire to some of the supply dumps there. British General Sir Harold Alexander, who took over command of the whole Tunisian front on February 19, reported that “in the confusion of the retreat American, French, and British troops had become inextricably mingled; there was no coordinated plan of defense, and definite uncertainty of command.”
Rommel now resolved to drive through Tebessa and then turn north. This would force the Allies to pull their army out of Tunisia, or face its destruction. But the strike had to be made at once. Otherwise the Allies could assemble large forces to block the way.
Furthermore, Rommel told Arnim, “the thrust northward had to be made far enough behind [that is, west of] the enemy front to ensure that they would not be able to rush their reserves to the [Western Dorsal] passes and hold up our advance.”
But General Arnim either could not see the possibilities of the strike or, as Rommel believed, “wanted to keep the 10th Panzer Division in his sector for a small private show of his own.”
Rommel appealed to the Italian Comando Supremo. The Italian supreme command agreed to an attack, but prohibited a thrust by way of Tebessa. Instead it had to go by way of Thala to Le Kef; that is, through Kasserine and Sbiba passes and northward just behind the Western Dorsals.
To Rommel this was “an appalling and unbelievable piece of shortsightedness,” for it meant the thrust was “far too close to the front and was bound to bring us up against the strong enemy reserves.”
But it was no time for argument. Rommel put his Africa Corps on the road at once for Kasserine pass, while 21st Panzer got orders to strike northward from Sbeitla to Sbiba, twenty-five miles east of Thala. Rommel ordered 10th Panzer Division to Sbeitla, where it could support the Africa Corps or 21st Panzer, whichever needed help. But Arnim delayed sending 10th Panzer, so none of it was on hand when the attacks opened.
The blow toward Thala came where Alexander was expecting it, and he ordered Anderson to concentrate his armor for the defense of the town. Anderson sent the British 6th Armored Division to Thala, and the 1st Guards Brigade to Sbiba.
At Kasserine, German motorized infantry, used to desert warfare, tried to rush the pass. They ignored the 5,000-foot mountains on either side, which the Americans held and from which forward observers called down heavy mortar and artillery fire on the Germans. This stopped the attack in its tracks.
Meanwhile 21st Panzer Division came to a halt in front of Sbiba, held up by water-soaked roads, a dense minefield, and the guards brigade. This division, too, made the mistake of attacking frontally in the valley instead of striking off across the hills.
Just as Rommel had predicted, the strike to Sbiba and toward Le Kef was so close to the Allied lines that reserves could get into blocking positions quickly. Some took positions in
the hills that were difficult to assault, gaining time to bring up more reinforcements.
Rommel concluded the Allies were weaker at Kasserine, and he focused his attack there, ordering up 10th Panzer Division. When Rommel arrived on the morning of February 20, General Friedrich von Broich, 10th Panzer commander, told him he’d brought only half his force—General von Arnim had held back the rest, including the Tigers, which Rommel was counting on.
Panzer grenadiers and Italian mountain troops now made flanking attacks on both sides of the pass, while, for the first time in Africa, Rommel unleashed Nebelwerfer—rocket launchers—modeled after the Russian Katyusha launcher. Nebelwerfer could throw 80-pound rockets four miles. They shook the Americans badly, and by 5 P.M. that day the pass was in German hands. Rommel reported that the Americans fought extremely well, and that German losses were considerable.
During the night Rommel moved his armor toward Thala to the north and Tébessa to the northwest. His aim was to confuse the Allies as to the direction of his next thrust and to force them to divide their reserves. The Allies fell for the bait. Fredendall brought Combat Command B of 1st Armored Division to guard the road from Kasserine to Tébessa, while the British 26th Armored Brigade Group moved south from Thala and took up a position ten miles north of Kasserine pass.
On February 21, a battle group of 10th Panzer (30 tanks, 20 self-propelled guns, two panzer grenadier battalions) pressed north against 26th Brigade, repeatedly flanking its positions, and destroying 40 tanks while losing a dozen of its own. The British withdrew to Thala, but a string of German tanks, led by a captured Valentine, a British infantry tank, followed on the 26th’s tail, got into the position, overran some infantry, shot up many vehicles, and captured 700 prisoners.
