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— CH. 1 · INTRODUCTION —

Western Desert campaign

~10 min read · Ch. 1 of 7
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  • The Western Desert campaign was one of the longest and most grueling struggles of the Second World War, fought across hundreds of miles of Egyptian and Libyan desert from June 1940 to early 1943. A scorching, featureless landscape where scorpions and vipers shared the ground with tanks and artillery, where a hot desert wind called the sirocco could reduce visibility to a few metres and coat every piece of machinery with fine sand. Where navigation depended on sun, stars, a compass, and what veterans called "desert sense". This was the main theatre of the North African campaign, and the place where the fate of Egypt, the Suez Canal, and British communications with the wider empire would be decided.

    At the heart of the campaign was a set of questions that would take nearly three years to answer: could the Axis powers drive Britain out of Egypt? Could Erwin Rommel, commanding a force always short of fuel and spare parts, outmanoeuvre an opponent with superior numbers and a shorter supply line? And could the Eighth Army, rebuilt and reinforced after a series of humiliating reverses, finally land the decisive blow? What followed was not a single battle but a relentless back-and-forth across the same stretch of coastline: an advance, a counter-advance, a siege, a relief, a surrender, and then the whole cycle again. The answer came in October 1942, at a place called El Alamein.

  • About 240 miles wide, running from Marsa Matruh in Egypt to Gazala on the Libyan coast, the Western Desert was traversed by a single paved road: Litoranea Balbo, also called the Via Balbia. The Sand Sea, lying roughly 150 miles inland, marked the southern boundary at the desert's widest points near Giarabub and Siwa. Everything beyond the coastal strip was a raised flat plain of stony desert, rising about 500 feet above sea level and stretching south for 200 to 300 kilometres.

    This terrain punished machinery relentlessly. German tank engines, designed for European conditions, had their service life cut from a range of 1,400 to 1,600 miles down to just 300 to 900 miles. Special oil filters were required for motor vehicles and aircraft just to operate at all. When Italian troops advanced into Egypt in September 1940, the Maletti Group got lost leaving Sidi Omar and had to be located by aircraft. The desert did not discriminate between the careless and the unlucky.

    The sirocco, known locally as the gibleh or ghibli, blew clouds of fine sand that coated eyes, lungs, food and equipment alike. Spring and summer days were miserably hot; the nights turned very cold. Wells dug by the British in 1939 mostly filled with salt water. The primary fresh water sources at that time were Roman aqueducts at Marsa Matruh and Maaten Baggush. From the Egyptian border there was no water at Sollum, and none for another 50 miles east to Sidi Barrani. Any army advancing into this environment was, from the first day, fighting both its enemy and the land.

  • Oberkommando des Heeres, the German army high command, concluded early in the campaign that German forces in Libya could not be supplied for a decisive offensive unless Italian forces were withdrawn to Italy. That withdrawal was politically impossible. The entire Axis war effort in North Africa was therefore conducted under a constraint that its own strategists judged insoluble.

    Italian supply shipments to Libya had to travel about 600 miles west around Sicily, then hug the Tunisian coast before reaching Tripoli, to avoid British aircraft, ships and submarines operating from Malta. The distance from Tripoli to Benghazi was roughly 1,020 kilometres; to El Alamein it was 1,780 kilometres. A German motorised division required 350 long tons of supplies per day, and moving those supplies 300 miles required 1,170 two-ton lorry loads. At the height of the campaign the Italians had only 7,000 lorries for deliveries to their 225,000 men.

    On average, about a third of Axis lorries were unserviceable at any one time, and 35 to 50 per cent of fuel deliveries were consumed simply transporting the remainder to the front. When Rommel reached El Alamein in June 1942 after capturing Tobruk, his supplies still had to come from Tripoli, now 1,400 miles away. On the eve of the Second Battle of El Alamein, a flood stranded 10,000 long tons of supplies and left the Panzerarmee with only ten per cent of the fuel it needed.

    The British faced their own difficulties once their line extended. But Wavell had begun planning a base capable of supporting around fifteen divisions as early as 1939, and the Middle East Supply Centre, operating across Egypt, Palestine and Syria, replaced roughly 100 liberty ship deliveries' worth of imports through local agricultural production by March 1943. The coastal railway the New Zealand Railway Battalion began building in September 1940 reached Tobruk by December 1942, carrying 4,200 long tons of water per day.

