In early 1943, after his crushing defeat at El Alamein , the Afrika Korps retreated towards Tripoli pursued by the British. Hitler wanted him to stop retreating and engage Eighth Army in an epic battle in which he would be wiped out without having surrendered. Fortunately for Rommel, Kesselring had ordered the occupation of Tunis as part of the preparation to defend the Italian peninsula from the expected Allied invasion. This limes African gave the Afrika Korps an alternative to collective suicide. When he arrived in Tripoli, instead of staying to organize "a German Stalingrad" as requested from Berlin, Rommel quickly headed to Tunisia.
The survival of the Tunisian perimeter, under the command of Von Arnim, was threatened by the pincer formed by the British Eighth Army advancing from the east and the US First Army advancing from the west. Knowing Montgomery, it was clear he would be weeks away from Tripoli, so the urgency was in the west. The Americans were finalizing the collection of the thousands of tons of supplies that their way of waging the war required and they would soon be ready. Its logistics center was in Tebesa, on the edge of the Algerian plateau near the headwaters of a series of valleys that give access to the coastal plain. Rommel wanted to attack through one of them, seize Tebesa's supplies and then use them for a deep offensive, taking advantage of the fact that the Algerian plateau favored mobile warfare. Von Arnim wanted to close off the valleys to prevent the Americans from gaining access to the coastal plain. They did not agree and went to the meeting with the Americans to decide on the spot.
The Battle of Kasserine Pass
The US 1st Armored Division had moved down the valleys, taking up forward positions on the coastal plain. It was overwhelmed and the remains of its units withdrew, leaving vehicles, supplies and fuel on the ground. Ziegler, Von Arnim's subordinate, assigned his two Panzer divisions to cover the valleys but Rommel had already set his sights on the largest of them, the one that would be called by military historiography the Kasserine pass , whose head was a stone's throw from Tebesa with its precious fuel. They discussed and Kesselring himself came to listen to Rommel and decide between the two alternatives. He saw him exhausted and sick, but he allowed himself to be convinced by him and authorized the attack towards Tebesa through the Kasserine pass.
At noon on February 20, German grenadiers and Italian infantry stormed the two hills flanking the narrow entrance to the valley. The 12th Panzer Division then overwhelmed the defenses blocking the road. Beyond the entrance, the valley widens into a somewhat rugged plain but smooth enough for tanks to manoeuvre. The Panzer IVs cleared it quickly and by nightfall reached the headland escarpments at the foot of the plateau. The 10th Panzer Division tried to force access to the plateau through a side valley but only got as far as the small village of Thala, where it was stopped by a veteran English armor brigade.
Rommel took all day 21 to accept that the advance to Thebesa was impossible. The head of the main valley was too steep to be taken in an armored assault. Perhaps the Rommel of a few years before would have sent all his forces to Thala and perhaps if he had, they would have broken through. We don't know if he considered it as he traversed the valley under scattered fire from long-range American artillery, given a disturbing precision by observers on the inaccessible ridges that closed off the valley on the left. At dawn on the 22nd, the Americans discovered that the Germans had left during the night and the valley was empty.
Having hit the Americans, it was time to deal with the other side of the pincer. After securing Tripoli and repairing the port, Montgomery advanced along the coast road to Medenine and stationed himself there to prepare the attack on the static German positions a few miles to the north. Rommel was excited. The British device was being built facing the German entrenchment and its left flank was unprotected. For a week, his staff carefully prepared the movement of each unit during the flanking. Three armored divisions would advance using the small coastal ridge as a screen, cross it by one pass each, and drop on the enemy line from the flank in a converging trajectory.
From the Kasserine Pass to the Battle of Medenine
At dawn on March 6, a particularly thick fog covered the area of Medenine . The three Panzer divisions crossed the passes and charged blindly across the plain at full speed, while the infantry broke out of the entrenchment and simulated a frontal attack. When the tanks were halfway to their targets, the mist disappeared. The commanders could see the enemy lines on some small rocky hills. There seemed to be no activity. They kept coming closer without a single shot being fired. Surprised, the commanders speculated that perhaps they were facing rookie soldiers who had abandoned their posts or who were paralyzed with terror at being in the path of a Panzer attack. When the first tanks were very close, all the British guns fired at once. Not just the ones that were in sight, but many, many more that had remained camouflaged. In total there were 470 anti-tank guns firing at point-blank range and over 300 long-range guns firing from further back. Dragon's teeth and minefields covered possible flanks. The massive eruption stalled the attack as the vanguard chariots exploded one after another. The attack stopped and the three column commanders awaited orders from Rommel. The three foci of the defense faced almost exactly the three points of the attack.
Rommel watched the scene from the heights of Halouf, which overlooked the battlefield. Witnesses saw him stiff and looking very ill, staring with unfocused eyes at the incredible violence unleashed so suddenly and unexpectedly. He was unable to react and his commanders waited for orders in vain. They decided on their own to renew the attack but the English response was just as violent. The attackers withdrew before nightfall, leaving a third of their tanks and a carpet of corpses on the ground. Luckily for the Germans, as was typical at Montgomery, there was no defense-attack transition but Eighth Army spent the night reinforcing positions. A few days later Rommel was evacuated to Europe seriously ill and in a state of total prostration. He would never go back to Africa.
One of the most dramatic narrative resources in literature and film is to subject the protagonist to sudden changes of fortune . The battles of Kasserine Pass and Medenine represent an extreme case. In just fifteen days, Rommel went from a modest but showy victory to a catastrophic and irreversible defeat. Contrary to what logic would dictate, while in the Kasserine step improvisation led to little success, in Medenine exhaustive preparation and careful execution produced ultimate disaster. In classical antiquity, this change of fortune would have been justified by Hera's slander or Ares' laziness. Today we know that those who sealed Rommel's fate in Africa were not gods but humans.
The power of improvisation
From the Enigma cracking At the beginning of the war, the British had developed a complete monitoring system that could control even the smallest detail of the German army. The interception of Fish teletype messages between staffs provided the context for understanding Enigma messages at the division level, while Playfair Doubles or tactical codes finished drawing the details. This comprehensive decryption of German communications allowed units to be controlled in real time down to the battalion level.
Face-to-face meetings and improvisation had protected the Germans at the Kasserine Pass. Communicating the battle plan to all units in advance had been deadly in Medenine. Montgomery placed the defense so carefully that many of Rommel's subordinates wondered how Eighth Army could have suddenly changed its orientation to adopt a defensive formation so ideally placed to hold off the Afrika Korps attack. Fortunately for the Allies, German intelligence officials and experts once again denied that Enigma was vulnerable.