Relatively minor - but important in the British and Italian perspective - theatre of operations in the Second World War, 1940-1942. The Italians, subsequently aided and then led by the German Afrika Korps under Erwin Rommel, made successive attempts to advance from Libya (an Italian colony) into Egypt (notionally independent but effectively a British possession occupied by the Eighth Army) with an eye to capturing the Suez Canal. The war ebbed and flowed considerable distances across Cyrenaica, culminating in the second battle of El Alamein which marked the end of the final Axis advance and the apotheosis of Field Marshal Montgomery, and the first British land victory of the war. Shortly thereafter the Americans landed in Algeria (Operation Torch) and despite setbacks at the battle of Kasserine the Axis forces, starved of supplies by the disruption of their convoys by air and submarine forces based at Malta, were squeezed out of North Africa entirely.
Chronology to follow |
