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Skylow β Entering Tobruk
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Siege of Tobruk
The Siege of Tobruk was a lengthy confrontation between Axis and Allied forces, mostly Australian, in the North African Campaign of World War II.
It started on 10 April 1941 as Generalleutnant Erwin Rommel invested the fort, besieging it for months, and launched attacks against the fort that were unsuccessful.
Three attempts were made before the siege was successfully lifted by allied troops; these were known as:
Operation 'Brevity' (May 15 - 27, 1941)
Operation 'Battleaxe' (June 15 - 17, 1941)
Operation 'Crusader' (November 18 - December 10, 1941)
For most of the siege, Tobruk was defended by the Australian 9th Division under General Sir Leslie Morshead.
General Archibald Wavell instructed Morshead to hold the fortress for
eight weeks, but instead they held it for over 8 months, before being gradually withdrawn and replaced by the British 70th Infantry Division and the Polish Carpathian Brigade just prior to the start of Operation Crusader.
The Royal Navy/Royal Australian Navy also played an important role in Tobruk's defense; it provided gunfire support, ferried in supplies and fresh troops and ferried out the wounded.
Tobruk was the longest siege in British Empire military history, and was the first notable land defeat for a German army in World War II.
Rommel nonetheless captured Tobruk in a new offensive in 1942
(with no Australians present they were withdrawn to PNG by this time apart from one unit that stayed til after El Alamein) in the Battle of Gazala.
Further reading
Tobruk, Peter Fitzsimons, Harper Collins, 2006
Siege of Tobruk
Part of World War II, North African Campaign
Date:
March 31, 1941 β November 27, 1941
Location:
Tobruk, Libya
Result:
Allied victory
Combatants
Australia
United Kingdom
Poland
Czechoslovakia
Germany
Italy
Commanders
Leslie Morshead (Aust)
Erwin Rommel (Germany)
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North African campaign History in Brief
During World War II, the North African Campaign, also known as the
Desert War, took place in the North African desert from
September 13, 1940 to May 13, 1943.
The United States began to directly supply the British in the effort on
May 11, 1942.
The US Army officially does not list a single βNorth African Campaignβ but subdivides its effort into some of the smaller campaigns described here.
Fighting in this region started with Italian attacks on British occupied areas.
When the Italians suffered terrible reverses, the German Afrika Korps commanded by Field Marshal Erwin Rommel came to their assistance.
After a back-and-forth series of battles for control of Libya and parts of Egypt, British Commonwealth forces ( mainly Australian and New Zealand) under the command of General Bernard Montgomery eventually pushed the Axis forces back to Tunisia.
Following on the Allied Operation Torch landings in north west Africa in late 1942 under the command of General Dwight Eisenhower, and after
Allied battles against Vichy France forces
(which subsequently joined the Allies), Commonwealth and US forces
finally pincered the Axis forces in northern Tunisia and forced their surrender.
By making the Axis powers fight on a second front in North Africa, the Western Allies provided some relief to the Soviet Union fighting the Axis on the Eastern Front.
Information learned from the British Ultra codebreaking operation was a major contributor to Allied success in the North African campaign.
Western Desert Campaign
The Northern African Campaign was strategically important for both the Allies and the Axis powers.
The Allies used the campaign as a step towards a second front against the Axis powers in Fortress Europe, and it helped to ease Axis pressure on the Russian front.
The Axis had planned to follow a successful campaign in North Africa with a strike north to the rich oil fields of the Middle East.
This would have cut off nearby oil supplies to the Allies, and would have tremendously increased the oil supplies available for the Axis war machine.
On September 13th, Italian forces stationed in Libya launched a small invasion into British-held Egypt and set up defensive forts at Sidi Barrani.
The British/Comenwealth forces were greatly outnumbered,
35,000 to 500,000, and only half of the British/Commenwealth
were combatants.
Nevertheless they launched a counter-attack, Operation Compass.
It was far more successful than expected and resulted in the surrender of the entire Italian army and the advance of the Allies to El Agheila.
The stunning defeat of the Italians did not go unnoticed and soon
German troops, the Deutsches Afrikakorps (DAK) under
Erwin Rommel (The Desert Fox), were sent in to reinforce them.