  • On the 7th of December 1940, the RAF attacked Italian airfields and destroyed 39 aircraft on the ground. Two days later, Operation Compass began as a planned raid of four to five days' duration against the Italian camps clustered between Sidi Barrani and the Tummars. What followed exceeded every expectation and transformed the strategic situation.

    The 4th Indian Division and the 7th Royal Tank Regiment attacked Nibeiwa at dawn on the 9th of December, overran the camp, and moved on Tummar West the same afternoon. By the 11th of December the Italians were defeated at Sidi Barrani. From the 9th to the 11th of December alone, the British took 38,300 prisoners, 237 guns, 73 tanks and approximately 1,000 vehicles, for 624 casualties.

    The 11th Hussars cut the Via Balbia between Tobruk and Bardia on the 14th of December. Bardia fell between then and the 5th of January 1941, costing 456 Australian infantry casualties but yielding 40,000 Italian casualties and prisoners, more than 400 guns and 130 tanks. On the 21st of January, Australian infantry broke into Tobruk and made a path for 18 British I tanks. The Australians took 25,000 prisoners, 208 guns and 87 tanks for a loss of 355 Australian and 45 British troops.

    The final act came at Beda Fomm, where Combeforce, a flying column of wheeled vehicles under Lieutenant-Colonel John Combe, set up roadblocks near Sidi Saleh on the evening of the 5th of February. The forward elements of the 10th Army arrived thirty minutes later. The Italians attacked for two days to break through; on the 7th of February, with the 6th Australian Division pressing down from Benghazi, the 10th Army surrendered. Operation Compass had destroyed the Italian 10th Army: a total of 133,298 men captured, 420 tanks and 845 guns taken, against a force that had begun the campaign with nine metropolitan divisions.

  • Adolf Hitler responded to the Italian disaster with Directive 22, issued on the 11th of January 1941, ordering the deployment of a blocking detachment to Libya. Its commander was Generalleutnant Erwin Rommel, who had earned his reputation in the Battle of France. The Afrika Korps arrived with fresh troops, better tanks and better air support.

    The Axis raided and quickly defeated the British at El Agheila on the 24th of March and at Marsa el Brega on the 31st of March. By the 15th of April, they had pushed the British back to the border at Sollum and besieged Tobruk. In the process, Lieutenant-General Philip Neame, the veteran Major-General Richard O'Connor and Major-General Michael Gambier-Parry were all captured.

    Tobruk held. The 9th Australian Division under General Leslie Morshead defended the port through a siege that would last nine months in 1941, raiding Axis supply convoys as they passed and preventing the Axis from invading Egypt. British attempts to break the siege, Operation Brevity in May and Operation Battleaxe in June, both failed. Battleaxe cost the British 969 casualties, 27 cruiser and 64 infantry tanks. Its failure led to the removal of Wavell, Beresford-Peirse and the 7th Armoured Division commander Creagh.

    By the end of 1941, Operation Crusader reversed the situation again. Conducted by the Eighth Army under Lieutenant-General Alan Cunningham from the 18th of November to the 30th of December, it cost the British 17,700 casualties against 37,400 Axis losses, relieved Tobruk and retook Cyrenaica. Tobruk fell again in June 1942 after the Battle of Gazala, when 35,000 Eighth Army troops surrendered to Lieutenant-General Enea Navarini of XXI Corps on the 21st of June. The Axis tide reached El Alamein, just 70 miles from Alexandria.

  • Lieutenant-General Bernard Montgomery took command of the Eighth Army in mid-August 1942. Rommel tried to destroy the British and reach Cairo before Allied reinforcements arrived in September. At the Battle of Alam el Halfa, from the 30th of August to the 5th of September, Panzerarmee Afrika advanced around the Eighth Army's southern flank but found the bulk of the British tanks and guns concentrated at the Alam el Halfa Ridge, 20 miles behind the front. Allied aircraft bombed and strafed Axis troops continuously from the 30th of August to the 4th of September. Rommel ordered a withdrawal on the 2nd of September. The Eighth Army lost 1,750 men and 68 tanks; the Axis lost 2,900 men, 49 tanks and 400 lorries.

    Montgomery paused and rebuilt. When the Eighth Army offensive began on the 23rd of October, it had 195,000 men, 1,029 tanks, another 1,000 under repair, 908 guns and 1,451 anti-tank guns. The Panzerarmee had 104,000 men, 496 tanks and only 180 miles of fuel per vehicle. By the 2nd of November, after continuous fighting, the Panzerarmee had expended most of its ammunition and had only 32 German and 120 Italian tanks left. Rommel decided to retreat; Hitler ordered him to stand fast. On the 4th of November, the Eighth Army broke through.

