Western Desert Campaign

The

☀Western Desert Campaign (Desert War), took place in the deserts of Egypt and Libya and was the main theatre in the North African Campaign during the Second World War. The campaign began in September 1940 with the Italian invasion of Egypt; Operation Compass, a British five-day raid in December 1940, led to the destruction of the Italian 10th Army. Benito Mussolini sought help from Adolf Hitler, who responded with a small German force sent to Tripoli under Directive 22 (11 January). The German Afrika Korps (Generalleutnant Erwin Rommel) was under nominal Italian command but Italian dependency on Nazi Germany made it the dominant partner.

In the spring of 1941, Axis forces under Rommel pushed the British back to Egypt except for the port of Tobruk, where the Siege of Tobruk took place until it was relieved during Operation Crusader. The Axis forces were forced to retire to where they had started by the end of the year. In 1942 Axis forces drove the British back again and captured Tobruk after the Battle of Gazala but failed to gain a decisive victory. On the final Axis push to Egypt, the British retreated to El Alamein, where at the Second Battle of El Alamein the Eighth Army defeated the Axis forces. They were driven out of Libya to Tunisia, where they were defeated in the Tunisian Campaign.

For Hitler the Eastern Front against the Soviet Union dwarfed the desert war, which was a holding action of secondary importance. The Axis never had sufficient resources or the means to deliver them, to defeat the British. The British missed several opportunities to finish the campaign by diverting resources to Greece and the Levant in 1941 and the Far East in 1942.