Commando Supremo and OKW ordered that the Marsa el Brega position be held to the last and Kesselring who flew to Libya asserted that any withdrawal to Buerat would encourage an Allied attack. To this Rommel bitterly replied that, whether his army was rolled over and destroyed in the Marsa el Brega or in the Buerat position was irrelevant, unless he had freedom of action he could do nothing to stop the Allies winning the war in Africa within the shortest possible time. The strength of the Africa Corps was reduced to 54 panzers, 18 armoured cars, and 66 anti-tank guns, his men were sleeping in the open in pouring rain in mid-winter, and the rations had been cut and cut again. German losses alone during the month of November had been 1122 killed and 3885 wounded. If the Panzer Army was to hold the positions demanded by OKW and the Commando Supremo then each German battalion would be holding a front of two miles and there would be no reserve. Rommel demanded the supplies which Hitler had said he would send and the Fiihrer promised them all again but demanded as his price that Tripoli would be held. Political necessity as well as military requirement demanded the maintenance of the largest possible bridgehead on the African coast.
It was clear that Hitler still saw the African theatre of operations as two separate battles whereas Rommel considered that his Panzer Army and 5th Panzer Army in Tunisia formed a single combat zone. In a conference with the Fiihrer Rommel repeated the advantages which a withdrawal to the Gabes line inside Tunisia would bring, whereas the only advantage of the Buerat line was that it gained time to allow the Gabes feature to be properly manned. Rommel's arguments were coldly logical and their conclusions inescapable. The withdrawal began even as 8th Army's carefully prepared advance began its forward movement. First the Italian infantry was evacuated and then in the bitter winter weather of 13 December the remaining panzers moved westward again. But once again the critical shortage of fuel held the panzers prisoner and they were threatened with encirclement by the swift-moving 7th Armoured Division. In the nick of time supply columns reached the armour and enabled the panzer regiments to fight their way through the British ring, battling now with the despair of a forlorn hope and with the bitter knowledge that their Supreme Commander Hitler had dismissed their efforts and had ignored their urgent needs.
Without fuel and lacking the supplies which the Fiihrer had promised, Rommel could not hope to hold the Buerat position and once that line had been abandoned then Tripolitania would have to be evacuated if the Army was to be saved. In desperation the German commander asked for permission to march back to Gabes and received Mussolini's bombastic reply 'Buerat will be held to the last'. With only 38 panzers in action, a further 12 in the Buerat line, and 10 without fuel in Tripoli, there was little that the Panzer Army could do to fight a defensive battle. On 29 December the 8th Army stood ready to assault the Axis positions. A crisis conference attended by the senior German and Italian commanders from the mainland demanded that Mussolini's orders be respected but Rommel pointed out that the length of time that the Buerat position could be held depended less upon him and his Army than upon the British and theirs. There were 30,000 Italian troops who were a dead-weight and their transport from defence line to defence line used petrol which the panzers needed. Of the daily minimum requirement of 400 tons only an average of 152 tons arrived. The panzer arm was operating with only 20 per cent of its establishment and the infantry was 50 per cent below its requirements. There were two lines of defence along which minimal resistance could be offered: Homs-Misurata and the final perimeter around Tripoli. This was the last chance to save the army from destruction. The evacuation from Buerat began on 3 January; once again Rommel's logic had proved to be irrefutable.
In Tunisia the dangerous military situation compelled von Arnim, commanding 5th Panzer Army, to ask for one of Rommel's infantry divisions to be withdrawn from the line and sent to occupy Sfax against any Allied move from the Kasserine sector. Rommel appealed to Hitler against this demand and was ordered to send 21st Panzer but was instructed to withdraw the tanks from that unit and hand them over to 15th Panzer Division. That division withdrew and as the Axis forces pulled back from the Buerat position on 15 January they could see from the Tarhuna heights the fires which marked where 18 tanks of Centauro Division had been blown up to prevent them falling into British hands.
Other pillars of smoke indicated where lorries for which there was no petrol had been destroyed. The German observers of that sad scene would also have seen spread before and below them a panorama of the whole of 8th Army's armoured might as it moved towards the Tarhuna pass. Against the full weight which Montgomery could commit to battle the Panzer Army Africa could send in only 23 panzers and 16 Italian tanks. Then, as this last remnant battled with the British, a telegram was received from Mussolini complaining that the Buerat position had been abandoned prematurely.
From the direction of Montgomery's thrust Rommel appreciated that the British intention was to bypass Tripoli and then to wheel inwards. Thus the Germans would be pinned with their backs to the sea. They would be cut off from Tunisia and the whole of the southern Tunisian flank would stand open to 8th Army's direct assault. He signed the order to evacuate Tripoli with a heavy heart for he realised that this meant to his Italian allies the end of the empire but Rommel knew that if he was to save the Panzer Army then there was no other decision he could make.
With the evacuation of Tripoli and the withdrawal into Tunisia the desert campaign came to an end but in the northern bridgehead Rommel still hoped that there might be more hopeful prospects and that a position could be held from which, with the promised reinforcements and fresh supplies there might one day again burst forth from the confines of the Tunisian bridgehead a reborn Panzer Army Africa.
Tunisia Campaign 1942
During the late summer of 1942 the attention of the western Allies as well as that of the OKW was directed towards the western Mediterranean in general and upon the North African colonies of France in particular.
The Anglo-Saxons were concerned to relieve pressure upon the Russians by mounting a so-called Second Front but the British, aware that Allied forces were at that time too weak to undertake successfully a landing and a campaign in north-west Europe, suggested other alternatives. In a memorandum President Roosevelt offered his military chief of staff three options. The top priority was given to the idea of a landing in French North Africa and by a rapid advance eastwards to cut off the enemy armies in the desert. The second option was for the Americans to link up with the British 8th Army in Tripoli and by joint action defeat Rommel and his Italian allies. Finally there was the option of landing in France and then establishing in the southern part of that country a bridgehead out of which, at some future date, reinforced Allied armies would burst in a campaign of liberation. But whatever the choice Roosevelt's order was that an offensive operation on land, and in the European theatre of operations, had to be launched during 1942. As Commander-in-Chief he
committed the United States to the first option. Reluctantly the American chiefs of staff agreed; French North Africa was to be invaded.
That this undertaking, code-named Operation Torch, would entail an armed assault upon the territory of a neutral nation was dismissed. The fact that the Axis powers had so completely respected French neutrality, that there was no German or Italian soldier stationed in any of the French possessions, was considered a positive advantage, for thus there would be no opposition to overcome on the road to Tunis. Further to smooth the path of the invaders secret service agents had contacted French officers and civilians loyal to the Allied cause and on the basis of their reports it was anticipated that resistance to the attack would be minimal. It was further expected that both the native population and the French colonial settlers would welcome the Allied forces as liberators, although as liberators from what or from whom was never made clear.