Next day Rommel learned from aerial reconnaissance that Allied reinforcements were approaching, reducing chances of driving through Thala. Meanwhile, Africa Corps on the Tébessa road had been checked by heavy American artillery fire.
On the afternoon of February 22, Rommel and Kesselring, realizing their weakness, concluded nothing more could be accomplished and ordered withdrawal. Fredendall, not seeing what was happening, did not organize an effective counterstrike, and the Germans retreated with little loss through Kasserine pass.
Rommel’s whole operation killed or wounded 3,000 Americans and netted more than 4,000 prisoners and 200 destroyed Allied tanks, against fewer than a thousand Axis casualties and far lower tank losses. But, if Arnim had cooperated and the Comando Supremo had shown any vision, the Axis gains could have been immensely greater.
Meanwhile Arnim, using the armor he had withheld from Rommel, launched his operation in the north on February 26. They were largely direct attacks at eight points along a seventy-mile stretch. The main objective was Beja, sixty miles west of Tunis.
Rommel described the plan as “completely unrealistic.” The main attack became trapped in a narrow, marshy defile ten miles short of Beja, and British artillery knocked out all but six tanks. Although the attacks netted 2,500 British prisoners, the Germans lost 71 tanks, the British fewer than 20.
The attack also delayed a strike Rommel was planning against Montgomery’s 8th Army at Medenine, facing the Mareth line, giving Montgomery time to quadruple his strength and to stop Rommel’s attack when it came on March 6. After losing 40 tanks, Rommel called off the effort. This ended any chance of defeating Montgomery before his army linked up with the other Allied army in Tunisia.
Rommel, elevated February 23 to command all forces in Africa, but facing an enemy twice as strong in men and nine times as strong in armor, concluded it was “plain suicide” for the Axis to remain. He took his long-deferred sick leave to Europe on March 9, hoping to convince Mussolini and Hitler to evacuate while there was still time. Mussolini, Rommel wrote, “seemed to lack any sense of reality,” while Hitler, impervious to Rommel’s arguments, concluded he had “become a pessimist,” and barred his return to Africa.
The issue in Africa was no longer in doubt. With command of the sea and growing command of the air, with vastly larger combat forces, the Allies were certain to win. Hitler’s only hope to save the approximately 180,000 Germans and Italians in Tunisia was to abandon guns and tanks, and institute a swift evacuation of the men by air and sea. But this Hitler would not countenance. As he had proclaimed for Stalingrad, the Axis forces in Africa had to stand or die. Mussolini, overwhelmed by the fate bearing down on him, asserted no independent judgment, merely approving everything Hitler ordained.
General Alexander had two strategic choices. He could drive a wedge between Arnim’s forces in the north around Tunis and Bizerte, and General Giovanni Messe’s 1st Italian Army, the new name for Rommel’s old Panzer Army Africa, on the Mareth line, encircling and destroying the two forces separately. Or he could squeeze the Axis armies together into an increasingly small bridgehead around Tunis and Bizerte until they lost their airfields and room to maneuver and were forced to surrender.
Alexander chose the second method, which required Montgomery’s 8th Army to advance northward along the coast, driving the Axis forces into a Tunis-Bizerte pocket, while the remaining Allied forces pressed against the line in Tunisia to hurry the Axis retreat along.
The first choice was the better one, by far, and Alexander knew it. Montgomery would plod forward with maddening slowness, adding to Allied and Axis casualties, and prolonging the Tunisian campaign far into the spring. But Alexander rejected the idea of splitting the two Axis armies because the agent would have to be U.S. 2nd Corps, and, as General Omar Bradley wrote, Alexander had a “complete lack of faith in the American soldier”—the product of the defeat at Kasserine. Instead, 2nd Corps was to “demonstrate” and “make noise” with limited feinting attacks eastward, out of the mountains.
