North Africa: Last Act

Press, Volume LXXIX, Issue 23966, 5 June 1943, Page 4

North Africa: Last Act

Lieutenant-General Sir Bernard Freyberg’s report to the Government summarises, with the vividness of summary narrative at its best, the last act of a drama in which the New Zealand Division magnificently played its part. Two years and one month before, while the New Zealanders and other British troops were discharging their debt of honour to their Greek ally, the Germans pressed through Tripolitania towards Egypt. One prong of a huge pincer movement designed by German strategy was to cut through Egypt and Suez into Syria, Iraq, and Iran. The other was to drive east of the Volga and down through the Caucasus. Thus Hitler hoped to control the oil supplies of the great central land block and, standing on both shores of the Mediterranean, to close Britain’s near sea route to the East. The decision which sent Rommel and the Afrika Korps to aid the Italians, whose incompetence for their task Wavell had crushingly proved, was pursued almost to a grand success. The Middle East Force had been greatly weakened and was poorly equipped. Rommel’s men, specially trained and admirably equipped, pressed it back from Benghazi to Solium. They were in sight of the goal and proclaimed it theirs. But November brought a sudden change. The offensive against Russia failed; and British troops flung the Axis forces back to Benghazi. The outbreak of war in the Pacific gave the Axis a new incentive to seek swift success in Libya. A junction with Japan would break the Allied blockade, throw India into turmoil, hopelessly split the Allied campaigns, and, in particular, greatly simplify Hitler’s designs in the west. Rommel was therefore heavily reinforced and instructed to lake Suez at all costs. Again he came close to success, when he broke through to El Alamein. But this was the end of Axis hopes and achievement in North Africa. Rallied and reinforced under Sir Bernard Montgomery, the Bth Army won its decisive battle and settled down on the long fighting trail which led to Tunisia, to the junction there with the Ist Army, the United States armies, and the

French, and, finally, to the total overthrow of the Afrika Korps and the Italians. Axis power in North Africa was not defeated; it was obliterated. Its whole armed force has vanished; its vast equipment is destroyed or in Allied hands. More than 500 Axis ships, besides, have been sacrificed in the campaign. And the indirect loss, to Germany and Italy, is beyond estimation. In his failure in North Africa and his failure in Russia Hitler’s global strategy has been wrecked; and he has been forced back upon the desperate defensive resources of his European fortress. It is the beginning of the end; the “ end of the “beginning” is past.