Bevin Alexander - How Hitler Could Have Won World War II

The issue in Africa was no longer in doubt. With command of the sea and growing command of the air, with vastly larger combat forces, the Allies were certain to win. Hitler’s only hope to save the approximately 180,000 Germans and Italians in Tunisia was to abandon guns and tanks, and institute a swift evacuation of the men by air and sea. But this Hitler would not countenance. As he had proclaimed for Stalingrad, the Axis forces in Africa had to stand or die. Mussolini, overwhelmed by the fate bearing down on him, asserted no independent judgment, merely approving everything Hitler ordained.

General Alexander had two strategic choices. He could drive a wedge between Arnim’s forces in the north around Tunis and Bizerte, and General Giovanni Messe’s 1st Italian Army, the new name for Rommel’s old Panzer Army Africa, on the Mareth line, encircling and destroying the two forces separately. Or he could squeeze the Axis armies together into an increasingly small bridgehead around Tunis and Bizerte until they lost their airfields and room to maneuver and were forced to surrender.

Alexander chose the second method, which required Montgomery’s 8th Army to advance northward along the coast, driving the Axis forces into a Tunis-Bizerte pocket, while the remaining Allied forces pressed against the line in Tunisia to hurry the Axis retreat along.

The first choice was the better one, by far, and Alexander knew it. Montgomery would plod forward with maddening slowness, adding to Allied and Axis casualties, and prolonging the Tunisian campaign far into the spring. But Alexander rejected the idea of splitting the two Axis armies because the agent would have to be U.S. 2nd Corps, and, as General Omar Bradley wrote, Alexander had a “complete lack of faith in the American soldier”—the product of the defeat at Kasserine. Instead, 2nd Corps was to “demonstrate” and “make noise” with limited feinting attacks eastward, out of the mountains.

But Eisenhower had replaced Fredendall with an entirely different sort of general, George S. Patton Jr. He was an overwhelmingly aggressive commander and was galled by Alexander’s instructions, especially as Eisenhower had raised 2nd Corps to four divisions and 88,000 men, four times the troops the Axis could find to oppose it.

Patton arrived at 2nd Corps headquarters on March 7, 1943, leading a long procession of armored scout cars, sirens shrieking, his “command car” sporting two metal flags with two huge white stars of a major general on a field of red, and Patton himself standing in the car like a charioteer. Patton immediately instituted his “cure” for the alleged problems of 2nd Corps: every soldier had to wear a tie, even on the battlefront, and everybody, including nurses tending patients in rear hospitals, had to wear a heavy metal combat helmet.

Patton was heir to a California fortune, and had married a rich Boston heiress, yet he never had any doubts about his destiny to be a great soldier. His grandfather, a Virginian, commanded a Confederate regiment and died of battle wounds. Patton graduated from West Point in 1909, won the Distinguished Service Cross in battle in France in 1918, and showed great promise as a tank commander in maneuvers in 1940. Patton was dyslexic, and the difficulty he had reading and writing gave him an enduring sense of insecurity. To cover his insecurity, an innate shyness, and a high, squeaky voice, Patton developed a public demeanor of bravado and bombast. This led him to become a publicity hound and to be extremely hard on his men. Eisenhower summed up Patton as a shrewd soldier who believed in showmanship, talked too much, and was not always a good example to subordinates. But Eisenhower believed he would turn into a superb field commander.

Montgomery proceeded with slow, exasperating preparations for an attack on the Mareth line, planned for March 20, two weeks after the Medenine battle. The attack by 2nd Corps was to be launched three days earlier but was to be limited to drawing off Axis reserves, regaining the forward airfield at Thelepte to assist Montgomery’s advance, and setting up a forward base at Gafsa to help reprovision 8th Army as it moved northward.

On March 17, 1943, the U.S. 1st Infantry Division under Terry Allen occupied Gafsa without a fight, the Italians withdrawing twenty miles down the road to a defile east of El Guettar, blocking the road to Gabès. Meanwhile the U.S. 1st Armored Division under Orlando Ward, with elements of the U.S. 9th Infantry Division, drove eastward from Kasserine, occupied the railway station at Sened, and moved toward Maknassy and the pass there through the Eastern Dorsals.

But Ward’s tanks and trucks got bogged down in mud from heavy rains, and, though Ward launched successive attacks on March 23, he was stymied by an eighty-man German detachment (Rommel’s former bodyguard) under Colonel Rudolf Lang on a dominating hill (322). Ward renewed the attack the next day with three infantry battalions, supported by artillery and tanks—and again failed.

Patton, livid with anger, ordered Ward to lead another attack himself. Ward did so, but it failed as well. Alexander suggested that Ward be relieved. Patton agreed privately but resented Alexander’s proposal as another criticism of Americans. In the end, he sent Omar Bradley, deputy commander of 2nd Corps, to do the deed, replacing Ward with Ernest N. Harmon.

At El Guettar, Terry Allen’s infantry broke into the Italian position on March 21, but on March 23 was hit by a counterattack of the 10th Panzer Division, rushed up from the Mareth line. The panzers overran the American forward positions, but were stopped by a minefield, then hit by American artillery and tank destroyers, which knocked out 40 German tanks. Although the Americans made few gains, their strikes at El Guettar and Maknassy drew off much of the enemy’s scanty tank strength. This helped Montgomery when he launched his attack on the Mareth line.

Montgomery had assembled 160,000 men to Messe’s 80,000, and deployed 610 tanks and 1,400 guns, while Messe had only 150 tanks (including the 10th Panzer’s already withdrawn) and half as many guns. As at El Alamein, however, Montgomery made his main effort straight into the heart of the Axis line, a frontal assault of three infantry divisions, hoping to break open a gap through which his armor could rush. Meanwhile, a New Zealand corps made a wide outflanking march 25 miles inland from Gabès to menace the enemy’s rear. This effort started well but 21st Panzer and 164th Light Divisions stopped it.

The frontal attack bogged down after making only a shallow dent in the Axis line. A counterattack by 15th Panzer Division, with only 30 tanks and two infantry battalions, overran the forward British infantry, stopping the entire British effort.

On March 23 Montgomery shifted his forces to the inland flank. Since Montgomery’s frontal attack had failed, the Axis commanders had already shifted 15th Panzer Division to this flank two days before.

It might have been another defeat for Montgomery, except that Arnim, now commander of the whole front with the departure of Rommel, decided to withdraw Messe’s army back to the fourteen-mile-wide Wadi Akarit bottleneck, 43 miles to the rear. At Wadi Akarit Montgomery went through his laborious preparations all over again.

Meanwhile Patton renewed his efforts at El Guettar and Maknassy. By March 27 Montgomery had reached Gabès on the way to Wadi Akarit, and Alexander launched Patton’s tanks toward the coast without waiting for infantry to clear a path. However, a chain of antitank guns stopped the tanks. Patton called on his infantry to crack the barrier, but they failed as well.

However, Arnim had transferred 21st Panzer to help 10th Panzer, reducing strength at Akarit, and making it easier for Montgomery to crack the line, which his infantry did April 5. Once more Montgomery was slow to exploit success, and by morning the Axis troops were moving up the coast, heading for Enfidaville, only 50 miles south of Tunis. Here was a narrow coastal plain with a hill barrier on the west.