Although ordered to simply hold the line, Rommel launched an offensive from El Agheila which, with the exception of Tobruk, managed to press the Allies beyond Salum, effectively putting both sides back at their approximate original positions.
During the following stalemate, the Allied forces reorganised as the
Eighth Army, which was made up of units from the armies of several countries, especially the Australian Army and the Indian Army, but
also including divisions from the South African Army, the
New Zealand Army and a brigade of Free French under
Marie-Pierre Koenig.
The new formation launched a new offensive and recaptured almost all of the territory recently acquired by Rommel, failing only to take the garrison forces at Bardia and Salum.
Once again, the frontline was at El Agheila.
After receiving supplies from Tripoli, Rommel again attacked.
Defeating the Allies at Gazala and capturing Tobruk, he drove them back to the border of Egypt where his advance was stopped in the First Battle of
El Alamein.
At this point General Bernard Montgomery took over as commander of Allied forces in North Africa and, after victory in the battles of Alam Halfa and Second El Alamein, Montgomery began to push the Axis forces back, going as far as capturing Tripoli.
Algeria-French Morocco Campaign (Operation Torch)
The Algeria-French Morocco Campaign started on November 8, 1942, and terminated on November 11, 1942.
In an attempt to pincer German forces, Allied forces
(primarily American, with a smaller British/Comenwealth contingent) landed
in Vichy-held French North Africa under the assumption that there would be little to no resistance.
Nevertheless, Vichy French forces put up a strong and bloody resistance to Allied forces in Oran and Morocco.
But not in Algiers, where a coup d'Γ©tat by the French resistance on
November 8 succeeded in neutralizing the French XIX Army Corps of Algiers before the landing, and arrested the Vichyist commanders.
Consequently the landings met no practical opposition in Algiers and the city was captured on the first day with the whole Vichyist African command.
After three days of talks and threats, General Mark Clark, an Eisenhower assistant, compelled the Vichyist Admiral François Darlan
(and the chief commanding General Alphonse Juin) to order French forces to cease armed resistance in Oran and Morocco, on November 10 and 11, providing Darlan would remain the head of a Free French administration.
The Allied landings prompted the German occupation of Vichy France
(Case 'Anton').
In response, the French Fleet was scuttled at Toulon and the Vichy army in north Africa joined the Allies.
Tunisia Campaign (Operation 'WOP')
The Tunisia Campaign started on November 17, 1942, and terminated on May 13, 1943, and was designed to accomplish three things:
1)
an Allied amphibious landing (Operation 'Largesse') near Sfax on the
Gulf of Gabes in eastern Tunisia to cut the Italian supply lines on
January 5, 1943.
2)
An eastward attack by the US II Corps from the termination line of
Operation 'TORCH' to assault German positions at Gafsa on March 17, 1943 in support of Operation 'Pugilist';
3)
Give US troops that just finished the 'Torch' landings and the follow-on troops that arrived after that operation concluded a chance to get their feet wet in European-style warfare.
Though Rommel was now pincered between American and Commonwealth forces, he did manage to stall the Allies with a series of defensive operations, most notably in routing the US II Corps at the Battle of the Kasserine Pass, but overall Rommel was flanked, outmanned and outgunned.
After The 'Eighth' army shattered the Axis defense on the Mareth Line, the Allies squeezed Axis forces until their resistance in Africa collapsed, ending with the surrender on May 13, 1943 of over 275,000 prisoners of war.
This huge loss of experienced troops greatly reduced the military capacity of the Axis powers.
This operation was finalized by Operation 'Retribution', which was designed to prevent the evacuation of the German and Italian forces from Tunisia.
This operation started on May 7, 1943, and focused on attacking the
German evacuation fleet as it crossed from Tunisia to Sicily and Italy.
It is known that 897 Germans were captured at sea, while an additional
653 escaped.
The remainder are assumed to have drowned.
Conclusion
After victory in the North African Campaign, the stage was set for the Italian Campaign to begin.
The invasion of Sicily followed two months later.
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Cheers
Chris
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