    Panzerarmee Afrika had suffered 37,000 casualties, about 30 per cent of the force, and lost 450 tanks and 1,000 guns. The Eighth Army suffered 13,500 casualties and 500 tanks, only 150 of them destroyed. Tobruk was retaken on the 13th of November. Benghazi fell on the 20th of November. The pursuit went all the way to Tunisia.

  • Rommel planned to defend the Gabes Gap in Tunisia, near the pre-war French Mareth line, while Army Group Africa under Generaloberst Hans-Jürgen von Arnim confronted the British First Army and II US Corps advancing from the west following Operation Torch. Montgomery waited at Buerat until the 15th of January 1943, when the Eighth Army had a 4:1 superiority in infantry and a 7.5:1 superiority in tanks.

    The 7th Armoured Division entered Tripoli on the 23rd of January. The 11th Hussars were the first troops into the city, 675 miles west of Benghazi. Five hours after their arrival a Naval Base Party came to survey the port's wreckage. On the 26th of January, five ships anchored outside and began unloading via lighters; by the 30th of January, 3,000 long tons of stores had been landed.

    On the 9th of March, Rommel returned to Germany to tell Hitler the realities of conditions in North Africa. He failed to persuade Hitler to allow a withdrawal and was not permitted to return to Africa, officially on health grounds. The Axis forces in Tunisia were caught between the Eighth Army from the east and the First Army from the west. They surrendered in May 1943.

    In 1977, the historian Martin van Creveld analysed Rommel's post-war claim that earlier shipment of the supplies sent to Tunisia in late 1942 and early 1943 could have won the desert war. Creveld disagreed. The small size of the Libyan ports was a structural constraint that no amount of additional shipping could have overcome, and British official historian Ian Playfair, writing in 1966, concluded that the defensive capability of the Afrika Korps and the caution it inspired in British commanders would have constrained the freedom of action of any general on either side.

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Battle of Alam el HalfaOperation CrusaderOperation CompassSecond Battle of El AlameinSiege of Tobruk

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Common questions

When did the Western Desert campaign start and end?

The Western Desert campaign began on the 11th of June 1940, when Italy declared war and hostilities commenced on the Egypt-Libya frontier. It ended in May 1943 when the remaining Axis forces surrendered in Tunisia.

What was Operation Compass in the Western Desert campaign?

Operation Compass was a British offensive that began on the 9th of December 1940, originally planned as a raid of four to five days. It destroyed the Italian 10th Army entirely, capturing 133,298 prisoners, 420 tanks and 845 guns over two months of fighting.

Why did the Axis forces lose the Western Desert campaign?

Axis defeat was fundamentally caused by an insoluble supply problem. The small size of Libya's ports limited how much materiel could be unloaded, and 35 to 50 per cent of fuel deliveries were consumed transporting the remainder to the front. Rommel himself wrote that Axis supply difficulties, relative to those of the British, determined the course of the military campaign.

What role did Erwin Rommel play in the Western Desert campaign?

Rommel commanded the Afrika Korps and later Panzerarmee Afrika from early 1941. He reversed the British conquest of Cyrenaica by April 1941, besieged Tobruk, and by June 1942 had driven the Eighth Army back to El Alamein, just 70 miles from Alexandria. He was defeated at the Second Battle of El Alamein in October-November 1942 and left Africa in March 1943.

What was the significance of Tobruk in the Western Desert campaign?

Tobruk was the only deep-water port between Tripoli and Alexandria and changed hands multiple times. The 9th Australian Division held it under siege for nine months in 1941. It fell to the Axis on the 21st of June 1942 when 35,000 Eighth Army troops surrendered. The Eighth Army retook it on the 13th of November 1942 after the Second Battle of El Alamein.

How many troops and tanks were involved in the Second Battle of El Alamein?

When the Eighth Army offensive began on the 23rd of October 1942, it had 195,000 men and 1,029 tanks. The Panzerarmee had 104,000 men and 496 tanks, but only 180 miles' worth of fuel per vehicle. By the 2nd of November the Panzerarmee was down to 32 German and 120 Italian tanks, and on the 4th of November the Eighth Army broke through.

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All sources

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