General Eisenhower was appointed to command this first offensive under­taking by the American Army in the western hemisphere and the choice of an American commander was intended to convey to the French in North Africa who may have had anti-British feelings, the totally false impression that Operation Torch was an entirely United States operation.

There were four strategic areas which the western Allies could have chosen as target areas but only two had the qualifications necessary for the success of a major naval and military operation. Of these two we can ignore the landings in western Algeria. We are concerned only with the assault upon eastern Algeria, and upon the Allied formations which debarked upon the shores of that region. The troops of that Anglo-American force were directed to thrust towards Tunisia and to seize the principal towns of Tunis and Bizerta. The capture of these major ports as well as that of less important harbours would bring an Allied army into position behind the Axis troops, at that time fighting in Tripoli, and thus between those troops and the ports from which they might make their escape to the mainland of Europe. The success of Operation Torch would make the question of whether the Axis or the Allies won the war in Africa academic. All that was needed, so it seemed to the Allied planners, was to race for Tunis sweeping aside any weak resistance from the Germans or Italians who might be encountered on the way.

Adolf Hitler, reviewing the strategical situation from his headquarters, came to the conclusion that if there was to be an Allied landing then this would take place either on the islands of Sardinia or Corsica, or possibly in southern France. The Fiihrer excluded North Africa completely from the possible targets for a sea-borne assault. German naval headquarters in the Mediterranean was not so confident, and, anticipating Allied landings, had drawn up plans for U-boat action against these. By a coincidence the Axis planners, as early as July 1942, chose as the most likely debarkation points those areas along the French North African shore which the Allied strategists themselves had selected. As U-boat strength in Italian waters was not enough to mount a whole series of widespread assaults against the ships of the Allied armada and was too weak to cover all possible target areas, a pair of intercept patrol lines was charted in the waters of the western half of the Mediterranean sea across which the Allied ships would have to sail to their landing areas and along which they could be attacked.

Reports reaching German naval headquarters which spoke of a concen­tration of shipping in Gibraltar were misinterpreted by Axis supreme commands, as was later intelligence of this build-up as a major convoy to Malta. But then reports reaching Rome brought graver and reliable news so that by 4 November it was clear that the naval preparations which the Allies were making presaged an invasion of North Africa. The evidence convinced both Mussolini and Kesselring, the German Supreme Commander South, but Hitler still clung to his beliefs of a landing upon Corsica or Sardinia, although on 6 November he did send a signal to the senior German naval officer in the Italian waters telling him that the fate of the army in Africa depended upon the destruction of the Gibraltar convoy and demanding from the U-boat crews relentless and victorious action.

During the night of 6/7 November every submarine which could be pressed into service headed westwards to the patrol lines, on an intercept course with the Allied convoy of 190 ships which was now sailing, completely blacked out, through the waters of the Mediterranean.

At 04.00hrs on the morning of 8 November the Allied assault opened at selected points along the Algerian coast and continued throughout the day. In some areas there was little or no opposition but in others there were French naval forays of such ferocity that the intervention of American heavy naval units was required to overcome them. By the morning of the following day an Allied army was ashore and was streaming along the roads towards Tunisia.

Hitler received the news of the invasion while at a wayside railway station en route to Munich and his immediate decision was to hold Tunisia. There would be no retreat. As a first reaction he offered air support to help Vichy France (the French under Petain) in its defence of the North African possession and under cover of this offer Luftwaffe units began to move into Tunisia during the night of 9 November. Meanwhile a telephone conversation between Hitler and Kesselring had taken place.

To answer the question on the number and type of troops which could be rushed without delay to bar the Allied advance, Kesselring could reply that only two battalions of Lieutenant-Colonel Koch's 5th Parachute Regiment and his own headquarters defence battalion were immediately available. 'Fling in everything you can', was the Führer's dramatic command. The orders for their despatch went out to the units on standby and then Kesselring's staff officers swung into a long-planned routine; the transport of a complete division from the strategic reserve in Sicily. But the German Supreme Command did not have the same view of Mediterranean strategy as Kessel­ring and, determined not to infringe French neutrality, refused to allow this stand-by division to be deployed to Tunisia. Not until 24 hours after the first Allied landings had taken place did Kesselring receive from Hitler the powers he needed, but even then the French authorities were handled with extreme delicacy. Permission was sought and obtained from Marshal Petain allowing the German troops to move into Tunisia.

Then began what has been described by some German military commen­tators as 'the poor man's war'; for with only a small force of troops, one wing of fighter aircraft, and a general without a staff, the German forces which had begun to land in Tunisia were ordered to stop the advance of the onrushing Allied troops by forming a bridgehead with a short, defensible perimeter and situated at an adequate distance from the main ports of Tunis and Bizerta.

Either as a bluff or as a piece of absolute cynicism Kesselring commented that a general should be sent to Tunisia — one with the wide red stripes of the general staff on his breeches — for his presence would be reported back to Eisenhower via the intelligence network, and who on the Allied side would believe that a German general could be sent into the field without the necessary troops for him to command. On the evening of 8 November, General Nehring was recalled from convalescence and ordered back to Africa. But not to his old command, for in Rome fresh orders awaited him. He was to take charge of operations in the Tunisian area and was quickly briefed on the task he had been given.

The terrain over which the battles of the next six months were to be fought was hilly, almost mountainous, particularly in the west and in the north­western frontier area where it bordered Algeria. To the east and to the south the ground became more flat, leading to a plain, and in some areas there was marsh. In the valleys between the western hills and on the plain there was extensive cultivation but the hills themselves were bleak and covered with scrub. The lie of the land favoured the defence for the high ground ran in a general north-easterly direction and the defenders would withdraw from peak to peak while denying the valley roads to an Allied advance. This was particularly the case on the eastern side of the country where the Mediter­ranean formed one flank which could not be turned. On this coastal side of Tunisia the mountains reached, at some places, almost to the sea and thus formed narrow gaps across which the Axis armies formed defensive lines.

The Tunisian road network was poor both in number and durability and only the few macadamised highways could be used in the rainy period which extended through the winter and into spring, by unhappy coincidence, the two seasons of the campaign. In the winter the principals were torrential rain creating mud and destroying the secondary roads, and low cloud, which curtailed combat flying, and bitter cold which could not be escaped by the infantry since the hills in which they had to live were generally devoid of man-made or even natural cover. By the middle of March the returning warm weather dried out the ground allowing wheeled movement off roads. There was much horticulture, with orchards of olive trees, cork forests, wheat and fruit growing. The cactus bush was every where and was used widely to form hedges, particularly around the larger, French-owned farms. When the Germans took over these buildings and prepared them for defence the cactus formed a natural type of barbed wire entanglement and helped to turn these farms into fortresses, almost unassailable by infantry and armour.