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It is something of a cliché in the history of the Second World War to claim that Stalingrad, the graveyard of Germany’s Sixth Army in Russia, was the decisive turning point of the conflict: the moment when Hitler’s hopes of victory finally turned to ashes and the eventual triumph of the Allies became certain.
It is historian Saul David’s contention in this fine study, however, that another military catastrophe for Nazi power – the capitulation and capture of more than a quarter of a million men in Tunisia in May 1943 – represented a defeat for the Third Reich equal in magnitude to the disaster on the Don, but that the victory in Africa has been unjustly overlooked.
At the time, the Germans themselves had no doubt about the extent of the debacle in the desert. A worried Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels confided to his diary that ‘when you think that 150,000 of our best young people are still in Tunis, you rapidly get an idea of the catastrophe threatening us there. It’ll be on the scale of Stalingrad, and certainly also produce the harshest criticism among the German people.’
Goebbels was quite correct; when the details of the defeat in North Africa became known, ordinary Germans made a direct comparison with the catastrophe in Russia, calling it ‘Tunisgrad’, which gives David the appropriate title for his book.
‘Tunisgrad’ came about as Field Marshal Erwin Rommel’s once-renowned Afrika Korps, together with their Italian allies, were boxed in between the British Empire’s Eighth Army – advancing from Egypt and Libya in the east after their victory at El Alamein in October 1942 – and the green and unbloodied US forces from the west, who had landed in Vichy French-ruled Algeria and Morocco in November in Operation Torch, the first of the increasingly successful Allied amphibious landings that would feature ever more prominently in the future.
As David clearly demonstrates, it was not only Axis land forces that suffered. The disaster in Tunisia finished the naval threat that they posed in the Mediterranean too, and 40% of the Luftwaffe’s strength was lost in the futile attempt to maintain their foothold in Africa.
Strategically, the victorious campaign sealed the alliance between America and Britain, and confirmed the wisdom of their decision to destroy Nazi and Fascist power first, before turning to deal with Japan in the Pacific. It proved that the Allied high command could cooperate smoothly, even when there was friction between them, and above all it laid the ground for the eventual liberation of Europe that began with the conquest of Sicily and the collapse of Mussolini’s Fascist regime in July 1943, within weeks of the triumph in Tunisia.
Commanding conflict
But the campaign was very far from an Allied walkover. Although the Torch landings were largely unopposed by the French, and the Americans occupied the ports of Algiers and Oran without bloodshed, the Germans in Tunisia were not ready to give up without a fight. Reinforced by Hitler, they inflicted a signal defeat on the ineptly led US II Corps in their first clash of arms at the Battle of the Kasserine Pass in February 1943.
The Corps was commanded by Major General Lloyd Fredendall, who, military historians generally agree, was by some distance the war’s worst commander on either side. Saul David does not dissent from this harsh verdict, and in fact quotes the opinion of Fredendall’s fellow officers that the luckless general was a physical coward, as well as incredibly incompetent, which, as the author also agrees, was the most damning judgement that anyone could pass on a soldier.
The Germans themselves had no doubt about the extent of the debacle in the desert.
Fredendall, like most of his men, had no actual combat experience before Tunisia. He had risen through the ranks thanks to his ability as a pen pusher and the patronage of America’s top soldier, George Marshall. Once the guns started firing, however, Fredendall took flight. He blasted an underground bunker into cliffs as his headquarters some 70 miles behind the frontlines and holed up there. He never visited the front himself, merely followed the action on maps. In addition, he used a weird, coded language of his own devising when issuing orders, which caused confusion and ridicule.
Rommel’s seasoned veterans were confident of holding Tunisia. Anchored on an old system of French fortifications in the south called the Mareth Line, the ‘Desert Fox’ was not the man to be caught napping and attacked first, striking at Free French forces in the centre of the Allied lines. The French fought fiercely but fell back and appealed to Fredendall for armoured reinforcements; he failed to answer their plea.
Rommel next took the offensive in mid-February when his Panzers, under General Hans-Jürgen von Arnim, hit Fredendall’s command under cover of a sandstorm. The inexperienced GIs retired, but they rallied the next day and attempted a counter-attack. However, the German veterans had prepared a trap, concealing batteries of the formidable 88mm guns, originally designed for anti-aircraft use but which had proved just as useful as tank-killers. The US tanks ran straight into a hail of these armour-piercing shells, and scores of them ‘brewed up’, incinerating their crews. Only seven out of 55 survived the slaughter.
Rommel took personal charge of the battle and pushed west through the Kasserine Pass, meeting stiffening resistance from the Allies, including from tanks dug in and used as stationary artillery. The Field Marshal was constrained by constantly having to refer to Rome to get approval from the Italians for his decisions and, worried that the British Eighth Army led by Montgomery was approaching from the west, he broke off the Kasserine offensive to shore up the Mareth Line.
In early March, concluding that Tunisia could not be held indefinitely, Rommel flew to Rome to ask permission to evacuate all Axis forces from North Africa to concentrate on defending Europe. Failing in that mission, he flew on to Ukraine to make a personal appeal for leave to withdraw from Hitler himself. The Führer, as ever, refused to contemplate retreat and relieved Rommel of his command instead, entrusting the defence of Tunisia to von Arnim.
The road to victory
The endgame now began. General Dwight Eisenhower, the Allied C-in-C in North Africa, had lost his early faith in Fredendall and relieved him of command of II Corps, replacing him with the fire-eating George ‘Lust for Glory’ Patton. This would be the flamboyant Patton’s first chance to shine on the battlefield and he seized it with both hands. The Americans had learned a valuable lesson from their blooding at Kasserine and, as well as changing their command, they modified tactics and training to ensure better coordination between infantry, armour, and artillery.
In many ways, ‘Ike’ Eisenhower is the real hero of Saul David’s story. Although as unused to battle as the man he had just fired, Ike proved the sterling qualities in Tunisia that would make him the supreme Allied commander at D-Day and beyond: calm under pressure, fair in his judgements, and a patient diplomat in settling the spats between the egotistical generals under his command.
The Allied strategy was to cut Axis supply routes off from Sicily by air and sea, leaving their vast forces stranded in Tunisia and starved of food, fuel, and ammunition. Meanwhile, Eisenhower and his British deputy General Harold Alexander planned a series of thrusts aimed at the ports of Tunis and Bizerte. In the savage fighting that followed, one casualty was the chief of staff of Army Group Broich, Claus von Stauffenberg, who lost an eye, an arm, and all but two fingers on his remaining hand when a column he was commanding was strafed from the air near the port of Sfax. Stauffenberg survived and was flown home, where he joined the anti-Nazi military conspiracy against Hitler and, despite his injuries, managed to plant the bomb that almost killed the dictator in July 1944. The commander of the division, General Friedrich Freiherr von Broich, was one of half a dozen German generals who surrendered along with more than 250,000 of their men in May when their defences were finally overwhelmed.
All this is related with verve and brio and a complete command of his narrative by Saul David. The author made his name with books on Britain’s colonial wars, but he is just as much at home writing about World War II, and makes a convincing case for his thesis that Tunisia was as significant as Stalingrad on the road to final victory. That road was to be long and rocky, and the war had two bloody years left to run after ‘Tunisgrad’. Following that watershed, however, there could be no doubt about the final outcome.
REVIEW BY NIGEL JONES
Tunisgrad: victory in Africa
Saul David
William Collins, hbk, 576pp, £25
ISBN 978-0008653811