But Eisenhower had replaced Fredendall with an entirely different sort of general, George S. Patton Jr. He was an overwhelmingly aggressive commander and was galled by Alexander’s instructions, especially as Eisenhower had raised 2nd Corps to four divisions and 88,000 men, four times the troops the Axis could find to oppose it.
Patton arrived at 2nd Corps headquarters on March 7, 1943, leading a long procession of armored scout cars, sirens shrieking, his “command car” sporting two metal flags with two huge white stars of a major general on a field of red, and Patton himself standing in the car like a charioteer. Patton immediately instituted his “cure” for the alleged problems of 2nd Corps: every soldier had to wear a tie, even on the battlefront, and everybody, including nurses tending patients in rear hospitals, had to wear a heavy metal combat helmet.
Patton was heir to a California fortune, and had married a rich Boston heiress, yet he never had any doubts about his destiny to be a great soldier. His grandfather, a Virginian, commanded a Confederate regiment and died of battle wounds. Patton graduated from West Point in 1909, won the Distinguished Service Cross in battle in France in 1918, and showed great promise as a tank commander in maneuvers in 1940. Patton was dyslexic, and the difficulty he had reading and writing gave him an enduring sense of insecurity. To cover his insecurity, an innate shyness, and a high, squeaky voice, Patton developed a public demeanor of bravado and bombast. This led him to become a publicity hound and to be extremely hard on his men. Eisenhower summed up Patton as a shrewd soldier who believed in showmanship, talked too much, and was not always a good example to subordinates. But Eisenhower believed he would turn into a superb field commander.
Montgomery proceeded with slow, exasperating preparations for an attack on the Mareth line, planned for March 20, two weeks after the Medenine battle. The attack by 2nd Corps was to be launched three days earlier but was to be limited to drawing off Axis reserves, regaining the forward airfield at Thelepte to assist Montgomery’s advance, and setting up a forward base at Gafsa to help reprovision 8th Army as it moved northward.
On March 17, 1943, the U.S. 1st Infantry Division under Terry Allen occupied Gafsa without a fight, the Italians withdrawing twenty miles down the road to a defi
le east of El Guettar, blocking the road to Gabès. Meanwhile the U.S. 1st Armored Division under Orlando Ward, with elements of the U.S. 9th Infantry Division, drove eastward from Kasserine, occupied the railway station at Sened, and moved toward Maknassy and the pass there through the Eastern Dorsals.
But Ward’s tanks and trucks got bogged down in mud from heavy rains, and, though Ward launched successive attacks on March 23, he was stymied by an eighty-man German detachment (Rommel’s former bodyguard) under Colonel Rudolf Lang on a dominating hill (322). Ward renewed the attack the next day with three infantry battalions, supported by artillery and tanks—and again failed.
Patton, livid with anger, ordered Ward to lead another attack himself. Ward did so, but it failed as well. Alexander suggested that Ward be relieved. Patton agreed privately but resented Alexander’s proposal as another criticism of Americans. In the end, he sent Omar Bradley, deputy commander of 2nd Corps, to do the deed, replacing Ward with Ernest N. Harmon.
At El Guettar, Terry Allen’s infantry broke into the Italian position on March 21, but on March 23 was hit by a counterattack of the 10th Panzer Division, rushed up from the Mareth line. The panzers overran the American forward positions, but were stopped by a minefield, then hit by American artillery and tank destroyers, which knocked out 40 German tanks. Although the Americans made few gains, their strikes at El Guettar and Maknassy drew off much of the enemy’s scanty tank strength. This helped Montgomery when he launched his attack on the Mareth line.
Montgomery had assembled 160,000 men to Messe’s 80,000, and deployed 610 tanks and 1,400 guns, while Messe had only 150 tanks (including the 10th Panzer’s already withdrawn) and half as many guns. As at El Alamein, however, Montgomery made his main effort straight into the heart of the Axis line, a frontal assault of three infantry divisions, hoping to break open a gap through which his armor could rush. Meanwhile, a New Zealand corps made a wide outflanking march 25 miles inland from Gabès to menace the enemy’s rear. This effort started well but 21st Panzer and 164th Light Divisions stopped it.
How Hitler Could Have Won World War II Page 21